Anton “Borat” Khudobin continues to be the story of the playoffs for the Houston Aeros, who are one win over Milwaukee from advancing to the conference finals. Here’s the Houston Chronicle story from last night’s 2-0 Game 4 win over the Admirals as written by proud papa Andrew Ferraro.

Khudobin stopped 27 of 27 shots on his 23rd birthday, and Benoit Pouliot scored the winning goal as Kevin Constantine’s bunch continues to roll. Game 5 is in Houston on Saturday.

Incidentally, here’s a real good Bruce Dowbiggin story on Pierre McGuire in the Globe and Mail. And by the way, McGuire’s mostly sitting back in coach when he flies to all these places.

Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom, rehabbing in Vail from Friday’s hip surgery, is a finalist for the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender. The other two finalists are Boston’s Tim Thomas and Columbus’ Steve Mason.

The GM’s vote for the Vezina. The winner will be announced in Las Vegas on June 18.

Here’s the graph on Backstrom from the press release: After nine seasons honing his craft in Europe and two earning increased playing time in the NHL, Backstrom established himself as the Wild’s go-to goalie this season, appearing in 71 games. He ranked among the League’s top five goaltenders in goals against average (2.33, third), save percentage (.923, fourth) and shutouts (eight, third) and his 37 wins were a franchise record in addition to being the NHL’s fifth-highest total. Backstrom established a club record with 149:19 of consecutive shutout goaltending Dec. 31-Jan. 8. 

Backstrom won the 2007 Roger Crozier Saving Grace Award for best SV pct. (.929) in the NHL, and teamed with Manny Fernandez to win the 2007 William M. Jennings Trophy, given to the goaltenders for the team with the fewest goals scored against it.

Backstrom joins Jacques Lemaire and Wes Walz as members of the Wild to be designated a finalist for a voted-upon NHL end-of-the-year award. Lemaire won the Jack Adams Trophy as the league’s top coach in 2002-03, the same season Walz was a finalist for the Frank J. Selke Trophy as the NHL’s best defensive forward.

Tonight, in Peoria, the Houston Aeros play Game 7 due to Saturday’s 2-1 Game 6 loss. Here’s the link for some game notes and other AHL playoff notes.

This is the best note: Houston head coach Kevin Constantine has won three Game 7’s as an NHL head coach, all three on the road.

In the NHL, tonight’s Game 6 of the Calgary-Chicago series and Anaheim-San Jose series. The home team has won every game in the Calgary-Chicago series, so there’s a great chance this is going back to Chicago for Game 7. As for Anaheim-San Jose, Game 5 was a great game. It’s always nice to see Joe Thornton, well, try. He finally instilled a little effort and anger into his game, and helped send the series back to Anaheim.

Tuesday night, there will be two Game 7’s: Rangers at Washington, and Carolina at New Jersey.

I can’t see at all how the Rangers win this series now. Boy, Rangers coach John Tortorella put this series in a whole world of hurt for the Blueshirts. As I mentioned on the blog a few days ago before it happened, I would have also considered scratching Sean Avery, but only if they actually lost Game 4.

But he scratched Avery in Game 5. The Rangers didn’t show up, then Tortorella gets himself suspended for Game 6. Plus, Avery returns and is a shell of his former self. As color analyst extraordinaire Ed Olczyk telestrated during one sequence, Avery was so trying to behave, he intentionally was refusing to even check anybody.

(more…)