U.S. Soccer Must Cut Ties with Landon Donovan

It's time for Jurgen Klinsmann to cut ties with Landon Donovan (Credits: Getty Images)

A little less than a week ago, United States head coach Jurgen Klinsmann came out and made a relatively short, but considerable announcement. Landon Donovan was told he had to earn his national team spot back something the United States star hasn't been told since the day he exploded onto the scene in 2002. Klinsmann means business.

And although I agree with Klinsmann's move, I believe going a step further is a necessary decision. Tell Donovan thank you for your services, but your era is over. It'll hurt. It'll sting LD's glowing confidence, but the damage he could cause Klinsmann's budding bunch could be even greater.

Donovan has been playing hide and seek with the USMNT since the squad bowed out in the World Cup three years ago. He's seemingly going back and forth on his word of whether or not he wants to make a final cup run. He's not played in any of the three World Cup qualifiers the U.S. has taken part in so far and it doesn't seem that he's to be part of any of Klinsmann's plans going forward. There is simply no need to hold onto the glory years we've received from Donovan in the past decade; he's 31 and he's at the tail end of his career. Can he help the national team? Sure he can, he's shown that he can muster up a few extra magic moments over the past few years. But he can also hurt this young, growing team by busting through the doors and making a scene like we've seen him do before. His confidence is both a blessing and a problem, but his what-if potential is not worth the headaches he may cause.

Over the past few years, the aging star hasn't given anyone a clear indication of where his head's at. One moment he's over in Europe, playing a main cog in the Everton offense, the next he's turning down an Everton extension because he thinks playing in the MLS is his duty. Playing in the mediocre MLS is far from what Donovan needed to do to boost soccer interest in the United States. With a last push in him he needed to continue his great run of form against superior competition in order to help the USMNT. Even his quality play in the second Everton stint wasn't enough for him to decline a return to L.A. The man seems to be dazed and confused.

Let him run circles around his own tail. Let him ride his own emotional rollercoaster. There is no need for Landon Donovan. This is Clint Dempsey's team; this is Michael Bradley's team; this is a new era in American soccer and we can't let the past growth muddle what could be a bright future.   Yes, he did provide us some sensational moments over the years and was the real catalyst behind the rise of U.S. Soccer, but by no means is he Derek Jeter, Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky. We don't need to wait on his every move. Klinsmann has been hard on some of Bob Bradley's protege like Bradley's son and Jozy Altidore, so I hope he can be even more stern with the befuddled Donovan.

We need to just go, go, go and leave the past in the rearview mirror. Thanks for the memories, Landon.

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The Danger Zone of the NHL Playoffs

Both the Rangers and the Islanders could present problems for the higher seeds in the East. (Credits: Corey Sipkin/NY Daily News)

With a rink in my backyard graced by a high-school team that I figured to be the New York Rangers, I spent more time in hockey’s giant freezer as a kid than any warm-blooded mammal should. Over those years, I was introduced to two things: hard-hitting hockey and hard-hitting music. A few songs in particular will always stand out in my mind, and on the eve of the NHL playoffs, where unwary juggernauts are routinely toppled by impudent upstarts, Kenny Loggins is bouncing around my brain like a puck that won’t sit still…

Out along the edges
Always where I burn to be
The further on the edge
The hotter the intensity

Highway to the danger zone
Gonna take you
Right into the danger zone

Chances are, Kenny Loggins was not singing about the NHL playoffs in his 1986-hit Danger Zone. But his lyrics certainly elucidate the dynamic of the postseason, where one thing reigns supreme: volatility. No one team stands on firmer ground than any other, and that little number attached to each team entering the tournament – a number that presupposes the presence of order, sequence and probability – comes to mean nothing once the chaos begins. It’s like tying a fancy red bow around your dog’s collar, and then letting the beast outside to romp in the mud.

Last year, “out along the edges” was certainly where teams “burned to be.” The 8-seeded Kings won the Stanley Cup by beating the 6-seeded Devils in the finals. In the first round alone, the 7-seeded Capitals dispatched the lofty Boston Bruins while the 8-seeded Senators took the mighty Rangers the distance. In total, four of last year’s eight first-round series were won by the lower-seed, giving birth to a second round populated by a 5-seed, a 6-seed, a 7-seed and an 8-seed.

The NHL playoffs are a highway to the danger zone.

With Kenny Loggins now properly saluted, let’s look at four low-seeded teams that spell danger for their playoff opposition.

1. New York Rangers (6^th seed in East)

The Rangers streaked to the 6^th seed with a 10-3-1 run to close out the season. They have scored more goals in April than any NHL team, while staying loyal to their defensive philosophy. On that note, they have allowed the fourth fewest goals of any playoff team. Trade deadline fortifications have beefed up the team’s torso and provided a shot in the arm that is still surging through their bloodlines. Erase all of that – all of that – and the Rangers are still right here as one of the most dangerous teams to face this spring.

Why, you ask?

