EASTERN

Washington vs Montreal: Caps in six.

New Jersey vs Philadelphia: Flyers upset in six.

Buffalo vs Boston: Sabres in seven.

Pittsburgh vs Ottawa: Pens in six.

WESTERN

San Jose vs Colorado: Sharks in five.

Chicago vs Nashville: Hawks in six.

Vancouver vs Los Angeles: Canucks in five.

Phoenix vs Detroit: Wings in six.

Don’t bank on any of this.

As for Murray, he can be faulted for not playing as aggressively against Federer as he did in his thumping of Nadal (which would have occurred whether or not Rafa had developed his leg injury).

But it must not be forgotten that Rafa’s game is not Federer’s game. While Rafa did well to try to hold the baseline in his Murray match (something he is only learning to do; it is not native to him), one thing that was clear to me in that match was that Nadal succeeded in hitting the ball flat only for the first couple games of the match. After that, even with aggressive positioning, his looping shots made him easy prey for Murray, whose speed is phenomenal. That exaggerated topspin may bother Federer when hit to the backhand, as he is only 6’1″ and deploys the one-hander, but it is lunch for Murray, who is 6’3″ and whose best shot is his backhand.

Federer’s ballstriking, however, is of an entirely different sort. He not only positions himself very aggressively on the baseline and steps into the court at the first opportunity, he also hits the ball much flatter than Nadal. Even the incredible examples of topspin we saw in the final were almost never looping – rather, several times he caught Murray napping with balls that appeared to be going out and dropped in at the last possible moment. It’s a lot harder for a player accustomed to being a counterpuncher, such as Murray, to play aggressively against Federer than against Nadal. His time is taken away.

That said, when Murray did step it up offensively, he did get more chances, even if it didn’t win him any sets. In his post-match interview, he noted that one difference between playing Federer at the Slams and elsewhere (Murray is 6-3 against Federer outside of the majors; 0-2 at the Slams) is not so much that Federer plays a different style, but that he makes far fewer mistakes. Which indicates to me that Murray has probably begun to clue in: while he has been content to get everything back and wait for the unforced errors to come, that’s not going to work against Roger on the big stage. He may win his share of minor matches (although Federer is now on a 3-0 run against him), but counterpunching won’t give him a major if he’s facing Fed.

As for Nadal, he’s facing what many of us long suspected: his playing style is bound to curtail his career. He hit the top relatively quickly, but all that pounding cannot be sustained on hard courts. To his credit, he has attempted to change his style (and he has beefed up his lefty serve more than I would have imagined a natural righty could do), but he is not quite there yet. He still reverts to looping topspin too readily, and that means he can be pushed around with high quality aggressive tennis – especially from the taller guys with two-handed backhands such as Murray, Del Potro, Djokovic, and a number of others. Which means that there is a growing list of young bucks that can take him down on hard court. Don’t bet on him winning another hard court Slam unless he somehow learns to flatten out the ball on a regular basis, unless he gets the very kindest of draws.

Speaking of Del Potro: I think he suffered from the weight of high expectations after winning the U.S. Open. Not to worry: he’ll get his share of titles. But Djokovic also has struggled to go all the way to the final since winning his first Slam in Australia in ’08. It’s one thing to come through with no pressure; it’s another to feel the weight of being a favourite. Which is one more thing that makes Federer’s run so remarkable.

Marin Cilic is also on the verge. He of course had that hammering of Murray at the U.S. Open in 2009, and here he had an incredibly tough draw and still gave Murray fits in the semis. He’s very young, very strong, and very smart. He has plenty of room for growth on his serve, and once he solidifies that, he should also be in that elite group.

It’s an exciting time for men’s tennis – lots of young talent who move like the wind and hit like Ali. And that’s without talking about Tsonga (crazy fast for a big guy), Soderling (who I suspect felt pressure similar to what Del Potro experienced), or the resurgent Roddick, who nearly toppled Fed at Wimbledon in ’09.

One last thing: I’m no fan of Serena Williams, which was again confirmed for me last year at the U.S. Open when she uttered threats against an official. But despite very different personalities, she and Federer do share one thing: the ability to rise to the occasion. In 2009, Serena won just three tournaments. They just happened to be the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and the year-end championships. Similarly, Roger won just four titles in 2009 – but two of them were Grand Slams. (And for that matter, Roger was a set away from winning Australia in ’09, and just two points away from winning the U.S. Open.) Even though neither Serena nor Roger are as consistently dominant as they have been at times in the past, they still come through in the clutch when the stage is largest.

