Maddux Sports Blog

After blowing their chance to even the Stanley Cup final with Detroit at two games a piece on home ice despite scoring the first goal of the game on Saturday, Pittsburgh is in dire straits. They now have to head into the hostile Joe Louis Arena in Detroit to win a game from a team and a crowd that has won it all before and knows and loves the smell of blood in the water. The sportsbooks really don’t like their chances - Detroit is a very solid -230 favorite for game five. If they do manage to pull off a miraculous win tonight all they have to do is win two more in a row against the best team in the league and the hottest goaltender on the planet. Not an easy task for anyone, never mind a team that’s core is made up of guys that are too young to grow a playoff beard. Playoff peach fuzz reigns in Pittsburgh.

It looks like an uphill battle for the Penguins tonight, but they can pull it off, can’t they? The short answer is no, probably not, but let’s take a closer look.

Let’s start with history. This does not make it look good for the underdogs. A team has come back from a 3-1 deficit in the finals before, but not for 66 years. Recent history is no more forgiving. All the team has to do is win two games in a building that they have yet to score a goal  in. Two straight shutouts started this series, and the Pens will have those bitter memories bouncing around in their heads. That’s not the only problem. Pittsburgh has a truly explosive offense but they have score just four goals in four games, and they have been shut down by Detroit. Sidney Crosby has been very good, and Marian Hossa has been solid, but Evgeni Malkin has been invisible, and the secondary scoring hasn’t existed.

Handicapping this series comes down to just one thing - what do you think the mental state of the team is? If Pittsburgh realizes that they have nothing to lose and they can se their situation as a rallying point then they can make a contest of this. If you buy into that then you’ll like the juicy longshot price you can get in game 5. On the other hand, the team could dwell on the fact that Detroit has been better, faster, and stronger and has dominated them in pretty much every aspect of the series. If that’s where the thoughts lie, or at least where the majority of them do, then the game could be ugly tonight.

For me, it comes down to this - I’ll be cheering for Pittsburgh to make the series interesting, but I can’t justify betting against Detroit. Sadly, I won’t be betting on them either given the price.  I guess I’ll satisfy my habits tonight by betting on baseball and watching hockey.

I watched the hockey game tonight, and I was left stunned by what I saw. The Red Wings are freakishly good, and Pittsburgh is in serious trouble. The Penguins haven’t scored a goal yet in 120 minutes. Ouch. What is most amazing, and most contributes to the outcome, is that Detroit is just sticking to their game plan. Pittsburgh keeps doing stupid things to try to get Detroit mad, the Red Wings don’t respond, and Pittsburgh commits a penalty out of frustration. That would be great at the best of times, but it is especially effective because neither Sidney Crosby nor Evgeni Malkin kill penalties. The best possible way to neutralize those two is to keep them off the ice. I feel fairly sure that Pittsburgh will win game three at home, but this series so far is just testament to how good Detroit is. It also makes me think that the week off before the series was the worst possible thing that could have happened to the Pens - their young guys had too much time to sit around and freak themselves out by the immensity of what was in front of them. It’s clear that the team lacks a player in a central role who has been here before. Detroit - start planning your parade route.

Probably just one parade route, though, Detroit. The Pistons got a win tonight to even their series with Boston at two, but I still don’t have a lot of confidence in their ability to win it all. I don’t think that they have the health or the effective depth to beat the Western rep if they can get past Boston. This round so far has really shown just how true what we have suspected all along is - the West really is much better than the East this year.

After nine straight wins, Brandon Webb lost for the second time in a row tonight. Unlike his first loss, though, this one was ugly. He only got one out in the fifth before getting booted, and he allowed four runs and ten hits. The odd thing is that though he was very hittable tonight he was also fooling a lot of guys - he struck out eight. I went against Webb tonight just based on value in his (in my opinion) inflated price, but I will be staying away from him entirely now until we can see for sure that he hasn’t decided to plunge into a freefall or that he is healthy.

Philadelphia was at (-201) tonight against the Rockies with Jamie Moyer on the mound. Just think about that for a second - Colorado was in the World Series just last year, but they have fallen so far, so fast that oddsmakers think them to be an overwhelming underdog against a guy who is 200 years old and throws about 12 miles an hour. Even worse, the price actually reflected value - a lot of it. Philly exploded for 20 runs, including two innings with 6 each, to win 20-5. That’s the fourth time that Colorado has been at +160 or higher and they have won just once, so they are not a good team to take a shot at as a long shot no matter how tempting the potential payoff may be. Put another way, they really suck.

The teams with the three highest payrolls in baseball are well below .500. The two lowest paid teams are leading their divisions. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but it just seems so odd to see that in print and try to digest it. Very, very, very bizarre. Also odd - as many of the top ten payrolls (two) are in last place in their division as are in first place.

Mondays aren’t supposed to be busy days on the sports front, but this one certainly was. Here are five things that caught my eye today:

1. It was covered here by someone else earlier tonight, but I have to touch on Jon Lester again. Impressive on a couple of fronts - Boston having two no-hitters in less than a year, Jason Varitek catching both games, Lester’s story. It would be an even better story if it had have been against a major league team instead of the Triple-A adequate Kansas City Royals. Based on what I wrote here last week I’ll be taking a very close look at Lester next time out.

