Everything Else

Night Songs – Stanley Cup Final Game 4

By Sam Fels 2047 0

And now we’re on the brink, though everyone already writing the tributes to the Capitals might want to check their history when leading a series 3-1. Even this grouping, for the most part, was around when they blew one of these to the Rangers three years ago in one off those Caps-Rags series we’ve all tried to burn from our collective memories. So yeah, if you love history and gremlins and such, you know this one isn’t over.

As the Caps were laying the wood to the Knights last night, there were far too many top-of-the-profession writers remarking on how the “magic” had run out for the Knights. They’re either willfully trying to push an angle that doesn’t exist, or they’re collectively stupid. Or both, I suppose.

If you watched the last round for the Knights Who Say Nee, even though it ended in five games it was hardly a dominating effort. The Jets ran the show for long stretch of that series, and yet kept running up against a very toothy wall in Marc-Andre Fleury. .950. There’s nothing else to say. There’s no planning or method to defeat a goalie who is throwing a .950 at you. If you can’t really conceive of that, just know with a goalie playing that well it takes 40 shots to find two goals, and even if your goalie is paying really well the other team can probably find two bounces off something for two of their own. At the very worst, Vegas was always gaining a shot at a coin-flip. This is the sport, really.

.845

That’s Fleury’s SV% in this series. And sure, it’s not like the Capitals are just a bunch of escaped wildebeests that got loose or something. Kuznetsov, Ovechkin, Backstrom, Oshie, Carlson, with help from Eller and his ilk, there’s a lot of talent here even if they lost some from previous seasons. But .845 is .845, and you’re going to lose when that happens. The Knights are losing, plain and simple.

Mostly, if you go by the underlying info, the Knights and Caps have been pretty much even, with the Knights just shading it. Some of that is they’ve been chasing the game more than any other series, but the fact that they’re chasing the game is down to Fleury suddenly turning into Tigger as much as anything else. This is still a team that’s basically one line, whatever inflated narrative Eddie and Pierre want to make about Reaves and Nosek on the 4th line, and it’s not really built to come from behind.

Sure, the Caps are fast enough to try and attack the defense of the Knights, which is not gifted with the puck other than Schmidt (and Engelland is AWFUL and the Caps have finally showed that). But the Jets did too, they just didn’t have an answer for the final boss in the crease. He’s basically provided the Caps a cheat code.

-While it’s been easy to discuss how the Knights are made up of players nobody else wanted (which isn’t totally true, I’m sure the Pens would have loved to keep Fleury as a backup, except you don’t pay backups $6 million and Fleury wouldn’t want to be that anyway. James Neal, Schmidt, Theodore, one or two others are players that those teams would have loved to keep but thanks to the expansion and cap rules, they simply couldn’t), the Caps have their fair share of weird pickups.

Oshie was acquired for Troy Brouwer (a deal I actually liked for the Blues at the time, and now Troy Brouwer has turned into a Jalopy). Michal Kempny…well, let’s not do this again. Lars Eller was discarded by two teams who didn’t appreciate him for Jaro Halak and and two 2nd round picks. As strange as it sounds for a 1st round pick, Kuznetsov actually slipped farther than he should have because teams knew he wouldn’t come over from the KHL for a few seasons. Matt Niskanen was allowed to walk from Pittsburgh.

It’s not just the Knights who can profit off the idiocy of others.

-What the Knights also can do like every other team is act like a bunch of asshats when they’re getting their dicks handed to them on the scoreboard. There’s Ryan Reaves doing Reaves things because his team is fucked for the night, which proves exactly nothing.

While Gerard Gallant is going to walk with the Coach Of The Year award, and he should, keep in mind he couldn’t keep his team wrangled in last night when the contest was over and they ended up losing without any class (and don’t fool yourself, there is not such thing as “message sending.” It’s just childish, bad losing). He’s also the coach who in two straight games when his team needed a goal and his net empty put Reaves out as his extra skater because he somehow doofus’d his way into two goals in two games (one a penalty). Even the best at the moment are prone to moments of completely, blithering stupidity.

Everything Else

Night Songs – Stanley Cup Final Game 2: I’m Incendiary Too, Man

By Sam Fels 2056 0

For most of the past few years, one of the main discussions in the game and outside of it is how to improve scoring. And we here have tried to point out that scoring isn’t the problem, action might be. There have been half-hearted attempts to try and open the game, but mostly it’s to increase power plays which will increase goals, and the hope is that the even-strength game will then open up out of fear of the power plays. It’s never quite worked, though scoring was up a tick this year.

