yeah, ulanov was terrible, olausson was terrible, all of the jets defensemen were terrible except numminen. but still, just because ulanov was awful doesn't mean that housley isn't also running around like a chicken with his head cut off.
because this is one of my cherished memories from childhood, humour me and let's go through housley's play goal by goal, shall we?
first goal
breaks up the cross-ice pass.
starts to head man the puck. note all three jets in the offensive zone are turning around.
everyone's hustling to get back.
except phil. where the hell are you going, phil? pucks going the other way.
that's housley at the left edge of the frame. still going the wrong way.
and for good measure, here's the end of the play. note that housley ends up on the ice.
second goal
not really his fault; housley's partner throws himself out of the play for no good reason diving at linden's pass to lidster. but another sequence where housley ends up on the ice watching a goal go in.
i just think this is funny. also want to drive home the point of why i remember this as "the phil housley game." he's on the ice for five goals against, and repeatedly the play ends with him impotently flopping around on the ice.
third goal
tabaracci makes the save.
uh oh, sandlak has the puck at the side of the net. he's big, better stand behind the post for no good reason.
(two seconds later) oh right, i play defense. better chase the puck to the open man that numminen would be covering except that he switched over to take my guy sandlak because i was standing behind the net.
better wave my stick in his general direction.
that's housley on the far right of the frame. hey, at least he's standing up this time.
fourth goal
okay, this is the ulanov one. now as i said, what ulanov did was unforgivable. pass up the middle to pavel frickin' bure. but watch phil.
ulanov gets the puck in the corner. phil bolts up ice, leaving two canucks deep.
jets winger is covered and housley is up ice so ulanov has no outlet. throws up a prayer to try and hit housley.
interception. phil turns around.
and throws himself on the ice so it looks like he tried.
fifth goal
turnover.
instead of retreating, housley lets bure get behind him. not the first or the last defenseman to let that happen to him, but it's game six and he's already scored two goals in that game alone. you should probably know bure's m.o. and be aware of where he is on the ice at all times, especially when the other man on the point is noted defensive stalwart keith tkachuk.
bure scores. playoff hat trick. ten year old me goes nuts.
EDIT: another interesting thing about this playoff series (and especially game six) is to watch how keith tkachuk giveth (bullying the canucks and scoring two goals from in close), and how keith tkachuk taketh away (he's on the ice and mostly watching the play for three of those goals against). we thought we were in real trouble now that winnipeg had this big tough tkachuk kid, who was just manhandling our big d-corps of diduck, babych, dr. gregg, and dirk; shades of a young cam neely and all that. also of note is his running jostling match with pavel, a holdover from the don cherry/"weasel power" incident from earlier in the year, and continuing an on-ice feud between them that would carry into the '93 playoffs. in this narrative, tkachuk was churla before churla.
