In this bonus edition of the Puck Podcast we discuss the Conference Finals as the Penguins face the Flyers and the Red Wings battle the Stars. We’ll breakdown the history between the teams, analyze the key matchups, discuss what we think will have to happen for each team to win and give our predictions on who we think will meet in the Stanley Cup Finals.
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Who is this joke who acts like he knows anything that thinks Crosby and Malkin play on the same line? What a joke.
When I said the Penguins had one good line, I was referring more to the fact that they have three guys that can score. I am aware that Malkin and Crosby do not play on the same line, but the point I was trying to make is that the Penguins are relying on three players (thus the reason I referred to them as one line as I looked at my notes) to score the majority of their points and that the Flyers will really only have to concentrate on shutting down three guys in order to beat the Penguins. It was a poor choice of words to be certain.
And yet it’s very much relevant that they’re on two different lines because you can’t stop two different lines with that kind of firepower that easily — I think Detroit is the only team that has the pure defensive depth to pull that off. Without that, you have to hope that you can put a scoring line with your top D against one line (say, Crosby/Hossa), and that the checking line can work with the second pairing, and have that be good enough against the other line (say, Malkin/Sykora). I’m no coach, but that looks like a pretty sketchy proposition unless you’ve got solid two-way players right down the line.
You are absolutely right, Jason. It’s really a choice of which poison the Flyers would like to be killed with – Crosby/Hossa or Malkin?