Playoff time: The best time of the year

The playoffs are often called the second season — a time when every team starts even and a time when many dream of upsets. When it’s all said and done, in most cases the best teams prevail, but you can usually count on a great story or two.

I am sure the 2011 OHL playoffs will be no different.

For me it’s kind of ironic that the Sudbury Wolves and Ottawa 67’s are meeting in round one of this year’s playoffs. These two teams have provided two of the bigger OHL upsets over the last few years.

The Ottawa 67’s were the sixth seed heading into the 2005 playoffs and went on to make it all the way to the Memorial Cup tournament in London. For the 67’s that included a second round series win over the Sudbury Wolves in six games.

That series will always be remembered for the goaltending provided by Ottawa goalie Danny Botacchio. The Sudbury native came back to haunt his hometown team by literally stealing that series.

Sudbury fans don’t need much reminding about the run the team went on in 2007. Just like the 67’s did a couple of years earlier, the Wolves went into those playoffs as the No. 6 seed. While not making it to the Memorial Cup that year in Vancouver, they did pull upsets over Mississauga, Barrie and Belleville to win the Eastern Conference Championship, and came within two overtime goals from beating Plymouth in the OHL finals.

That Wolves playoff team had a lot of great stories, but the names Dias, Dahm and Staal led the way. Matt Dias scored the triple overtime series winner against Belleville to win the East, Sebastian Dahm provided lights out goaltending and Marc Staal carried the team on his back as he went on to win the Wayne Gretzky 99 Award as Playoff MVP.

While the 2011 Sudbury-Ottawa series is still playing itself out, it certainly got off to a great start with an 8-7 overtime win for the Wolves in game one at Scotiabank Place.

For me, I was just thrilled getting the chance to do my first radio broadcast in an NHL arena, but it quickly turned out to be a game I won’t soon forget. There were so many twists and turns and momentum changes, I was left emotionally drained. I can’t imagine what the players and coaches went through.

Sudbury’s line of Michael Sgarbossa, Andrey Kuchin and Josh Leivo put on a show combining for 16 points. The rookie Leivo had a five-point performance including a hat trick in his first OHL playoff game. It was the same numbers for Kuchin including the OT winner, while Sgarbossa entered the Wolves playoff record book with a goal and five assists. He joins Wes Jarvis and Rod Schutt as the only players in Wolves history to register six points in a playoff game. Jarvis and Schutt did it back in 1976 in an 11-2 win over the Soo Greyhounds.

It’s still too early to say if there is another story to be written in the 2011 Sudbury-Ottawa series, but you never know.

Stew Kernan is the radio and television voice of the Sudbury Wolves, and the news director at EZ Rock and Q92. This column appears every other week in Northern Life.