The Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup... again

One of those odd unwritten rules of pro hockey is that your entire life revolves around winning the Stanley Cup, but when you’re one game away from actually doing it, you have to pretend like you haven’t noticed. You have to claim it’s just another game, and maybe even feign some degree of surprise that anyone would treat it any other way.

So Monday, hours away from a chance at capturing their third Stanley Cup in six years, that’s what the Blackhawks did. After their morning skate, player after player swore that the night would be like any other game. They repeated it like a mantra, almost robotically. Just another game. No big deal. It’s only a championship on the line. For their part, the Lightning were just as coy, shrugging off any suggestions that having their very playoff lives on the line made this game any sort of big deal.

The charade lasted all morning, right up until Lightning coach Jon Cooper addressed the media. He was asked whether this was, indeed, just another game.

“No chance,” he replied, incredulous. “The Stanley Cup’s in the building. I can’t believe they would say, ‘Oh, it’s just another game.’”

“We know it’s just not another game,” he continued, gaining steam as he went. “This is much different than Game 1. You got to win or you go home. On the other side, you know what happens if they win.”

“No. I don’t like to sugarcoat anything. This is the reality of the business we’re in.”

He’s right, of course, even if he’s not supposed to say it. This wasn’t just another game. As it turns out, it would be the last game of the series and the season, and the one that saw a new dynasty crowned. And it would be the night the reality Cooper spoke of finally caught up with the Lightning.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

The Stanley Cup final gets weird

“To me, this series has been expect the unexpected.”

That was Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper on Saturday night, after his team had dropped a 2-1 decision on home ice in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final. He was offering the observation in response to a question about whether back-to-back 2-1 final scores meant that the series had settled into a defensive struggle, but it was probably a comforting message to deliver in the bigger picture right now. That’s because today, with the Blackhawks leading the series 3-2 and holding home ice for Monday’s Game 6, the expectation is that Chicago is about to win the Stanley Cup.

Tonight marks the first time in the modern era that the Blackhawks will have a chance to skate the Cup on home ice. Given their well-documented excess of talent, experience, and, yes, resiliency, blowing it now to a Lightning team that’s young and hurting would seem to go against the script.

And that’s where the good news for Tampa Bay kicks in, because so far this matchup hasn’t much gone according to plan. Patrick Kane and Steven Stamkos can’t score, but Cedric Paquette and Antoine Vermette can. The series has been the closest we’ve ever seen — it’s the first time in final history that no team has held a two-goal lead at any point through five games — yet we’ve somehow avoided any overtime. And every now and then, an injured goalie who sometimes seems like he can barely stand decides to charge out of his net to body check his own defenseman. (More on that last bit in a second, since it turns out to be important.)

Given all that, it made a certain sort of sense when the hockey world arrived back in Tampa last weekend to find that the downtown had been taken over by an anime convention, with the streets full of cosplaying fans dressed as superheroes and cartoon characters. When you’ve got a Stanley Cup that refuses to make much sense, why not mix in a few grown men dressed as Pikachu?

Somehow, it all worked together. Over here is an enthusiastic 16-year-old with a lightsaber getting dropped off at the entrance by his mom. Over there is an unheralded 21-year-old rookie going head-to-head with All-Stars and winning. This lady is pretending she can cast magic spells. That guy is pretending he didn’t bite anyone. Here’s Captain America, there’s Captain Everything, and the whole time you’re just thinking, Why not? Why the hell not? Who ever said any of this should make sense?

And so, it goes without saying, the big moment from Saturday’s game didn’t come off of a brilliant rush or a sterling defensive effort. No, it came six minutes into a scoreless game, on a seemingly harmless Blackhawks clearing attempt into the Lightning zone that defenseman Victor Hedman was heading back to handle. Patrick Sharp was on him, but not in any sort of dangerous way, and Hedman was ready to chip the puck off the boards to send Stamkos off on a breakout when … well, see for yourself.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Grab bag: The case of the disappearing Cup winner

In this week's grab bag:
- Should playoff beards be banned?
- An obscure player with a bizarre claim to fame
- Don Cherry struggles with pronunciation, chapter infinity
- Comedy stars
- And a YouTube breakdown of the time that the Stanley Cup winning goal was scored in overtime, and we all missed it.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Is Marian Hossa a future Hall of Famer?

