Game #23 Preview Suite
The Blackhawks were given the unfortunate task of trying to cheer me up after the Bears loss today, and instead of doing that they just took my already broken heart and ripped it out of my chest and stomped on it. Well, not really, because I don’t really think much of these Blackhawks even with how fun the early games this year have been, and with the Tampa Bay Lightning coming to town and Cam Ward in net, this was going to be ugly from the jump. But let me be dramatic, okay. Let’s do the bullets:
– Sweet merciful Jesus, can anyone on the blue line for this team skate anymore? I know the Lightning are one of the fastest teams in the NHL, but the Blackhawks defensemen literally looked like traffic cones more often than not tonight. The Lightning were skating circles around them all game long, and no one even really seemed interested in stopping them. Seriously, go watch the Lightning’s fourth goal again, if you can stomach it – I know I couldn’t. It’s like watching a new driver go through an obstacle course. Or like watching the Patriots receivers run through the Bears secondary. NO YOU ARE STILL MAD ABOUT IT.
– The second period tonight was perhaps the worst display of “professional” hockey I have ever seen the Blackhawks play. That really is where the Lightning did most of their obstacle course maneuvering, and they basically suffocated the Hawks the whole time. I don’t care how fast or good the team you’re playing in, to get outshot 34-6 in any period of NHL is hockey is inexcusable.
– Sam mentioned this on Twitter, but the Hawks best work in terms of getting out of their own zone tonight was whichever player had the puck just went up the ice with it, either skating or passing, instead of trying to fit into whichever weird-ass system Q wants them to run on the breakout. It worked for Jan Rutta, who in a a blind-squirrel-finding-a-nut moment sprung Alexandre Fortin on a breakaway for his first NHL goal.
– Those last two points bring me to a conclusion, and it’s one that I’ve talked about both sarcastically and seriously for a while now, and the podcast guys have talked about for a while now as well. And that is that it might just be time for Joel Quenneville to go. Now, I seriously doubt they’re going to make any serious move like that in season anytime soon, especially after the Scott Powers article that waxed poetic last week about how Q got here to begin with. But getting dominated in a period like that and success coming moreso from players doing their own thing rather than your system are not trends that bode well for the Stache. This is just one game, so I am not trying to jump to too wild of a conclusion, but it’s still something to monitor.
– Congrats to the Hawks on finally scoring a power play goal tonight. I look forward to the next one coming in December.
The obvious answer is that Steve Yzerman stepped down as Lightning GM because he got some assurance from somewhere or someone that Detroit is finally going to euthanize the increasingly hockey-senile Ken Holland and return the conquering hero. That and to be closer to where he actually lives, of course. This will be Caesar through the arch shit. And perhaps with the Wings being so bad and having a good look at the #1 pick and hometown boy Jack Hughes–and certainly the NHL would never rig such a thing for a franchise they’ve been wheel-posing for for decades–maybe Yzerman thinks he’s already got a leg up in bringing the Wings back to “Scum” status.
Still, it’s hard to see why you’d so quickly walk away from the Lightning, given what he’s built and what’s on the horizon.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Lightning is that the “Cap-ocalypse” that was supped to ravage their roster never materialized. The Lightning haven’t really had to lose anyone. Sure, he was able to use the lack of state income tax to his advantage and keep the cap hits for Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov lower than market-value while still providing the same money in their pockets. But hey, you have to press your advantages where you can. And now Kucherov, Stamkos, Hedman, Miller, Johnson, and McDonagh are around for years.
There also isn’t doom on the horizon. Sure, Yanni Gourde and Brayden Point are in need of new contracts after this season, and will be due raises, maybe even hefty ones. But all of Anton Stralman, Braydon Coburn, and Dan Girardi come off the books as well, for a cool $11.2M in space. And none of them need to be retained. Only Stralman at a much lower price would appeal. And if the Lightning let all of them go, they have Cal Foote waiting in the AHL to step in with Mikhail Sergachev moving up the lineup.
The following season, Ryan Callahan’s $5.8M hit will disappear, thankfully, and they’ll have even more space to play with as not really anyone is due a raise then. At least no one who has popped up as vital yet.
No one in their corps is even out of their prime, or even that much past their peak yet. Stamkos is 28, and McDonagh is 29, and the latter threatens to not age well, but everyone else is either right in their prime or not even there yet. They’re not going anywhere.
