Ranking all 23 series from the 2020 postseason

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The playoffs are over, and we made it all the way through. That’s pretty amazing, and the NHL deserves a ton of credit for pulling it off. An unprecedented 24-team, five-round tournament for the Stanley Cup and it pretty much went off without a hitch.

But while every one of the 23 series we saw was amazing on some level just for existing in the first place, we can admit that some were better than others. A lot better, in at least a few cases. That’s how it always is in the playoffs, when a few series emerge as legendary battles we’ll remember for years to come, and others are forgotten almost immediately. Mix in an extra round, and eight additional teams, and your hit-to-miss ratio is going to go haywire.

So today, let’s remember each one of the postseason series we just saw, by ranking them all from worst to best. We’ll count the qualifying round as the postseason because when teams are playing win-or-go-home games, that’s what it is. We won’t count the round-robin because nobody cared. That gives us 23 options to work with, and we’ll start our list the same way the league started its postseason all those weeks ago…

23. Hurricanes over Rangers (Qualifying)

The very first series to take the ice had its moments, including some instant bad blood. It was also a mismatch, with the Rangers holding a lead for just three minutes in a series that ended up being the only sweep of the extended postseason.

22. Islanders over Panthers (Qualifying)

The series that you always forgot when you were going over the qualifying matchups, barely remembered when it was happening, and have no recollection of today. The Panthers didn’t quit when they were down 2-0, and their Game 3 victory prevented a sweep and keeps this one out of the bottom spot. But it just seemed to annoy the Islanders, who rolled to a Game 4 win and put the Panthers, and the Dale Tallon era, out of their misery.

21. Avalanche over Coyotes (Round 1)

There’s something to be said for a genuine mismatch, one where the better team can exert its will and just steamroll a helpless opponent. That something is “please end this,” which is what the Coyotes players seemed to be saying in Games 4 and 5 when they lost by identical 7-1 scores that may have actually flattered them. Man, we all thought, as long as the Avalanche stay healthy they’ll be unstoppable.

20. Flames over Jets (Qualifying)

This old-school Smythe Division matchup had all sorts of potential, but a lot of it went out the window in Game 1. Mark Scheifele’s gruesome injury at the hands skates of Matthew Tkachuk was the biggest story of the postseason’s early days and certainly added some bad blood and controversy to the series, while Winnipeg’s gutsy Game 2 win seemed to set the stage for something special. But it was all over after that, as the depleted Jets lost Games 3 and 4 by a combined score of 10-2.

19. Islanders over Capitals (Round 1)

Yes, it’s our second Islander series already, which might be viewed as an insult by their fans. We’ll save the dozenth iteration of the “Are the Islanders boring?” debate for another day, except to say: Yeah, they’re really boring when they’re facing an opponent who doesn’t even seem to want to be there. The Caps were missing Nicklas Backstrom for most of this one, which didn’t help, but when you’re getting outscored 17-8 I’m not sure how much one player matters. The Islanders were just better.

18. Canucks over Wild (Qualifying)

The first three games featured a pair of shutouts, plus a Game 2 that wasn’t as close as the final score suggests. Game 4 was legitimately great, a 5-4 thriller that featured a late Vancouver goal to force overtime and a near-instant sudden death winner. But if that game is all you remember from this series, you’re not missing a ton.

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Puck Soup: Fading Stars

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The Lightning surge to a 2-1 series lead
- The dramatic but brief return of Steven Stamkos
- Who'll win the Conn Smythe?
- Comparing the NHL's bubble product to the NBA and other sports
- Running down the awards, including the worst votes
- Alex Pietrangelo puts the pressure on the Blues
- Plus Bob Boughner, the 500 best albums of all-time, and a quiz

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes (including next week's insane ultra-specific draft) by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

A way-too-in-depth look at 25 years of Stanley Cup handoffs

I’ve always been kind of fascinated with the Stanley Cup handoff. The moment where Gary Bettman calls over winning team’s captain to accept the Cup is great, once you get past the boring speech and awkward photograph. But it’s what happens after that really gets me, as the captain chooses a teammate to receive the first handoff, then that guy chooses who goes next, and on down the line.

That first pass from Bettman to the captain is cool, but can feel corporate or manufactured (and occasionally downright awkward). The handoffs that follow are all about the players, and the way they decide to handle it can tell us a lot about how the team dynamic really works.

That’s a pretty awesome tradition. It’s a relatively new one, too. For most of NHL history, the captain got the Cup and his teammates just kind of mobbed around him. The first time most of us remember a handoff having some thought behind it was when the Oilers made a point of giving it to Steve Smith in 1987, a year after his notorious own goal ended their season. And it didn’t really become an annual thing until 1994, when the NHL formalized the Bettman process we’re used to today.

If we go back to 1994, that gives us a nice round 25 seasons to work with. That feels like something we should work with. I already did a first-handoff ranking a few years ago, so let’s do what we tend to do around here and dig even deeper. Like, probably too deep. Can I interest you in some Cup handoff analytics?

I went through the last 25 Cup winners and made a note of the first five players to get the Cup after the captain. (I couldn’t find all five for two teams; I’m missing the fourth and fifth players for the ’96 Avalanche and the fifth for the 2000 Devils.) Then I went through those players to figure out how they rated in various categories.

Here’s what I went looking for, and what I thought I’d find:

How many seasons had the player been in the league? I’m assuming that veteran players get the Cup first.

How many seasons had the player been on that team? I’m guessing that franchise lifers will have the edge, although I can remember a few guys who were new to a team.

Is this the player’s first Cup? I’m assuming these guys are more likely to get an early handoff.

Was the player an OGWAC (Old Guy Without a Cup)? A combination of the first few categories. We’ll use the definition from this year’s rankings: 33 or older with at least ten years in the league. I’m thinking this will be the biggest single factor, with OGWACs going right to the front of the line.

Was the player a star? I made a note of whether the player was a Hall-of-Famer, had won a major award (Hart, Vezina or Norris), or had played in an all-star game. Stars should probably have advantage.

Did the player win the Conn Smythe that year? I’d think that players who just had a monster playoff will be more likely to get an early handoff.

We’ll be looking at players only, so we’re not counting owners (Mike Illitch got the Cup first for the ’97 Red Wings) or coaches (Scotty Bowman famously took a lap with the Cup in 2002). We are counting players who were injured or otherwise unable to play, since it turns out there are a lot of them. That includes Vladimir Konstantinov, who was recovering from a career-ending car accident when he got the Cup first for the 1998 Wings.

Sound interesting? Maybe not, but I’ve already done the work so you’re stuck with me. Let’s see what we can learn, and maybe make some predictions along the way.

Observation #1: Sorry, kids, veterans get the Cup first.

No big shocker here. The average first-handoff recipient has been in the league 13.36 seasons by the time they get the honor. Even that’s actually a little misleading, because it includes Viacheslav Fetisov, who was nearly 40 when he was the first Red Wing player to get the Cup in 1997 but had only been in the league eight years.

