Katie Baker looks at a budding NHL rivalry, Sam Donsky ranks performances in Garry Marshall's holiday universe, and Justin Charity examines Drake's 'Views.' View in your browser Share | Subscribe The May 4 newsletter has three debuts: Katie Baker weighs in on Capitals-Penguins, Sam Donsky ranks every performance in Garry Marshall’s holiday oeuvre, and Justin Charity explains why Drake's giant new album feels so slight. Getty Images A Thaw in the Cold War: The Once and Future Capitals-Penguins Rivalry By Katie Baker As the Zambonis prepped the ice for Game 2 of the Penguins-Capitals second-round playoff series on Saturday night in Washington, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was being detained in a concrete bunker somewhere in Toronto — in true hostage fashion, he even held up the day’s newspaper as proof of life — to determine, with the help of some ping-pong balls, which team would pick when in next month’s NHL draft. By the end of the evening, the Penguins had tied the series at a game apiece, the Toronto Maple Leafs had won the top spot in the draft (I can no longer deride them as the Knicks of the NHL, because the Knicks would have traded that pick long ago), and a stat sure to simmer down giddy Leafs fans was making the rounds on Twitter: That two of those players, Marc-Andre Fleury and Sidney Crosby, were Pittsburgh Penguins lent a sort of circle-of-life-lightning-crashes element to the night. Fleury was 24 when Pittsburgh won the Cup in 2009, and Crosby was still 21. It was the Pens’ second straight appearance in the final. Given the circumstances that year, it was difficult not to fantasize about a dynasty, to wonder how many rings they could feasibly win over the next decade or so. But the championship series wasn’t the only noteworthy event that season. Pittsburgh’s road to the 2009 Cup included a second-round, seven-game series against the Washington Capitals that felt, at the time, like the beginning of something more — an X-Men origin story of a matchup. Three of the games were decided in overtime. Another boasted an anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better pair of hat tricks from Crosby and his Russian machine foil, Alex Ovechkin, whom the Caps had drafted first overall in 2004, just before the NHL lost a season to a labor dispute. (The Penguins took Fleury in 2003 and won a post-lockout leaguewide lottery for the right to snag Crosby in 2005.) The series seemed to be a glimpse into a glorious future, the start of a beautiful hateship, a preview of what would surely be many Eastern Conference final deathmatches to come. It became, for a time, the NHL’s predominant marketing strategy: Ovi and Sid, the new Cold War. But hockey has a way of making other plans — of reminding us that the professional lives of even the most tough and gruff athletes can be outrageously, and often unfairly, delicate. In the seven years since the Caps last played the Pens in the playoffs, the two franchises have collectively employed seven head coaches. Only once has either team advanced past the second round, when the Bruins swept the Penguins in the 2013 Eastern Conference final. Ovechkin has been called a coach killer (and has called a coach this), and Crosby has been concussed, and the most celebrated NHL playoff rivalry of the decade turned out to be the one between the Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings. On Monday night, in Game 3, the Capitals were a force to be reckoned with: They more than doubled Pittsburgh’s shot count, 49-23, they mounted a furious late-game charge featuring some of Ovechkin’s most monstrous shots, and they still lost the game, 3-2, to fall behind 2-1 in the series. Things are already growing ugly entering Wednesday’s Game 4, with both teams seeing players suspended for illegal hits. This matchup is about more than just Crosby and Ovechkin; you know teams are deep when guys like Evgeny Kuznetsov and Phil Kessel are the sidekicks. With any luck, this will go seven and be another perfectly dysfunctional relationship of a series: volatile, even hostile, yet long-lasting and punctuated by joy. If it is, let’s not take it for granted. Leave the daydreaming to the draft. Ringer illustration Judgment Day: The Search for the Greatest Performance in a Garry Marshall Holiday Movie By Sam Donsky The legendary screenwriter William Goldman has said that if you want to judge an actor’s greatness, you first have to watch them perform in the Garry Marshall Holiday Universe. It’s easy to see why. The GMHU — consisting of the classic films Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve, and, as of last Friday, Mother’s Day — is an actor’s playground, a canvas on which real artists are allowed to create real art within the stakes of generally recognized secular holidays. On the occasion of Mother’s Day, we figured it was the perfect time to reassess that age-old question: Who holds the title of “best performance in a Garry Marshall holiday film” — and, by extension, can be considered the greatest actor in the