Gretzky Round 2 Game 4 Scores

[KevanGuy]

Day 4
25 PANTHERS 5 LIGHTNING 4
26 CANADIENS 2 THRASHERS 5
27 HURRICANES 2 PENGUINS 5
28 CAPITALS 5 RANGERS 1

Seems like there is always at least 1 upset in the opening round. Beer's turn this year.

[KevanGuy]

Playoff Tree

Round 1
LIGHTNING 2
PANTHERS 2



THRASHERS 4
CANADIENS 0



PENGUINS 3
HURRICANES 1



RANGERS 1
CAPITALS 3

[Antithesis]

Wow, the Thrashers really manhandled the Habs during their series. An impressive win for your team, Neil. Some nice, lengthy rest time for your roster as well. Congratulations!

[Flickered Flame]

Wow, I knew the Habs were in tough but to get swept!

And how 'bout those pesky Panthers? Down 4-0 and they come back to win and tie the series.

[Beerfund]

Habs swept. Beerfund will be fired as GM quite possibly prior to July 1st. Stay tuned for further details.

[HelloHockeyFans]

Eesh... looks like the SIM still hates Vokoun.

[Sylvanfan]

Yeah, I didn't think a sweep would happen, but evidently Neils deadline moves look like winners. Congrats to Neil on advancing, takes the pain out of how crappy the real life Oilers are maybe. Also congrats to Troy on a great season, something just didn't go right for him in the playoffs, but he had a pretty good team.

Game 5 sees the Pens and Rangers with a chance to move on too. Again what looked like a bunch of series that could go long on paper might just end up being shorter than anticipated.

[Goffie]

Wow...I had a feeling the Thrashers were gonna pull off an upset, but not like this....Tough Luck Beerfund, interesting too see what your plan is with your team this offseason.

Hejduk leads the Pens to a huge win...game story up later.

[OILFAN #81]

THRASHERS WIN GAME #4 5-2, COMPLETE THE SWEEP!!!!

(AP - Atlanta)

Simply put the 2006-2007 Atlanta Thrashers are on a mission. Being CPHL Champions under GM Dayel Peterson in 2005-2006 left the team with a taste of success. The roster was dismantled in the summer leaving teams with an abundance of blue chip prospects but no veteran presence at all. Andy Chiodo was the team's #1 goaltender and the forwards and defense were nowhere near representing the team that had won the championship. GM Sutaria took over the team and his goal was to make this Thrashers team a contender once again. Well on Monday evening, the Thrashers completed a 4 game sweep over the Montreal Canadiens in their best of 7 Gretzky Conference Quarterfinal Series by winning the game 5-2.

"This is a great feeling. To beat a good team like Montreal just feels so great. But to do it in the style that we did and not lose a game just makes it feel that much better. I'd like to start off congratulating Troy as he has a good team over their in Montreal. They had a great regular season and have a good group of players. I thought coming into this series we matched up great against them talent wise. We were there in every area on paper and the stats from the regular season. It was just going to come down to whose top players produced more and our guys did that. Lang, Horcoff, St.Louis, Walker, Ohlund, Denis, etc, etc all were exceptional. We are going to enjoy this for a few days. The boys deserve it." - GM Sutaria

The Canadiens came out playing a good first period. Keith Tkachuk scored just 35 seconds in to give the visitors a 1-0 lead. Shawn Horcoff scored a pair before Steven Reinprecht scored a late goal to send the teams to the rooms tied 2-2.

"I think that was the first period all series that we were outplayed by them. You could tell that they weren't going to give up and to score those couple goals gave us some confidence." - Shawn Horcoff

The Thrashers dominated the 2nd period outshooting the Thrashers 18-7 and Scott Walker capitalized on a Jiri Fischer 4 minute highsticking penalty to give the Thrashers a 3-2 lead heading into the 3rd.

