Well, my wife's out shopping today, so I guess I'll just get my comments on this series all wrapped up. General remarks, then:
Goaltending: edge to Victoria. I'm a Frank Brimsek fan. I've got Mr. Zero in my 2nd tier of goalies and Fuhr in the 3rd. Fuhr's playoff record (which I don't think is "polarizing" at all) may narrow the gap a bit, but I think Brimsek was simply the better player.
Coaching: even. I don't see a particular advantage to either team in this department. Hart and Green are both strong 2nd tier coaches.
Breaking down the skaters can't be done with such easy 1-to-1 analysis. A few points:
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Health: Victoria's vaunted 1st line is a fragile unit, and are now entering their third playoff round. I've no doubt they'll suit up until their limbs fall off, but are Lemieux and Neely at 100% (I'll leave Stevens out of if, as he's a short peak player, but one who suffered from a freak injury)? This is the danger you face when you draft this kind of player. If they face too much physical pressure over the course of the playoffs, they will wear down. Victoria's top line had Red Horner to contend with in opening round, and the very aggressive (and occasionally dirty) Pilote - Salming pairing in the last series (not to mention Mike Peca). Is the physical beating beginning to take it's toll? Lemieux will be on the ice, but will this be Super Mario or the Mario who couldn't bend over to tie his own skates? I know Lemieux will be out there - it's not a question of his toughness...only his health.
Neely is probably the bigger risk for Victoria, though. Neely's peak was very short due to injury and if Cam isn't at 100%, the Secrets are in trouble. Neely's had a hard road of defensemen to fight through thus far and it doesn't get any easier with Bill Gadsby patrolling his side of the ice. With Lidstrom as a partner, Gadsby is free to play the aggressive, hitting game he was known for (ask Tim Horton), which is bad news for Cam Neely. Nor is it good that Neely now must deal most of the time with Johnny Bucyk, who is quite possibly the hardest-hitting left wing in history. Even when not matched against the Bucyk line, Neely doesn't get a break with Litzenberger, Prentice and Stuart manning the left wing on their respective units. Even a small loss in effectiveness on the Lemieux line could be disasterous for the Secrets.
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Skill: Much is made of the Lemieux line, but are they actually better than the Sakic line? The only matchup Victoria wins when comparing 1st lines is at center, and it's not like Joe Sakic is a bum. Mario is tremendous, but Joe Sakic is the greatest playoff performer of his generation (besides maybe Lidstrom), so the matchup is hardly a landslide. Bucyk vs. Neely goes to Cam only if you honestly believe you're getting 100% full peak Neely for seven games, which at this point seems highly unlikely, even moreso because he'll be doing battle with Johnny Bucyk in the corners in this series. Neely's peak was higher than Bucyk's, but the difference isn't great, and Neely's peak was much, much, much shorter than Bucyk's. The odds of Neely actually outperforming Bucyk over seven games are slim. At this point, the Secrets are still ahead, but what do we make of Maltsev vs. Olmstead? Offensively, they aren't even close. Olmstead was a good digger and has solid credentials to be a 1st line support player (I like Olmstead and disagree with those who say he doesn't belong on a 1st line under any circumstances), but Maltsev's skills are simply on a different level, entirely, with very little to seperate him from Kharlamov, Mikhailov and Makarov when you actually take a look at their career achievements. This is a clear win for the Spiders, and although Olmstead makes up ground in terms of checking, Maltsev is the wrong matchup for Olmstead in terms of defensive play. You don't match a big, slow, gritty checker against a very fast forward with outstanding stickhandling skills if you want to get the best out of your checking forwards. Olmstead matches well defensively against powerforwards like Howe, Neely, etc. Against Maltsev, much of what made him effective as a checker is lost. At the end of the day, when questionable health and the ugly Olmstead vs. Maltsev matchup are taken into account, it's not at all clear which 1st line is actually the better unit.
- The biggest (and longest, in terms of icetime) unit vs. unit mismatch in this series is Cleghorn - Gardiner vs. Gadsby - Lidstrom. Even if you favor Victoria's top line (which is far from a sure thing), comparing the 1st pairings is brutal for Victoria. Cleghorn and Gadsby are on roughly the same level, but the other comparison here is just unfair to Herb Gardiner. I don't really get why Gardiner is on the top pairing over Bill White, as he's really not deserving of the kind of icetime Cleghorn should be pulling, and Boucher - White are probably deserving of more than they'll get as a 2nd pairing. This is why I believe in giving my best players the most icetime: to avoid having a guy like Herb Gardiner out there against other teams' top lines pulling 25+ minutes a night, but I don't see a way for Victoria to avoid such a situation at this point without screwing up chemistry on their blueline. Gardiner is a solid 2nd pairing guy in my opinion (I'm not saying he's a bum), but he's in over his head as a top pairing ATD defenseman.
Then there's the question of Sprague Cleghorn and how he'll react to Odie getting run every shift. It's not just the left wings - the Spiders' bottom pairing defensemen (Russell and Corbeau, against whom Odie will often skate) are also extremely physical. Russell's speed and hitting ability should be well known as I assume a good number of people here saw him play (though here's a link to a good
profile of Russell if you don't believe me), and Corbeau was picked by UM as the hardest hitter of the 20's, not to mention being a notorious pugilist. Will Sprague blow a gasket when Odie gets picked on? What happens to the Victoria defense if and when that happens? The Secrets can, of course, choose to bench Odie Cleghorn before or during the series, but I'm not really sure what kind of message that would send to the team.
- issues with the skill level and composition of Victoria's 2nd line have already been mentioned.
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Speed: The Spiders are the faster team, and present a difficult matchup for the Secrets defensively at a couple of key points. The problems of the Olmstead / Maltsev matchup have already been discussed, but the matchup of George Boucher against Sakic - Maltsev or Savard - Foyston is also not a good one for the Secrets. Both of San Francisco's scoringlines come at you with a very high level of speed and creativity, which is exactly what you want to attack defensemen with mobility issues. MXD says that no source lists Boucher as slow, and that is somewhat true. the HHOF simply says that he was "not blessed with great speed", though Legends also called Lionel Conacher a "competent skater" which is something of a mockery considering that we know from other sources (which I personally uncovered) that he was a slug. Given the site's tendency to sugarcoat their profiles,
any criticism in an HHOF profile should be taken seriously. At best, Boucher is an average skater, and at worst...well, he could be pretty slow.
MXD will tell you that it's impossible for a defenseman in Boucher's era to score a lot of points without speed, but won't mention that Buck's defining attribute was his stickhandling ability, which was apparently excellent. In the pre-forward-pass era, stickhandling was of greater importance than in the modern game because a single player weaving with the puck was the most effective way of bringing it up ice. A defenseman with excellent stickhandling skills may well have been able to excel in this era in spite of poor skating. At any rate, even if you think Boucher's an average skater,
any lack of mobility against the Spiders' scoringlines is dangerous.
That should just about cover it.