The only other two players with less than a decade of NHL experience to get the Cup first were Konstantinov in 1998 and Curtis Leschyshyn in 1996. Konstantinov was obviously a special case. As for Leschyshyn, at 26 he’s the youngest player to ever get the first handoff, and it’s not all that close. If you’re looking for the story behind that, there really isn’t one, except that he’d been friends with Joe Sakic since they broke in together with the Nordiques and the traditional first handoff protocol hadn’t really been cemented yet.

Once the first handoff is out of the way, the older guys still tend to dominate. The average player to get a second or third handoff has been in the league 11.72 seasons, while a fourth or fifth handoff averages 10.34.

That’s not to say that the kids never get their hands on the Cup early. But in 25 seasons and 122 handoffs, I couldn’t find a single rookie. And I only found one second-year player (Tomas Holmstrom, who got it third after a breakout postseason in 1998), and just one in his third year (Milan Hejduk went fifth in 2001).

What it means for this year: If the Stars win, you might assume that Miro Heiskanen would be a leading candidate given how good he’s been this year. But if he was, the Stars would be breaking with tradition. And that’s especially true given how many older options the Stars have.

OK, sure, but what if Heiskanen stays hot through the end of the final and wins the Conn Smythe? Well…

Observation #2: Being a star in your prime doesn’t really matter. Neither does the Conn Smythe.

This one surprised me a bit. I expected veterans to be prime candidates for early handoffs, especially if they hadn’t won a Cup before. But I figured that a team’s best players would be next in line. Not really, as it turns out. Or at least, it’s far from a sure thing.

For example, Drew Doughty wasn’t a top-five handoff in either of the Kings’ championship years. Patrick Kane never got higher than fifth for the Hawks (and that was in 2015, not in 2010 when he’d just scored the OT winner). Evgeni Malkin has never had a top-three handoff for the Penguins, and while Nicklas Lidstrom was captain for Detroit’s 2008 Cup win, he never got top-five honors in any of 1997, 1998 or 2002.

That’s not to say that big stars never get the Cup early. Future Hall-of-Famers accounted for 25 top-five handoffs, including going first eight times. But most of those were guys who were near the end of their career; the only times that the first handoff went to a star in his 20s would be Mike Modano in 1999 and Scott Niedermayer in 2003, and they were both 29. When it comes to the kiddie table, even the big names have to wait their turn.

Maybe more surprisingly, the Conn Smythe just doesn’t seem to matter at all. In the 18 years that the Conn Smythe was awarded to a player on the winning team that wasn’t the captain, not one has received first handoff honors. Only Brian Leetch in 1994 went second, and only Tim Thomas in 2011 went third. Until Ryan O’Reilly last year, a Conn Smythe winner hadn’t received top-five handoff honors since that Thomas year. And O’Reilly only went fifth.

Bottom line: The voters might do a better job on the Conn Smythe than on the Hart, but the players don’t seem to care.

What it means for this year: This is probably bad news if you have guys like Miro Heiskanen, Tyler Seguin, Brayden Point or Nikita Kucherov in your pool.

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Puck Soup: Stanley Cup, finally

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Thoughts and picks for Lightning vs. Stars
- We say farewell to the Islanders
- What went wrong in Vegas
- The Eric Staal trade
- Caps get a coach, Coyotes get a GM, Montgomery gets a second chance
- OUFL Tarantino films, and more...

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A Stanley Cup Final rooting guide for every other fan base

We’re almost there. After seven weeks in the bubble, zero positive tests, and some surprisingly solid hockey, we’ve got our Stanley Cup Final matchup. Just two teams remain.

Which means, of course, 30 teams on the sidelines. That makes it time for the annual Stanley Cup Final rooting guide, in which we go through each of the other teams to try to figure out which of the conference champions they should be throwing their support behind.

Most years, the results split out pretty close to 50-50. That didn’t happen last year, when the final delivered a matchup between an inspiring underdog and a favorite that was too easy to hate. I’m happy to report that this year’s matchup between the Stars and Lightning gets us back to something close to balance. That’s important, because if we’re all going to spend the next week yelling at each other over bandwagons we just joined, it should at least be a fair fight.

As always, these are merely suggestions, and you are of course not obligated to follow them. If you disagree with my pick for your team, or just feel like you’d prefer rooting for someone else, simply fill out an appeals form and send it to the head office. We’ll notify you of our decision by next month.

In the meantime, here’s who to root for …

Anaheim Ducks
Put it this way: If Corey Perry wins the Cup, everyone has to talk about 2007 a lot. That’s a good thing for Anaheim fans, especially with those glory days feeling further away than ever right now. Add in longtime Duck Andrew Cogliano chasing his first ring, and this one’s easy.

Pick: Stars

Arizona Coyotes
Rick Bowness joined the Coyotes as an assistant in 1999 and was there for five years before getting a shot as head coach … for 20 whole games, before the owner demoted him so he could name himself head coach, despite never having coached before. It did not go great. The Coyotes are one of several teams that should be rooting for Rick Bowness.

Pick: Stars

Boston Bruins
It’s tempting to go with Dallas, thanks to the Anton Khudobin factor, not to mention that the Bruins got smoked by the Lightning. But that series was over so quickly it didn’t really have a chance to elicit as much bad blood as it could have, and seeing the Lightning lose in the final, while vaguely cathartic, wouldn’t really change the fact that they were a better team.

Besides, do Bruins fans really want to read a bunch of seven-year-old “trading away Tyler Seguin was a mistake” takes? Do you really want to have to see this clip a million times next month? Grit your teeth and root for the Lightning to win, so that beating them next year will feel like an even bigger deal.

Pick: Lightning

Buffalo Sabres
The easiest call on the list. The Stars are in a Stanley Cup Final? Sabres fans don’t just get to root against them, they get to wish every misery imaginable on them along the way. Oh, sorry, would that be over the line? That’s OK, it’s the Dallas Stars in the final, nobody notices when someone’s over the line.

Pick: Lightning

Calgary Flames
If the Lightning win and he’s healthy, the Conn Smythe will probably go to Calgary born-and-raised Brayden Point. That and the lingering resentment from a Round 1 loss to Dallas is more than enough.

Pick: Lightning

Carolina Hurricanes
Dallas, for three reasons:

1. Cities that stole teams from traditional markets in the ’90s should stick together.

2. Screw the Lightning, because Southeast Division rivalries never die.

3. If the Stars win, people will say the turning point was when an executive went on an expletive-laden tirade about the team’s best players, and let’s be honest, you could kind of imagine Tom Dundon doing that someday.

Pick: Stars

Chicago Blackhawks
The Hawks beat the Lightning in the 2015 final, but only after Ben Bishop got injured, so karma says Chicago fans should root for … wait, I didn’t think this through. Huh.