Game 1 of this Final was used as proof that lots of goals means lots of excitement and that this is what the game should be aiming for. As I said after Game 1, I’ll go for this fractured, frantic contest every day ahead of a 2-1 truck-pulling-a-stump-fest. That doesn’t mean I need every game to be 6-4. In fact, I would prefer 6-4 to still be the rarity, so that we can enjoy them every time instead of just getting accustomed to it and it becoming lacrosse.

Last night was proof that you can still have the speed and the raucous pace that doesn’t lend itself to intricate passing or build and all the excitement that comes with it and have the goalies be a part of it, too. Big saves, like Holtby’s with less than two minutes to go but Fleury has a few himself, are just as exciting as goals sometimes. It’s a big moment. It’s a game-changing moment. Games pivot on these just as much as they can goals. Hockey doesn’t need goals, goals, goals. When it’s open like these two games have been, it gets goals but it also gets these goalies doing amazing things, too.

In essence, hockey has something of a similar problem that baseball has at the moment. They have these great athletes at the goalie position, but they don’t get to do enough to show it thanks to defensive systems that are meant to stop pucks from ever getting to them to stop. To choke off space so that shots aren’t even attempted. Goalies now are just reacting to angles and cutting off the lower part of the net. A lot of their saves are on shots they never really saw. Much like in baseball, you have athletes all over the field but you don’t get to see them make plays much because everyone is striking out or hitting homers.

We really can see what these goalies can do when they have to stare down open shooters or have to deal with passes across the slot and such. And that’s fun too! When Carlson gets to let loose freely from the top of the circle and Fleury is coming out to meet him, that’s as close to an Old-West gun-fight as you’re going to get in sports. It’s unique to hockey, because we don’t know the result. Sure, LeBron can roll to the hoop and be met by a defender, but whichever way that goes it’s one basket. If you’re one-on-one with a goalie in soccer, you’d better fucking score.

Hockey needs to find a way to get more of those moments per game. What are you going to remember more, any of the goals from Game 1 or Holtby’s save from Game 2?

-As for the game itself, the Caps seemed to weather the storm and then got the better of the middle 30 minutes or so by letting Carlson, Orlov, and Niskanen just skate past the forecheckers of the Knights. It’s a risk if you can’t get away from them, but trying to complete any pass under that sort of pressure is a bigger one. When any of them beat the first guy and caught the second forechecker going the wrong way, suddenly they had a plethora of space and odd-man rushes with possession. The Caps made plenty off that, then pushing the three back for Vegas, or just the defense, back off their line and then making plays just inside the Vegas line. Orpik’s goal came from that, because once they beat the forecheck and just kept going the backtracking forwards weren’t there.

Fleury didn’t cover himself in glory, as he was by the slots at the Mirage for Eller’s goal, way overplaying Kempny who had a man half on him. The other two goals he’s not going to do much about, but this is what happens with Fleury. When he’s really feeling himself he gets way aggressive, because he’s still one of the more athletic goalies around. But it’s a very fine line, and once he goes over the edge on it he can look very flappy/swimmy/sprawly. If he doesn’t get on the other side of that line, the Knights are going to be up against it.

Everything Else

Watching The Party – Stanley Cup Final Preview

By Sam Fels 2034 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: Game 1 Tonight, Game 2 Wednesday, Game 3 Saturday, Game 4 Monday

When it’s been 90 degrees for a few days you’re probably not thinking about hockey. You’re even less likely to be thinking about hockey between these two teams. This was not the Final predicted, and in the NHL’s supreme marketing strategy it’s going to put it’s showpiece curtain-raiser up the night after LeBron had THAT Game 7 and Game 7 between the two best teams in that league tonight. Good thinking. Anyway, this series has a chance to be good, and it also has a chance to be bad, because predicting anything with these two the past two rounds has been folly. Let’s get through it and then get about our holiday.

Goalies: He’ll be the least talked about goalie in this series, but Braden Holtby certainly has nothing to apologize for. He’s carrying a .928 throughout the playoffs since he came in on his white horse against the Jackets. While the Caps certainly played it back at times against Pittsburgh especially and the Lightning at times, he didn’t give the Bolts much at even-strength at all. Other than last year’s minor slip against the Penguins, Holtby has been a playoff stud for pretty much his whole career. Sure, it’s his first trip here, but it was his first trip to the thrid round and that didn’t seem to phase him much.