Henrik Lundqvist, we answer. And therein lies the transcendent truth of the NHL playoffs: in an endlessly team-oriented sport, one player can win a series.

In this regard, the Rangers are lucky – no, privileged – no, blessed – to have Lundqvist. Simply by default of his position, Lundqvist is in a prime position to alter the outcome of a best-of-seven series. But it his tendency to transform into this possessed, almost maniacal stopper of pucks that propels him into that category of players who can single-handedly push his team onward. Lundqvist loves nothing more than the pressure of the playoffs, and the stiffening of competition that comes with it, and his confident demeanor can calm a team from the backend out.

Not that the Rangers need it. Having now made the playoffs in eight of the last nine years – not to mention drawing a team in the first round they are extremely familiar with – this group will not suffer stage fright under the bright lights of the playoffs. They are led, after Lundqvist, by their steely captain Ryan Callahan, and buttressed by a hardened cast of been-there-before guys like Brad Richards, Dan Girardi, Derek Stepan, Ryan Clowe, Ryan McDonagh and the soon-returning Marc Staal.

The Rangers will have their hands full with a surging Capitals team, but between their discovery of form and their elite goaltender, the pieces are in place for a long playoff run.

2.  New York Islanders (8^th seed in East)

The Islanders, by mere virtue of writing this season’s best story, are not a rosy first-round date for any high-seeded Goliath. Anytime a team rises from the depths and makes the kind of mystic run the Islanders have – necessarily becoming everyone’s second-favorite team in the process – they are immediately wrapped in yellow caution tape, demarcated with a flashing red light, and acknowledged with a sign that reads Explosives – Stay Back.  

In their first trip to the playoffs since 2007, the Islanders will be playing with house money: they have already succeeded by getting here, and they are not expected to advance. While their rivals on the other side of the Throgs Neck Bridge are under more pressure to succeed than any 6-seed ever, the Islanders can approach the playoffs with the same why not us? mentality with which they approached the regular season.

But the Isles aren’t just a dangerous team because of the charms and mojo feeding their Cinderella run. They are a dangerous team, first and foremost, because they can score. They finished seventh in the league with 2.81 goals per game, and did some serious damage on the power play, converting at just about a 20% rate. And they can score, first and foremost, because they can skate. Advance metrics haven’t yet found a way to quantify team speed, but guys like Michael Grabner and Travis Hamonic – who aren’t slowing down for the mathematicians anytime soon – supply all the evidence we need by churning their legs.

The one area in which the Islanders faltered this season was the penalty kill, a weakness they shrewdly offset by taking the third fewest penalties in the League. Embedded in their one glaring flaw, then, is glowing evidence of a playoff team: the recognition of a chink in their armor, and the on-ice awareness to conceal it.

In the playoffs, where special teams double and triple in importance, where speed becomes a lifeline, and where a little stardust can go a long way, the cast-off Islanders look to have it all.

3. Los Angeles Kings (5^th seed in West)

Let’s say this outright: despite languishing at the start of this season, no one will be taking the Kings lightly in the playoffs. Last year’s torrid run to the Stanley Cup championship erased any sleeper potential this team had left.

Still, the Kings start the playoffs on the road, having won just eight games away from the Staples Center this season. Their goalie and last-year’s Conn Smythe winner Jonathan Quick has been stellar at home, but Scott Clemmensen-like everywhere else. In road games, he is checking in with a GAA of 3.11 and a SV% of .891, and this Kings team will have to win games in unfriendly buildings if they are to defend their title. It’s hard to say whether it’s the hostile crowds, the unfamiliar sight lines, or a classic case of homesickness that is troubling Quick on the road, but if he can’t shake off the traveling doldrums this Kings team is doomed.

And suddenly they feel like underdogs again.

But assuming Quick doesn’t forget his game in the overhead – or backup Jonathan Bernier proves a dependable alternative – the Kings will not be an easy out. They still boast a formidable scoring core, led by Anze Kopitar and his puck-handling wizardry and Jeff Carter and his Basset-Houndian nose for the net. Their defensive corps is as impressive as any – defensively responsible as it is offensively inclined – headlined by Drew Doughty, Slava Voynov and the mid-season revelation Jake Muzzin.

Muzzin, an imposing young defenseman, was given a second shot in LA this season after failing to impress in his first NHL stint in 2010. His season is a microcosm of his team’s season; a hesitation at the start, a gathering of the bearings in February, an acceleration in March, and a calm cruise to the finish. After registering just three points through February 25, Muzzin finished the year with 16 points – good for ninth on the team. The Kings meanwhile, were loafing around the bottom eight of the West for the first month of the season, before catching fire in late February and finishing the year on a 20-10-3 run.  

Last year, the Kings wrote a 5-2-3 record over their final ten games before streaking to their first Stanley Cup championship. This year, their closing record was 5-3-2. If they can pull off a similar reproduction of last year’s playoff exploits, they will become the first repeat champions since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997-98.