There’s a conversation about the Chicago Blackhawks that seems to repeat itself as their playoff run rolls on. It goes something like this: Somebody wonders out loud how many future Hall of Famers are on the roster. Someone else immediately rattles off the names of the team’s big three — Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, and Duncan Keith. And someone else points out that head coach Joel Quenneville will be an obvious choice.

Then there’s a pause, the question hangs in the air for a bit, and finally someone hesitantly adds “ … and maybe Marian Hossa?”

At 36, Hossa has spent this latest playoff run doing what Hossa does: a little bit of everything, often quietly, and usually from just outside the spotlight. Last night he had an assist on Toews’s opening goal, giving him four points in the series. With the Hawks now deploying him on a line with Toews and Patrick Sharp, he figures to be a key figure over the second half of the series.

He also makes for the subject of an interesting HOF debate. My experience has been that people say it’s a relatively easy call — they just can’t agree on the call. To some, he’s a slam dunk. To others, he’s a respected player who falls solidly into the “Hall of Very Good” but just doesn’t have the résumé to deserve more than that.

So as Hossa makes what by now has become his near-annual appearance in the Stanley Cup final, it’s fair to ask: Are we watching a future Hall of Famer? Let’s walk through the pros and cons.

The Numbers

Hossa crossed the 1,000-point mark early in the season, and with 486 goals he should get to 500 next year. Those tend to be the big milestones for HOF candidates, at least among forwards, so by crossing them Hossa guarantees himself a spot in the discussion.

But that’s about all it guarantees, because those milestones don’t carry the same weight that they once did. There are plenty of guys in the 500/1,000 club whose HOF candidacy never gained serious traction. That includes players like Pierre Turgeon (515/1,327), Pat Verbeek (522/1,063), Keith Tkachuk (538/1,065), and, for reasons that nobody has ever fully explained, Dave Andreychuk (640/1,338). Jeremy Roenick (513/1,216) hasn’t been inducted and looks like he may never be, and even Mark Recchi (577/1,533) didn’t get in on the first try, although virtually everyone agrees he will eventually. So Hossa’s number are good, but they’re well short of making him any kind of a sure thing.

Of course, unlike all those guys mentioned above, Hossa played his entire career in the dead puck era. But even on an era-adjusted basis, he’s still trailing Roenick and Turgeon, and he’s miles behind Andreychuk and Recchi.

On the other hand, all those numbers are for the regular season only — mix in his 143 career playoff points, second only to Jaromir Jagr among active players, and Hossa gets a boost.

The Honors

This may be the strongest argument for the “good but not great” side of the debate. Hossa has never won a major award and was a finalist only once (for the Calder as Rookie of the Year in 1999; he came in second to Chris Drury). He has one postseason All-Star selection, making the second team in 2009. And that’s pretty much it. His best finish in Hart Trophy voting for MVP was 10th; his only other top-five finishes for any award came for the Lady Byng in 2003 and the Selke last year.

He did appear in five All-Star Games, which isn’t bad in a league where that game is often wiped out by lockouts and Olympics. But the lack of any significant hardware, or even all that many near misses, paints a picture of a very good player who was never in the conversation as being among the league’s best.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

The Resiliency Factor

When it comes to playoff hockey, “resilient” is a funny word. It’s undoubtedly a compliment. In fact, it’s one of the best things you can say about a collection of players. Resilient means you don’t quit. Resilient means mental toughness. Resilient means character, leadership, and speaks to your compete level … and any number of the hockey world’s other favorite clichés all rolled into one. Good teams have it. Bad teams dream of getting it. Resilient is a badge of honor.