So it’s kind of a mystery how the Detroit build could be a more attractive option than this. Maybe Yzerman felt he’d done all the building and didn’t have much interest in merely maintaining. Maybe it’s just “Momma called.” But the Wings need so many pieces. Maybe he thinks his name is enough to draw prime free agents in the next few years. Except the Wings have exactly zero cap space at the moment. They’ll lose Thomas Vanek’s, Gustav Nyquist’s, and Niklas Kronwall’s contracts, as well as Jimmy Howard’s. But the Wings need at least a #1 center, a #1 d-man, and probably a goalie too, and that’s just for starters.
He’ll certainly have no interference in Detroit, where he’ll be allowed to do whatever he wants. The problem might be he’ll be competing with the force he’s already created for at least the next three years, probably longer, as they’re in the same division. That’ll make for some interesting viewing.
Game #8 Preview Suite
Whenever the Hawks and Bolts get together, we bother our friend Alexis Boucher (@Alexis_b82). When we stop talking about Tetsuya Naito, we get around to hockey.
The Maple Leafs got all the press over the summer (shocking we know), and the Bruins always seem to have the East coast bias thing going. But the Lightning are the defending division champs, both regular season and playoffs, and were an unlucky whisker away from being in the Final themselves. Is there any reason to think they aren’t the favorites again?
I’m understandably biased when it comes to this question, but barring extensive injuries or incredibly bad luck it’s hard not to pick the Bolts as one of the heavy favorites out of the East. Their incredibly talented core group is still around and younger players have another year of experience under their belts. They know how well they’ve done over the last several years but the fact that they’ve fallen short isn’t lost on them. Before the home opener earlier this month Steven Stamkos was asked about the 2017-18 Division championship banner that had been hung in the rafters and if there was any discussion about it among the team. The captain said there wasn’t any talk about it because it wasn’t the one they wanted. This group remains hungry to finally fulfill their promise and hopefully this will be the year they make it happen.
It seems like the Lightning are always unveiling a spiky new youngster who contributes big time. Last year it was Yanni Gourde and Brayden Point. Anyone this year?
Right winger Mathieu Joseph made the Lightning’s roster out of training camp and he’s already been making a name for himself. Drafted in 2015, Joseph had an incredibly strong first pro season with the Syracuse Crunch in 2017-18. He plays with a tremendous amount of speed and tenacity on the ice which fits in well with Tampa’s style. He has had incredibly chemistry early on a line with another promising young player Anthony Cirelli and the veteran Alex Killorn.
Any chance Mikhail Sergachev earns more of a role than just third-pairing this season?
The sky certainly seems to be the limit when it comes to Sergachev’s potential. He’s so good that it’s easy to forget he’s only 20-years-old. He continues to see a decent amount of time on the second power play unit as well. As he continues to learn and grow it’s not out of the question that he breaks into Tampa’s top four.
What’s the story behind Steve Yzerman stepping down? Is he just going to get that much money from the Red Wings? Is this a worry in Tampa?
When the Yzerman news broke so close to the start of training camp it was more surprising than anything. Apparently, he wanted to tell all of the players when they arrived but it was shocking nonetheless. Not a lot of details have come out besides Yzerman’s desire to be closer to his family. His wife and daughters have remained based in Michigan throughout his tenure as GM and that can’t be easy. It would seem he’s destined to rejoin the Red Wings in some capacity down the line but it’s also difficult to see him stepping away from the team that he has built into a perennial contender before they reach their goal of winning the Stanley Cup. There’s a lot of unknowns in this scenario but Yzerman has definitely left them in a position to succeed. Julien BriseBois has been under his tutelage for a quite some time and is more than a worthy successor.
Game #8 Preview Suite
While all the news of the summer has mostly been focused north of the 49th, because they have nothing else to do in the summer except annoy the rest of us with their offseason bullshit and I mean jesus fucking christ get a second baseball team or something or spend more than three weeks at fucking “cottage” where all you do is drink the same bad beer you always do and complain about what you spend the rest of the year doing before you go back to complaining about it while you do it and yes we actually have mountains and lakes here in the States too can you believe it and you’re not so special so just go back to locking yourself in your basement and drinking your own piss while you make videos that 16-year-old girls love because that’s not creepy at all you fucking dweeb and..