4. Detroit Red Wings (7^th seed in West)

Speaking of those Red Wings…

When are they not a dangerous team in the playoffs? They might be aging and they might be slowing down, but with their backs against the wall with four games remaining this season, the Wings of Old showed up and got the points they needed to get. It was a professional bit of execution from a professional team, propelled by a group of seasoned stars that knew all along their glorious playoff streak was never really in danger.

That’s the thing about this Wings team: there is this pervading sense of equanimity about them, this steadiness in their gaze that looks adversity in the eye and says game on. They are never undone by the snags and hitches and hurdles of an NHL season, yet they are never too brash to think they won’t come. As the fourth-oldest team in the League, the Wings understand what it takes to win and possess the quiet confidence that things will get done.     

The face of the team’s unruffled demeanor is Pavel Datsyuk, a man who has scored 255 NHL goals and celebrated approximately 20 of them. Datsyuk, who was said to be on the decline entering this season, racked up 49 points in 47 games, his best point-per-game pace since 2008-09. He was aided by another star supposedly in the twilight of his career, the unflappable Henrik Zetterberg, who tallied 48 points in 46 games. It was his best point-per-game pace since 2007-08.

Still, the Red Wings earned their keep this season through their defense. They surrendered the second-fewest goals per game in the West, led as always by the untiring Jimmy Howard. Howard played 42 games – the second-most in the League – and racked up a league-leading five shutouts. 

That’s the luxury of a shortened season: teams that rely heavily on certain players do not have to give them breaks or breathers. The three-month long lockout took care of it for them. For an aging team like the Red Wings, the lockout could end up being the key to a long playoff run. Datsyuk, Zetterberg and the rest of those soon-to-be grey-bearded Wings have surely never felt so fresh entering the playoffs.

With the legs of their youth and the aplomb of their age, the Red Wings are in a position to make Hockeytown rock like the ‘90s. 

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Spring of '13 Officially Commences Thursday

The Garden could be host to another spectacular spring, just like it did in '94. (Credits: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Championship aspirations take on a different look and feel in the city of New York. Those same aspirations take an even more heightened, exciting feeling when they take place in Madison Square Garden. Then there are the special seasons when both the Knicks and Rangers, who share MSG, engage in those championship aspirations harmoniously. Most notably the springs of '94 and '72 when both teams reached their respective championship Finals captivated the city like none other. The Knicks and Rangers have both played in the postseason the past two years, but not since that storied '93-'94 season has New York had this much excitement about its Garden tenants.

When their respective seasons started, the NHL with a bit of a delay, the Knicks had little expectations to really compete past the first round with the offseason additions that turned the franchise into, what many considered, "An AARP squad." On the other hand, the Rangers were tabbed as Stanley Cup contenders, with the addition of Rick Nash supposedly the final piece to the title puzzle. Their seasons couldn't have went in different directions. The Knicks won their first Atlantic title in almost 20 years, won 54 games for the first time in 15 years and clinched the #2 seed and homecourt all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals. The Rangers struggled out of the gate, before completely altering their season in a mid-season trade flipping the out-of-place Marian Gaborik to Columbus for a smattering of players (including Ryan Clowe from San Jose) who fit coach John Tortorella's system much better. They finished the season 10-3-1, good enough for the sixth in the East. Both the Knicks and Rangers enter the playoffs on fire.

The Knicks have already jumped on their opportunity, up 3-1 on the Celtics in the first round. The Rangers don't start until Thursday. Yet the mutual excitement is already growing in the Garden. Both teams have shared the postseason spotlight the last two years, but it wasn't until this year that there was an real expectation for both simultaneously. There's a real sense the Garden will be opening its historic doors to New Yorkers night after night for epic playoff tilts all the way to June. There's a real belief that something special is waiting in the wings.

So is this the season that both of them capture the hearts of New Yorkers like they did in '94? Can Carmelo recreate Ewing? Can Rick Nash be Adam Graves? Lundqvist, Richter? J.R., Starks? The pieces are all there for their to be a beautiful puzzle being assembled before our eyes. Thanks to the Knicks hot start the buzz is abound. The Rangers can add to it in a favorable matchup with the Capitals. It's go time.

Spring of '13 is here. Get ready New York.

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Kevin Durant Gets his Wish, Just Not in the Way he Thought

The pressure is all on Kevin Durant, now let's see how good he really is. (Credits: Getty Images)

The minute the Twittersphere blew up with the news that Russ Westbrook had torn his meniscus, ultimately terminating his season, people immediately started crowning the Heat champions. There was no way that a Westbrook-less Thunder squad could defeat this menacing Miami team. They're probably right, not so much because OKC no longer has it's engine, but because LeBron is setting up his teammates like they're messing around in rec league. Once the dust eventually settled however, a new storyline emerged. A new, more positive view of the situation had arisen. We finally get to see just how good Kevin Durant is. We get to see him as the clear alpha dog, no longer sharing the pressure to succeed; it's all on him.