Then again, it might not matter. Nothing the Caps do might matter if Marc-Andre Fleury is going to continue to look like something from North Of The Wall in net. The numbers at this point are stupid, and while a five-game win looks like a pounding, in point of fact the only reason the Knights got out of that series was Fleury and the top line. Fleury isn’t being shielded in any form like Holtby has, and it hasn’t mattered. Ok, sure, Fleury will be seeing an inspired Ovechkin, but he just turned away the Jets who have at least three lines of scoring. If Fleury keeps this up, you really don’t have to dig much farther than that. If Holtby continues his form, you might see a lot of 2-1s in this series.

Defense: On paper, this is a pretty big advantage for the Caps. And they’ve seen what the Knights are modeled after in the Penguins and found a method for keeping them bottled, which was keep them in the neutral zone. The top four has more mobility than any of the teams Vegas has seen so far, and more discipline to go with it. Sure, Brooks Orpik is going to need an oxygen tank on the bench, but he’s been well-spotted and it hasn’t cost the Caps much and it’s unlikely to now. Carlson and Orlov are a threat to help get play the other way when the Knights get stretched as well. The stage might jar them, the script won’t.

I’ve written it four times but they got here with this blue line so I guess I have to stop. Still, I’d only want Nate Schmidt on my team but again, the Caps don’t have the firepower the Jets do and they just beat them. That said, the Jets carried a lot of that series and even though the Knights do their best to take their defensemen out of the equation by just asking them to get the puck out, the Caps won’t be as caught off-guard by it. The Caps do have enough speed to expose McNabb and Engelland and whatever other goofus is back there. But then so did Winnipeg. It doesn’t have to make sense because it’s hockey. That’s what “Hockey Is For Everyone” actually means, that every player will get his day because the sport is basically random.

Forwards: I’m sure if Ovechkin doesn’t get a goal in every game the stories will be about how he froze in his first Final, but he and his line have been excellent. Fleury kept Scheifele and Wheeler on a leash in the last round, but one thinks if Ovie sees some of the same chances He might score a couple more. Backstrom and Oshie on the second line and Eller on the third actually give the Caps slightly more depth, based on what’s been going on lately. But with the way Fleury is going, if Kuznetsov and Ovie don’t score and probably score a fair amount, they’re going to be up against it. And sadly, if this series is going to get national attention away from the Warriors third title in four years, it’ll probably be because Tom Wilson did something assholic.

While the going story about the Knights is how they’re “All For One” and all that, really they’ve been the top line and grunts for two rounds now. Marchessault, Reilly, and Karlsson have kicked everyone’s skull to dust to the tune of a near 60% attempts-share, and everyone else has kind of been backing up. Sure, Tuch, Haula, and Neal have chipped in goals here and there, but the process has been in efficient. Sure, the fourth line has been good as well, but the Caps have one as well and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Ryan Reaves is going to be a difference maker in this series without renouncing everything I am as a human being. If the Knights’ main trio doesn’t remain dominant, Fleury might not even save them. The Caps top pairing has more mobility and smarts than they’ve seen in the playoffs, as Trouba and Byfuglein (in his own end) were both awful in the last round. Chances are Niskanen and Orlov won’t be, and Carlson and Kempny aren’t likely to be either.

Prediction: You’d feel pretty stupid going against Fleury now. Continuing his .947 means they win, plain and simple. Holtby has been really good too, and the Caps have kept pulling rabbits out of their hats. The Lightning were a better team than the Knights. The Penguins certainly had more pedigree. Feels like this one goes the route but again….947. Knights in 7. 

Everything Else

What We Talk About When We Talk About Vegas

By Sam Fels 2647 0

I know. I’m the piss on everyone’s chips. This might start out like that, but I promise not all of this article is going to be that. Swear to God. Not even sure I totally believe it, but it’s the truth. Anyway, with Vegas winning the Western Conference yesterday, all the debate and arguments over what it means about the state of the league, the state of mind of some fans, and a bunch of other stuff that happens when something this unique takes place has basically exploded. Let’s sift through it.