world? We took some notes, made some tough decisions, and settled on a definitive list: (30) Anne Hathaway, Valentine’s Day. Says “make love.” (29) Ashton Kutcher, New Year’s Eve. Admits going to Tufts. (28) Jason Sudeikis, Mother’s Day. Raps. (27) Taylor Swift, Valentine’s Day. Cheerleader-shames. (26) Topher Grace, Valentine’s Day. Misidentifies techno. (25) Jennifer Garner, Mother’s Day. Raises the roof. (24) Ludacris, New Year’s Eve. Is a cop. (23) Julia Roberts, Valentine’s Day. Quotes Pretty Woman. (22) Shay Mitchell, Mother’s Day. Attempts to drive a wedge between young people using Foo Fighters tickets. (21) Michelle Pfeiffer, New Year’s Eve. Pays Zac Efron to hang out. (20) Timothy Olyphant, Mother’s Day. Pronounces “Paris” with a long a but a dropped s. (19) Jessica Alba, Valentine’s Day. Humiliates Ashton Kutcher in public. (18) Bradley Cooper, Valentine’s Day. Predicts vestwave. (17) Jon Bon Jovi, New Year’s Eve. Wins a duet against Lea Michele. (16) Seth Meyers, New Year’s Eve. Brags about his vet-school discount. (15) Jamie Foxx, Valentine’s Day. Gets a text and then says, “Got a text.” (14) Jessica Biel, Valentine’s Day. Tells a masturbation joke while sobbing. (13) Katherine Heigl, New Year’s Eve. Threatens Bon Jovi with a knife. (12) Sarah Jessica Parker, New Year’s Eve. Defends clogs. (11) Carla Gugino, New Year’s Eve. Touches a DVD. (10) Margo Martindale, Mother’s Day. Opens a beer with one hand. (9) George Lopez, Valentine’s Day. Does the Heisman pose during an insurance dispute. (8) Ashton Kutcher, Valentine’s Day. Gets engaged and then says, “Call me Mr. Engaged.” (7) Halle Berry, New Year’s Eve. Skypes with Common. (6) Jon Lovitz, Mother’s Day. Holds a dog like a baby. (5) Julia Roberts, Mother’s Day. Holds a baby like a dog. (4) Queen Latifah, Valentine’s Day. Confronts Anne Hathaway. (3) Shirley MacLaine, Valentine’s Day. Makes out in a cemetery. (2) Zac Efron, New Year’s Eve. Talks to Sarah Jessica Parker on the phone while peeing. (1) Jennifer Aniston, Mother’s Day. Mocks Twitter. Getty Images Drake, King of the Jukebox By Justin Charity The Wurlitzer 1015 Bubbler, an iconic jukebox popular in the 1940s, weighs 360 pounds and holds 24 records. At that capacity, a 1015 could barely contain Drake’s hits, including remixes and cameos, of just the past 14 months. Views, Drake’s newest album, arrives just seven months after What a Time to Be Alive, the rapper’s duets tape with Future, which arrived just seven months after Drake’s last solo project, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. That’s about 50 songs, more than half of which have charted on the Billboard Hot 100. Not to be confined by terrestrial radio or standard Spotify revenue splits, he has also planted a flag with OVO Sound Radio, his flagship Apple Music program (launched in July 2015). It all adds up to a musical ecosystem that allows Drake to flood the market with his product and likeness, at an extreme pace and on unique terms. Given such productivity, it’s little surprise that Views, once billed as a major adventure for Drake, now washes to shore as bark from a larger vessel that’s already passed. At 81 minutes, Views struggles to justify the great space it takes up in the shadows of songs like “0 to 100/The Catch Up,” “Jumpman,” and “Hotline Bling” — themselves singles so big that they’ve eclipsed the original promise of Views. There are hits here, a handful of Rihanna-indebted tracks that blend dancehall and Afrobeat cadences. (Call it the Target electronics department riddim.) Measured against those bold dance numbers, however, the rest of Views makes for an incongruous and slovenly default. A whole grip of midalbum tracks are a jumble of caddish aphorisms so generic that I bet no one would notice if Drake were to hop back in, Kanye-style, to rearrange his bars and swap whole verses across those songs. Any great disappointment with Views — and I do detect it — stems from the assumption that albums are Drake’s forte, his definitive craft, his ideal format. They’re not. They’re just massive dramatic cues for Drake, a stunt queen with killer instincts, to make the most of Universal’s marketing budget. Since about 2013, the year that L.A. rapper Kendrick Lamar challenged Drake (and others) by name, detractors have rallied around the charge that Drake has no truly essential (“classic”) hip-hop album to his credit — that Drake is Nelly 6.0. Never mind that the real feat here, the real innovation, is Drake’s having kept himself in unbreakable Top 40 rotation for just about every season of the past seven years now — an unprecedented dominance. His jukebox overfloweth. And remember: Drake won his spectacular feud with Meek Mill not just on the strength of his raps and the speed of his releases, but also by his bravado at the bully pulpit. Drake will bury Views in its own hit singles. After all, there’s rapping, and then there’s entertainment. There are good songs, and there are stellar performances. There’s art, and there’s karaoke. 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