I’m sorry, that got away from me. Let’s start again. Most of the attention this summer has been on the Leafs after signing Tavares, or the continuing descent into hell’s asshole from the Ottawa Senators and their drama(s) with Erik Karlsson, or the simply mystifying, long-standing incompetence and arrogance of the Canadiens. So you’d be forgiven if you forgot how the Atlantic Division actually works.
The class is still located on the west coast of Florida, which isn’t where anything should ever be located but here we are. The Tampa Bay Lightning haven’t gone anywhere, though they may have taken a half-step back by not taking a step forward. Then again, that step forward is probably waiting either in camp or in mid-season, and it could be a very large one. Let’s hop to it.
Goalies: As you’ll see with most of the team, it’s basically the same outfit as last year that they’re just going to run again. Andrei Vasilevskiy put up a Vezina-caliber season, at least to the eye of the ever-vigilant hockey press and their Nick Kyrgios-level of effort on thinking, finishing third for that award after piling up a .920 SV% and a 2.62 GAA. He was also .930 at evens. Those numbers would look better if he hadn’t tailed off in the season’s second half, as he went .916-.916-.883-.900 in January-April, which is worrying. And it wasn’t a much larger workload that got him, because he made 50 appearances in the season before while Ben Bishop was fighting with the various gremlins that live in his soft tissue (I think I saw Soft Tissue Gremlins open for…).
So maybe that should have been a clue that the playoffs were not going to be filled with glitter and strobe lights for him. The first two rounds saw him get the soft-landing of the one-man Devils and the one-line Bruins, and he obliged accordingly by seeing the Lightning through in 10 games total. But the series against the Caps, who were running on high-octane at that point, was a different story. He posted a .901 in that series, with serious disasters in Games 1, 2, and 7. Sure, his first foray into the playoffs as a starter, and he is allowed another try or five. But given the way he faded as the season went along, there should be sharper eyes on him at the start of this season as teams already have the scouting reports from last season’s back end.
Backing him up is Louis Domingue. He’s perfectly serviceable as a backup, but the Bolts are not going to be able to turn to him if Vasilevskiy’s belly-up from last year is a feature and not a bug. If that happens, they’ll be looking outside the organization.
Defense: So the temptation is to label this their weakness. And it is right now. Except that it very well might not look like what it looks like now. Because the rumor is that Erik Karlsson will really only go to Tampa or Vegas via trade. And if this defense adds the best d-man alive, it goes from weakness to sharp pointy thing with lasers.
But until that happens, if it happens, we can only deal with what we have on hand. Outside of Vasilevskiy, the biggest reason the Lightning got punted by the Caps in seven games is that Victor Hedman was awful in that series. And when he’s not dominating play, they Lightning don’t have anyone else who can do that. It was also what bit them in 2015, and that’s when Anton Stralman could actually move. Hedman carried a 45% corsi-percentage that series, and his scoring-chance percentage was even worse.
Now, some of that, even a majority, could be explained that he was dragging around the bloated, buzzard-ransacked, maggot-infested corpse of Dan Girardi around. I don’t know what it’s going to take for people in the game to realize that Girardi has been a nuclear disaster site for about five seasons now, and no amount of dumb faces he makes or grunts he emits are going to change that. He should be nowhere near anyone’s top four, let alone a Cup-contenders. Even Hedman couldn’t save his immobile, dead ass and that should tell you something, And yet…
Ryan McDonagh and Stralman are still here to man the second-pairing, and while the odometer readings are catching up to McDonagh, a second-pairing assignment is still well within his range. If in between buying new silk robes and testing the viscosity of his own spunk, Jon Cooper could figure out to slide Mikhail Sergachev here instead of Stralman, he’d be doing his team a huge favor. At least until Karlsson washes up on the useless St. Petersberg shores.
The third pairing is the aforementioned Sergachev, who will be praying he no longer has to serve out whatever apprenticeship/dungeon-hood Cooper has in his own mind (Note: Cooper has an actual dungeon in his house but it is for very different things) and can be let loose. The broken-and-pie faced Braydon Coburn is somehow still here, even though it’s been unclear what he does other than break his face since 2012. Slater Koekkoek and the dumbfuck way he either spells or pronounces his last name and Jake Dotchin probably fancy their chances of cracking the lineup regularly, especially when Stralman can’t get out of a chair and Girardi and Coburn can’t figure out how to sit in one.