There certainly are a lot of annoying aspects to the Knights, and I feel like I covered most of them here. But that post probably needs updating, and it also skipped a very large, perhaps most-annoying aspect that’s come along with them. This idea that the Knights’ run has somehow “healed” Vegas after the atrocity right before the season. That’s patently ridiculous, cheap, and manipulative, and a few other adjectives as well. This is always a safe-haven  sportswriters run for in times like this, either for easy heart-string pulling or they simply don’t have the capacity to deal with real-life disasters/horror in any real way.

I certainly don’t want to discount that those connected to those killed that night might have found some distraction in the Knights. If they could provide those people with any amount of time of levity, happiness, joy, then that is indeed a wonderful thing. But it’s not “healing.” Those deaths were senseless, and merely serve as a testament to our country’s demented priorities and broken political system.

You know what might “heal?” Meaningful gun control and mental health care expansion in the name of those who passed to assure something like that never happens again. That would mean those deaths weren’t empty or meaningless. A hockey team winning a few playoff rounds do not. And yet you constantly see this listed right next to Fleury’s .947 SV% as a reason the Knights are going to the Final. That’s abhorrent and wrong. It’s also too convenient. So does that mean the Panthers are moral failures because they didn’t make the playoffs after Parkland?  Or various other teams in various other locations of our sickeningly frequent other shootings and mass murder?

It’s a story, but it’s separate to the Knights success and should be treated as such. Yes, I have frequently written about the sports mattering and the connection to those we’ve lost. I wrote a whole book about it, in fact. But after the celebrations and the memories, those people are still gone, and the grieving and processing and healing–if such a thing is even possible–takes place within and away from arenas and stadiums. Secondly, while I wrote about the Cubs World Series win and what it meant to me because of my family, the Cubs were something we actively shared together for my entire life. The Knights didn’t exist before this, so there isn’t that connection for anyone there. Again, if any of those who survived or those connected to those who didn’t could find momentary distraction from the Knights, that’s great. But it’s not the overarching cure-all that every sportswriter is desperate to be, and all those who are desperate for it to be so we won’t talk about some real changes.

That doesn’t mean sports can’t affect things in the rest of the world. Didier Drogba stopped a civil war, for christ’s sake! Colin Kaepernick was able to keep a critically important issue in the public eye without even playing, while also exposing just how deep and cancerous racism is in our country. You may say you knew all along, but I guarantee there are plenty who didn’t realize how deep the problem went and had their eyes opened. They just don’t yell as loud as though who wanted Kap to just go away. It can be done, but it’s extraordinary circumstances like that.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the hockey aspect.

Admittedly, this is one of perspective. If the Hawks hadn’t won three Cups recently, I’d probably be livid right now. You get the frustration from some fanbases, but it’s misplaced. Just because your team has been moronically run for decades doesn’t mean everyone else’s has to be. Try and explain “mandatory suffering” to a Yankees fan. It doesn’t have to be that way. Sure, it seems unfair, but it’s not. Something is only “unfair” if you were promised a certain system or process. Sports is not that. You are not guaranteed a win, otherwise what would be the point? It just so happens hockey has a ton of teams that have been run by the stupid, drunk, bewildered or some combination thereof for far longer than any reasonable league should. And because of its lack of attention and/or its stone-resistance to any sort of change, it remains that way. Why are ex-players still getting GM jobs when every other sport has moved on to executive types for that job? Does anyone care Theo Epstein never played the game? The GM of the Warriors never played in the NBA, and that’s the best team of all-time (come at me).

That discussion also goes to age. A 25-year-old Patriots fan would know no suffering. A 40-year-old one would and could regale you with stories of sitting on a cold and uncomfortable bench in Foxboro watching Steve Grogan thrash about (I’ve been through this story). So that doesn’t hold up.

What I think it points at is just how stupid and backward this league is, at least to some people. And yet some of these decisions that landed players in Vegas aren’t as indefensible as it seems. Sure, Dale Tallon should be barred from ever working in the league again, and has basically proven that he got lucky with a few draft picks and was just conscious enough to not fuck up two top-three picks. We’ll circle back to this. Nate Schmidt was a third-pairing player in DC. And rightly so. William Karlsson had done nothing on two teams. The Ducks had three or four young defensemen ahead of Shea Theodore. The Penguins had a better, younger, cheaper goalie than Fleury. Alex Tuch wasn’t going to change the fortunes of the Wild anytime soon. James Neal’s departure sure didn’t hurt the Preds much.