Durant's first test? Passed with flying colors, defeating the Rockets on Saturday to take a commanding 3-0 series lead. KD went off for 41 points, 14 rebounds, four assists, two steals and a block. He did it all and showed us, for at least that night, that he wasn't phased by his fallen teammate. Challenged accepted.

But this is the Rockets we're talking about. A young, relatively inexperienced team who really doesn't have anyone that can slow Durant down let alone stop him. The challenge will only grow greater as he meets either the Grizzlies or Clippers in the second round; each could present a unique, but equally difficult task. Will Durant abandon his high percentage tendencies when teammates go cold, will he float in Carmelo Anthony territory (a pretty unpopular place when things go wrong)? Or will he embrace the task, do his best LeBron impression and will his Thunder to the NBA Finals. It's still very possible; no team in the West has proved to me that they are leagues ahead of the Thunder even without Westbrook.

I fully expect there to be moments when Durant is overwhelmed with this pressure, when he can't harken back to his days carrying the Texas Longhorns with consistent 35-plus point, 15-plus rebound games. If he can keep those moments to a minimum then the Thunder should be just fine. On the other side of the coin, those moments (and their frequency) should prove to the world that the oft-criticized Westbrook is an integral part of this team. That his game causes more success than harm. That yes, he might shoot more than Durant, but that he is the true catalyst for this offense. KD must create for himself and create victories for his team. It's unchartered territory for him, at least since the team moved to Oklahoma City.

Everyone has labeled Durant as the league's second best talent, now he'll truly have the opportunity to prove it to us.

Ball's in your court KD. 

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Nats Wilting Under Heavy Hype

Ryan Zimmerman, now on the 15-day DL, has headlined the disappointments in Washington's locker room. (Credits: US Presswire Photo)

It took the Washington Nationals/Montreal (Puerto Rico) Expos 31 years to reach their second playoff appearance, which was last year. By making the playoffs only twice in their 45 years existence, this franchise easily takes the cake as the most pathetic one the sports world has ever seen. But things changed last year, excitement turned to expectation. With last year's successful season in their back pocket, the Nationals were on paper, supposed to be the kings of the NL East, and possibly going to lift serious hardware. But 21 games in, the Nats look more like plebeians than anything resembling royalty.

Excluding Bryce Harper, who single-handedly wants to become the best player in MLB history after only two seasons (.351/7/15), no one has stepped up for Washington. They rank lower than 20th in runs, batting average, on base percentage, WHIP and batting average against. Simply put, there is no one in the lineup that brings any semblance of production except for Harper. Their starters, Jordan Zimmerman, Stephen Strasburg and Ross Detweiler have actually been pretty good, but their only 5-6.Run production is severely lacking. The other two starters, last year's Cy Young runner-up Gio Gonzalez and journeyman Dan Haren have been putrid.

The question remains though, how are they going to contend in the NL East with the Braves mashing their way to a 15-6 record? Atlanta already has five games on the Nats and even the lowly Mets rank a game ahead of Washington. Don't think the Braves are going anywhere either, this team had expectations. They're living up to them. So is the pressure of being a World Series contender getting to some of the Nationals? Yeah, I think you could say so. Ryan Zimmmerman (on the 15-day DL) is batting an embarrassing .226 for a guy receiving $16 million this year. Jayson Werth, who is due $18 million this season, is only batting .259. Adam LaRoche, who somehow is getting paid $12 million a year, is batting an earth-shatteringly bad .169. If it wasn't for Bryce Harper, this lineup would be baking up more zeros than a Dunkin' Donuts.

Now you can harp on me with the whole, "We're only 21 games in and there's so much more time" card. Yes, you are right, there are still 141 games remaining in this tiring major league campaign, but division leaders don't build themselves the hole the Nats are in. They don't lose series to the Mets; they avoid losing four games in a row. They also don't rely on one player to carry their offense and they especially don't waste a surprising 1.38 ERA out of a guy like Ross Detweiler. The Nationals are in trouble. Keep watching the Braves rack up the wins and this team could be scratching and clawing for a wild card spot or worse...

As a Nationals fan you're glad to see that Harper is not only living up to expectations, he's swallowing them whole. I'm not a fan of the person Harper is, but he increasingly looks like the real deal. Especially considering the fact he's single-handedly keeping a team afloat at the green age of 20, you've got that "cornerstone for years" feeling. This kid is beyond his years in terms of mentality and execution, but his team? Well his team looks a deer in the headlights. A team that doesn't know how to handle the contender label. A team that thinks their unnecessary salaries will drive in runs and strikeout batters. 

If Davey Johnson doesn't turn this ship around soon, things could get ugly in Washington. This pathetic franchise is going to have to do more than drive in 3.6 runs to earn themselves a trip to only their third playoffs. Time is on their side, but time can be a fickle beast. 