Do the Blackhawks and Stars even have a rivalry these days? Maybe not, but they did back in the Norris days, and I know Hawks fans have long memories.

Pick: Lightning

Colorado Avalanche
A team that barely beats you in seven games even though half your team is injured and you’re down to your third-string goalie, then rolls through the rest of the playoffs to win the Cup? You do not want that sort of regret in your life.

Pick: Lightning

Columbus Blue Jackets
I’m going with Dallas, for two reasons. First, a Stars win would be a reminder that low-scoring hockey can win. Only two teams in the league saw a combined total of fewer than 370 goals (for and against) in their games this year, a mark that even low-event teams like the Coyotes and Islanders couldn’t reach. Those two teams were the Stars and Blue Jackets, and they even scored an identical 180 goals along the way.

Also, the Blue Jackets’ sweep psychologically decimated the Lighting last year, and you’d hate to see them fully recover from that in just one season.

Pick: Stars

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A futile attempt to learn something from all four remaining teams

We’re down to four teams left in the playoffs, and that means it’s time for one of the NHL’s most cherished annual traditions: Looking at the final four and deciding that everyone needs to be just like them.

It’s a copycat league, after all, and we’ve already tried to figure out what lessons we can learn from individual teams. Teams love to point at the winners and say “Let’s be that”. And with two rounds left, we should be able to find some key elements that all four contenders have in common.

Or at least, you’d think we’d be able to do that. This year’s final four turns out to have an annoying habit of using three teams to teach us something important, then having the last team show up and ruin it. Trust me, it gets annoying. So today, let’s comb through some of the important lessons that we can learn from the final four, as long as you ignore one of them.

Lesson 1: The NHL is a two-goalie league now

The lesson: Legendary teams of that past would ride one goalie all the way through the playoffs. But while that worked in the days of Brodeur, Roy and Belfour, today’s contenders need two goalies they can trust. Between injuries, fatigue, slumps and the dreaded back-to-back, you’re going to need both guys to play, and they have to be able to play well.

Look at the Stars, where Ben Bishop put up a Vezina-caliber regular season, but has been hurt for most of the playoffs. Anton Khudobin has stepped in and played just well enough to keep the Stars in the running while they wait to see if Bishop can return. Then there’s the Islanders, who’ve spent the last two seasons deploying a platoon system in goal. Semyon Varlamov has mostly handled the load in the playoffs, but when he started to falter against the Flyers, Barry Trotz didn’t hesitate to switch to Thomas Greiss for a winner-take-all Game 7. It worked, with Greiss posting a shutout. And when Greiss struggled in Game 1 against Tampa, it was right back to Varlamov.

And then there’s the most obvious example: the Golden Knights, who went out and got Robin Lehner even though they already had a goalie with tons of playoff experience. The decision to go with a two-goalie system hasn’t exactly been a popular one with everyone involved, but it’s working.

Teams around the NHL are already learning this lesson. Even the Canadiens, with the highest-paid goalie in the league, went out and traded for a reliable backup. That’s the modern NHL, where you need two goalies.

Except…: The Lightning are going old-school with Andrei Vasilevskiy, and it’s working fine. He’s their undisputed number one, with a big contract kicking in next year, and it’s his net. In fact, there’s a decent chance you’re not even sure who the Lightning’s back even is. It’s Curtis McElhinney, if you’re wondering, but the 37-year-old hasn’t seen the ice for so much as a minute this postseason. And barring an injury, it’s almost impossible to imagine him getting a start.

Apparently, you can win just fine with one goalie after all. Huh. OK, on to the next lesson.

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Let’s all boo the 2020 Playoff Disappointment Team

We’ve finished two rounds of the NHL playoffs. Or maybe three, if you count the play-in. Did we ever decide if that counted? I’m not sure we did. I feel like we all kind of just collectively decided not to think about it, and I respect that.

Either way, a tournament that started with 24 teams has seen 20 of them go home. Chances are, that includes your team. And you know what that means: It’s time to pick one specific player to point at while yelling “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”

OK, that might be a bit extreme. Still, blaming an entire lost season on one guy having a bad few weeks is an important hockey tradition, and we’re all looking for ways to cling to normalcy these days. So let’s do it. Let’s break out the annual Playoff Disappointment Team.

We do this every year, but this season comes with a twist. Since we’ve had 20 teams eliminated, that means we can build a 20-man roster using exactly one player from each of the losers. In some cases, that’s going to make for a tough call, since let’s just say a few of these teams bring more candidates to the table than others. That’s OK, we’re up for the challenge. Unlike these chumps.

Get out your torches and pitchforks, and let’s start blaming some world-class athletes for not living up to our standards.

Goaltenders

Jordan Binnington, Blues
We’ll start with one of the more obvious picks, as Binnington just couldn’t recapture the magic from last year’s run. In fact, we may as well just say it: He was bad. Not streaky, not inconsistent… bad. His final stat line includes an .851 save percentage and 4.72 GAA. Those are numbers that would get you benched in the 1980s, let alone today.

But maybe most impressive of all, he claimed a spot next to Wayne Gretzky’s 92 goals and Bobby Orr’s +124 on the list of unbreakable hockey records by becoming the first goalie in NHL history to finish a postseason 0-and-5.

Pavel Francouz, Avalanche
This feels like a weird pick, and maybe it is, because it’s hard to find anyone on the beaten-and-battered Avalanche who really played badly. And to be clear, we’re not blaming Francouz for getting hurt. But before he followed Philipp Grubauer to the injured list, Francouz stepped in to start the first four games of the Dallas series. And he was, well, not great. He gave up 15 goals while posting an ugly .862 save percentage, and the Avalanche found themselves in a 3-1 hole that they couldn’t quite climb out of. Then he got hurt, and maybe we’ll find out he was less than 100% during the series. But as it stands, it was a rough ending to what had been a surprisingly strong season by a 30-year-old who’s still technically a rookie.

Hockey fans know that sometimes, your team just loses to a hot goalie on the other side. The unfortunate truth is that it can work the other way, and a cold goalie can cost the better team a series. That may have happened here.

Defense

Jack Johnson, Penguins
The Penguins came into the postseason with high hopes, then made a quick exit at the hands of a 12-seed. Not surprisingly, they’ve got plenty of candidates for this squad, and if you wanted to go with a bigger name like Kris Letang or even Evgeni Malkin, you’d have a case. But our spot goes to Johnson, who’s disastrous series had observers tossing around phrases like “fundamentally hopeless”. When your GM has to specifically defend your continued employment after the series, you’ve had a rough postseason.

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In a copycat NHL, 8 lessons to learn from the 8 remaining teams

The NHL is a copycat league.

We know that, because we hear it all the time. That’s especially true around playoff time, as the list of eliminations grows and those teams try to figure out what went wrong. Inevitably, as we narrow down the field and eventually crown a champion, everyone comes up with the same plan: Point at whoever won and say “do what they did”.

