Attempting to gauge a team’s relative strength within a hermetically sealed season is a fool’s errand, which is perhaps why the bosses sent the assignment my way. No time like the present, even with the playoffs commencing four days before the regular season concludes. Pandemic Playoffs II.
So this is kind of going to be like four Original Six-era playoffs, self-contained through two rounds after playing an exclusively division-only regular season schedule, pretty much the way it was done from 1942-43 through 1966-67.
Close your eyes and you could almost imagine Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews playing the roles of Gordie Howe and Rocket Richard (not stylistically, of course), though Sidney Crosby might like to have a word with those folks who might have overlooked Jean Beliveau back in the day.
There are, of course, no conferences this season, so the four divisional winners who emerge from the first two rounds will be re-seeded by points in the semifinals. That should become standard. Re-seeds after the first round should return to being the norm.
Re-seeds for the final four (lower case, no trademark infringement here) should be adopted permanently to produce a Cup final featuring the last and best two teams standing. If players refuse to touch their conference championship trophies out of some sense of superstition, then why on Earth even award them?
But enough dallying. Onto this season, where first-place teams that established divisional superiority through 56 games will have to do it again in best-of-seven’s. By the way, through the quarter-century of Original Six playoffs when the opening round illogically matched the first- and third-seeds and the second- and fourth-place clubs, the top two teams advanced to the final 16 times.
The wheat
Vegas had Marc-Andre Fleury. They added Robin Lehner. They had Gerard Gallant behind the bench. They fired him to add Pete DeBoer. They had a collection of forwards who could play both ways. They traded for Mark Stone. They had a strong defensive corps. They signed Alex Pietrangelo. It is always onto the next for the Golden Knights, and there is only one next for the franchise, to beat the Flyers’ record of fastest expansion club to the Cup, Philly having won it seven years into their existence.
Colorado took the Presidents’ Trophy via the regulation win tie-breaker over Vegas even with one less overall victory, the award less meaningful than the reward of avoiding the Wild in the first round and instead drawing the Blues. The Avalanche have an abundance of firepower without sacrificing anything on the defensive end. They will be reliant on Philipp Grubauer, who has a cool 13-7 career playoff mark in nets.
Carolina has arrived, four years after breaking a nine-year playoff drought, two years after last winning a playoff round. Is this the outcome Rangers fans would consider a successful rebuild? Do you believe in Petr Mrazek, and do you care that the Candy Canes were hammered twice by their first-round foe Nashville in the final two games of the season?
Toronto hasn’t won a playoff round since 2004—how’s that for a rebuild, Rangerstown?—and there would be no excuse for the Maple Leafs to fail to advance past Montreal in their first postseason showdown since 1979. The team has plenty of firepower, but is the Freddie Andersen-Jack Campbell goaltending duo capable of producing even eight victories, let alone 16?
If the Rangers had the worst experience under the bubble last August, Pittsburgh was right behind, the Penguins being ousted by Carey Price and the inferior Canadiens in the qualies. But Crosby is on another one of his rides for a team that is nearing full health – and is much greater than the sum of its parts.
So if Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov and Victor Hedman are at full strength, that changes everything for Tampa Bay, doesn’t it? Even as we wait to find out whether Lightning-Panthers will have the first-round juice of historical geographical rivals like the Rangers and Islanders and the Habs and Nordiques.
For most of the second half, Boston was just a step or two ahead of the Rangers, and now here are the Bruins suddenly seeming as formidable as ever with Taylor Hall’s deadline acquisition maybe a transformative move?
The chaff
Semyon Varlamov is an elite goaltender and Barry Trotz should never be underestimated, but the Islanders grinded down toward the end of this season just as they did last year before the pause granted the team a reprieve. The absence of Anders Lee can’t be papered over. And there is this: in a 15-game stretch from Apr. 3 through May 6 while going 6-7-2, the Islanders won a total of three games in regulation. They were all against the Rangers.
NBC is on its way out the door of NHL business so how delicious would it be for the network to showcase Edmonton and Mike Trout, make that McDavid, for as long as the entertainment lasts?
Florida is on the cusp, Joel Quenneville – much like Trotz on the Island – is a transformative coach, why would Aleksander Barkov want to leave in another year, and the Puddy Tats do indeed have more than a puncher’s chance in the opening round against the Lightning.
Minnesota, long a club stuck in the middle lacking personality, has taken a step forward with the addition of the dynamic Kirill Kaprizov and the culture change wrought by GM Billy Guerin, but now is not the time. Washington is a complete team, but the matchup against the Bruins is not optimal, and is it even remotely possible that pending unrestricted free agent Alex Ovechkin is playing his final games as a Cap?
Nashville did its thing, extending GM David Poile’s streak of making the playoffs to what’s the difference how many years, instead of owning up to a reload that surely will be coming. St. Louis seems to be a muscle memory team, if the Rangers care to wait. Head coach Paul Maurice of Winnipeg could well be available if the team goes out early. And is Carey Price feared enough by the Maple Leafs to enable Montreal to pull off what would be a seismic first-round upset?