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Rangers Finding Themselves at Opportune Time

Henrik Lundqvist has regained his Vezina form, not a coincidence that the Rangers have done so as well. (Credits: Barton Silverman/The New York Times)

New York Rangers netminder Henrik Lundqvist might hold himself to a higher standard than anyone else in the NHL. When his game is on, as the saying goes, you could blindfold him, tie his hands behind his back, send him out there in a pair of slippers, and he’d still expect to stop the puck. This unyielding standard of perfection reveals itself when the rare puck slips by him: in an act of disgust, Lundqvist will slouch his shoulders, jerk his head forward and summon all the strength in the world to resist assaulting the crossbar with his stick. The more often he does this, the higher his confidence must be.

Twice in New York’s last two games – an 8-4 win over Buffalo on Friday followed by a 4-1 win over New Jersey on Sunday – we have seen this defiant posture from Lundqvist. At First Niagara Center on Friday, the Rangers were skating off the ice after the second period carrying a 7-3 lead into the locker room. Lundqvist, who had been beaten by a wicked top-shelf backhander late in the period, was still noticeably perturbed by allowing three goals in the final six minutes, and slammed his stick on the boards next to the bench before disappearing down the tunnel. Though a win for the Rangers was by now a foregone conclusion, their goalie expected better.

Then, at home against the Devils on Sunday – a team Lundqvist has owned since breaking into the League – the Rangers were ahead 4-0 late in the third and well on their way to another victory. With a little less than seven minutes remaining, forward Andrei Loktionov slipped a shot between Lundqvist’s legs to spoil his shutout bid. The King, as he is known in Manhattan, stared down at the spot on the ice where the puck had eluded him, briefly considered gouging a hole in it with the toe of his stick, before rising to his feet with the knowledge that two more points were all but secured.

Ultimately, that is all that matters to Lundqvist and to his team. But the fact that he desires something more than your average two points, something stainless and glistening, gives you an idea of how well this Rangers team is playing.

Since the turn of the month, the Battalion on Broadway is 8-2-1. They have won five of their last six, and are two wins away from clinching a playoff spot with three games remaining. By the preseason blueprint, of course, this was all supposed to salted away by early April, at which point the Rangers were to set their sights on the number one seed in the East while handing some starts over to Martin Biron. But things didn’t go as planned through the first two-and-a-half months of the season, as the team struggled to score goals and carve out an identity, the latter of which provided the foundation for last year’s success.

With the Rangers loitering somewhere between sixth and 10^th for most of the year, critics and fans – which in New York are one in the same – wondered where last year’s team had gone. Well, for one, Columbus. The Rangers gutted the meat of their roster to acquire Rick Nash in the offseason, sacrificing systemic role players Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov in a deal that left them a top-heavy bunch. But for the most part, their scoring core was returning, and any team with Rick Nash is usually better than any team without Rick Nash. This led to Stanley Cup prognostications, the likes of which hadn’t crowded New York City since 1994.

When the team got off to a slow start, the panic was accordingly heightened. Admittedly, after ten games and a 5-5 record, the 2013 version of the Rangers looked starkly different than the 2012 version, which was stouthearted and resolute. But in reality, this was quite similar to the 2012 version, after 10 games at least, as that team jogged out of the gate to an equally unimpressive 4-4-3 record. Though they ultimately finished atop the East, they didn’t assume that position until the last day in December, after 35 games. Over the next two months, the Rangers posted a 17-6-2 record, opening a nine-point lead in the East by March 1. It took them time to find their groove.

Entering April this season, the Rangers had played 34 games. During a regular season, that would bring them somewhere near the end of December. At 16-15-3, they had shown flashes of brilliance and endured spells of futility, stubbornly negating every winning streak with a subsequent losing streak. Just when they seemed to be finding their form, they would lose it, and just when they seemed to have lost it for good, they would find it again.

At the trade deadline, General Manager Glen Sather, who at 69 years old cares little for patience, decided he had afforded the current squad more than enough time. With optimism and pessimism weaving this way and that like a pair of well-timed wingers, Sather made a pair of moves to isolate pessimism for good. He brought in Ryan Clowe, a gritty forward with scoring touch, and the type of player that coach John Tortorella dreams of having as a son. Then he shipped out the struggling and meek Marian Gaborik for playmaking center Derick Brassard, pugnacious winger Derek Dorsett and swift defenseman John Moore. After staring distastefully at a plateful of caviar and cannoli for much of the season, straying the food across his dish in uncomplimentary piles, the demanding Tortorella looked down to find a bleeding steak, a long rack of ribs and some mysterious piece of meat that was probably still alive. He finally had his team. 

The first game with the new guys in tow saw the Rangers whip the Penguins 6-1, setting the precedent for the rest of April. The offense, which was dead last in goals per game entering the month, exploded, scoring six goals for the first time this season. They have since accomplished this feat twice more, and have scored far more goals in far less games this month than any month this year. Their previous high was 30 goals over 15 games in March, a mark they have trumped with 42 goals over 11 games in April, the most by any team so far. This offensive eruption has pushed the Rangers from 30^thin the League in goals per game to 17^th at 2.58/game, just a tad below last year’s rate of 2.71/game.   

