NHL Playoffs — Where things stand, recaps, storylines

It wasn’t the prettiest of series, but the President’s Trophy-winning Rangers finished off their sweep of the Washington Capitals last night with a 4-2 win. The Rangers trailed for about three minutes all series, and they were driven by great play from their top two centers. Mika Zibanejad led the charge with 7 points (1G 6A), four of which came on the Rangers red hot power play, while Vincent Trochek put up 6 points of his own (3G 3A) in the four games played. The story of the series was the Rangers’ ability to not only capitalize on their power play opportunities (6 goals), but also jump on chances shorthanded, going 15-17 on the PK with two shorthanded goals. Shesterkin didn’t face a very high volume of shots, but he was his usual self in the series with a 1.75 goals against average and a .931 save percentage.

Despite their dominance, it’s pretty tough to take a lot away from this series though, given the fact that the Capitals absolutely limped into the playoffs with only 40 wins and an unheard of -37 goal differential. The Capitals were sellers at the deadline this year, and while it’s amazing that they managed to make the playoffs in the first place, I don’t think anyone ever considered them to be a real contender. Looking forward, the Rangers will have their work cut out for them with a likely matchup against a Hurricanes team that has looked really solid and has a commanding 3-1 lead over the Islanders.

I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but I think a Canes Rangers matchup in the second round would be absolutely electric. The Rangers beat the Canes in 7 games the last time these two teams met in the playoffs (2022). Both of these teams have been knocking at the door for a while now, and I think they’re both turning the corner and look like serious contenders. The Canes were big time buyers at the deadline, adding Jake Guentzel and Evgeny Kuznetsov, both of whom have been huge contributors since March. The Rangers on the other hand did practically nothing, which obviously is looking to be the right call given their dominant run to end the season and their first round sweep. Looking back on our trade deadline analysis, we graded the Hurricanes as winners and the Rangers as losers, so if these two teams do meet up next round, it’ll be interesting to see whether those grades end up making us look dumb. 

One thing that I’ve found interesting about the Canes is their commitment to playing a man-to-man style of defense in their own zone. It’s a pretty rare strategy, but one that’s worked well for Carolina largely due to them having a core of players who are skilled defensively, committed to playing strong team defense, and are well-conditioned. While they’ve done a great job of shutting down the Islanders, the Rangers are leaps and bounds better than the Isles offensively, and it’ll be fun to watch how the man-to-man style works against studs like Zibandejad and Artemi Panarin. Again, this is all assuming the Canes are able to close out their series against the Islanders, but this is the matchup I think we should all be rooting for in terms of entertainment value.

On the other side of the Eastern bracket, the Panthers look to close out the Tampa Bay Lightning at home tonight, as they lead the series 3-1. This series has seemed way closer than that, and the games themselves have been absolutely awesome to watch especially because of the two studs battling it out in goal. The Russians Andrei Vasilevsky and Sergei Bobrovsky have both been incredible, and the goaltending duel in Game 2 made it one of the best games I’ve watched in recent memory. Another Russian, Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov, who put up a ridiculous 100 assists and 144 points in the regular season, has yet to score a goal this series but has been facilitating with six assists through the four games played. Three of those assists came in their last game, a 6-3 win by Tampa to stave off elimination, so if the Panthers are able to shut him down, and get their PK back to what it was for the first three games (10-12), they should be able to shut this one down on home ice.

If the Panthers do win, they’d advance to play the winner of Boston and Toronto in the next round. The Bruins are up 3-1 themselves, and since winning Game Two the Leafs have been their usual playoff selves – in absolute shambles. Mitch Marner, who signed a 6-year, $65.4 Million contract in 2019 ($10.9 AAV !!!) has been called out relentlessly for his soft, disinterested play, and the Leafs troubles boiled over in their last game when William Nylander was caught on camera telling Marner to “stop crying”. I for one relish in the annual downfall of the Leafs and their fans, and while I’m not a Bruins fan by any means (cute little team though, they had that great run a few years back where they forced a game 7 in the stanley cup finals – a huge accomplishment!) I think a Bruins Panthers rematch would be just as electric as a Rangers Canes series. While they haven’t all been the most exciting series, I’m pumped about how the East bracket is shaping up and I think we’re in for a great next couple of rounds. 

On the West side of the bracket, I find it very hard to root for any team, but I’ll still do my job and break these matchups down like the professional that I am. The Avalanche, owned by the worst owner in pro sports, have completely overwhelmed the Jets with their starpower, and I think that Cale Makar might just be the second best player in the NHL, even better than MacKinnon. The Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck, is going to easily walk away with the Vezina trophy this year, but he’s been swiss cheese in the playoffs with a 5.22 goals against and an .870 save percentage. The Avalanche have scored five or more goals in every game for a grand total of 22 in four games, and the Jets only win came in game one when they needed 7 goals to top the Avs 6. The Avalanche seem to be absolutely rolling right now, and unless Hellebuyck can dig deep and steal a game or two (which he’s very capable of), the Jets appear to be dead in the water as they prepare for a do or die game 5 at home on Tuesday.

The winner of that series will go on to face either the Dallas Stars or the Vegas Golden Knights – the Knights currently have a 2-1 lead. You almost have to feel bad for the Stars, who put up the best regular season in the West but got absolutely screwed by the seeding and by Vegas’ classic Long Term Injured Reserve loophole trick, which they’ve used pretty much every year since they joined the league. For the third straight year, Captain Mark Stone went on the Long term IR in February just before the trade deadline, clearing his contract off the salary cap and allowing the team to add players at the deadline. Also for the third straight year, Stone was activated from the LTIR in early April and this year he was surprisingly cleared to play for Game 1 of the playoffs, when the salary cap is no longer relevant. The NHL has to fix this loophole, and I have to imagine (or at least hope) that this is the last year the Knights are able to get away with skirting the cap. 

On the other side, the Vancouver Canucks just had the best comeback of the playoffs so far with Brock Boeser scoring his second and third goals of the game at the under-three minute mark, including a goal with 8 seconds left to tie the game up at 3-3. Vancouver went on to score just a minute into overtime, and they have a commanding 3-1 lead over the Predatorswith the series coming back home on Tuesday.

If the Canucks can close it out, they’d move on to face the winner of Edmonton and LA, which is a series I admittedly have not been able to watch much of due to the geniuses in the NHL’s scheduling department deciding to put every game at 10:00pm ET or later. I’m not one to have any sort of east coast bias whatsoever, and I actually think I probably have a bias against both coasts, but the NHL is so bad at marketing Connor McDavid that it’s actually laughable at this point. The generational talent has been given the graveyard time slot for every game so far, and while I’ll take some blame for not sucking it up and staying up past my bedtime to watch a game in this series, it would be nice if they gave them a 7:00 time slot for once, especially when the alternative was watching the Rangers Capitals snooze fests. 

With all that being said, the Oilers have a strong 3-1 lead over the Kings in this one, and while much of the flak against the Oilers has been their lack of goaltending and defense, they won off a Stuart Skinner 1-0 shutout last night, with their only goal coming from their stud defenseman Evan Bouchard. 

Ultimately, while it might not look like we’re going to have many first round series go to seven games, a lot of these are far from over. Either way, the stage is going to be set for some awesome matchups in the second round on both sides of the bracket – particularly the potential Colorado/Vegas matchup in the West, and I think both potential matchups in the east will be must watches. All in all, we’ve got a whole lotta good hockey to watch in our future, so stay tuned for more updates.