Another Marathon Ends

Just finished watching the Red Wings eliminate the Flames in double overtime. Between how tired Calgary looked tonight, and how lifeless the Lightning appeared at the end of the third period of their game today, I'm wondering about scheduling in the 1st round this year. It used to be that you could count on playing every second night, until your series was over. Now we get games on back-to-back nights - the Rangers and Thrashers even had that, in Games 3 and 4 - and sometimes three games in four nights, as happened in the Detroit/Calgary series. That sort of thing ought to be reserved for the regular season, if you ask me. The games are too important in the playoffs to have teams lose because they're tired. How much of this year's wacky calendar resulted from the desires of NBC and the Versus network in the U.S., rather than availability of arenas, I wonder?

Anyway, now the only unknown is the winner between Vancouver and Dallas. The Western Conference semi-final matchups will be: Detroit vs San Jose and Anaheim vs Vancouver (if the Canucks win Game 7), or Detroit vs Dallas and Anaheim vs San Jose (if Dallas wins). I gotta say the first scenario is more appealing to me, but I guess it'll come out whatever way it's gonna.