Three of the team’s six goals that portentous night came on the power play. It was the first time they had scored three power play goals in a game all season. They moved the puck quickly and creatively, shaking out of the mechanical trance they had been stuck in for so long. Brassard and Clowe made an instant impact on the man advantage, each recording three power-play points in the game, and have continued to play major roles in this domain since. The power play, which entered the month second to last in the League with a 14% success rate, has succeeded at a 22% clip since. With this resurgence, the extra-man unit has climbed up to 21^st in the League at 16%, a tad above last year’s final mark of 15%.

Then there was Lundqvist, who with 26 saves on 27 shots seemed like his normal self. But even he had ratcheted up his game. Until April, Lundqvist had been great, but not Lundqvist-great. A thief of more wins in the past eight years than any one of his contemporaries, Lundqvist was a brilliant save or two short in many of his team’s losses this season. His post-goal posture often suggested vexation rather than anger, the message closer to Where is my game? than I want that one back. Even with stellar numbers entering April – 14 wins, 2.17 GAA, .922 SV% - the Rangers needed more out of their goalie and Lundqvist knew it. He has responded with the type of exceptional play that characterized his Vezina-worthy 2012 season, stealing two games outright and dabbling in thievery in at least two others. So far this month, he has eight wins, a 1.81 GAA and a .939 SV%. He has roared back into Vezina discussion, now ranking second in wins, and third in both GAA and SV%.       

His confidence is higher now than ever. He has found his game and is feeling like a man unbeatable. The Rangers have found their game too, taking nicely to an aggressive, grinding style. It’s April in New York, but by all accounts in The Garden, it’s sometime in late December, and the Rangers are just now hitting their stride.  

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Harvey Means Hope

Matt Harvey means legitimate hope for Mets fans. (Credits: Michael G. Baron)

In the sixth inning of Friday's Mets, Nationals game, a new chant rained down from the scattering of fans in Citi Field.

"HAR-VEE'S BET-TER, HARVEE'S BET-TER"

Young ace Stephen Strasburg had just given up his fourth run of the game, on back-to-back jacks. He left after the sixth, leaving his heavily favorite Nationals in a 4-0 hole. Opposite him was Matt Harvey, 24-year-old rookie, cruising to what would be his fourth victory in four tries. A sparkling 0.93 ERA accompanying him as finished the game going seven innings, surrendering only one run. Harvey was better, much better.

Preceding that fourth start, Harvey had battled below freezing temperatures in Minnesota going eight innings in short sleeves. He allowed one run. Before that he had out-dueled aging superstar Roy Halladay in hitter's haven Citizen's Bank Park. Seven innings, one run. In his first start of the season, Harvey dazzled the Citi Field crowd throwing seven innings of one-hit, shutout ball. Matt Harvey has arrived.

Harvey stands a physically menacing 6-foot-4, 225 lbs, a man who seemingly swallows up the pressure and spits it out in a demeanor of a 30-year-old veteran, not a 24-year-old neophyte. He doesn't posses the long arms that most pitchers do, but he is built like a tank, legs like tree trunks. Legs that he uses to fling upper-90 MPH fastballs with a flick of the arm. This guy was put on the earth to throw the baseball, and throw it hard. He won't dazzle you with knee-buckling breaking balls or a wide-ranging selection of pitches. The mound is for getting the job done and he does so with a flamethrown fastball with quick movement that takes advantage of the slightest batter hesitation. His slider also has the ability to overwhelm batters. Rounding out his repertoire is an under utilized curveball, which can be deadly and a solid changeup that only can be improved. You may think that a pitcher that relies so heavily on a fastball will eventually be figured out, but the versatility of his two-seam and four-seam fastballs confuses the hell out of batters. A pitch so simple with the slightest of movement, thrown at that speed? Mind-boggling. The best part, however? It puts the least stress on his arm. Knock on wood, but longevity could be on his side.

For Mets fans, the word "longevity" doesn't appear to often in their vernacular. We all know about Johan Santana, Pedro Martinez, and in smaller terms, Shawn Marcum, John Maine and Oliver Perez. Anytime pitching talent walks through the doors in Flushing, Mets fans shutter in fear. There's rarely caution-less excitement from Mets fans. But as you watch Harvey dominate in the way he has, in such relaxed fashion, it's hard for the fans to keep themselves glued to their seats. It makes you want to shout out and proclaim him the next Tom Seaver, (knock on wood). It makes you dream of a sub-2.00 ERA seasons. It makes the bright future even more of a tangible thing. Matt Harvey has brought a legitimate hope to Mets fans.

And so a funny phenomena will occur this summer. The Mets are currently 9-8, an impressive record for a team resembling more of a Triple-A squad than a major league outfit. But it won't be much longer before the Mets are 10 games under .500, so on and so forth. Watch as Citi Field fills sells out every fifth day, when Hope toes the rubber. Then watch scattered crowds fill the rest of home games in Flushing. It will be an odd sight, but a better one than anything else we could've expected out of the Metropolitans this year.