Of course, those lessons keep changing. If a big team wins the Cup, everyone wants size. If it’s a smaller team, we pivot to speed and skill. You need a stud blueliner, unless you don’t. Never spend big on goaltending, unless you should. Build around veteran depth, but stay young. Make trades, but don’t disrupt chemistry, and sign lots of free agents, but don’t mess up your cap.

What lessons will we learn from 2020? Nobody knows yet. But based on the teams that are left, there are some lessons that fans can hope the league will learn. After all, some ideas and concepts just make the NHL more fun, and all else being equal we should hope that teams decide to copy those. So today, let’s take a look at the eight teams left, and take a fan’s perspective on the copycat lesson we’d like to see everyone learn from them.

(Will it all be wishful thinking when GMs inevitably include that the answer is “more grit”? Yes, but shut up, let us have hope.)

The team: Vegas Golden Knights

The lesson: You can still trade your way to a championship.

Remember trading? Trading was fun. For you kids out there, teams used to occasionally exchange assets, often in large transactions that we used to call blockbusters. This was back before the salary cap made every GM’s job too hard. Ask your grandparents, they’ll tell you.

OK, I’m getting dramatic here, and this is a topic I may have already mentioned once or twice or roughly a million times. Trading is still part of the NHL, even if we don’t see the sort of wide-ranging moves that we used to. But for many teams, it doesn’t seem to be a priority. Build through the draft, the thinking goes, and then supplement with a few well-timed moves only when the moment’s right.

The Knights didn’t do that. Granted, they kind of couldn’t; being an expansion team has a way of limiting your options. I doubt many teams are going to bother with trying to copy a team that’s only existed for three years. But it’s still worth pointing out how aggressive the Knights have been when it comes to making trades, not just around their expansion draft but in the seasons since. They went big for Max Pacioretty. They won the Mark Stone sweepstakes. And this year they went out and got Robin Lehner even though they already had a goalie. That seems to be paying off. Guess they had to take a stab at it.

Again, nobody can point at the Knights and say “copy everything they did,” because expansion drafts aren’t an option for anyone outside Seattle. But if they win it all in Year 3, it’s at least going to get tougher for GMs to tell us about how they just can’t be expected to make important trades anymore. (Especially at the deadline, but we’ll hit that point again in a little bit.)

The team: Vancouver Canucks

The lesson: Offense isn’t the enemy.

This one’s not complicated. Defense might win championships, but goals are fun, and if you watch the Canucks you’re going to see more goals in a typical game than you will for any other contender.

The Canucks scored 228 goals in the regular season, good for second in the West behind Colorado. But they also gave up 217, more than any other team that’s still standing. At nearly 6.5 combined goals per game, the Canucks lead the remaining teams by a decent margin.

I’m not naive enough to think that a Canucks Cup win would change the defense-first mentality that permeates the league – that ship sailed decades ago. There are no offense-friendly NHL coaches. There are only defensive coaches who can’t get their teams to lock it down as much as they want.

Still, we can hold out hope that an unexpected Canucks run might at least remind a few coaches – or the GMs that hire them – that the idea is to put the puck into the other team’s net more often than it goes in yours, and that a 5-4 win still counts as a win. Wishful thinking? Probably, but we need all the help we can get.

The team: Philadelphia Flyers

The lesson: You can trust your young goalie (maybe).

Goalies are weird. That’s not exactly breaking news to longtime fans, but try explaining the position to a newbie. The goalie can be the most important player in any given matchup, with the ability to single-handedly win or lose a game or even a series. But we’re never completely sure who’s good and who isn’t, and sometimes guys we’ve never heard of become superstars, at least temporarily.

And oh yeah: goalie prospects take forever to develop. Your team drafts a guy, you get excited hearing about how good they’ll be someday, and then they just … disappear. Not completely, of course. But while your team’s best forward and blue line prospects start making their NHL debuts within a season or two, if not immediately, that goalie just lingers off in the distance. For years.

Look around the league. Thatcher Demko just finished his first year as a full-time NHLer, six years after he was drafted. Ilya Samsonov took five. The KHL means Ilya Sorokin still hasn’t arrived, and he’s already 25. Your favorite team’s best goalie is probably in a similar boat.

It didn’t used to be this way. Top goaltending prospects used to show up fairly quickly, just like other positions. Tom Barrasso had a Vezina-winning season at 18. Patrick Roy’s big breakout came when he was 20. Martin Brodeur’s Calder season came at 21. Grant Fuhr was the Vezina runner-up at 19.

Enter Carter Hart, the Flyers goalie who debuted at 20 and has established himself as a star despite just turning 22 this month. That’s old school, and it’s been fun to watch a team make a run with a baby-faced goalie. And hey, it’s not like the Flyers haven’t watched a young rookie have some playoff success before.

Granted, not every team has a Carter Hart waiting in the wings, and nobody wants to see young goalies rushed into starting jobs before they’re ready. But maybe not every goalie needs six years in the minors and three more as a backup before they’re ready to handle the big job. Watching Hart dominate might help nudge us back to trusting the kids.

(Just please get him to stop talking about how he grew up watching Carey Price, it’s making me feel very old.)

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Puck Soup: Playoff pasta

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We react to Tuukka Rask going home
- Thoughts on all the series so far
- Where will the big-name UFAs end up?
- More NBC guys said dumb things
- The return of the $25,000 Pierre-amid
- OUFL, pasta edition
- And a goodbye to Dale Hawerchuk

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Weekend rankings: Sorting through the early contenders and pretenders

Yeah, we’re doing another postseason power ranking, even though this is a feature that was built for the regular season. Being a hockey writer when the playoffs are in August is like being a referee in overtime: The rules go out the window.

The last time we tried this was two weeks ago when each team had all of one whole game of qualifying action to go on. Somewhat amazingly, those one-game-old rankings hold up kind of well – all five teams we had ranked at the bottom lost their qualifying round, all five teams at the top are still alive, and our decision to rank the Maple Leafs as being in more trouble than the Canucks turned out to be prescient. Is it… is it possible that I’m only good at this during the playoffs? That doesn’t sound likely. Quick, let’s do another set of rankings and put that thought to rest.

It was an interesting weekend in the bubble, as we saw our first high-profile departure from a star who decided he’d had enough. Tuukka Rask’s exit came as a shock, especially with the announcement coming just hours before the Bruins took the ice for Game 3. He’d made some waves earlier in the week with his comments about a lack of playoff atmosphere, but not many of us saw this coming. Don Sweeney maybe did, at least based on his comments in the aftermath, and it should go without saying that Rask has the right to put his family first.

The Rask story came a few days after we saw a very different kind of surprise exit, this one from Canadiens’ coach Claude Julien, who was hospitalized with chest pains and will miss at least the rest of this round. Both the Bruins and the Canadiens responded to adversity with impressive wins, but the long-term impact remains to be seen.

