Easter Beginnings

Vol. I, No. 30

PLAYOFF RACE HEATS UP

A ghost may have been exorcised in Raleigh North Carolina last night. On the eve of Easter, the Devils got 4 goals, from 4 different scorers.  They blanked the Carolina Hurricanes on the road.

It was Martin Brodeur's eighth shutout of the season, moving him into a tie with the Phoenix Coyotes' Ilya Bryzgalov.  It was also his 42nd victory of the season, atop all other NHL netminders.  And it was his 599th career win, in a class by his own.  In this, he can only compete against himself as he approaches #600.

The victory came against same Canes that dispatched the Devs in game 7 of last year's first round playoffs. The same Canes that, as a reborn Hartford Whalers squad, won the Stanley Cup in 2006. 

This year, Carolina's team is out of the hunt, 8 points behind the 8th place team in the east, the Boston Bruins.  With only three games left in their schedule, it would take a small miracle for the Canes to find a way into the playoffs.

As for the home town boys, next stop is Atlanta on Tuesday.  Ilya Kovalchuk gets to play against his old teammates, and the Devils will face Johnny Oduya and Niclas Bergfors who left New Jersey in the February 5th trade. We tune into WFAN, or MSG+ to catch the game at 7:30pm. Washington plays Pittsburgh at the same time. Stay tuned for the Atlantic Division race for the top.

THOUGHTS ON THE TIME OF YEAR AND TECHNOLOGY

There is one more week to go in the regular ice hockey season, as Easter heralds the true onset of spring.  Major league baseball is open for business, and the boys of summer will now share the airwaves with basketball and hockey postseason playoffs.  Searching the radio dial for hockey games now becomes a hit or miss proposition.  

For Devs fans, that means flipping between WFAN (660AM) and Bloomberg (1130AM).  It's an easier choice than in years past, when games appeared all over the dial, on three or four different stations. Only in the New York metro market, with seven professional teams playing at the same time, can this confusion exist.  Of all those teams, only two (the Devils and the Yankees) have shown any kind of championship consistency in recent years.

Media access has changed in the past 10 years, with the widespread penetration of broadband into mobile 3G phones and devices. This weekend, another revolution may have occurred. Found on the NHL.com website today was the following news.  "NHL announces NHL.com optimized for iPad".  

Let's see if we find fans tuning into games on their iPad.  Just find a Wi-Fi spot and take in your favorite game on your battery-powered viewer.  OK, so it's bigger than a cell phone.  But with those ubiquitous backpacks, iPads ought to be popping up all over the place.

Hockey Rules (and maybe in even more places now)!