Leafs and Canadiens get a second chance at the cup

David Martin of the Ottawa Citizen is reporting on a new NHL playoff format that sees the bottom 16 teams in the NHL playing for the Rabinovitch cup.

The second tier playoff series is the brainchild of the CBC which has named it the Rabinovitch Cup after their president Robert Rabinovitch.

The CBC is faced with a declining television audience with the absence of the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers from the Stanley Cup playoffs this year. They are predicting a 30% loss in viewership over the length of the playoffs.

In a further brilliant move the Rabinovitch Cup sees the 9th seed teams in each conference go through to the second round automatically. This ensures that the Toronto Maple Leafs will make it to the second round and that at least one Canadian team will still be in the hunt for the new cup after the first series play themselves out.

Even Don Cherry was reported as being supportive of this new cup and says "This is great. I love it. At least my Leafs have a chance to win something for a change."

Toronto Maple Leafs fans are excited that they can finally be assured that the Leafs will make it past the first round... unless the team ends up being disqualified when they can't get enough players off the golf course to field a team when round 2 rolls around.

David Martin is an Ottawa humour writer and you can read his original article "One Cup the Leafs can win" here.

Hockey Goaltenders make good short stops - Video

Well, except for hitting and running the bases anyway.

Thanks to Dave Smith a dedicated reader of Eric McErlain's Offwing Opinion I just spit coffee all over my double LCD monitor and wireless keyboard setup.

Eric provides a link to perhaps the greatest hockey movie (or greatest short movie anyway) since Slapshot (ok, maybe Slapshot 2).

Clark, the Canadian Hockey Goalie is a short video about Clark (a Canadian Hockey Goalie strangely enough) who decides to give up hockey to take a shot at Major League Baseball... as a short stop. Watch the video here.

This video is well worth the couple of minutes it will take you to watch it. But be warned, go to the john just before watching it and DO NOT under any circumstances drink anything while watching.

My favorite moment from the video? When Clark jersey's his 3rd baseman for calling him a 'hoser'.

P.S. For Eric McErlain and other sports/hockey bloggers out there, I tried to link this directly to the post on OffWing Opinion but he seems to be having some issues with his site. In fact it freezes my browser every time I look at anything but the main page.

And Eric, thanks for the post, I spit my drink everywhere, almost pissed myself and had to get a new keyboard.