My choices for players to keep an eye on are Mikael Samuelsson and Kris Draper for the Wings and Wojtek Wolski and Andrew Brunette for the Avalanche.

Regarding Sammy, from your lips to God’s ears, Paul. He’s been solid in the defensive zone but he needs to bury a few before his offensive zone giveaways stop giving me ulcers.

Personally, my first choice for a player to keep an eye on is Mule. If he can stick his big butt in ThreeOrFour’s face as often as Homer will, then Jose The Hat is going to have a tough time matching his .940 SV% from the Wild series.

My second choice is Mac. We all waited for him to level TuTu in the Nashville series. It didn’t happen. Were his ribs still too sore for fisticuffs? Who knows. But I’m betting someone on The Dive (please, God, let it be Foote) will get a face full of Grinder mitts before too long. Game 1 at about the 5:00 mark of the first period would get things off to a real nice start.

Posted by OlderThanChelios from Grand Rapids on 04/24/08 at 01:52 PM ET

“That is what is important to me today: games yet to be played and new memories to be made.”

Amen to that. I’m getting tired of hearing the phrase “rekindle their rivalry” and seeing the clips the Lemieux cheap shot, the goaltender battles, etc, etc.

Sure, it’s good to hype up the series and get some casual observers interested in the game but let’s keep focus on what’s happening now.

Posted by Shane from Saskatoon on 04/24/08 at 04:08 PM ET