Under normal circumstances, this is where I’d insert the standard boilerplate about how some things are more important than sports, and that health and family are always the priority. But it’s 2020, and I’m guessing you don’t need a reminder of that. The NHL has done an admirable job of putting this tournament together, maybe the best of all the major sports leagues. But this week was a reminder that it won’t be easy, and that despite having been at this for weeks, we’re somehow still only halfway through Round 1.

Is that too early to be picking favorites? Of course it is. But it’s August and it’s the playoffs and we’re doing this anyway.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed toward a summer November of socially distanced keg stands and fountain pool parties.

One worry I had going into the first round was that we’d see a big disconnect between the teams that had just fought through a qualifying series and those that been playing in the round robin for seeding. Those latter games had featured a noticeable lack of intensity compared to the do-or-die variety, and I wondered if we’d get a week into this round and find all of the so-called favorites trailing because they just couldn’t keep up.

Nope. Or at least, not really. A few of the favorites did get off to slow starts, most noticeably the Blues and Capitals. But even those series didn’t look like anyone was going at half-speed, so at least one pre-tournament worry seems to have been unfounded.

5. Philadelphia Flyers – Whatever happened in Sunday’s game, there was no question about what would stand as the highlight of the weekend:

No words are necessary. #AnytimeAnywhere | @oskarlindblom pic.twitter.com/EyJxL5i5DM

— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) August 16, 2020

Hell yeah, Oskar Lindblom.

The Flyers may have been inspired heading into Game 3. Or maybe they’re just the better team. That’s what the regular season records say, as well as the seeding. It’s not what most of the action in the first two games had suggested, as these two teams went back and forth. The Flyers needed Sunday’s win after Friday’s no-show, and they got it, but this series still feels like it has a few twists and turns left in it, and the Flyers had better find some offense.

4. Boston Bruins – So what do we do with the Bruins? Despite what many of their loudest fans seem to think, Rask is a very good goaltender with a history of postseason success. (He has a better career postseason save percentage than Henrik Lundqvist, Jonathan Quick, Patrick Roy or Dominik Hasek, so the narrative that he doesn’t come through in the clutch is a mystery.) They’re going to miss him.

How much? That’s the critical question, and the answer is we’re not really sure. Jaroslav Halak is one of the stronger backups in the league, so the Bruins are in better shape than a lot of teams would be. But being a great backup isn’t quite the same as being a great starter, and as good as he is, Halak isn’t Rask.

You could make the argument that Rask wasn’t Rask either, given where his head was at this month. Maybe under the circumstances, Halak will be an upgrade. Or maybe he’ll be close enough that it won’t really matter. But the Bruins are in tough against a really good Hurricanes team, and they’re still missing David Pastrnak.

Can they overcome all of it to make it out of the round, and beyond? I’ve got them in the top five, so that tells you that I still believe. But it’s a tougher call than it would have been a week ago.

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The bandwagon-hopper’s guide to the (real) playoffs

Welcome to the playoffs. Well, the real playoffs. Was that last round the real playoffs too? I think it might have been, but nobody’s quite sure. This has all been very confusing.

One thing we do know: Half the league has been eliminated, which means there are a lot of fans out there who might be looking for a bandwagon. That’s always a bit controversial, but we’re not here to judge anyone. You waited five months for the playoffs, if you need a team to invest some emotion in then you do what you have to do.

But who should you pick? It’s a big decision, and we’re here to help.

As always, a good bandwagon pick is going to have a few factors working for it. They’ll be a good team, because nobody wants to bandwagon an early loser, but not too good, because front-runners are the worst. They’ll have at least a few players that are easy to root for, preferably including an OGWAC or two, and not too many guys you can’t stand. In a perfect world they’ll be an entertaining team to watch; especially when you’re not completely invested, you’d rather watch a 6-5 win than a 1-0 slog. And ideally they’ll have an existing fan base that would welcome some support.

These are suggestions only, of course. You’re free to pick your own bandwagon team, or to refuse to pick one at all and then spend the next two months loudly reminding everyone of that fact. But let’s run down the options, just in case.

16. St. Louis Blues

Why you should get on board: It’s become a bit of a tradition to rank the defending champs near the bottom of these lists, and for good reason: That’s classic front running, and no self-respecting bandwagon-hopper should want to be part of that.

That said, you could make a very solid case for the Blues as a perfectly acceptable pick. Remember, this is the team that we had ranked No. 1 on last year’s list. A big piece of that was based on their half-century Cup drought, but not all of it, and a lot of those factors still apply. They’re an interesting team, they’re full of good stories, their GM won’t stop making trades, and their coach can beat you up. They haven’t had to come back from last place this year, but they did endure the scary Jay Bouwmeester situation, and it would be great to see him get another day with the Cup.

Why you shouldn’t: So could you bandwagon this team? Sure. Should you? Maybe. But I’m still ranking them last, and I have a good reason: Their fans have earned it. They spent 53 years as the league’s reasonably well-liked but forgettable kid brother, and now they’re the champions. They deserve everything that comes with that, including a strong dose of jealousy-fueled spite from everyone else.

Bottom line: Boo those stupid Blues, they’ve been riding high for too long!

15. Chicago Blackhawks

Why you should get on board: They’re underdogs, I guess. And based on what they just did to the Oilers, they’re pretty good ones.

Why you shouldn’t: Two reasons. First, they shouldn’t be in the playoffs. They had the 23rd best record in the league, and while there’s absolutely a certain Team Chaos appeal to seeing them knock off a few favorites, having them actually win the Cup would just render the season even more meaningless than it usually is.

And speaking of Cups, oh right, they already have three in the last decade. They’re not a great team now, so this wouldn’t be a front-runner pick, but do you really want to get on board with a fan base that’s going to react to a championship by shrugging and then trying to figure out how they’ll make more room in the trophy case?

Bottom line: Here’s a good rule of thumb for bandwagon picks: If you want to go with an underdog, don’t choose a recent dynasty.

14. Montreal Canadiens

Why you should get on board: Like Chicago, they were a bad team during the season that probably shouldn’t be in the playoffs. But with no recent championships, and not a whole lot of recent relevance, you’d at least be rooting for a team that needs this. If you’re going to go with a 12-seed longshot, the Habs are the better choice. And as a bonus, they’re one of those teams that the analytics folks think might be better than their record, so the odds of a longshot run aren’t quite as long as they appear.

Why you shouldn’t: I say some version of this every year, but it’s worth repeating: Montreal fans do not want you on their bandwagon. Habs fandom is its own kind of thing, and it’s pretty great, but you’re going to have a hard time fitting in. And if they do win it all, room on the bandwagon is going to be tough to come by.

Bottom line: Also, a Habs championship would infuriate the rest of Canada. I’ll leave it to you whether that’s a plus or a minus.

