I wasn’t feeling too well when I got home from work and I had a hard time sleeping so I watched some non-Sharks playoff hockey, including most of the Buffalo/NY regulation time action. A couple of notes:

1. The Rangers are a bunch of cheap, theatrical whiners. I hope they loose badly. Jagr plays like too many other superstars by hoping the strength of his name alone will keep him out of trouble. Fortunately the refs were having none of it and sent him to the box several times for blatant hooks that he, of course, cried like a little baby about. But it isn’t just him: The whole team embellished and acted and moaned whenever things didn’t go their way. It was sad.
2. Then the contested goal (see some too-quick video of it here) came where Karel Rachunek was said to have executed the oft-cited “distinct kicking motion” to put the puck in the net. Now it doesn’t matter because the Rangers ended up winning in overtime but even with that being the case, a lot of coverage mentions the disallowed goal and the TV announcers and analysts were all up in arms over it. I can see it both ways (if he was stopping, why was his leading insole facing the goalie? That’s like asking for a broken ankle; but then again, if it had been the Sharks I would have said the requisite “definitive evidence” required for an overturn wasn’t there and the call on the ice was a goal), but the crying and gnashing of teeth for the Rangers was pathetic.

As for the Anaheim/Vancouver game, Vancouver could have won it, but they pulled a Sharks maneuver and failed to capitalize on many, many brilliant chances given up by the Ducks. J.S. Guiguere wasn’t all that great, but he hardly needed to be since the Canucks didn’t seem to really want it all that bad. Sometimes it looks like only Roberto Luongo is playing for the Cup up there in Vancouver, everyone else is like, just wanting a scone or something.