The future grows brighter with every sizzling 97 MPH fastball, every K he rings up. Then you look down the line and see Zack Wheeler, Noah Syndergaard as future pieces of the rotations. You see Travis D'Arnaud, who currently ranks as sixth on the MLB's top prospects list as possibly the next coming of Mike Piazza. You see all these things and you dream of the 2015 playoffs. But we all know that the Mets have superpowers beyond any organization at transforming a bright future into an ugly reality. "Proceed with caution," is a lesson every Mets fan has taught and will teach his or her son.

Fortunately for now we have Harvey to help us believe that the next few years will see us get more and more competitive. We get to receive some national attention, to see Baseball Tonight analysts salivate over Harvey's future. He can rid us of the nightmares of Johan, Jason Bay and Carlos Beltran's bat-on-the-shoulder moment. He can make watching the Mets fun again, even if it is only every fifth day.

Harvey means hope and hope's all we got right now.

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A Familiar Debate Rages Again

The Crosby, Ovechkin debate has resurfaced. (Credits: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

From 2007-2010, the NHL was blessed with a chance circumstance that every professional sports league desires: the Lionel Messi – Cristiano Ronaldo effect. Its two best players by popular consensus, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, played for two of its best teams, stirring a rivalry between Pittsburgh and Washington that crested in a seven-game playoff series in 2009. In that series, Crosby and Ovechkin traded blow for thunderous blow, even staging twin hat-tricks in game two, but it was Crosby’s Penguins who landed the last punch with a resounding 6-2 win in game seven.

The NHL, after that series, was in a comfortable place. It boasted two polarizing stars who relished competing against one another, whose standoff was so well-documented, so transcendent,it had the power to draw fans from other sports. This doesn’t happen often for the NHL, a league that struggles to market its big-name players the way the NFL and the NBA do. (Think LeBron – Durant; Brady – Manning.) But Crosby and Ovechkin were seen so unanimously as 1and 1a, people with little interest in saucer passes and toe drags we’re tuning in when Sid the Kid and the Great 8 locked horns simply because battles like theirs don’t come around all that often. It fell into that category of “must-watch” TV, where you sports soul literally compels you not to miss it.

Crosby and the Penguins went on to win the Stanley Cup that season, avenging a 2008 Stanley Cup loss to the Red Wings in the Finals. Crosby, constrained by the tight-checking of Henrik Zetterberg, had a relatively quiet series, but when he hoisted Lord Stanley June 12^thin Hockeytown, there was no doubt it was his Cup, his team, and his League.

The next season, the League belonged to the Capitals. Led by Ovechkin’s 50 goals and 109 points, Washington steamrolled the Eastern Conference in 2009-10, finishing atop the standings with a gaudy 121 points. It was just the second 120-point season by a team in 15 years. After watching enviously the spring before as his nemesis scaled hockey’s highest peak, Ovechkin seemed poised to do the same just a year later.

But the Montreal Canadiens shocked the Capitals in the first round, ousting the Presidents Trophy winners in seven games. It was a flameout, if there ever was one, and the second high-stakes meltdown suffered by an Ovechkin-led team that year. In February at the Winter Olympics, a highly-touted Russia team squared off with Canada in the quarterfinals of the men’s hockey tournament, and were whitewashed by Crosby and Co., 7-3. Again, the win propelled Crosby’s team to immortality, as Canada went on to defeat the United States in the Gold Medal game, 3-2, on an overtime goal by you-know-exactly-who.

With a Stanley Cup and a gold medal to his name, Crosby was slowly separating himself from Ovechkin. Meanwhile, Ovechkin was falling back into the pack. In 2010-11, the Russian superstar scored just 32 goals and finished with 85 points. It was the first time in his career he scored less than 40 goals and 90 points in a season, and though Bruce Boudreau’s new defensive-minded philosophy had reined in the high-flying Caps, the fact that Ovechkin still led the League in shots suggested the chances were there. Washington’s first place finish in the East excused, even validated, Ovechkin’s offensive tumble, but when the Caps were swept by the fifth-seeded Lightning in the second round of the playoffs, there were no more alibi’s for the NHL’s two-time MVP.

Before dispatching the Capitals, the Lightning had taken care of the Penguins in the first round. But these weren’t Crosby’s Penguins; these hadn’t been Crosby’s Penguins since Sid suffered a concussion in the Winter Classic back in January. After taking a blindside shoulder to the head from David Steckel, Crosby’s magnificent season was stalled, then put on hold, then shelved for good. He would not play again for 10 months.

By the end of the 2011 season, the rhetoric surrounding Crosby and Ovechkin had definitively changed. In just two years, the combustible question of “Who’s better?” had given way to hollow contemplations of “Where has Ovechkin gone?” and “Will Crosby ever come back?”

The Messi – Ronaldo effect is so special because it is so rare. With the increasing rate of roster upheaval and the diminishing length of an athlete’s prime in this era of sports, to have the two best players in the world suiting up for two of the best teams in the world at the same time requires an alignment of the stars that would make any astrologist weak in the knees.         