Forwards: The opposite end of the spectrum for the Bolts. They have two perennial MVP-candidates on their top line in Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov. They’re perhaps the only team that can claim that, except for maybe Winnipeg. Brayden Point–Ondrej Palat–Tyler Johnson could be the best second line in the league, though the other contender might in the same division with Toronto. The bottom six is littered with solid contributors in Alex Killorn, Yanni Gourde, Cory Conacher, Cedric Pacquette, and now Andy Andreoff who washed out of LA can play with a team more suited to, y’know, something other than belching and farting their way up and down the ice. 1-12 it’s hard to find a more complete unit in the Eastern Conference. They don’t have the center-depth the Leafs now employ, but this center-depth was enough to pile up 113 points with spotty goaltending for half the season. And we know that Steve Yzerman is going to add something sneaky and productive at the deadline for a song, and not even a good song. Like a Styx or Springsteen song or something (suck it, Killion).
Outlook: They’ll be challenged by the Leafs for the division crown, which means they’d have to negotiate likely the Bruins and then the Leafs to get back where they were (maybe the Panthers). There is more than enough scoring here if everyone stays healthy and just gets to their career norms. A couple guys getting snake-bitten could be a problem, but could be countered by guys having spikes. The defense is a worry, until it gets buffeted by that Swedish dude with the hair. No, the one they don’t already have. The goaltending is a bigger question than anyone is asking though, but thankfully no one else in this division has a definitive answer there either. The conference final certainly is a distinct possibility, and once you’re there pretty much anything can happen. At the same time, Vasilevskiy could be what he showed for the second half and then whatever resources they were going to chuck for Karlsson might have to be used to go get a goalie. Why do I feel like Henrik Lundqvist could end up here?
Previous Team Previews
Saying goodbye to the Tampa Bay Lightning is a lot like saying goodbye to bread. Sure, they were necessary. Sure, they had flashes of being really good and noticeable. And yet it felt like everything went on around them. It’s like they were the dining room table at one of their coach’s key parties/12-hour orgies. It’s going to be used as a prop at times, it’s going to have important tools placed on it, but it’s not really where the focus is going to be.
Before the season, it was generally agreed the Lightning were the best team in the league. And really, they were. Somehow they were able to overcome the fact that Dan Girardi turned into amassed lizards like five years ago, Anton Stralman has looked like confused villain #3 in any Bond film since last season, and Braydon Coburn still has windburn from the 2010 Final. They blended kids and rookies into their already stacked lineup seamlessly, the way Jon Cooper blends peanut butter and candle wax seamlessly into his Thursday nights.
And yet pretty much from the first month on, everyone tried to find a different team to claim the favorite. We all wavered from Boston (hilarious) to Nashville to Winnipeg to Vegas to even saying fuck it the Penguins are just going to win again BECAUSE. The Lightning remained as steadfast as ever, they just couldn’t get anyone to care other than the retirees who populate the place and the extras from Magic Mike who no one told filming was over. They were the reserve prom date who had to wait for everyone else’s delusions of grandeur to pass.
As good as this team is, did it ever have any swagger? Or was that sucked up all by Cooper as he sauntered into a USF bar on a Tuesday? Did they ever look like they believed they could beat anyone and everyone? Was there ever an assuredness? It sure never seemed like it. There was no style or panache to it. It was just results. It was basically hockey Pearl Jam.
It looked like they might have captured it getting out of their division in the playoffs. But that should have been the first clue. That division. 17-5-2 against everyone who wasn’t the Bruins, which contained five teams that looked like something an untrained puppy left to its own devices for hours had gone through. Still, it should have been more.
And then the Caps showed up and said, “Hey wait a fucking minute, why is everyone out-thinking themselves here? Girardi and Coburn suck and we’re going to show everyone.” And they did. By Game 7 both looked like David Cross’ burn victim from Mr. Show. Sometimes it is as simple as it looks.
