Halak puts an exclamation mark on one of the best opening rounds in Stanley Cup history

The opening round of the National Hockey League's 2010 Stanley Cup championships produced a series of notable storylines, including:

• entertaining hockey, combining both a potent offensive display of 5.9 goals per game (the highest since 1996) and some superb goaltending, most notably that of Jaroslav Halak, who stood on his head to lead the Montreal Canadiens past Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals; 
• tight hockey, with a total of 49 games in the first round (the most since 1995) and 12 of them overtime results (the most since 2001). There wasn't a single four-game sweep, only one five-game series, five six-gamers and two that went the distance to seventh games;
• unpredictable hockey, with road teams winning 27 of the 49 games and four series going to the lower-seeded teams.

Yet with all due respect to the resurgent Detroit Red Wings, the resilient Boston Bruins and the surprising Philadelphia Flyers, the single biggest storyline of the conference quarter-finals is Halak and the Habs. The Slovak Olympian goaltender is one of the major reasons why this first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs has to go down as one of the best in modern history.

This is the first time an eighth-seed has knocked off a top-seed after falling behind three games to one. But it's more than No. 8 ousting No. 1 within a conference, it's actually No. 16 in the playoffs eliminating No. 1 overall.

That's why Halak has already earned himself a special place in the 100-year history of the Canadiens (and in the hearts of their fans). He stole the last three games for Montreal and his performance in game six at the Bell Centre was one for the ages, invoking comparisons with rookie Ken Dryden and the 1971 Stanley Cup champions and rookie Patrick Roy and the 1986 champion Canadiens.

Dryden and Roy made history because they won three and four series, respectively. Halak is only one-quarter of the way to the peak of Mount Stanley. What he has done, however, is what Dryden did 39 years ago: beat the top-ranked team in the Stanley Cup tournament. And even with Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins on the horizon, it's a start that's intriguing for Canadiens boosters and, even moreso, for Halak's agent, Allan Walsh.

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A sidelined Ovechkin hurts U.S. audiences but not necessarily overall North American numbers

There will be much hand-wringing over the Washington Capitals' stunning exit in the first-round of the National Hockey League's 2010 Stanley Cup tournament. Most of it will be in the Caps' front office, but a close second will be the disappointment shared by U.S. television rights holders Versus and NBC, both of which were loving their first-round playoff ratings and must have been salivating at the prospects of an eastern conference showdown between Alex Ovechkin and the Caps and Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

That Ovechkin-Crosby is no longer in the cards will also cause some long faces at the NHL's corporate offices in New York. And that's understandable from those who bank on star marketing to build a larger footprint in the U.S.

Yet if it is job one of the commissioner's office to create aggregate value through optimal revenue generation and profits -- for itself and its member franchises -- there is no need for any heads to hang.

This is a tale of two countries. What in this case is bad for hockey in the U.S. is good for the game in Canada and not necessarily bad for the NHL.

The bottom line is that another series for the Montreal Canadiens will be good for the NHL and its partners; most notably its Canadian broadcast and corporate partners. At the micro level, it will sell more tickets and pump up higher box office totals (especially with at least two games at the 21,273-seat Bell Centre, the second-biggest building in the league with the highest-priced tickets of any of the remaining eight playoff clubs).

It will engage more fans and drive larger overall television audiences, largely because CBC and RDS will drive numbers north of 3.5 M and even 4 M per game in Canada alone. Those ratings will help make more money for the NHL's single-largest broadcast rights buyer; the CBC.

It's true that fewer Americans will be watching the conference semifinals and finals than if Ovechkin and the Caps were on the marquee. The net outcome with the Habs in and the Caps out is positive for the core business of the NHL, however, because so many more people will be watching in Canada.

The NHL might not see it that way, because it is rarely prone to recognizing that on a per capita basis, 10 to 20 times more Canadians watch NHL hockey than do their American counterparts. What it should see is that when your business partners make money, it's good for your business. And in this case, no one pays the NHL more money for rights than the CBC and its Hockey Night in Canada franchise.

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Doughty and the Kings have a bright future

After pushing the favoured Vancouver Canucks to overtime twice and splitting the opening set at General Motors Place enroute to a 2-1 series lead, the Los Angeles Kings suffered three straight losses and are on the outside looking in this week while the Canucks prepare for the Chicago Blackhawks and Round 2 of the NHL's 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs.

That does not mean, however, that the Kings have little to celebrate going into the off-season. They in fact have every reason to be bullish about the next cycle of their franchise history in La-La Land.

Reaching the playoffs for the first time in eight years is a big step in the right direction. It also gives their young line-up a taste of what the Stanley Cup tournament is all about. As star defenceman Drew Doughty said after elimination Sunday, you sometimes have to learn how to lose before you can learn how to win.

Doughty himself is another reason to celebrate if you're a Kings' fan, a member of LA's hockey operations brass or an NHL league marketing executive coveting a presence in the second-largest media market in the United States. In #8 Doughty, the Kings have a gold-medal winning Olympian, a James Norris nominee as the league's best defenceman and a player who invokes comparisons with none other than #4 Bobby Orr...all at the age of 20!

The remarkably composed sophomore rearguard is the epitome of a young, up-and-coming Kings team that appears ready to contend for much of the new decade ahead. At an average age of 27.4, LA's future lies in Doughty, goaltender Jonathan Quick, rising star Anze Kopitar, Russian sniper Alexander Frolov, captain Dustin Brown and other youngsters in the line-up. Los Angeles also has to be considered a possible destination for free agent sniper Ilya Kovalchuk.

The bottom line is the new-look Kings are beginning to make strides in both hockey operations and business operations. Their attendance climbed five per cent and reached 96% capacity (averaging 17,313) at the Staples Center they share with the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA. Their television audiences on Fox Sportsnet West and Prime Ticket are up 27% (although keep in mind, the Kings' average regional audience of 27,140 households and approximately 62,000 viewers is 15 per cent the size of Canucks' TV numbers on Rogers Sportsnet Pacific).

On the NHL Composite Power Rankings for the 2009-'10 regular season released this month by TheSportMarket.biz, the Kings placed 12th overall (ninth on the ice with 105 points and 15th off the ice with an estimated per game box office of $817 K US). http://www.facebook.com/thesportmarket?v=photos&ref=ts#!/photo.php?pid=3724749&id=280702824731
 
Much of their strength in overall operations comes from the solid business infrastructure provided by owners Anschutz Entertainment Group and the connection to their glory years provided by former stars such as Luc Robitaille, who now serves as the Kings' President of Business Operations.

For the LA Kings, the present is good; the future better. On and off the ice, they have such bright days ahead, Kings' branded sunglasses could become compulsory equipment in Hollywood for the first time since Wayne Gretzky made hockey fashionable in southern California 20 years ago.

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