#5 Bruins Ruin Flyers
The Philadelphia Flyers found their way into the second round of the playoff despite a complete lack of effective in goal tending.  The Boston Bruins were distinctly unimpressed.  The Broad Street Bullies will have plenty of time to consider their lack of defense – they were outscored 20-5 in the series – while watching the remainder of the Stanley Cup from home.

#4 The Mavericks Run Wild
The Los Angeles Lakers were the #2 seed in the Western Conference. They were two time defending champions on their way to a three-peat. They were the team of destiny. Then they played the Dallas Mavericks.

The Mavs didn’t just beat the Lakers, they embarrassed them. They outclassed them in every conceivable way en route to a four game sweep of the defending champs. By the time that Lakers players Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom were thrown out of the game for acting like self-pitying thugs who just wanted somebody to hit, it was already too late.

#3 Lightning Strikes Again
The Washington Capitals were the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference. Same story, different sport. The lowly Tampa Bay Lightning, who fell down three games to one in the opening round of the playoffs only to bounce back, decimated the Caps in a four game sweep that felt like sweet vindication for a team that many thought didn’t belong.

#2 Animal Kingdom
The Kentucky Derby has been an annual tradition for 137 years. That’s longer than Joe Paterno has been coaching. It’s a beautiful thing when a long-shot proves everyone wrong, and that’s exactly what happened when 20-1 dark horse Animal Kingdom won the Kentucky Derby, ridden by a jockey who expected to be watching from the sidelines until just days before the race. Anyone else smell a Disney movie in the making?

#1 Verlander’s 2nd No-No
Justin Verlander did it again. Verlander and the Detroit Tigers shut out the Toronto Blue Jays. Verlander was spectacular – I guess you’d have to be to go a whole game in MLB without giving up a hit. His fastballs were blindingly fast. His sliders were un-hitable. His curveballs were… also un-hitable. Before all was said and done, Verlander threw 108 pitches on the day, any one of which was a thing of beauty.

#5 Lakers – Mavericks
The Dallas Mavericks stole Game 1 from the L.A. Lakers, staging a 17 point comeback and shaking the confidence of Kobe Bryant. After the game, Bryant was quoted as saying “This team can beat us.” Uh, Kobe, I think they just did. Now we’ll see if that defeat brings out the best in the Lakers or if they’re gong to follow Kobe’s lead and call it quits.

#4 Bulls – Hawks
Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose became the youngest player ever to win the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award. I always thought it an unfortunate oddity that the award was announced in the middle of the playoffs. This weekend, we’ll see whether it is Rose’s play or his ego that gets pumped up by the MVP award when he takes the court against the Atlanta Hawks.

#3 The Kentucky Derby
51 weeks a year I do my very best to ignore horse racing, which it turns out, is pretty easy to ignore. But once a year, this thing called the Kentucky Derby turns up and suddenly everyone, everywhere is a horse racing enthusiast. Maybe it’s the funny hats, maybe it’s the mint juleps. I don’t know. But this year I’m just going with it.

#2 Capitals – Lightning
The Washington Capitals had the best record in the Eastern Conference. They breezed through the Conference Quarterfinals by beating the New York Rangers 4 games to 1. Then along came the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team that barely survived the first round of the playoffs on the back of a tremendous three game streak after falling behind 3 games to 1 against Buffalo. Now the Lightning has marched into the Capitals house and taken the first two games of the series. It’s back against the wall time for the Caps, and they’ll need to snatch an away game in Tampa this week if they’ll even have the chance to play on into the weekend.

#1 Celtics – Heat
As of this writing, only one game of the best of seven series between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics is in the books. But somehow it already feels like it has the makings of a classic. Never in the history of the NBA has there been a more successful franchise than the Celtics. Never in the history of the NBA has there been higher expectations for a team than the 2010-2011 Miami Heat. The fanfare at the start of the season surrounding the arrival of the Heat’s triumvirate was off the charts in a sport that is all about the fanfare. As I so presciently wrote at the time, anything less than a championship for the Heat will be a failure. Game 3 on Saturday, the first of the series to be played in Boston, should be telling.

(Editor’s note: As of publication, the Heat lead the series 2-0.)

Trainer Nick Zito and owner Robert LaPenta although disappointed are not out of the Derby altogether, as they also have Cool Coal Man, winner of the Fountain of Youth at Gulfstream Park last year.