HOCKEY & MOZZARELLA..

HOCKEY..
A slightly disappointing start to round 2 of the 2013 Stanley Cup playoffs for New York Rangers. Down 2 games in the first 2 games to Boston Bruins..

Current standings are (21 May):

Boston really are the surprise at this stage being 2 straight games up. Pittsburgh and LA are my personal favourites and I would have thought would be 2 or 3 games straight up but both have conceded a game.

Detroit, Mrs P's team (for different reasons to judging hockey skills and more to do with likeable players!) are looking a bit scrappy in their games but have been helped by Chicago's similar performance. Who knows which of those two teams is going through to the semi-final..

New York being down 2 games is in fact a good thing. As each game they lose goes by my yearning to be in New York later in the month to soak up the atmosphere of a game and some great Brooklyn beer and freshly smoked mozzarella pizza is slipping away.

MOZARELLA..
On that, I have just found out that Joe's Dairy, a family run cheese shop in SoHo that used to make the best smoked mozzarella I have ever tasted closed last week (11 May 2013).

Unbelievably, the shop was suffering from not enough walk in sales for their home made cheese.

I went in 2007 and witnessed the steam being blown across the road as the vats were being opened one morning. Bought some smoked, sliced by Anthony Campanelli at that very counter below and he wrapped it for me in a paper wrapper. I had it in my backpack, visited Bleeker St record store and then found a great Brooklyn Brewery real ale style pub close by at lunchtime and really enjoyed it for my lunch. One very memorable morning spent. Seems that won't be happening again. Shame. Real shame. Here's the official report.

In fact, it deserves two links it was that great a place - here's a really good review on a blog called Vanishing New York. Joe's reminded me of the types of store I used to see on Starsky & Hutch or other US TV programmes when I was a kid. Still a lot around, but not too many in Manhattan it seems. These days you have to venture out to Brooklyn, Long Island (not a bad thing - I am a fan of the New York Islanders after all!) or up to the Bronx.

Happy hunting.

BEARS BEAT RANGERS..

Game 1 of the NHL Stanley Cup second round started Thursday evening for New York Rangers with a visit to the TD Garden Arena, Boston. An ice hockey venue I have yet to visit - next on my list in actual fact.

I'll keep this one short. ish.

Most of the shots on Lundqvist in the first period hit dead centre of his shirt logo. You are not going to score against "possibly the best netminder in the NHL" doing that.

Just over 12 minutes in though, a scrabble in front of net ended up with the puck in the back of it and Boston taking a lead. Scorer: Zdeno Chara, a Slovak national standing and one of the tallest players in the league at a huge 6 foot 9 inches! Huge! See below:

Last 20 seconds saw Sagan almost even up with a shot on the net that went wide. You couldn't cut it finer. 1.3 seconds to go in second period and NYR evened up. 1-1 as McDonagh fired in a medium strength snapshot from midway to the blue line.

Then, just 14 seconds into the third period the Rangers scored again. Derek Stepan this time (who is currently 2nd in both the regular season and the playoffs for the amount of game winning goals achieved.. strange stat, but clearly a key player for the team). Two goals with 16 seconds of playing time. 2-1 Rangers.

Didn't last long though, newcomer defenseman number 47 Torey Krug got his first NHL goal just before the three minute mark of the period. 2-2. This was his first ever playoff game having only played one game for the Bruins in the regular NHL season following signing from non-league team Indiana Ice. Keep your eyes on him next season - wikipedia page here.

The pressure was kept on by the Bruins for the next few minutes before play settled down into an end to end pattern for the rest of the period. 

Powerplay Boston and a dangerous try 22 seconds to go in the third. Then they hit the goalpost as the clock ticked to 0.0 seconds. New York Rangers thrown a lifeline at the very sound of the horn...

Overtime. Powerplay and, to be honest, Boston looked dangerous throughout.

4:20 left in OT and Boston took game one 3-2 with Marchand's first goal in the playoffs.

Shots on goal: Boston 48, New York 35.

One up for the bear. Let's hope the park Rangers get him at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon (3PM ET).

The other game last night was San Jose Sharks v LA Kings. End score: 4-3 to LA. A very very close game with LA only just evening up to 3-3 with 1:43 left in the third period and then, amazingly, 4-3 with 1:21 left. You can tell these two teams are going to come to major blows very soon.

And in other news, non hockey readers of this blog will be happy to know that I am going to post a non-hockey post later today. Mind you, if you think trains, trams and subways are boring....