BEST EVER? SAVE IT
Holtby's heroics don't surpass Cup's greatest
IT WAS a spectacular save all right, perhaps to be remembered as the series-changing event that kick-started the Capitals to their first Stanley Cup championship.
But only recency bias (or in this case, immediacy bias) can account for folks calling Braden Holtby’s lunging stick save on Alex Tuch with two minutes remaining in Wednesday’s match in Las Vegas the greatest in the history of the finals, no matter its degree of impossibility.
People. People. Perspective, please.
It was Game 2. Though the save preserved a 3-2 lead, there is no guarantee the Golden Knights would then have won the match if Tuch had finished the cross-ice pass from Cody Eakin and the game had gone into overtime. Further, a Caps defeat in that one would only have created a 2-0 scenario. Brilliant as it was, the save decided nothing.
For similar reasons, Mike Richter’s breathtaking right pad save on Pavel Bure’s penalty shot in 1994 is disqualified from consideration as the greatest of all time. It happened in Game 4 with the Rangers up in the series 2-1, even if down by the same score in the second period. The series was neither won nor lost on that night.
No, by definition, the greatest saves in the history of the finals have come late in one-goal Game 7s, the ones that in fact do preserve championships. Here, then, is the Slap Shots ranking of the best saves in Stanley Cup history: 1. Ken Dryden on Jim Pappin, 1971. The Canadiens were up on the Blackhawks 3-2 with 4:00 to play at Chicago Stadium when Dryden flashed his right pad to deny Pappin’s point-blank, left doorstep rebound of Keith Magnuson’s drive from the right. The Habs won it 3-2 in the game in which Tony Esposito whiffed on Jacques Lemaire’s secondperiod shot from the neutral zone, and took the Cup in perhaps the NHL’s most dramatic tournament ever — which featured Montreal’s stunning firstround upset of Boston and the Blackhawks’ seven-game semifinals victory over the Rangers. 2. Nikolai Khabibulin on Jordan Leopold, 2004. The Lightning led Calgary 2-1 with 5:00 remaining when Khabibulin made a point-blank rebound stop on Leopold from the left porch. Tampa Bay won it by that score to take the Cup. The Conn Smythe went to Brad Richards, with the voting completed with approximately 10 minutes to go. Had it taken place at the buzzer, that save likely would have clinched it for he goaltender. 3. Marc-Andre Fleury on
Nicklas Lidstrom, 2009. Seconds remained at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit when Fleury scrambled to his right to deny Lidstrom’s drive from the lower left circle to preserve a 2-1 lead and deliver the Cup to the Penguins, who had trailed 3-2 in the series and stopped the Red Wings’ bid for a repeat. 4. Cam Ward on Fernando Pisani, 2006. The Candy Canes were up 2-1 with 3:45 to play when Ward stretched his left pad to somehow stop Pisani’s rebound from in front after an initial save on Raffi Torres’ drive from the left side. Carolina won it, and the Cup, with a 3-1 victory over Edmonton.
➤ Are Vegas’ pregame routines over the top? You bet they are. And there is nothing remotely wrong with that. The NHL is moving, sometimes with glacial speed and sometimes reluctantly, into the show-biz realm of 21st Century sports. The more extravagant the show, the better. The NFL learned that long ago.
This may be a business to the owners (and the players, too, for that matter), but hockey is a game that is meant to be enjoyed by the masses. The Cup finals should be a spectacle. That’s what it was for the first two games in Vegas, from start to Holtby’s finish.
➤ If Oliver Ekman-Larsson doesn’t accept what we understand is a Coyotes offer of an eight-year extension in the neighborhood of $8 million per, the defenseman with one year to go on his contract will all but certainly be dealt at the draft. Ottawa’s Erik
Karlsson, also a pending 2019 free agent, is expected to be traded, as well.
The potential availability of OEL and Karlsson on the market was a factor in the Rangers’ decision to move Ryan McDonagh at the deadline rather than to wait until the offseason. Again, though, it was Tampa Bay’s inclusion of Li
bor Hajek in the package coming back to New York that sealed the deal.
Lightning management, we’re told, was unhappy all season with the team’s play in the defensive zone. Hence, the decision to dismiss associate coach Rick Bowness. But associate/assistant coaches aren’t rogue operatives. They im- part and install the head coach’s vision and system. The Rangers’ breakdowns weren’t the fault of
Ulf Samuelsson in 2015-16, weren’t the fault of Jeff Beukeboom in 2016-17, and weren’t the fault of Lindy Ruff in 2017-18. Which is to say, the clock has started on Jon Cooper. ➤ Watching Deryk Engelland bloom into a difference-maker for Vegas and Brooks Orpik continue to play important minutes with Washington makes me wonder again why the Rangers couldn’t have been more patient with — and more committed to — Dylan McIlrath.
Because you know, there was that stretch during 2015-16 when McIlrath and Keith Yandle formed a pretty decent pair back there before No. 6 went down with another injury and never quite got another shot at reclaiming a job.
True enough, his 2016-17 training camp was inferior, and McIlrath was waived through the league each of the past two years, so it is not as if the Blueshirts made the most egregious error of all time. But still, there are players of McIlrath’s skill-set not only in the NHL, but thriving.
➤ Finally, having been elected as this year’s Elmer Ferguson winner that means induction into the writers’ wing of the Hockey Hall of Fame in November, I owe thanks to the people who have made my career what it is — and that is you, the readers.
Without you, I would not be here.