You know what might have helped? If Steven Stamkos could have managed an even-strength goal at any point in the last series, or more than one in the whole playoffs. Still, you have to say it goes nicely with his no goals in the ’15 Final at all. Quite the set. Hell of a Rick Nash impression you’ve got there, Stammer. Guess you weren’t alone. Nikita Kucherov couldn’t manage any either. So nice how you’re keeping each other company. #LinematesTilWeDie
They weren’t alone in Chateau Where The Fuck Were You? Victor Hedman spent all but one game against the Caps making love to a lawn mower, which didn’t exactly counteract the performance art for the blind that Girardi, Stralman, and Coburn were putting forth. The only d-man who looked like he wanted it was Mikhail Sergachev, and he could barely find 10 minutes per night while his coach was scrolling through Early2BedShop.com on his phone. I guess if you’re traded for Jonathan Drouin you can’t be surprised if they still treat you like Jonathan Drouin out of habit. You can’t expect a hockey coach to notice you’re a different guy.
But it’s ok, Steve Yzerman is a genius because he’s the first GM to figure out that Florida’s lack of an income tax could be like, an advantage? We’ll ignore he’s the reason that his blue line that was half-comprised by Tweedle Dumb, Tweedle Slow, and Tweedle Old was all his doing. And hey, they’re all back next year! Only J.T. Miller needs to be re-upped, just as soon as they can locate him with his other linemates after the conference final. They’re all up after that, which is good because Kucherov, Point, and Gourde are going to suck up the rest. Dance that dance, Stevie Y. Everyone will still love you. (And frankly, the fact that he could see taking the Detroit job was an utterly hopeless task alone makes him smarter than 80% of the GMs out there).
So so long, Tampa. No one has made being this good this meh since…well who knows, because all those teams are forgotten now. Much like the whole area. Miami at least has nightlife. Orlando has Disney. Jacksonville has crack. Tampa has…hang on I’ll get this. Probably not a good sign when the only movie that takes place there, the aforementioned Magic Mike, is all about how everyone wants to get the fuck out of there, huh?
It was quite the viewing to have the Capitals on one screen last night and the Cleveland Cavaliers on another last night. Both played with a unique desperation and frenzy against teams that not only didn’t match it, they didn’t seem very interested in doing so either. As Ryan Callahan said, “They played like they had to win, we played like we had another chance.” You could put that quote on any Celtic and it would work as well.
The Caps were simply everywhere last night, in the kind of effort I’m not sure you can manage for more than a game or two. But the thing is, they don’t. They have to do it for one more…and then maybe like five or six more against Vegas. But they probably won’t come up against such a sloppy opponent again.
As furied as the Caps were skating in both directions, the Lighting were simply awful. They couldn’t complete two consecutive passes. As the Caps sank deeper and deeper, the Lightning kept trying to make plays at the offensive blue line, and the three times they ran into each other there is a pretty good symbol of how all that went. Victor Hedman went back into witness protection, they didn’t score on their power plays, and that seems to be the impetus for this Lightning team.
Still, I don’t know where this leads us for a Game 7. The Lightning are still the better team, and yet they’ve infrequently been intent on proving that this series. They were clubbed in the first two games, and then “did enough” in Games 3 and 5 while having Vasilevskiy bail them out in Game 4. At some point you’d think they wouldn’t be so flummoxed by Trotz’s defensive ways, and yet here we are.
Still, this is where the Bolts have been before. They beat the Rangers in a Game 7 at this stage in ’15. They lost to the Penguins in ’16 in the same situation. As strange as it sounds, the Bolts really have been part of the league’s aristocracy for a while now. Meanwhile, it feels like the Caps just set themselves up for a greater heartbreak. Unless you really believe these Caps, THE CAPS, are going to close out three straight series on the road. Just doesn’t seem to be their way. What does is finally breaking through to get just close enough to realize they’re just not quite good enough this time around, when their past two teams most certainly were (yes, those Caps teams would have gone on to win the whole thing if it wasn’t for Pittsburgh, I’m fairly sure).
There’s another thing I wanted to get to, a bugaboo of mine for years. These were the postgame comments of Brooks Orpik. The playing surface across the league have been something we’ve been calling attention to for a while. The one here in the United Center was routinely voted among the worst in the league, which didn’t make a lot of sense for a team that was on the vanguard of playing fast and skilled.
Obviously, there are a lot of challenges, given that almost all of these buildings are holding multiple events, not just sharing with a basketball team. It’s May, and especially on the East Coast humidity is going to be a problem. All understandable.
