By Greg Cameron
I must confess to you, the loyal Springfield Student reader, something that I feel as though I should share. I have fallen head over heels in the recent days and weeks.
Now, you’re probably wondering with whom and why with just a short time left on Alden Street. To be perfectly honest, this love has been fermenting for some time now.
Are you ready to hear about this new found love? Are you positively sure you’re ready for such heart-stopping, yet heart-enriching news?
Alright, I’ll let the cat out of the bag. I have fallen back in love with playoff hockey and the excitement that comes with it.
By this point, many of you have likely turned the page or read the other fine articles in this publication, but if I may, let me keep you just a little longer. Besides, maybe someday you’ll lovingly miss my hockey columns after I graduate.
Anyway, this is simply an awesome time of year to get into a sport that doesn’t entirely get the national media exposure that it so righteously deserves. This year’s playoffs have been a showcase thus far of the young and the restless in the NHL.
Sure, much of the league’s stalwarts are still there in San Jose, Washington, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, and Detroit. But, this year some new blood has transfused in the NHL playoffs in the form of Phoenix, Colorado, and Los Angeles in addition to countless young players like Boston’s Tuukka Rask.
Rask hasn’t been the only young netminder making his mark on these playoffs. Let me introduce you to Detroit’s Jimmy Howard, a University of Maine product playing stellar in between the pipes for the Red Wings.
His emergence for the Red Wings has been nothing short of a revelation for a team that gutted their way into the playoffs and got healthy at the right time. Just the other night, Howard robbed a would-be Coyote goal-scorer with a beautiful kick save sans facemask.
So far in the first round of play we’ve seen just about anything a hockey fan can possibly see including an own-goal. Yes, you read that right, an own-goal—by professional hockey players.
San Jose’s Dan Boyle, an all-star and a gold medalist in this year’s Vancouver Olympics, managed to misplay the puck and slip it between the pads of fellow Shark and goaltender Evgeni Nabokov. Mind you, this own-goal and stroke of the greatest misfortune ended the Sharks’ tilt against the Colorado Avalanche Sunday night.
Now, as a former mite hockey player, I’ve done the same thing; just not on the NHL level. Trust me, my own lovely parents could probably tell you all about that fateful play held coincidentally at nearby Smead Arena at Blunt Park.
Of course, I wasn’t at all the caliber of player that Dan Boyle is, but all I’m saying is, I feel the guy’s pain.
However painful for some playing in the playoffs or however fortuitous a bounce of the puck in your favor, few things concerning playoff hockey can’t be beat.
Now, as a hockey fan, I’ve already proclaimed my love for playoff hockey. Hopefully, as a Bruins fan, the playoffs can love me back.