And let’s face it, George McPhee isn’t a genius either. We know he’s not an idiot, he built that first wave of Ovie-era Caps teams. But he’s not redefining anything here. Everything just came up Milhouse.

The one thing to remember is above in this post. .947. That’s all you need to know. Without Fleury, the Jets might have swept this series. They certainly win both in Vegas. .947. He was .927 during the season. Again, that’s pretty much it, along with Karlsson’s 25% shooting-percentage. Look at the top-10 starters in SV% this year. All are on playoff teams.

What I think frustrates people is it is a testament to just how watered down the league is in terms of talent. All it takes to be a playoff team is a goalie playing well and two or three guys with a shooting spike. Which makes it seem random, which makes it seem pointless.

And yet…eight of the last nine Cups have been won by three teams. Now, of those eight Cups none of those teams that won had to play the same team twice in the Final. The Pens beat the Wings, Sharks, and Preds. The Hawks the Flyers, Bruins, and Lightning. The Kings the Devils and Rangers. So maybe it is random until it isn’t. I’m not sure what to make of it.

And yet we can’t have it both ways. The salary cap can’t handicap well-built teams while we also lament that no one knows how to build a team. Yet there doesn’t feel like any GM we can safely say knows what he’s doing completely. We’ve been over Tallon, and he constructed most of a team that won three in six. We could have the Stan Bowman argument all day. No one thinks Ken Holland is anywhere near a genius anymore when he can’t spend as much of Mr. I’s money as he wants. Jim Rutherford inherited a pretty great roster and stocked farm-system, and still gave up a 1st-round pick for Ryan Reaves. Lou Lamoriello had Roman Polak on the team. How deep do you want to go?

When it’s like this the answer is almost always in the middle. Yes, there are a lot of dumb GMs but they also have a near-impossible job thanks to the hard cap. And yet even that could be changing. There’s going to be a big bump this summer, bigger than previous seasons, and that could happen a couple more times before another lockout changes the landscape again.

What we can say is that goaltender is the definitive position in the four major sports right now, because of the flattening of talent-bases across the league. People claim quarterback, but he’s only on the field half to three-quarters of the time. Aaron Rodgers is the best I’ve ever seen (come at me), and he’s been to one Super Bowl because the Packers haven’t been able to figure out anything else around him and some bad/hilarious luck. It ain’t his fault. And goaltender will remain that until teams can amass and keep a level of talent overcome that. And even the Jets, who pretty much have, couldn’t do much with Fleury in this way. .947.

It doesn’t always work like this. Jonathan Quick dragged the Kings to a Final in ’12 but the next Kings team was really fast and really good. You can’t say a team has ridden a goalie only since until Fleury now. Murray was very good the past two years, but not other worldly. Crawford was really good in ’13 and when he straightened out in ’15, but he never carried a .940+. This happens every so often.

What we can hope for is that finally, hockey people will learn. Vegas is built on smaller, faster (and even they traded for Reaves). McPhee and Gallant saw the biggest obstacle to scoring was shot-blocking, and set their team to try and score before that could get set up. Gallant deserves praise for getting his team to skate as hard back as the do forward. But we’ve seen that before, too. Bruce Boudreau has made a career of doing that in the regular season, then acts shocked when teams match that effort in the playoffs. But Dubnyk, Andersen, or whichever goof in DC when he was there couldn’t bail him out the way Fleury has this year. This isn’t new.

Still, a league that eschews “harder to play against” for faster and better could be a better product. The Knights are fucking hard to play against and they don’t need Marchand or Wilson-esque bullshit to be so. They’re just always up your ass because they’re fast and work hard. And you can’t score on their goalie right now.

It’s an anomaly. It’s a strange one. It might never happen again. But there are lessons to be learned.

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Night Songs – Round 3 Night 7: Maybe There’s Just No Fighting It

By Sam Fels 1745 0

As I sat last night trying to figure out what I’d say about Game 3 between the Jets and Knights, it dawned on me that pretty much all of it doesn’t matter. I could sit here and talk about the ridiculous pace the Knights played that thing at last night. And I would say there’s no way that can be sustainable, but that’s kind of been their thing all season. Or I could talk about how the Jets slower d-men…which is basically all of them, kept insisting on taking more time with the puck than they were ever going to get. When the Knights are the opponents, you either gotta skate like your ass hair has been lit on fire or move the puck as soon as you get to it. It feels like the best way to play the Knights when they’re in this mood is maybe to not even pass in your own zone. Just get the puck and fire it around the boards and past their forwards and basically do what they do to you. You can also try and pick your way out, which is what the Hawks did in their prime, but that takes such a level of intricacy and precision I don’t know that any team is capable of it. Especially with the not-quite-that-fast blue line of the Jets. What I do know is that the Jets didn’t have time to contemplate Proust on every retrieval like they were attempting to take last night.

