This Weekend in Sports (24-Mar-2007)
NHL
Eastern Conference Playoff Race
Toronto has a home and home series starting tonight against Buffalo. Natural rivals based on location, Toronto at the very least has to split this series to have a hope of making the playoffs. Buffalo has already clinched a playoff spot and is 7 pts ahead of any team in the Eastern Conference. As a Leaf fan I can only hope that Buffalo is going to take it easy until the playoffs and maybe the Leafs can steal 2 wins.
Montreal, New York Rangers, and the New York Islanders, are all playing sub .500 teams on Saturday and should have an easy go of it. However if any of them look past this game they could find themselves losing out on 2 important points and have their playoff dreams slip away.
Euro Cup 2008
Euro Cup qualifications continue this weekend with 20 games scheduled for Saturday. Some of the top international teams such as England, Spain, and Portugal need to win this weekend to not fall out of contention.
Spain will face Denmark who is sitting second in Group F. It will be a tough match and hugely pivotal given that Sweden currently has 12pts, Denmark and Northern Ireland have 7pts, and Latvia is tied with Spain at 3pts.
England has a huge match with Israel. This doesn’t look like much of a competition on paper, but Israel is tied with England in their group and if England were to lose they would be hard pressed to qualify for the Cup. With Croatia and Russia leading the group respectively England can hardly afford to take Israel lightly.
Portugal sits in 4th place in their group 4pts behind Finland with a game in hand. Portugal will play Belgium and will be handicapped not having the services of both Deco and Sabrosa. This is a must win for Portugal that showed a lot of skill and poise in the 2006 World Cup.
Although this weekend really doesn’t spell the end of any team it will be a very exciting weekend to figure out where each team stands.
NCAA Men’s Basketball – March Madness
Well the tournament goes into it’s second weekend with really no major upsets like other years. The lowest seed left is UNLV seeded number 7 having beet Wisconsin the number 2 seed in there division. This Friday will see the end of the third round and have us down to 8 teams where anyone can win. Although there isn’t a Cinderella team like in the past this will be an exciting battle of the best skilled college teams in the country.
It’s the European Championship, once known as the European Nations Trophy. It’s never been called the Euro Cup.
http://www.uefa.com/competitions/EURO/news/Kind=1/newsId=387580.html
Never’s a bit harsh wouldn’t you say? If I google for Euro Cup 2008 I will find lots of references to the tournament. I can even buy tickets to Euro Cup 2008 so someone must be calling it Euro Cup.
I can NOT believe the leafs blew that 4-1 lead in the 3rd.
4 goals in 8 minutes? Geez…
I know! 4-1 in the third! This is why people haven’t accepted Raycroft as a good goalie. He doesn’t usually come up with a big save and often lets in one soft one. Last night however in the Leafs 4-1 victory he made a great save on Briere. A split is what they wanted when they went into the weekend and a split is what they got.
NY vs NY ended in a 3 pt game.. not good, not good..
“the threat from the internet” then!