The Blog for the Sports Gamer Three guys who love Sports Gaming rant and rave about various stuff.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I’ve made a point of not chatting up Detroit sports too much during the NBA and NHL seasons, but that changes today. Playoff time is here and the Pistons and Red Wings enter the post-season with the best records in their respective leagues; this is the first time the top seeds in the NBA and NHL have come from the same city.

The Red Wings kick it off against Edmonton on Friday night. I’m a bit more worried about the Wings than the Pistons because the NHL playoffs have always been a touch unpredictable. One of the top seeds routinely will fall to a #8 seed and it’s not all that uncommon for the Stanley Cup Finals to consist #3 seeds and lower. Plus, Edmonton is scrappy. In the old NHL they never went down easy and there’s no reason to expect that they will in the new NHL. I also haven’t watched much hockey this year (having not signed up for OLN), and I don’t really know what to expect.

What I do know is that this Wings team is not the same squad that’s as famous for it’s first and second round exits as it is for its Stanley Cups. The most famous playoff Red Wing no-shows (Hull, Robitaille, Federov, etc.) are no longer here. This is a team that’s carried by equal parts veteran savvy (Yzerman, Lang, Shanahan, Lidstrom), explosive youth (Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Samuellson, Williams) and underrated goaltending in Manny Legace and Chris Osgood. I can’t make any real predictions until I watch a few games (I’m signing up for OLN tomorrow), but I do think this is a team that at least makes it to the conference finals.

As for the Pistons, what can you really say? It’s a team that - for more than half the season - was on pace to hit 70 wins, they had four all-stars, and they have a leading MVP candidate in Chauncey Billups. True they slowed down in Feb/March, but then turned it right back on again in keeping the Spurs and Mavericks in their rearview mirror for the league’s best record and when you look at their losses, precious few were to teams in contention. (True they lost three to the Wizards, but doesn anyone think the Wiz will beat them in the playoffs should they meet?)

These guys are better than the Bad Boy era Pistons and they’re better than any team in the East. Barring injuries, I don’t see any way they don’t reach the NBA Finals. Will they win it? I really think they will. The Spurs needed seven games, home court, and a broken final play in Game 5 last year to bring the Pistons down and this team is better than last year, with a deeper bench to boot. I like the Mavericks, but I don’t think they’ve got the full game necessary to outlast Detroit in a seven game series. I’d really like to see a matchup with the Suns, because I think that would be exciting basketball, but I think it's a tough haul for them to reach the Finals. No matter how you look at it, this Pistons squad is ready for another championship ring.

Red Wings and Pistons. Pistons and Red Wings. For a Detroit sports fan it doesn’t get any better than this. (Now watch both these teams bow out before the conference finals.)