The Thrashers came out hard in the 3rd and put the game away on two quick goals by Shawn Horcoff and Martin St.Louis. Marc Denis shut the door the rest of the way to give the Thrashers the win and a 4-0 series sweep over the 2nd seeded Canadiens.

Tomas Vokoun was back in the net for Montreal after Patrick Lalime started game 3. Like every game this series, it didn't help. Vokoun was pulled for the 3rd time in 3 starts making it 4 goalie pulls in 4 games for the Canadiens.

"Things just seemed to go our way this series. The guys were just exploding offensively and we had great success against Vokoun and Lalime." - Captain Martin St.Louis

The Thrashers outscored Montreal 24-9 in the series in the 4 game sweep and were led by the 2nd line of Horcoff-Lang-Walker. Robert Lang who was the star of the first 3 games was injured in the 1st period with a facial laceration and is out about one week. Shawn Horcoff led the series with 11 pts, Lang had 10 in 3 games and 1 period, and Walker had 7.

"The good thing for us is that now we have time to rest all our players including Robert. By having some days off here that gives us some time to rest him for the next series." - GM Sutaria

The two main battles going into the series were the goaltending matchup. The numbers:

Marc Denis(Thrashers): 4-0-0, 2.25 GAA, 0.915 save percentage
Tomas Vokoun(Canadiens): 0-3-0, 6.42 GAA, 0.832 save percentage

The other matchup? The swap of star forwards traded earlier in the season for one another. Martin St.Louis and Peter Forsberg.

The numbers:

Martin St.Louis(Thrashers): 4 GP: 4 G, 4 A, 8 pts, +2
Peter Forsberg (Canadiens) : 4 GP: 0 G, 0 A, 0 pts, -4

It seemed as if the Thrashers were able to shut down the main stars of the Canadiens all series long and get to Vokoun.

"We had some extra motivation as Axel stated that we didn't have what it took to beat the Canadiens. That article was clipped to the board at the beginning of our series. We love being the underdogs." - Sutaria

At press time rumors were coming from Montreal that GM Beerfund himself had stated that his future as GM is up in the air and something could be coming before July 1st.

"It would be an absolute shame to me if he didn't come back. This is my 1st year in the league as GM but I know he has been GM of the year before a few seasons ago and he is a very good GM and has a good team over there in Montreal. We congratulate him again on the season he had." - Thrashers GM Sutaria

Asked if he had any preference who he plays next:

"It's going to be tough regardless. The other 6 teams left in our conference are good teams. We know if Florida wins there series we play them no matter what but if Tampa Bay wins there series we play either Pittsburgh, Washington or the Rangers. We will prepare for one of those 4 teams starting on Wednesday. We want to enjoy this for a few days and we will starting tonight."

[Knut]

Caps get to Osgood Finally...
Take commanding lead of the series....

The Capitals finally were able to chase Osgood from the nets and were able to take a commanding lead in their first round series against the Rangers.

Naslund and Ott lead the way with two points apeice.. and Rick Dipietro had a solid performance.

The Capitals would like to thank Temporary coach Proto for doing a good job with line combinations.

[droopydrew19]

Originally Posted by KevanGuy

Day 4
25 PANTHERS 5 LIGHTNING 4

Looks like it was a rough game. A couple of charging penalties and a hitting from behind to boot. No love lost with these state rivals. The battle of Florida is ON now.

[Hanna Sniper]

[MJK]

A tied series I will take it. I badly outshoot the Lightning yet was down 4-0...The sim God is an idiot and I defy him!!!!

There take that!

[jam26]

Congratulations to Neil on being the first team to advance. I expected this one to be a longer series. I'm also interested to see how the Habs react this off-season.

[Radically Red]

Wow.. Congrats to the Thrashers.. Tough luck to the Habs though..

[notoepik]

Every playoffs, some team gets swept and makes you say, geez.

Tough luck for the Habbies.

Or ya...........what KG said

[HalifaxDrunk]

[flambers]

Ouch, Rangers have their backs to the wall. It will take a huge effort to get this series back to New York for game 6....