2. Man, do I ever hate the Spurs. They keep finding a way to win when it matters - mostly by boring their opponents to death. The worst part isn’t that they are still alive, or that New Orleans would have made for a far more interesting series against the Lakers. It’s that San Antonio now has to be considered the favorite to win it all, and especially so if Kobe isn’t at his best. If I have to see Tim Duncan cut down another net I am more than likely to puke.

3. The Red Wings took a couple games off, but they finally showed up today and exerted their total dominance over the Stars. Pittsburgh did the same thing yesterday after their one game holiday. This sets up the most interesting and likely exciting Stanley Cup showdown we have seen in years. I am leaning towards the Penguins, but it could go either way and I wouldn’t be surprised. It takes a lot to get me to watch hockey in June, but this will do it.

4. Andy Roddick pulled out of the French Open today thanks to a shoulder injury. I like the guy and I respect his game, but I couldn’t be happier. He’s lost in the first round the last two years at the French, and I was not at all looking forward to figuring out if he was going to break that bad habit this time around.

5. The NBA draft lottery goes tomorrow night, and as always the stakes are very high for a lot of teams. Derrick Rose is a player to build a team around, and Michael Beasley could ease a lot of woes as well. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I would like to see the Knicks win it most - watching D’Antoni coach Steve Nash for the last few years was a complete pleasure, and watching him and Rose would be no less captivating. I’d also like to see Memphis get the pick - it would be fun to see them struggle with deciding if they should choose the player who best fits them - Beasley - or the player who will sell the most tickets - Rose. Seattle would be fun, too - Durant plus one of these two would make it easy to draw comparisons between the Sonics now and the Penguins a couple of years ago.

1. There are only six guys in the majors with the last name Cabrera, but it seems like there are about 212. Every time I turn around another one is in the news. The latest did it in an impressive way - Cleveland second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera turned just the 14th unassisted triple play in major league history in the second game of a doubleheader against Toronto. He dove to catch a line drive, touched second for out number two, and the tagged Marco Scutaro, the guy who should own a hundred pizza places based on his name alone, to enter history. Troy Tulowitzki had one last season, and the previous unassisted play was in 2000.

2. That wasn’t the only crazy thing to happen in that game. I don’t know Cliff Lee, but I can only imagine that he is one angry dude right now. The ridiculously hot ace threw nine scoreless innings in that game to lower his already almost non-existent 0.81 ERA. The problem is that his team didn’t score any runs, either. The bullpen poured gas on the mound and lit it on fire in the tenth, allowing three runs. Lee should have had a brilliant complete game shutout. Instead, he threw 117 pitches and has nothing to show for it. On the plus side, his ERA is down to 0.67. That’s obscene. To be fair, we should note that Shaun Marcum is having a very solid year, and he was brilliant as well. He allowed just two hits in eight scoreless innings.

3. Detroit cruised to a third easy win against Dallas. This is as one-sided as a conference final can possibly be. A friend sent me an e-mail late in the game that said it well - “Dallas looks like a good junior team playing an NHL team”.

4. A-Rod is not going to be healthy and back in action in time for the Yanks’ series against the Mets this weekend. That’s the story, anyway. More likely, he knows how nasty fans in New York can be, and he has trips in the friendlier and more apathetic climes of Baltimore and Seattle after that. No one ever said A-Rod wouldn’t duck a tough spot.

5. The Lakers series just got tougher to figure out. Now we have to play psychologist, figuring out how much Kobe’s back injury is for real, and how much of it is just showmanship in an attempt to get an edge over Utah. There’s no question that he isn’t 100 percent. It just seems a bit odd that he showed up in front of the media wearing some funky electric stimulation device on his back. Teams and players are notoriously tight-lipped about injuries in the playoffs, and they never seem to tell the truth when they do rarely speak. Based on that, it’s pretty easy to concoct a conspiracy theory that would suggest that he isn’t in nearly as bad shape as his actions would suggest. The problem is that he’s the only player still active outside of LeBron James that singlehandedly can determine the outcome of his series based on his health.

6. We’ll have the Preakness field set in two days, but it is still pretty fluid. Recapturetheglory has pulled out of the race. Now Harlem Rocker, the undefeated horse trained by Todd Pletcher that Big Brown’s connections admitted was the only one that they were concerned about in the field, has decided to find an easier spot. That means that this is going to be a ridiculously easy field for Big Brown if he is anywhere near his best. The one thing that could make it a bit more interesting is the rumor that Gayego could give the race a try. He had a lousy Derby, but there is a lot to like about the Arkansas Derby winner. If nothing else, his presence would inflate Big Brown’s price from the microscopic to the merely ridiculously low.

7. The Celtics have now played five road games in these playoffs. They have yet to win or cover a single one. Despite what they accomplished this season, I find it hard to view them as a truly elite team with that on their record. If they can’t beat Atlanta or Cleveland how are they going to get past L.A., San Antonio or Charlotte.