Sporting Madness

With everything on the line, the Montreal Canadiens recovered from their dismal play in the last couple of games to beat the Boston Bruins 5-0 in Game Seven of their first-round series and move on to the Eastern semifinals. After taking an early 3-1 series lead, Montreal looked terrible in a 5-1 thrashing in Game Five and not much better in a 5-4 loss in Game Six Saturday, where they gave up four third-period goals. Tonight, they played cool and composed and proved that they were clearly the better team. They also showed that they can play tough defensively, blocking 23 shots, dishing out 38 hits and killing off all six penalties they took. It was a particularly good performance from some of the Canadiens who had struggled lately. Rookie goalie Carey Price was back to his normal unflappable self, with the Globe 's Tim Wharnsby describing his performance as the "best hockey" he'd played to date. Mark Streit, normally an offensive defenceman who has played up front in...

Just a quick note about the hockey playoffs: I've entered a team in the globesports.com challenge, which works on a pretty simple basis: pick one player from each list (i.e. a list of #1 forwards, #2 forwards, #1 defencemen, etc) until you have six forwards, four defencemen and two teams' goalie tandems. You get one point for each assist and two for each goal any of your players score, plus two points for each win your goaltenders put up and an extra point for each shutout. You can also completely retool your roster after the first and second rounds. Thus, I wasn't too concerned about picking teams that could go deep into the playoffs: I was more interested in finding the most offensive player available at each slot, and particularly those playing against teams with weaker defence and goaltending. My players and their performances to date are listed below. So far, I've accumulated 15 points from the first two nights, good enough to put me into a tie for eighth (however...