But it’s a badge you only get to wear when you’re losing. Tough times are a prerequisite of resiliency. After all, no team has ever been resilient when it was up 3-0 in a series. It’s a great card to have in your hand, but it can’t be played until the scoreboard is crooked, the injuries are mounting, and a series (and season) is slipping away.

Resilient means you never give up. But it also means you might be kind of screwed.

Today, the Chicago Blackhawks are resilient, which is a nice way of saying they’re in trouble. They trail the Stanley Cup final 2-1 after a Game 3 loss at home in which they gave up the winner with three minutes left in regulation after getting only one puck past a goaltender who could barely stand. A loss in Game 4 tonight in Chicago would give the Lightning a chance to skate the Stanley Cup around their home ice in Game 5. Tonight is not quite a must-win game — at some point we can probably acknowledge that the term has lost all meaning — but it’s close.

So tonight will be a test of the Blackhawks’ resiliency. Luckily for them, they have plenty. The Blackhawks know it — on media day, coach Joel Quenneville told reporters that “the resiliency of this group is as good as you’re ever going to find.” The Lightning know it — Alex Killorn described Chicago as a “resilient group” last week. (An important note: There is no such thing as a resilient team. It’s always a resilient group or, in rare cases, a resilient bunch.) And we heard all about it in the conference finals against the Anaheim Ducks, when Chicago trailed the series three separate times before finally coming back to win in seven games. The Blackhawks were “really resilient,” according to Ducks forward Andrew Cogliano. Cam Fowler echoed that they had “resiliency and attitude … they never quit.”

Of course, that Hawks-Ducks series was a battle between teams that both laid claim to the resilient label — and not just resilient, but “tremendously resilient,” according to Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau after Game 5. The Ducks would show resiliency one night, then the Blackhawks would resilient them right back the next. That’s where this can get kind of complicated, since we don’t quite know who’s really resilient until it’s all over and we find out who won.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

When Stanley Cup final goalies get hurt

Ben Bishop didn’t have a leg to stand on. Literally. At various points during last night’s Game 3 of the Stanley Cup final in Chicago, Bishop struggled just to stand up. At other points, he made it seem like going side-to-side was difficult. And yet he somehow stuck around for the entire game, eventually earning the decision in Tampa Bay’s 3-2 win.

As painful as it was to watch, last night was an improvement. On Saturday, Bishop’s mysterious injury forced him out of Game 2 — he briefly returned and then left again, this time for good. Backup Andrei Vasilevskiy was forced into action in the game’s final minutes. At this point, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we see him again this series. Bishop is toughing it out, but he looks like a guy who is on borrowed time.

And so, we find ourselves playing out a story line that’s exceedingly rare in a Stanley Cup final. For the first time in almost a decade, we have a starting goaltender suffering a significant mid-series injury, one that has already forced him out of action once and could do so again.

Uh, you might want to stop reading right here, Oilers fans.

Seriously, just do it. Close the browser tab. Everything is going so well for you right now. Between Connor McDavid, Peter Chiarelli, and Todd McLellan, you’ve basically just enjoyed the best month any team could have without actually playing any games. Life is good for you right now. So stop reading.

Because today, in the aftermath of the Bishop ordeal, we’re going to look back at the last time an established starter got hurt during the final. And that means going back to 2006 and the series between the Oilers and Hurricanes.

(Seriously, Oilers fans: Leave now. Final warning. Any especially squeamish Lightning fans may want to bail, too, come to think of it.)

The 2006 Cup final was the first played in two years, thanks to the lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season. When play finally resumed in October 2005, hockey fans were treated to a league with a new salary cap, new rules, and a new emphasis on calling the rulebook by the letter. The result was the best kind of chaos, a season when conventional wisdom and expert predictions went out the window. Scoring jumped, two generational talents debuted, and the eventual MVP was traded midseason. It was a fun time.

That sense of unpredictability carried over into the playoffs. In the East, the Hurricanes ultimately edged the Sabres, which wasn’t especially surprising. But in the West, where the heavily favored Red Wings had racked up 124 points to emerge as the clear-cut Cup favorite, all four underdogs won in the opening round. After beating Detroit, the Oilers made an unprecedented run all the way to the final as the no. 8 seed, knocking off the Sharks and Mighty Ducks along the way.