13. Boston Bruins

Why you should get on board: They’re a really good team that finished first in the regular season standings. They’re also only the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, so apparently they’re kind of underdogs? Look, don’t think too hard about it, just embrace the only chance you’ll ever get to cheer for a Presidents’ Trophy winner that doesn’t have home ice.

Why you shouldn’t: They were one win away from the Cup last year, so while they’re not quite as big a front-runner pick as the Blues, they’re pretty close. They have Brad Marchand, and there’s a good chance you have some feelings about him by now. Then again, they also have Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak and maybe one last year of Zdeno Chara, so the likability factor is higher than you might expect.

Bottom line: They kind of got screwed hard by the round robin format, so if you’re looking for a somewhat flimsy excuse to get on the bandwagon of one of the best teams in hockey, there’s an opening here.

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Puck Soup: The way the ball bounces

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We react to the draft lottery, which was rigged
- Thoughts on the Leafs losing when it matters, again
- Greg and Ryan make their picks for the next round
- And probably lots more, but I left early because I'm on vacation this week

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

Grab Bag: Week one thoughts, a lottery idea and Tocchet spaghetti

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- My thoughts on the first week of the NHL's risky return
- A modest proposal for how to handle the draft lottery reveal
- An obscure player who did his best work in the playoffs
- Weird goalies in the comedy stars
- And Rick Tocchet makes spaghetti in a YouTube classic

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Puck Soup: Our first look at the postseason

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Our thoughts on the NHL's return, what's worked and what hasn't
- Breaking down each series
- Are we surprised that the Oilers and Penguins are on the verge of elimination?
- Matt Dumba's speech and the NHL's baby steps towards social activism
- Draft lottery, chapter two
- The best and worst Nintendo characters.
- And more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

Puck Soup: The playoff prediction episode

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We make our predictions for all eight play-in series plus the round robin
- Our reactions to the first exhibitions games
- On week in the bubble, and it's so far so good
- The John Chayka mess
- Debating the best and worst bakery products
- And more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

Who to cheer for (or against) if your team wasn't invited to the postseason

Hockey fans have finally had their first taste of NHL action in four months, sort of, thanks to this week’s exhibition action. But the main event doesn’t start until the weekend when the most bizarre postseason in history kicks off. And every fan will be on the edge of their seat watching it all play out.

Well, unless you’re a fan of one of the seven teams that didn’t get invited. It’s been a rough year for you folks. First, you had to watch your teams suffer through miserable seasons. Then came the unprecedented pause, which was awful for everyone. But now, while the rest of us are getting amped up for a wild postseason, those seven fan bases are trudging towards month five of what could end up being a nine-month offseason. Also, you somehow all lost the draft lottery. As I said, rough.

Today, we’re going to make an extra effort to include those teams, with a playoff rooting guide that’s designed especially for them. For each team, we’re going to do three things. We’ll suggest a team they could definitely root for. We’ll offer up a backup team, one that might be a little tougher case to make but should still work. And then we’ll close out with one team that the fan base can actively root against, because let’s face it, spite-watching the playoffs is usually the best way to enjoy them.

We’ll use a different team for each of the three slots with no repeats, which (spoiler warning) is going to ramp up the difficultly more than a little for certain teams. Let’s see where this goes.

San Jose Sharks

You could cheer for: The Penguins. It’s the Patrick Marleau factor. Sharks fans got to watch him try to win a Cup for 20 years, plus one brief comeback that seemed like a good idea at the time. The relationship had its ups and downs, but surely any Sharks fan would love to see him get his first Cup. (You could say the same for Joe Pavelski and the Stars, by the way. The Sharks are the league’s leading exporters of OGWAC stories.)

Or you could try: The Capitals. First, they’re all sorts of fun to watch. Second, they employ Ilya Kovalchuk, and if he had a great run and won his first Cup, it would probably annoy Kings fans. And third, there was a time when the Caps were the Sharks – the team with a ton of talent that never quite broke through, then fell apart and missed the playoffs to signal that their window was closed. That was back in 2014, and they bounced back so quickly that everyone just kind of forgot about writing them off. If you’re still holding out hope that this version of the Sharks can win a Cup without a total teardown, the Caps aren’t bad inspiration.

While rooting against: The Bruins. Look, not to beat a dead horse, but the Sharks should have traded Joe Thornton to Boston at the deadline. They didn’t, and both sides had their reasons, but Thornton was bummed out, and if Boston just goes and wins without him, it just makes it even worse.

Also, Brad Marchand.

Detroit Red Wings

You could cheer for: The Lightning. Yes, there’s a recent playoff history here, with the Lightning beating the Red Wings in each of Detroit’s last two trips to the playoffs. But when you just finished one of the worst seasons in modern NHL history, anything that reminds you of what it feels like to be in the playoffs is a good thing. Both teams know the pain of racking up a monster regular season and then crashing and burning in the first round. And maybe most importantly, the Lightning are just a really good, exciting team to watch and they should go deep into the playoffs, and Detroit fans deserve that after what they just went through. Red Wings fans can have a little winning, as a treat.

Or you could try: The Canadiens. I’m no math wizard, but if a team wins the Stanley Cup and you beat that team four straight times during the season, I’m pretty sure that means you’re the champion.

While rooting against: The Avalanche. I know time heals all wounds and they’re not even in the same conference anymore, but if there’s a world where the Red Wings and Avalanche can be friends, then I don’t want to live in it.

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One sentence to get hyped for all 64 possible round-one matchups

We’re just a few days away from the return of the NHL, with the start of a play-in round to determine which four teams in each conference will advance to the first round of the playoffs, plus a round robin to determine seeding for the remaining teams. It’s a tournament format we’ve never seen before, and after four months without hockey, nobody would blame you if you find yourself desperately looking forward to that first week.

Where people might blame you would be if you were already looking even further ahead, and trying to figure out who’s going to play who in the round of 16. After all, we’ve got sixteen teams playing for survival and eight more playing for their seeding, and no idea how it might all shake out. Do the math, and we wind up with 64 possible matchups for what will officially be considered round one. If you really wanted to start thinking ahead, you’d have to consider every one of them.

Would that be crazy? No! But would it be? Yeah, a little, sure, but I’m doing it anyway. Look, you’ve seen what I’ve been up to for the last few months, it’s possible that I’m just a little bit too excited to have actual hockey to write about again. We’re doing this.

And by “this,” I mean coming up with one single sentence to pump the tires of all 64 potential first-round matchups. It probably goes without saying that this will be easier for some matchups than others, but that’s fine. Got to get those creativity muscles back into game shape, after all. Let’s start thinking positive and figure out why each of these 64 matchups is worth looking forward to.

Canadiens vs. Bruins

Quite possibly the greatest rivalry in hockey history, and it has a way of transforming even run-of-the-mill stuff like too-many-men penalties and handshake lines into something dramatic, so you don’t need my help to sell this one.