Or I thought I could write about how the Jets eventually did adjust, and slowly took over the 2nd and especially the 3rd. And maybe the Knights punched themselves out in the first half of the game, and maybe that will be a problem going forward.

And then I realized that almost none of it matters.

In a normal world, in a normal playoff game, the Jets probably score three goals in the 3rd period. Maybe six. Even when adjusted for score, the Jets had 13 scoring chances in the 3rd alone last night, which is a stupid number (according to Natural Stat Trick). But there’s Marc-Andre Fleury, and it just fails to be anything. Nothing matters, because he’s playing at Tim Thomas ’11 levels. What do you do?

Look at this shit.

There’s no logic to this. Sometimes he’s not even in good position and can just fling himself everywhere like he’s John Fucking McClane and it works. On that first highlight Scheifele should have scored twice. When he didn’t they should have just canceled the rest of the game. Maybe series.

I don’t want to claim there’s a fix, because if there is it’s on a cosmic level instead of a league level. Everything goes in for the Knights on some nights (UGH), and Fleury then does that. And then we’re forced to read a bunch of “Does Pittsburgh Regret…?” articles, even though the Penguins have/had a younger, cheaper, better goalie the past two years. You now who predicted Fleury doing this? No. One. He wouldn’t have even told you he could do this. This is Arc Of The Covenant shit.

Where this series is, the Jets should still feel pretty good. They just have to get one win in Nevada, and another effort with the last half of Game 3 probably sees them get one. I mean it normally would. But this isn’t normal.

But hey, we got another highlight of Dustin Byfuglien dragging two guys off a pile, which he assuredly isn’t doing for the attention it generates or anything, and certainly doesn’t distract cretin hockey followers from the fact that every time he was on the ice last night the Knights got an odd-man rush the other way. In just the first period, McClure texted me, “I’ve counted three times he’s been forechecking below the goal line.” When and if the Knights win this series, I assure you Byfuglien will be on the ice for the killer goal.

Which is fine, because Jacob Trouba has been even worse. And that’s the real problem for the Jets, is they don’t have a d-man who can consistently stand up to this pressure. Maurice will have to figure something out.

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Watching The Party – FFUD’s 2nd Round Preview: Sharks vs. Knights or That’s About Enough Of This

By Sam Fels 2398 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: WE DON’T KNOW BECAUSE THE NHL IS A BUNCH OF STUPIDHEADS!

HOW THEY GOT HERE: The Sharks fustigated the Ducks in 4, and the Knights did worse to the Kings in 4

At some point, the bubble has to burst. Thanks to the Kings deciding to play their first-round series like they were relegation fodder, the Knights got to simply waltz into the second round in their first playoff asking with barely a sweat. A steam-room for half an hour would have been more taxing. The Sharks won’t be as cowardly or stupid, but then they don’t have a horseshoe and salt and a rabbit’s foot jammed in their colon like the Knight have had all season. The Sharks come with no less playoff savvy than the Kings had, they just have a much better roster. One hopes this is where the Knights dance of the seven veils finally comes to an end, because this has been a bit silly.

Goalies: Whatever we said about Sergei Bobrovsky, the opposite just might be true of Martin Jones. He threw a .970 at the Ducks in the first round, though to be fair the Ducks didn’t post much more of a threat than a veiled suggestion at him. But this follows his .935 in the first round loss last year to the Oilers, and his .923 in the Sharks’ run to the Final in ’16. Jones just might be a playoff goalie, and he’ll get more support than Jonathan Quick got.

You used to toss all sort of jokes at Marc-Andre Fleury, and then he’d let those jokes pass by his glove or through his legs into the net. Not so now. Fleury was even better than Jones in the first round with a .977, but then again he faced even less of a threat than Jones did as the Kings barely sent one forward over the red line all series while Dustin Brown looked at things with his Dustin Brown face. We can say for sure that Fleury will get tested more here, but this is the same guy who backstopped the Penguins through the first two rounds last year. Where and if the Knights break, it’s unlikely to be in net.