But it affects the quality of the game. The Lightning weren’t good, but they weren’t helped by a puck bouncing all over the place. Trotz and the Caps are right to use that and sag back, because it’s near impossible to pass your way through that when the ice is descending into slurpee. For a league that should be striving to be as pleasing to the eye as possible with passing and skating everywhere instead of guys just battling in the neutral zone like it’s No Man’s Land, this should be something they talk about.
But it isn’t, because whatever fixes are needed to keep all playing surfaces as clean as possible would cost money. So I’ll just shout at the rain some more.
One in a state of shock, one game went exactly as planned. It’s the NHL on NBC!
Capitals 2-0 Lightning
I guess this is what everyone else felt last year when watching the Preds roll over the Hawks from the outside. But I think that made more sense than this. At least Game 1 of that series was close. The Lightning haven’t even been in the same zip code as the Capitals. And I can’t believe I wrote that sentence.
I suppose if there’s one thing we can point to, it’s that the Lightning’s blue line was overhyped. But it mostly didn’t matter because their forwards were so good, and there was “God Mode” within Victor Hedman to cancel it out even further. You saw in ’15. So you know it’s there. Well, the Caps don’t seem to care, and have greatly exposed Stralman, Girardi, Coburn and even McDonagh–who’s a good defensive guy but has never been a mover and that’s getting wildly demonstrated. Meanwhile Hedman has been tentative and unnoticeable, which is just really weird. The only d-man who seems to be able to survive the Caps’ forecheck is Sergachev, mostly because he’s fearless and not having to see the best the Caps have to offer. Stralman and Girardi look like they just discovered there’s a bear in their breakfast nook.
It hasn’t helped that Cooper has coached this series with both hands around his neck instead of his usual postgame belt in the shower. His team look completely shell-shocked, and they seem to be playing right into the Caps hands by either not bypassing the forecheck as the Penguins did the past two years or having his forwards help out. Then when the Caps set up three at their own line every Bolt seems content to just charge headfirst into it and lose the puck and the whole thing starts over. And then they panic, and their defense goes charging everywhere in the offensive zone and they’re giving up an odd-man rush a minute.
If there’s one team that could surrender this momentum it’s the Caps. But man they would really have to like, shit themselves to a dysentery-like level. Because it’s one thing to disrupt and it’s another to cash in, and right now at Ovechkin and Kuzentsov and Eller and Beagle, they all can’t miss. It’s been astonishing.
Jets 1-0 Knights
This was more to form, though only one game. But in Game 1, the Knights saw what was always going to be their biggest problem. A team that can play their game, is willing to, and can do it with better talent. The thing with the Knights during the season is it’s hard to find a team in February and January that’s going to want to skate back as hard to catch them going forward. It’s easier to inspire players to bust it up the ice during the season than it is to inspire them to bust it back. Think the mid-2ooos Suns. Or why Tom Thibodeau’s teams want to murder him by Valentine’s Day.
Well, inspiration isn’t a problem in the conference final. The Jets smell it. So they can get back and negate the get-it-the-fuck-up-there ways of the Knights by getting the fuck back there. How many passes did they pick off on what Knights players thought were odd-man rushes only to find a backchecking forward closing it off? That’s how the Knights get you, and if they don’t have it they’re proper fucked.
I don’t know what to make of Byfuglien. Everyone knows I’m probably the polar opposite of his fan but he was marvelous in Game 1. Then again the Knights didn’t try and get him off his game which is so easily done and it was so fast it didn’t matter that he was rarely where he needed to be defensively and he was making so much happen at the other end. Maybe you just accept the show. Anyway, if the Jets get Game 2 tonight in any sort of similar fashion as Game 1 you can start penciling them in. I don’t know what Vegas’s Plan B could possibly be.
vs. 
SCHEDULE: Game 1 Friday, Game 2 Sunday, Game 3 Tuesday, Game 4 Thursday
They’ve broken through. After more than a decade in the Ovechkin Era, and repeated attempts to run head-first (sometimes literally) through the forcefield between the second round and the conference final, the Caps finally found the weak point and got into the back half of the journey toward the Cup. Good for them, Ovie certainly deserves it. Seems a shame it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a very long stay, because they’re going to find an unholy machine waiting for them.