The NHL was fortunate to have it when they did, and certainly sucked all the nectar from it when they could. Even as Crosby raced out of the gate this season with 48 points in his first 30 games – a 90’s-like pace of 132 points in an 82-game season – Ovechkin’s torpid start suggested this flower was dry. The captain in Pittsburgh was simply that much better than his counterpart in Washington.

But just when Crosby thought the battle was over, just when he thought his archenemy was gone for good, Ovechkin has risen from the ashes, pulled himself out of the snow like the Huns in Mulan, and declared the game back on. (You can't tell me the Hun at :19 of that video doesn't bear striking resemblance to Ovechkin.) He has used a 10-goal month of April to vault over Steven Stamkos for the goal-scoring lead with 28, and more importantly, propelled the Capitals to third place in the East. Two months ago, Ovechkin was being discussed as the season’s biggest disappointment; now, he is being discussed as the season’s MVP.

His most immediate competitor? Sidney Crosby.

Now in fairness to Crosby, he had the Hart Memorial Trophy won back in February. He was putting up points at a video-game rate, and making the players around him infinitely better. )Whatever bonuses or raises Chris Kunitz and Pascal Dupuis receive this summer should be split in half and delivered to Crosby.) When Crosby took a puck to the mouth on March 30^th– he has not played since – he had 56 points through 36 games, including a whopping 41 assists, and his Penguins sat atop the East with 54 points, seven points clear of second-place Montreal. His scoring pace was so furious, he has yet to relinquish the top spot on the leaderboard despite having missed nearly three weeks of action. If the season ended today, the MVP award would still be his. 

But if Crosby fails to return before the end of the regular season, he will have missed 13 games – more than a quarter of this 48-game season. Whether a player who suits up for only three-quarters of his team’s games is worthy of the MVP or not is a tricky question. (The mere fact that it’s a discussion is a tribute to Crosby’s greatness.) What’s a whole lot clearer, is Ovechkin’s candidacy for the award.

11 games into this season, the Capitals were dead last in the East with a record of 2-8-1. They looked like a team unsure of themselves, following the lead of a Captain unsure of himself. Ovechkin had been swapped between right wing and left wing by coach Adam Oates, and the once inexorable goal-scorer looked uncertain, tentative, and perhaps worst of all, tractable. Ovechkin’s game has always been centered on a certain relentlessness, a type of furious energy that one might see in a wild animal resisting capture. There were ways to slow down the Great Ovechkin, but – outside of a few dozen tranquilizers – there was no way to stop him. At the start of this season, and through most of last year, he seemed to have lost that seething drive, and through the fist 11 games this year, he had just three goals and four assists for seven points.

Then, as if shot in the neck with enough adrenaline to teach a sloth how to sprint, Ovechkin woke up. Not coincidentally, the Capitals did too. Since Feb. 8, Ovechkin has 25 goals and 16 assists over 32 games. And as he rose up the stat boards, his team rose up the standings. Washington’s 22-9-1 record in the same time span has lifted them to third place in the East (thank you Southeast Division…), as they race toward the playoffs with dangerous confidence. Only two other teams in the NHL – the Penguins and the Blackhawks – have picked up more points than the Capitals since Feb. 8, and those two teams have more goal-scorers than they know what to do with.

The Capitals, on the other hand, go as Ovechkin goes, a burden of pressure that Crosby has never had to shoulder in Pittsburgh. With the likes of Evgeni Malkin, James Neal, Kris Letang and Jarome Iginla, among others, the Penguins have enough great players to soldier through one superstar’s drought relatively unscathed. Since Crosby was sidelined on March 30^th, Pittsburgh has won six of its eight games, pumped in 25 goals and widened its Eastern Conference lead to nine points. The team lost the best player in the world, and hardly missed a beat.

Do you know what would happen if you removed Ovechkin from the Capitals’ lineup right now? The team’s intensity would plummet, their lethal power play would fizzle out, and Nicklas Backstrom would start passing the puck to advertisements on the boards because he expected Ovechkin to be there.

I’m not ready to say Ovechkin has caught up again with Crosby. Crosby has too often performed like a bantam in a mite’s league recently to make that claim true. But Ovechkin has surpassed Crosby in value to his team. The Penguins are fine without their captain; the Capitals are not. And when it comes to judging the MVP, isn’t that what matters? The size of the whole left by a player’s absence? The weight of their impact on their team’s success? 

If you consider Ovechkin’s early-season sleep-in an “injury”, we have seen what the Capitals are without him. And we’ve gained the same glimpse into the Penguins with Crosby out now. We aren’t holding it against Crosby for playing on a spectacular team, and certainly in the long run, Pittsburgh isn’t going anywhere without him. But Washington wouldn’t even be talking about the long run if it weren’t for Ovechkin. The playoffs wouldn’t even be a discussion.

And speaking of long runs, here’s to celebrating the rebirth of this two-horse race. With Crosby returning to the ice soon and Ovechkin surging back to life, it appears there are still miles to go before this one is over. 

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