Many fans remember that Oilers team as a ragtag group of misfits that barely sneaked into the playoffs and pulled off a minor miracle to make it to the final, but as we’ve covered before, that’s not quite true. The Oilers actually were a pretty darn good team whose season was almost ruined by historically awful goaltending. The 2006 Oilers could score, they posted solid possession numbers (as best we can tell), and they had Chris Pronger. They also spent most of the year passing the starter’s job between Jussi Markkanen, Ty Conklin, and Mike Morrison, none of whom managed to post a save percentage better than .885.

That led to a gutsy trade deadline gamble, with the Oilers sending their first-round pick to the Wild for veteran Dwayne Roloson, a pending free agent. It was a risky move. The Oilers were in danger of missing the playoffs, so it was possible they were giving up a high pick for a month’s worth of regular-season work from a player who would bolt in the offseason. But it paid off beautifully, as Roloson solidified the position during the season and then played brilliantly during the playoff run.

By the time they reached the final, Edmonton looked every bit like a team that could beat Carolina and earn the franchise’s first Stanley Cup since 1990. With Roloson playing well, Pronger leading the way, a cast of unlikely heroes emerging, and an entire nation largely united behind them, the Oilers had a distinct “team of destiny” feel to them. In a wild and unpredictable season, there was no better ending you could script than the Edmonton Oilers skating off with the Stanley Cup.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

What we know and what we don't after two games of the Stanley Cup final

Ah, the old rotating goalies trick. Works every time.

Saturday night’s Lightning win over the Blackhawks, which knotted their Stanley Cup final at one game apiece, was highlighted by a wild third period in which the Lightning made three goaltending changes after starter Ben Bishop couldn’t continue due to … well, something. That brought in rookie Andrei Vasilevskiy for one shift, during which the Lightning scored the eventual winner. Bishop returned shortly after and played a few more minutes before leaving again, with Vasilevskiy making five saves the rest of the way to seal the win in relief.

It was a bizarre and confusing scene — Steven Stamkos told reporters that the players were relying on the PA announcements to figure out who their current goalie was — and it led to several questions. Was Bishop, to put this delicately, suffering from flu-like symptoms? (Apparently not.) Was he hurt? (It would seem so, although everyone appears to have a different theory over just what the problem might be.) And when exactly did whatever it was start to bother him? (Well, that part gets tricky.)

Based on the timing of his exit, plenty of fans assumed that Bishop had been hurt on the Blackhawks’ controversial goal early in the third period that tied the game 3-3. That play saw Marian Hossa appear to interfere with Bishop by shoving the goalie’s pad with his stick. But there are two problems with that theory. The first is that Bishop’s immediate reaction of chasing down the officials to protest the non-call sure didn’t look like a guy who’d just suffered an injury. The second is that there had already been signs that something wasn’t right before the goal.

Those signs came on the stoppage before the goal, when Bishop called over teammates Victor Hedman and Anton Stralman for a brief conference in the crease. The two defensemen then headed for the bench — not for a line change, but to report something to the team’s trainer. It seemed as if something was up, and that suspicion grew stronger minutes later when Bishop himself sought out the trainer after heading to the bench on a delayed penalty. Minutes later, during a TV timeout, he headed off the ice and straight down the hallway to the Lightning dressing room, and the great Ben Bishop Mystery was on.

Of course, it all leads to the most important question of them all: Can he play tonight? Lightning coach Jon Cooper danced around the question yesterday, saying Bishop “could be available” and that we might find out more when the Lightning take to the ice for today’s game-day skate, which is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. ET.

If Bishop can’t go, the switch over to Vasilevskiy won’t be as big a downgrade as you might expect. The 20-year-old Russian is one of the top goaltending prospects in hockey, and he has experience playing games both internationally and in the KHL. That doesn’t compare to the level of pressure he’d face in a Stanley Cup final start, of course, and maybe he melts down in the bright spotlight. But there’s a chance he could be every bit as good as Bishop has been, and maybe even better.