Goalies: Before this whole thing started, we said it might be better for Braden Holtby, who’s not ever really been a playoff dog except for last season, to come in and be the white knight to bail out Barry Trotz and the Caps after trying Phillip Grubauer in the first two games against the Jackets. That didn’t work, this did work, and now Holtby is playing awfully well. He only gave up 13 goals in the six games against the Pens, but then again he wasn’t asked to do all that much. The Caps only gave up more than 25 shots twice in six games, and that’s just about the best they can do. Holtby isn’t going to have a full-out meltdown with that kind of workload, but sadly that workload is probably going to get a whole lot heavier in this round.
You could say Vasilevskiy has had even less to do. He only had to face one player in the first round in Taylor Hall. He only had to face one line in the second round against the Bruins, and after Game 1 he gave up only seven goals in their four wins. He only saw over 30 shots once in those four wins, but the Lightning can probably hold the Caps to the same kind of output which certainly isn’t the case vice versa. Neither Holtby or Vasilevskiy have been here before so we have no idea how they’ll react. When this is all over, I doubt it’ll be because of either goalie primarily.
Defense: The Caps defense in the second round was basically what it was all season. John Carlson scores a ton on the power play, some at evens, and then they kind of turtle well enough to keep the other side from tearing the walls down. Orlov and Niskanen have been more than just useful, and basically nullified Crosby and Guentzel when the last series got decided. They’ll get the Stamkos and Kucherov assignment you’d think as often as possible, and based on how the last series ended the Caps are probably going to send their stall out to help them as much as possible with a trapping style that’s going to make you really understand Ibsen and welcome the void into your life.
I’m still not totally convinced by the Lightning’s defense, but because it hasn’t been seriously tested, and the Caps are likely to play this very conservatively, I don’t know that I have to be. Hedman might be enough, and will see plenty of Ovechkin with McDonagh you would think. Or if they wanted to play a funny joke they could throw McDonagh and Girardi at Ovie’s line just like the Rangers did and it always seemed to work even though everything tells you it shouldn’t. Also, Dan Girardi sucks. Anton Stralman isn’t much better these days as he gets older, but he’s enough. What the Bolts do have that the Caps don’t is a young, third-pairing bum-slayer in Mikhail Sergachev who has run wild most of these playoffs. That is when he’s played which really has been barely at all. Cooper needs to let this guy off the hook because the Caps will not have an answer and they’re probably going to need all the neutral zone busters they can find as the Caps dig trenches and set up barbed wire there.
Forwards: Even if the Caps were fully healthy, this is where the Lightning have the biggest advantage. And Backstrom and Burakovsky are not healthy. If they could not make the bell for an elimination game against the Penguins, only Washington’s Sisyphusian boulder they finally got up the hill, you have to imagine they’re really hurt. They’ll suit up at some point in this series, though Backstrom’s status for Game 1 is up in the air. Without him, this team is really just one line, and we saw what the Bolts did to a one-line team the last round. Lars Eller is great and all but he’s not enough. Especially when Tom Wilson is assuredly going to give away a couple dumbass power plays to the Lightning by trying to eat someone’s face in a bid to one-up Marchand or something.
We derided Swingin’ Jon Cooper’s choice to send Brayden Point and Palat and Johnson out against Boston’s main threat after Game 1. They spent the rest of the series giving that line a swirly. That goes with Stamkos and Kucherov and Miller (who’s been great) on the top line. Killorn and Gourde are a very decent third line. Basically, the Lightning are two to three times deeper than the Caps, and there just isn’t much they can do about it.
Prediction: The Caps have to gum this up as much as possible. They cannot run with the Lightning in any fashion. They don’t have the depth at forward. They’ll get outscored. So they’ll have to make everything 2-1 and hope Holtby goes nuclear or Vasilevskiy goes blind. They’re counting on Ovechkin or Oshie getting really hot, but if neither do they just don’t have the goals. The Lightning have the guns and they have the numbers. Crash before my eyes…Lightning in 5.
Found out a lot about a lot this weekend. Let’s get to it:
Winnipeg Leads Nashville 3-2
This series has basically been delicious. It confirms everything we thought about the Preds, in that they were more Pekka Rinne than they or any of their sycophants who just want to drink on Broadway again in the spring for free wanted to consider. The Preds got back into the series by trapping and basically playing 90’s Knicks basketball, and they still needed a miracle save from Rinne to make that work. Back at home and in front of a crowd too busy trying to memorize all their chants that are just variants of the word “suck,” they didn’t feel they could do that. They tried to go toe-to-toe with the Jets, and they got stomped. Sure, the shots and attempts charts will tell you this was a more even game. But an even game with the Jets isn’t an even game. They have more firepower than just about anyone in the league at forward. So if you’re getting the same amount and type of chances they are, most likely they’re going to bury more of them.
