The goaltenders in the 2014 Olympic gold medal game were Carey Price (Canada) and Henrik Lundqvist (Sweden). Canada won, 3-0. Those same goaltenders are now facing each other in the 2014 NHL Eastern Conference Finals. No one saw this coming (you’re probably lying if you did), because Montreal was Canada’s last (only) hope in a historically-bad year for Canadian teams, and a week ago it looked like we were rolling towards Penguins-Bruins as the ECF (a rematch of the last two Eastern teams to win the Cup). Now we’re guaranteed to get someone into the Cup Finals who hasn’t been there since the early 1990s — the Canadiens were last there in 1993 (won) and the Rangers last in 1994 (won), but neither has been back since — which only furthers this idea of random-arse stuff happening all the time in the NHL Playoffs.
The series starts Saturday in Montreal and is a rematch of the 1986 Eastern Conference Finals …
… as well as a sad point for mid-1990s baseball fans, as Yankees-Expos looked like a potential ’94 World Series before the strike.
Should be an interesting one. On the other side, the Blackhawks wait for a Game 7 winner between the Ducks and Kings.
