Tonight and the night before, my new home team clobbered the Rockford Icehogs in back-to-back games. This is a great start for their first season and first appearance in the Calder Cup playoffs. The “new” guy Dallas sent down, Jamie Benn, has been a huge boost for their offense and overall toughness on the ice. Goalie Brent Krahn has been no slouch neither. His GAA is now 1.00 for the pair of victories.
Now they’re off to exciting Rockford, IL to hopefully finish off their opponent to advance to the next round against either the Chicago Wolves or Milwaukee Admirals (their series is tied at one each). I’m not sure if the winner of round two is crowned the divisional champ despite Chicago winning the first seed by points. Probably not. I do know that if my Stars advance to win round three and defeat the team from the North division, they’ll be crowned Western Conference champs.
One interesting side note. Friday night’s game had a goal for Rockford many of us considered to be questionable on the referee’s part. According to the replay we saw on the big screen, the puck didn’t completely cross the line to count. I managed to find someone wearing an official AHL sweater to ask about the league having any kind of video review with Springfield, MA as the NHL does through Toronto (the respective headquarters of each organization). His response was yes and no. Yes, with the older, more established teams, there are in-goal cameras (Hershey Bears, Providence Bruins, I’d guess Houston Aeros and Milwaukee Admirals since they were in the IHL and joined the AHL in 1999) to review how close it is. Younger franchises like us, no. We would need to be around a couple more years before the league made the investment. In defense of the referee, he said there was a request for a video review through the cameras present in the Cedar Park Center (CPC) covering the game for the people in the skyboxes, Comcast Rockford and theahl.com which backed the decision to award the point; the people going over the footage saw a gap of white between the line and the puck, therefore it did go in to count. The representative then concluded, “What are you complaining about though? You won 2-1 anyway.” I laughed with my rebuttal of Krahn being robbed of his shutout.
“Austin Stars”
Texas Stars. 😛
“I’m not sure if the winner of round two is crowned the divisional champ despite Chicago winning the first seed by points.”
They’re not. Division Champs are just the regular season victors. If it was decided in the playoffs, Bridgeport Sound could “win” the East despite playing in the Atlantic.
This confused me more than a little. Usually, NHL teams are seeded within their conference, not within their division. Pens v Sens, Caps v Habs, Avs v Sharks, Canucks v Kings, Coyotes v Wings, are all cross-divisional matchups. So I expected the AHL would do the same. Some leagues (MLB) even have a rule that first round opponents CAN’T be divisional rivals.