And oh yeah, congrats to TMF for 23 consecutive Grand Slam semis. Not bad.

The secondary hope for a great final rested with Andy Murray, the great UK hope and now world #3, who holds a 6-2 head-to-head against Federer. It was thought he had a nearly clear path to the final, but world #6 Andy Roddick played him brilliantly for his third crack at a Wimbledon final against The Mighty Fed (Andy lost this same matchup in 2004 and 2005). Most gave him virtually no chance, expecting him to get perhaps one set at best.

Instead, the world was treated to yet another epic battle that didn’t end until 16-14 in the fifth (the most amount of fifth set games in Grand Slam history), as Roddick, playing fitter and smarter under coach Larry Stefanki, had the match of his life. In the end, it took Federer a personal best 50 aces to get the best of Andy, who didn’t drop serve until his very last service game.

Frankly, the way Murray and Roddick played here, I don’t think Rafa would have made it to this final even had he been healthy. We saw the match that needed to be played, even though no one (outside, perhaps, Roddick’s camp) expected it in advance.

The numbers for both players were staggering. Fed’s 50 aces nearly doubled Roddick’s 27. While that seems almost unthinkable, Roddick himself had more than double the amount of aces he had ever served against Federer at Wimbledon (his previous high was 13); and Federer for his part served out of his mind, considering how poorly he served in his last Grand Slam fast court final (against Nadal in Australia).

Roddick very nearly had Federer on the brink when, with a set in hand, he went up 6-2 in the second set tiebreak. But Federer played three brilliant points before Andy misplayed a high backhand volley; ultimately Roger closed out the tiebreak by scoring the last six points to even up the match 1-1.

Will this rank equal to the 2008 final? Despite the 16-14 fifth set (compared to 9-7), probably not. Last year’s match was considerably longer in actual playing time, as most of this match was a serving display. There were less points lost on serve here, and Federer-Roddick rallies – even with Roddick so improved in this area – are generally shorter than Federer-Nadal rallies. Moreover, last year’s match was between the two top-ranked players who have a longstanding epic rivalry, and it was that match which largely allowed Rafa to wrest the #1 ranking from Federer. And of course, Rafa now has six Grand Slam titles to his credit, whereas Roddick has but one (due in no small measure to having to play out his prime simultaneous to Federer’s).

Yet there was plenty at stake this time around, given that the victory pushes Federer past Pete Sampras for career Grand Slam titles (15) and past Nadal back into the #1 ranking.  It’s also his sixth Wimbledon, just one shy of the record held by Sampras and William Renshaw (who won them when defense of the title meant a bye to the final awaiting the challenger).

Given that Roger is not yet 28, it seems likely that he has a few more Slam titles left in him to put distance between himself and Sampras. The latter is venturing 17-19… but wouldn’t 20 be a nice round number?

And to top it off, he had an apparently easy draw – all the players who have given him some difficulty in the last year or two were in the bottom half (Federer’s), including Robin Soderling (who beat him at Roland Garros a couple weeks ago, and also nearly beat him at Wimbledon a couple years back), Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (who beat him in Australia in 2008), Novak Djokovic (who nearly beat him on clay in May, and also has given him fits at Wimbledon in the past), and even Fernando Verdasco (who came within a hair’s breadth of upsetting him in Australia this year). The only nemeses in his half were world #3 Andy Murray (who beat him at the 2008 U.S. Open), who he wouldn’t face until the semis, and Mikhail Youzhny, who once posed a problem, but hasn’t been a threat for some time.

If Federer wins Wimbledon, he will not only be the new recordholder for career Grand Slams (fittingly breaking Sampras’s record of 14 at the latter’s favourite tournament), he will also regain the #1 ranking. (Even had he entered, Nadal would have needed at least a semifinal berth to retain #1 were Fed to win the title.)

It’s too bad, really. I think a lot of people were hoping for yet another Federer-Nadal showdown in the Wimbledon final – a stage that has provided two classic five set matches in the preceding two years.

And of course, there will be the complaint that if Fed regains #1, he won’t have earned it; he’ll have it by virtue of Nadal’s injury.

That’s a bit unfair, however. One could argue that Nadal would never have been number 1 had Federer not suffered mono in 2008.

The other factor here is that unfortunate fact that, as numerous pundits have been saying for years, Nadal’s playing style pounds his body to pieces. If he is going to have the long career it looks like Federer will, he’s going to have to change his style of play, particularly on the punishing hard courts. He has had problems in various parts of his legs for several years, which is why he usually has at least one lengthy part of the season which he either misses out on or is pretty much ineffective. While good health is a gift of God, there is no denying that one of the reasons for Roger’s success is that he has been very healthy, and his fluid, seemingly effortless playing style has been a big contributor to that. (His struggles in 2008 and early 2009 were from mono – not sports-related – and from a bad back – which virtually any athlete can incur, no matter what sport or style is involved.)