Defense: While it doesn’t get the pub outside of Brent Burns, this is the Sharks’ strength. It’s not as good as it could be, as for reasons he can’t even understand or explain Peter DeBoer has eschewed Joakim Ryan for the smoldering husk of Paul Martin to play with Brent Burns which is a really bad idea. The Sharks defense actually spent a lot of time on the back foot against the Ducks, though with all of the Ducks merely looking at their watch the whole series they didn’t give up a lot of good chances. You’d still take this top four, and Vlasic and Braun have a better chance at nullifying the Knights’ top line. It’s not the quickest outside of Burns, making the not-playing of Ryan even more curious, and they might have to play it cautious to keep from the Knights getting behind them a lot. Which was the Kings’ problem.

I feel like I’m done trying to explain anything that goes on with Vegas. On paper, this defense sucks. Nate Schmidt is the only one you’d want. Maybe Shea Theodore if you’ve had one too many, which is the state I assume most NHL general managers operate in. But McNabb and Engelland suck and we know this. I couldn’t pick Colin Miller or John Merrill out of a lineup. And yet because the Kings didn’t do anything other than occasionally try and spread germs to them, they were untested in the first round. You’d think they’ll get no such breaks from the far deeper Sharks, especially as Donskoi and Hertl seemed to get going in Round 1. This has to be the weak point the Sharks can exploit.

Forwards: Hanging over this series is when and if Joe Thornton will return. The real question is whether the Sharks are better without him right now. Pavelski has been a much better center than wing, and he was a pretty good wing. The Sharks play faster without Thornton, and their goal-, attempt-, and scoring chance-rates have all risen since Thornton got hurt. If the Sharks jump out to a lead in this series they can hold Thornton back even longer, though it sounds like he’s never going to be healthy. Even without him, this is a deep team. The Sharks got contributions from all four lines in their ass-stuffing of the Ducks, which has been a calling-card of the Knights. When Thornton does come back it’ll be interesting if they don’t try and simply get what they can out of him and just have him replace Eric Fehr on the fourth line. For right now, they’ve got enough.

The Knights were a little more top-heavy than the Sharks in Round 1, though given the way the Kings tried to play a Panic Room game there weren’t a lot of chances to go around. They only needed seven goals to get through. Seven goals won’t get it done here, and while the Sharks will be more open than the Kings were the Knights are going to have to get more from the likes of Eakin, Nosek, Haula, and the bottom six to get out. Because the likelihood is that Pavelski, Kane, Hertl, Donskoi are going to match whatever the Knights’ top six does.

Prediction: This one’s going to go a while, because both goalies are playing too well to see either team get out of this in four or five. Each will get at least one goalie win. And while everything seems to be breaking the Knights’ way, I trust the Sharks’ defense and bottom six more than theirs. The Sharks also probably get an emotional boost from Thornton’s return, especially as it looks like it’ll happen, in whatever form, at home in Game 3 or 4. Sharks in 6. 

Everything Else

Watching the Party – FFUD’s 1st Round Preview: Kings vs. Knights or This Is Bat Country

By Sam Fels 1564 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: Game 1 Wednesday, Game 2 Friday, Game 3 Sunday, Game 4 April 17th

Amazingly, the Kings and their fans are going to take a break from complaining/campaigning for their players to win awards they don’t deserve to play a playoff series. But as we all know, what really counts is what individual awards your team garners. Anyway, the Kings might have drawn the sweetheart spot here and play a fading Vegas team that still was able to hang onto the division because the rest of the Pacific blows goats. Anyway, this could be a long series, but it won’t be all that much fun to watch.

Goalies: There will be a ton of talk about Jonathan Quick’s playoff pedigree, and it will ignore the fact that Quick has as many crap playoff campaigns as excellent ones. He was terrible in 2014 but his team was so high-octane it didn’t matter. And he wasn’t any better when the Kings got trounced in 2016 by the Sharks. Quick closed the season pretty roughly in three April appearances but that shouldn’t nullify how good he was in March. This was his best regular season since that 2012 triumph, so one should expect something closer to the dominant Quick in the playoffs than the one who couldn’t stop a sloth in the sand.

There may be a lot of talk of Marc-Andre Fleury’s playoff foibles, but that was a long time ago. Fleury has been at least good and sometimes excellent in his last three playoff runs, and was possibly the biggest reason the Pens got a second Cup last year when Matt Murray was hurt. And that Penguins team was not defensively sound. Again, he’s much more likely to be average or better than he is to have a full body burf that he did in 2012.