Canadiens vs. Lightning

The last time they met in the playoffs, they gave us a controversial overtime goal that spawned offside review, so whatever this series produced couldn’t possibly be any worse.

Canadiens vs. Capitals

It would be a 10th anniversary rematch of the only playoff meeting between the teams, which was one of the most memorable upsets of the cap era (with an added dose of Ilya Kovalchuk intrigue).

Canadiens vs. Flyers

They’ve had a couple of meetings in the cap era, but the real memories come from the 1980s, when the rivalry was so intense that the NHL had to make up new rules to get them to stop pummeling each other.

Coyotes vs. Blues

This series would feature the top two pending UFAs in Taylor Hall and Alex Pietrangelo, and there might only be enough money left in a flat cap world for whoever wins.

Coyotes vs. Avalanche

Sometimes the story of a series is a simple one, like when the highest-scoring roster in a conference faces the second-stingiest defensive team and we get to test that whole “defense is what wins in the playoffs” theory.

Coyotes vs. Golden Knights

This was the desert-based rivalry the NHL had in mind when the Golden Knights first arrived, before they wandered off and decided to feud with the California teams instead.

Coyotes vs. Stars

Phil Kessel vs. Tyler Seguin has never not been fun.

Hurricanes vs. Bruins

It would be a rematch from last year’s Eastern Conference finals that should have been so much better than it actually was, plus it would be fun when the Canes showed up in Whaler uniforms just to confuse everyone.

Hurricanes vs. Lightning

Admit it, two Cup-winning Southern contenders having a playoff series in an empty arena in Canada would be pretty hilarious.

Hurricanes vs. Capitals

Last year’s opening round series was amazing and this one could be a ton of fun, with a ready-made revenge narrative for the Capitals (but maybe also Andrei Svechnikov?).

Hurricanes vs. Flyers

Get ready for roughly a million photos of a 20-something Rod Brind’Amour with his shirt off.

Blackhawks vs. Blues

One of the oldest and best rivalries in hockey would be rekindled, and having it play out in August lowers the risk of any holiday-themed massacres.

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The chaos lover’s rooting guide to the playoffs and lottery

We finally know what the NHL will look like when the season resumes, and I have to say, I’m pretty sure my favorite team is set up to dominate.

No, not the Maple Leafs. I mean my other favorite team: Team Chaos.

I’ve been on the Team Chaos bandwagon for years, and they’ve come through with some pretty special seasons. There was “expansion team rolls over the league and makes the final,” and “terrible team takes Sidney Crosby’s dynasty to overtime in Game 7 of the conference final” and “128-point juggernaut gets swept in the first round.” Unlike some other teams I could mention, Team Chaos rarely lets me down.

But this year? This year could be something else. The league’s new format seems like it was designed by Team Chaos representatives. We’ve taken an unprecedented 24-team format with a postseason round that may or may not count as the playoffs and combined it with the potential for a double-lottery that could see one of the league’s best teams win the first overall pick despite finishing top ten in the standings. The potential scenarios in play boggle the mind.

We don’t even have to get into the real-world situations that could cause legitimate chaos, such as an outbreak of positive tests or players refusing to report. Let’s pretend that everything plays out exactly the way the league wants it to. That could still lead us down some truly bizarre paths.

Today, we’re going to explore some of those possibilities. Here are 15 of the weirdest scenarios I could come up with, and how appealing they would be to a diehard Team Chaos fan.

Scenario: Carey Price single-handedly wins the Cup

One of my favorite movie moments is the diner scene from “Mulholland Drive.” Two characters we don’t know meet for lunch and one of them, clearly disturbed, explains a nightmare he’s been having. In the dream, he walks out of the diner and down the alleyway behind it, at which point a horrifying figure appears and he dies. He wants to confront his fear by seeing what’s really back there — “to get rid of this god-awful feeling.” With his friend trailing him, the man gathers his courage. Then he walks out of the diner and down the alleyway behind it, at which point a horrifying figure appears and he dies.

The scene is terrifying because there’s no twist. There’s no misdirection. The movie tells you exactly what’s going to happen and why you should be afraid of it, and then it unfolds precisely as promised. And somehow, that makes it so much scarier than any surprise could have been.

The NHL version of the figure behind the diner is Carey Price, who is apparently the scariest goaltender in the world. He’s been mentioned by name in multiple objections to the play-in format. This despite the fact that it’s been years since the numbers suggest he’s been an elite goaltender, or even an especially good one. Forget about the stats or the standings or even what your own eyes tell you. Carey Price is the monster in your nightmare — and he’s going to get you.

And that means there’s nothing scarier than having all our fears turn out to be exactly right, as Price takes the ice and immediately Voltrons himself into 1986 Patrick Roy and 1971 Ken Dryden and 1984 Steve Penney and 2010 Jaroslav Halak and 1950s Jacques Plante, then goes five rounds without allowing a single goal while every GM in the league screams “I TOLD YOU SO” into the void.

Chaos meter: 80/100. This one’s pretty darn good, but there are so many other options that I have to leave some room at the top of the scale. Onwards …

Scenario: We get a Cup Final rematch between the Blues and Bruins

It’s been months since anyone looked at the standings, so it’s easy enough to forget that the Bruins and Blues had the best records in their conferences. In theory, if everything goes according to expectations, they’d meet again in the final.

Will everything go according to expectations? Not according to pretty much everyone; we’re all expecting plenty of upsets, thanks to short series and rusty teams. But maybe we get a curveball and just end up with a rematch of the classic seven-game 2019 Final. Only this time, in October instead of June.

It would result in a good matchup, but the timing would feel all wrong. Kind of like a Brad Marchand line change.

Chaos meter: 10/100. Would this be kind of cool? Sure. Would it be chaos? Let’s just say we can do a lot better.

Scenario: The Presidents’ Trophy champion Boston Bruins are the fourth seed in their own conference

This is the better Bruins’ scenario if you’re on the Team Chaos bandwagon.

Here’s a fun fact about history’s Presidents’ Trophy winners: They’ve always been the top seed, with home ice throughout the playoffs. They had to be; that was the only way it could work. But this year, thanks to the weird decision to let a three-game round robin determine the seeding for each conference’s top four teams, the Bruins could get off to a slow start, lose a few games and end up being the fourth seed in the East.

You know, the same East that they’re currently leading by eight points in the regular season. A regular season that we’ve been told is now over, meaning the Bruins officially finished on top.

A Presidents’ Trophy winner that doesn’t even have home-ice advantage after the first round of the playoffs. That wouldn’t be possible in a pre-pandemic world. It almost certainly shouldn’t be possible today. But it is, which means it has to happen.

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The 12 types of fans you’ll meet when the NHL season resumes

The NHL is on the way back, and while there’s still no guarantee that the season will be able to resume, plans are in full swing with a date set for training camp and progress on other key elements.