The withdrawal of Nadal probably benefits someone else even more than it benefits Federer. Andy Murray is already in the weaker half of the draw, has just won his first grass-court title, and has a pretty clear path to the final unless young gun Juan Del Potro (#5) or someone less likely steps up.

A word of warning, though. There really is no such thing as an easy draw. At this level, all the players are dangerous. The question is form and matchups. Nadal matched up well with almost everyone in his half. Will Murray? Gonzalez is in his quarter, as are a couple of big servers, albeit lower-ranked ones (he faces Kendrick in the first round). Roddick is also in his half, and with his draw, he also may have a path through to the semis.

I will not be one of those. To be sure, a victory over Nadal would have been more dramatic and much sweeter. It would invoke more staying power in people’s memories. And it’s also true that – not so unexpectedly, really – the moment was just too much for Robin Soderling, playing in his first Grand Slam final (he had never so much as reached the quarters previously).

But Federer was the best player on this fortnight, and that’s what any championship is about. If we go through the lists of titlists in any sport, almost all of them at some point have won a final against someone other than their chief archrivals. It’s just the nature of sport, and there will be no asterisk beside Federer’s name, explaining that he did not have to defeat Nadal in order to win the 2009 Roland Garros crown. Nadal on this occasion was not good enough to beat Roger’s eventual finals opponent. He was not good enough to win Roland Garros in 2009; Roger was.

Today we are reminded why it has been so important for Federer to improve continually, to keep putting himself in positions where he has a chance to win, even on the clay at the French, where supposedly he would never succeed. There were many naysayers who said he could never beat Rafa Nadal at Roland Garros, and therefore would never win the title. But nonetheless, he became the second-greatest claycourter of his time. Only Nadal himself was able to stop Federer at Roland Garros for the last four years. It is therefore not a cheap victory, but entirely fitting, that the man who invested so much of himself in winning this tournament has finally done so. This could never have happened had Federer resigned himself to being an also-ran on clay.

This tournament has raised all sorts of other questions. What does this event do to the confidence of both Nadal and Federer, respectively, heading into Wimbledon? Will Federer reclaim, not only his Wimbledon title, but the number one ranking? Even if Nadal’s tendonitis was some sort of factor, has Soderling’s dominant performance against him shown the way for other players to present a real challenge to Rafa – even on clay? And what of Soderling himself: has he finally turned a corner, so that the promise of his talent will be fulfilled to the extent that he can challenge repeatedly at the majors?

The coming months promise some very interesting storylines….

But the Penguins lost some key pieces of their puzzle over the off-season, including local favourite Ryan Malone, and more importantly, superstar Marian Hossa, who signed with… Detroit, as a free agent. And halfway through the season, neither club looked likely to make it: Detroit was having all sorts of defensive and goaltending woes, while Pittsburgh didn’t so much as have hold of a playoff spot.

But here we are, and they’ve both made it, and done so in pretty impressive fashion.

There are a host of reasons why this particular matchup is highly intriguing:

1. It’s the first back-to-back Stanley Cup finals rematch since 1983-1984, when the New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers faced off in successive years.
2. It’s the first opportunity for a team to win back-to-back Cups since New Jersey made the finals in 2001 after winning in 2000. The bid was unsuccessful – the last team actually to win two in a row was… Detroit, in 1997-1998.
3. It pits Hossa against the team he left because he felt he could win the Cup in Detroit (even signing for much less money than he could have received elsewhere). Naturally, there are folks who say that karma will get him, and Pittsburgh will win….
4. It pits probably the two most skilled teams in the NHL. It is so nice to see the cream rise to the top.
5. It offers a chance for redemption to Evgeni Malkin, who virtually disappeared halfway through the 2008 playoffs, apparently when he was taking a physical pounding early in the Philadelphia series. This year, he has only seemed to get stronger as the postseason has progressed.

As for that first point, there are further reasons why this matchup is being compared to the earlier one. In 1983, the Islanders were finishing up a four Cup run, while in 1984, the Oilers began a dynasty of their own, winning five Cups in seven years. Meanwhile, the Wings are the closest thing to a dynasty the NHL has, winning four Cups in the previous 11 seasons and accumulating far more wins (whether playoff or regular season) than anyone else. Given the salary cap, there’s such relative parity it’s unlikely any team will ever manage four or five Cups in a row like the dynasties of old, so the comparison to the Islanders is legit. Not to mention, like the Islanders, this is a veteran team with a lot of savvy.