And Kyle Connor turning Treat Boy into bucket-and-mop material didn’t do my heart any worse either.
So now Laviolette has a choice. He can try and trap and stall his way back home to a Game 7, a method that works but has a very low margin for error. One bad deflection undoes all the work. And if it doesn’t work he’s going to face some tough questions about why he was fucking with his lineup all playoffs long to get guys like Scott Fucking Hartnell in the lineup but not Calle Jarnkrok or Kevin Fiala. It’s especially hilarious because next year is almost assuredly the time on Lavvy’s clock when his players start to regard him as a bellowing meat sack and tune him out. It’s happened everywhere he’s been, and it’s a miracle he’s lasted in Music City this long. A lot rides on tonight.
Knights defeat Sharks 4-2
I had suspected that the Sharks weren’t all that good, but hoped for better. Then again, I don’t know what you do when a goalie is throwing a .965 at you at evens, which is what Marc-Andre Fleury is doing. And that’s really what it comes down to. It’s not that the Knights aren’t deserving winners of this series. But if Fleury were playing at a mere mortal level, even with like a superb .930 or something, this series is headed back to the desert for a Game 7 or it’s already over the other way.
The Sharks will have some decisions to make this summer, as every key player they have is over 30 with the exception of Martin Jones. They’re considered the leaders to get Tavares, which would certainly change the complexion of the next couple of years whether Thornton stays or retires or goes because of it. If they don’t get Tavares though, you wonder how much longer they can keep coming up with decent seasons and playoff runs. Especially if Calgary and Edmonton were ever to get their act together (don’t need to worry about the latter, thought).
As for the Knights, my suspicion, based on anything normal, is that this all comes to an end against whoever’s next. They can’t outrun the Jets for sure, and though the Preds’ might isn’t what most think they can match Vegas’s forwards and have a fleet defense that won’t be overawed by Vegas’s forecheck. They also wouldn’t insist on playing Paul Martin for a portion of it because they’ve been hit with a brick when they weren’t looking. But that assumes a normal goalie performance, and Fleury is doing anything but that. To bet against him is a fool’s errand.
Also, with Rinne and Fleury having career renaissances at 33 and 34 as they have, that gives you faith that should Corey Crawford ever be healthy he can maintain the level he was setting too.
Capitals lead Pittsburgh 3-2
Oh, Caps. Won’t you ever learn? Don’t you see where this is taking you? Haven’t you walked this road again and again? We know this road. We know exactly where it ends.
As sick as I am of Caps fans everywhere nailing themselves to a cross every four minutes, it’s about time Alex Ovechkin broke through. Sure, they’ll get railroaded by the Lightning in the next round, who are now going to be rested and having played just 10 games to get this far. But do you trust them? Do you trust Holtby to play well enough to keep the Penguins down for two games? Do you trust the Caps to get goals from anywhere else besides their top line? Do you trust Tom Wilson not to completely fuck up Game 7 when he comes back?
It could happen. These things always seems to reverse at some point. Even the Canucks got to a Final once. The Penguins just might be out of gas. Their defense might just be too creaky and the Caps might have sensed they can get behind it whenever they want. Maybe Sid doesn’t have any magic jewels left in his bag.
But which way would you wager?
Lightning Beat Bruins 4-1
We’ll save most of our thoughts for the eulogy, but the Bruins might have been the biggest mirage we’ve seen in a long time. They were one line and a goalie playing well, and because that one line was so other worldly it masked all their other problems. But when that one line couldn’t go for three a night, they got utterly stomped.
The hockey season is long enough that there’s plenty of time to outthink yourself. The Bolts were the best team before the season started, and there really was never a reason to think they were otherwise other than boredom and injuries. They have four lines and three pairings, though someone is going to expose Dan Girardi and Anton Stralman. It won’t be the Caps or Penguins though, at least not the Caps. We should be all in for a Lightning-Jets Final, not only because it would piss NBC off to no end and you’d get many hockey writer tears about not being able to go to Nashville or Vegas on the company dime, but because it would be a Final packing more firepower than any since at least 2013, probably 2010, and maybe even longer than that.