Is this a good idea? That’s up for debate, especially with news leaking out of positive tests in other sports. There are still several ways this could all go badly, including scenarios where a resumed season had to be halted again or never got off the ground at all. But for now, the league is pushing forward, and we’re just weeks away from seeing NHL teams back on the ice.

As fans, we might as well start preparing ourselves for what’s to come. And that means an attempted conclusion to the season that will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. With 24 teams, a play-in round, hub cities and empty arenas, this might end up being the most unique few months in NHL history.

Whichever way you feel about the plan, it’s certainly going to be interesting. So today, let’s start getting ready for what’s to come by introducing a dozen types of hockey fans you can expect to meet when (or if) the NHL returns.

The Pessimist

We might as well start here, because you’ll be hearing from The Pessimist plenty. You already are. The Pessimist has a long list of reasons why resuming the season is a bad idea, can’t possibly work, and is going to end badly for everyone involved. Anywhere fans are starting to show some excitement over the season resuming, the Pessimist will swoop in with data, charts, and more than a few terrifying worst-case scenarios.

Here’s by far the biggest problem with The Pessimist: They’re almost definitely right. Maybe not about those worst-case scenarios – we hope – but about the level of risk we all seem way too comfortable accepting here. Are we bravely pushing forward in the face of adversity the way we might like to think, or just selfishly putting other people in danger so that we can enjoy some vague semblance of normalcy (that we’ll still just complain about anyway)? Should we even be doing this? Am I bad person for wanting any of this to happen? Are you?

The Pessimist will make you wonder, which means they’ll be one of your least favorite voices over the next few weeks and months. But look on the bright side: at least you’ll be able to blame them for ruining your fun, instead of your own nagging conscience.

The Format Proposer

Yes, it took months for the NHL and NHLPA to agree on a format for the rest of the season. Did they get it right? No they did not, and The Format Proposer is here to tell you all about it. In detail. So much detail.

As it turns out, this fan had a better idea all along. Against all odds, Gary Bettman doesn’t seem to have stumbled onto their Twitter feed, so he missed out on implementing the correct format. Or did he? The Format Proposer seems to be convinced that there’s still time for everyone to recognize the genius of their idea, and that will stay true even after the games have started. All they have to do is keep telling you about it, constantly, at all times.

It goes without saying that The Format Proposer’s idea is terrible, completely implausible, and clearly set up to benefit their personal favorite team. That doesn’t matter, because they’ll still be yammering on about it as the Stanley Cup is being lifted.

The Binger

This fan can’t wait to watch the games. No, not some of them – they plan to watch every game. They’re counting on limited rink availability in the hub cities to force an Olympic-style schedule with games spread out as much as possible. The Binger has multiple screens. They are willing to record games and watch them in the middle of the night. Time zones are their friend.

This fan has missed sports a little too much, is undoubtedly way too into that Korean baseball league, and has probably been gambling on their kids’ Fortnite games. They need this. Let them have it.

The Asterisk

Are you enjoying the playoffs? Are you starting to get emotionally invested in who’s going to win? You shouldn’t, because none of this counts, and The Asterisk will be there to remind you of that at every turn.

Like a few of the folks we’ll meet on this list, The Asterisk won’t necessarily be wrong. They’ll just be annoying, because you won’t even be able to express any sort of interest in how a series will turn out without them showing up to scold you about how none of this really matters. And if your team wins and you seem even mildly happy about that? The Asterisk will be there to put an end to that, you fool, you absolute imbecile.

Luckily, they won’t be able to do any of that without running into their own adversary…

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Not all Cups count the same. Where will this year’s rank?

The NHL has made it official: They’re going forward with a plan to finish the season with 24 teams, and they’re going to do everything they can to make sure we see a team win the Stanley Cup in 2020.

Great. Will it count?

You’re going to hear a lot of talk about asterisks this summer. Some fans are going to insist that any results from here on out don’t count because the pandemic and the pause have left us with something completely different than anything we’re used to. Others will argue that hockey is hockey and of course it counts. Others will want to wait and see.

Time will tell which side wins, but the reality is, that’s always been the case. Not all Cups carry the same historical weight and some are viewed differently than others. Fans can always find a reason to diminish a particular championship if we look hard enough. So maybe the right question here isn’t “Will it count?” but rather “Just how much will it count?”

Let’s see if we can sort this out. Today, we’re going to start at the very top of the Stanley Cup scale with the championships that not even the most cynical fan can dispute, and work our way down to the ones that are easier to discredit. Along the way, we’ll try to figure out where exactly history will end up viewing this year’s championship.

Tier 1: Any Stanley Cup that your favorite team won, obviously

We need to start here because otherwise, everyone is going to read this post and just get madder and madder as they go, and I’d certainly never want that to happen. So let’s be clear: this whole piece is entirely about everyone else’s Stanley Cups. Those are the ones that are on shaky ground. Any that your favorite team has won? Those are exceptions. Perfect, impeccable exceptions.

Tier 2: The dynasty

Hockey fans tend to be caustic and jealous, especially when we see somebody else being happy, so we’ll jump at any opportunity to hand-wave away some other team’s glory. But that’s just about impossible to do when that glory keeps repeating itself year after year. By the time a team has won four or five Cups in a short span, there comes a point where even the most embittered rival fan has to go: “Yeah, fine, they might be OK.”

Examples: The 1970s Canadiens, the 1980s Islanders and Oilers.

Tier 3: The quasi-dynasty

Similar to the above, this team won multiple Cups, although maybe not quite as many and there was enough space in between them that we can argue over whether they deserve full-fledged dynasty status. Still, at a certain point, that feels like splitting hairs — these teams are good.

Examples: The 90s/00s Red Wings, Avalanche and Devils. Probably the cap-era Blackhawks and Penguins too, unless you think the parity era has lowered the bar.

Tier 4: The two-time winner

Not quite a dynasty, not quite a one-and-done. These teams are confusing and need to pick a lane. Stop doing this, everyone. Either stop at one and let someone else have a turn or go all out and win three or more. Shoot or get off the point.

Examples: The 1974 and 1975 Flyers, the 1991 and 1992 Penguins, 2012 and 2014 Kings

Tier 5: The dominant one-and-done

OK, so this team didn’t win multiple Cups. But they were very good, in both the regular season and playoffs. Ideally, they won a Presidents’ Trophy along the way or at least came close.

The proper way to deal with a fan of one of these teams is to acknowledge how stacked the roster was and how well the team came together at the height of their powers. Then pause just long enough for them to let their guard down, before adding “I guess it’s kind of disappointing that they didn’t win more than one” and then immediately exiting the conversation.

Examples: The 1994 Rangers, the 1989 Flames, maybe the 2018 Capitals if we grandfather in those three Presidents’ Trophies from the Ovechkin era.

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