And the Penguins’ depth down the middle evokes the Oilers of old, with Crosby and Malkin (superstar 1a and superstar 1b) standing in for Gretzky and Messier. (Don’t forget Jordan Staal as a third line center.) With a young talented goaltender who has proven himself a winner (Marc Andre Fleury), one could be tempted to think of Grant Fuhr, whose achievements were measured more in wins than in goals-against average. Unsurprisingly, given the youth of the Penguins, many folk do see a dynasty in the making here.

Like the dynastic Islanders, the Wings have a reputation of being built on defense, while the Penguins strike fear into opposing netminders with almost superhuman scorers.

And then there’s the matchup itself. Like the Oilers, who learned what it took to win by absorbing a punishing defeat at the hands of the Islanders in 1983, the Penguins look to have learned the lessons of 2008 and are back to set the record straight. Their sweep of Carolina shows that they are on a mission.

Yet, for all the comparisons, both teams are very different from the teams whose memory we are evoking.

Take Pittsburgh. Neither Crosby nor Malkin plays like either Gretzky or Messier. Although Sergei Gonchar is an excellent offensive defenseman, he cannot take over a game the way Paul Coffey could. And there are no wingers that could remotely correspond to Jari Kurri (probably the greatest two-way player of his era) or Glenn Anderson. (While late acquisition Bill Guerin was a big scorer at one point in his career, he’s past that now.) The latter two points are relative weaknesses; with regard to Crosby and Malkin, though, it’s more a matter of style. In this year’s playoff run, in the absence of a sniper like Hossa, Crosby has become goalscorer almost of necessity, using his strength down low to control the vicinity of the net. That’s something Gretzky could not do, and Messier did not. Their roles were simply different.

Or take Detroit. While the Islanders had plenty of scoring power (Bossy, Trottier, Tonelli and of course, the overtime specialist Nystrom), they were essentially a defensive team that scored opportunistically. In 1983, it could be argued that they were outplayed, but Edmonton could not win because they couldn’t control the puck where it really counted (in front of the net), and when they could, they were stoned by Billy Smith. The Red Wings, in contrast, are one of the greatest puck control teams in history, and on most nights they outshoot their opponents by a fairly wide margin. While the Red Wings are far underrated for toughness, the size of their players compared to most of the rest of the league reflects the fact that this is a pure skill team, while the Islander’s star center Bryan Trottier was the sort of player who would just as soon run over you as skate around you. It’s true that both the Islanders and the Wings built their team style outward from the defense, but the respective styles are as radically different as Denis Potvin and Nik Lidstrom.

So while the scenario is similar, the teams involved in 2009 are not very like the teams they evoke. But that’s okay, because there is certainly enough to this series to make it the most intriguing matchup we’ve seen in quite some time.

Federer will have the advantage of both an extra day’s rest, and a much easier semifinal, after Nadal ground out a record-breaking 5 hour, 14 minute marathon with Verdasco. Still, Rafa did get a day off, and he’s extraordinary in terms of physical endurance, so I don’t really expect fatigue to be a huge factor.

Tough call on who will win this – Nadal’s serve has finally become a big weapon, which is so necessary on hard court, and he’s learning to play a lot more aggressively. Meanwhile, Federer, despite a hiccup against Berdych, when he had to come back from two sets down, looks to be back on his game after a 2008 when he fought himself much of the year due to mononucleosis and the resultant lack of proper conditioning (not to mention rest). But I’m pulling for Roger to win his fourteenth Slam, tying the all-time mark set by Pete Sampras.

I guess he decided Chris Chelios shouldn’t be the only dirty old man in the league.

(For those who don’t know:  Chelios, nearly 47, is the second-oldest player ever to play in the NHL, behind Gordie Howe. He also is widely hated for dirty tricks. But Lemieux, 43, was one of the dirtiest players of all. Like Chelios, he was a very gifted player and won numerous championships – but he was notorious for using his stick to impede and surreptitiously hurt other players throughout his career.)

And… I’ve entered! You can find my first entry, “Hit the Ice,” at the CBC site here.

I’m hoping to find time to get another entry or two in, but the deadline is August 31, so we’ll see.

I’ll try to keep this site updated, but further challenge info is at the sister site, timgallant.com, where I’m eventually planning on keying my music stuff.

If you’re a fellow Canadian, please listen and consider voting for me when the time comes!!