Trying their best to stave off eliminations the Carolina Hurricanes ran into a team that is improving every time they step on the ice.
Eric Staal's early goal gave Cane's fans hope but a relentless offensive push by the Pittsburgh Penguins proved to be too much as the Pens sweep the Canes 4-0 with a 4-1 win tonight in Raleigh.
The Canes played their best game of the series but it was no match for a Pittsburgh team who will be returning to the Stanly Cup Finals for the second year in a row.
Northern Nash never got an opportunity to play round four in the high school baseball playoffs as tonight's game was rained out in Oxford. They will try again Wednesday night at Webb High School.
If Northern can win over Webb they would be forced to start the Eastern Finals Thursday night in Wayne county against Eastern Wayne who was a 6-4 winner of West Brunswick.
Way back during the football playoffs I complained there were too many games in order to win the championship and it is even worse in baseball. There is no reason any team should be forced to play four games in one week for the sake of making money for the NCHSAA.
Ever since they made the eastern finals a two out of three all teams have been forced to play with this format. Last Thursday night at the Rocky Mount sports banquet Pat Smith had a novel idea. Let the eight conference champions play a two out of three each round.
What that would have meant that the playoff game between Northern and Rocky Mount would have meant you are in or out so both would have used their aces to just get in the playoffs.
This format makes a lot of sense to me. It means that you would only play three games per but the negative would be it might take twelve games to win the title if every series took three games to win.
There is no perfect answer but the the format now smells.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
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