Ducks 4, Red Wings 3
Here’s a few interesting things about this tilt, which is now 1-1 after Scott Niedermayer scored in OT to put the Ducks over the hump. We like listing things numerically, so that’s what we’re about to do:
1. Scott Niedermayer is a really good name for a wallflower in high school. You know Biff, from Back to the Future? Can’t you just envision him screaming “NEE-DER-MY-ER!” in the same voice as he screamed “MC-FLY?” I can.
2. The fact that the Niedermayer brothers might have surpassed the Sedin twins in terms of “Western Conference relevance” is utterly surprising, although I guess the Ducks were a higher seed.
3. There are several moralistic questions involved with this series right now. For example, if you root for Anaheim to win – and they now have home ice, for whatever that’s worth – are you secretly supporting marital discord? See, there’s this long-standing rumor that Chris Pronger left Edmonton because he was cheating on his wife and needed to get out of dodge. If you support Detroit, are you a bandwagon guy? I mean, Detroit is en fuego recently: Pistons have lost a scant 1 game in these playoffs, the Tigers are the defending AL Champions, and even Kid Rock seems kinda relevant these days. Do you root for Teemu or Dominik to get their career-validating championship? Do you root for Holmstrom or MacDonald to get on the national radar first? So many questions. I might have to take a nap or something.
[Ted Bauer will be covering the NHL playoffs for us this year. You can find more of Ted’s work at A Price Above Bip Roberts.]