Defense: Well, they’ll try and tell you that Drew Doughty deserves another Norris, and he’s been good as he usually is. But he’s not Norris-worthy, and the Kings probably need him to be because the rest of this crew sucks. Dion Phaneuf is terrible, has pretty much always been terrible, and with how quick the Knights are you’re going to see how terrible. Alec Martinez is fine, I guess. Christian Folin is not. When you need Jake Muzzin, you’re in a place you need to get out of. Look or the Knights to get behind this team a lot.

I don’t know how the Knights did it, because this blue line should suck. The only one you’d want is Nate Schmidt, and maybe Shea Theodore if you squint. I’m not sure the Kings have the forward depth to attack this weakness, and if Jeff Carter is feeling frisky the Knights are going to have some problems. There should be chances and both goalies are going to have to be on their toes to keep there from being a lot of goals.

Forwards: The Kings are top heavy, with most of the heavy lifting being done by Anze Kopitar, who somehow also re-exhumed Dustin Brown. Toffoli and Carter on the second line have dovetailed into a playoff boomstick before, and that’s the Kings hope. If Adrian Kempe pops off that could tilt this. But there isn’t much on the bottom six.

Again, we don’t know much about what the Knights here, because we haven’t seen their top six forwards as top six forwards in the playoffs. Wild Bill Karlsson isn’t going to shoot 25% this series, you wouldn’t think. Can Marchessault and Smith get goals when it’s hardest? We know Haula does when he plays the Hawks. But they’ve gotten this are, and if they can replicate their “get it the fuck up there quick!” style from the regular season a plodding Kings blue line is going to struggle. If they convert those chances, this fluke might go a little farther.

Prediction: I don’t think too many people want to see either of these teams in the second round, but one’s going. The Kings hardly inspire, but the Knights won eight games in regulation since Feb. 23rd. Four of those were over Vancouver, Calgary, and Detroit. That’s not exactly roaring into the playoffs (and an indictment on the division that no one could run them down). I feel like the Kings are just going to attrition this. And it’ll take a while. Kings in 7. 

Everything Else

Your Friends And Neighbors – ’17-18′ NHL Team Previews: Diamonds… And Dust. So Much Dust

By 1629

Oh hey look! It’s the new kid! The mouthy, over-hyped new kid, but because he has the nicest house and the latest video games and the best weed everyone’s going to go over there after school anyway. Yes, this Vegas team hasn’t really shut up since well before they expansion draft, but you’re going to get constant updates about their ticket sales and Twitter and FB are going to be filled with your fellow fans making the trip out to Vegas when their team is there. At least a group of sweaty hockey fans aren’t the worst group of people you can find yourself surrounded by in Vegas, but it’s close. Anyway, the chatter will do everything it can to distract you from the fact this team is something you’d dig out of the bathroom drain. And it’s probably going to be that way for a few years. Which it should.

Oh right… we can’t do previous year’s stats, because they didn’t exist. So we’ll just hop right into it.

Everything Else

Attrition And Panic

By 1529

It probably isn’t the best way to watch the NHL playoffs in the context of a larger meaning. Life has no meaning, eat Arby’s. We all know this. But when the Hawks are done for this long you can’t help but let your mind wander.

Before this Penguins-Senators series, while I was wary of my prediction skills in saying that then Pens should win relatively easily, the comparison of the two teams’ rosters wouldn’t lead to any other conclusion. But the thing is this isn’t really the Penguins’ complete roster.

Everything Else

Feed The Animals – Hawks at Penguins Preview, Overdraft Notification

By 1428

 at 

Game Time: 7:00PM CDT
TV/Radio: NBCSN, TVA-S, WGN-AM 720
Noah Didn’t Take No Penguins With Him On The Ark: PensBurgh

Once again the Hawks find themselves a part of NBCSN’s RIVALRY NIGHT with a team they see a sum total of twice a year. The network should just call the event “Wednesday Night Hockey” and play up the rivalry when there actually is one. Though, to much of rockheaded fanbase of this league, there is still somehow a “rivalry” between the captains of these two teams, even though it’s long been established that the one on the Penguins’ side of things is far and away the better player. But a superstar matchup is a superstar matchup, even this late in the season when most of the playoff picture has been settled and teams like this are basically trying to not get hurt.