As we await word of who’ll get the start tonight, let’s take a look back over the past few days in Tampa for some of the other things we don’t yet know about this series, and a handful of things that we do.

What we know: The Triplets are alive and (probably) well

The Lightning’s top line of Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, and Nikita Kucherov had been deadly over the first two rounds, but had slowed down midway through the conference finals against New York. Of particular concern was Johnson, who came into Saturday with a league-leading 12 playoff goals but hadn’t found the net since Game 3 against the Rangers.

That had led to speculation that he may be hurt, and that speculation only increased when he briefly left Saturday morning’s skate. He denied it, because he’s a hockey player and that’s what he’d do if his rib cage were jutting out of his chest, but with the Lightning held to two goals or fewer in four of those five games, his mini-slump was developing into a major story.

For now, at least, we can relax. Johnson scored the Lightning’s third goal midway through the second. It was an ugly goal, one that had no business getting by Corey Crawford, but it counted, and combined with Kucherov’s marker seven minutes earlier it gave the Triplets a two-goal night. Healthy or not, they’ll take it.

What we don’t know: When the Blackhawks stars will break through

That leads us to the series’ other big stars up front, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. The two have been just about unstoppable through most of the playoffs, especially when deployed on the same line. But over the first two games against Tampa Bay, they’ve been held to just one lone assist between them. On Saturday, Kane didn’t even manage a shot on goal, which is just about unheard of.

You’ll note that we’re asking “when” Toews and Kane will start scoring, not “if”; they’re just too good to be shut down over the course of an entire series. But the Lightning have done a good enough job over the first two games that Chicago coach Joel Quenneville split the duo up midway through Game 2, with Hossa moving up to play on Toews’s wing while Kane drops back to a line centered by Brad Richards.

A big part of the reason for Kane and Toews’s quiet start has been the play of the Lightning’s top pairing of Hedman and Stralman. But plenty of credit also goes to the play of Cedric Paquette, the 21-year-old Lightning center who drew the task of going head-to-head with Toews. It was such a potentially overwhelming assignment that Cooper didn’t even bother to tell him about it before Game 1; Paquette was left to figure it out for himself when he kept getting sent over the boards and finding Toews waiting for him.² On Saturday, Paquette even chipped in with the Lightning’s first goal, a rare offensive contribution from a Tampa Bay bottom six that hadn’t contributed much of anything offensively in weeks.

After Saturday’s game, Paquette admitted that the lack of scoring outside the top two lines had been discouraging. “I was really frustrated,” he said. “My playoff wasn’t going the way I wanted … Coop told us, ‘You guys need to chip in if we want to win that Cup.’”

After Game 1, Cooper hung the nickname “Captain Everything” on Toews, and it’s a good one. But based on the first two games, we might have to start calling Paquette “Captain Everything Else.”

>> Read the full post on Grantland

How much does Stanley Cup Final experience matter?

The numbers are jarring, bordering on unfair. The Chicago Blackhawks come into this final with a roster that boasts 26 Stanley Cup rings. Most of the core, including Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, and Duncan Keith, each have two.

The Tampa Bay Lightning, by comparison, have one. That’s it. One ring, total, from an entire roster. And that one, belonging to Valtteri Filppula, is seven years old.

This Lightning team is young. And more importantly, the core is remarkably young. The captain, Steven Stamkos, is 25. The best defenseman, Victor Hedman, is 24. The top line features Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat, both 24, along with Nikita Kucherov, who is 21. The starting goalie, Ben Bishop, is a comparatively ancient 28, but he’d never played a NHL playoff game until this season. The guy who has been given the task of shutting down Toews is Cedric Paquette, a 21-year-old rookie who’s so young that coach Jon Cooper didn’t even tell him about his assignment for fear of throwing him off his game.

Total Stanley Cup final games played between the group of them, heading into Wednesday’s Game 1: zero. And they’re facing a Blackhawks team making its third trip in six years. The Lightning have never been here before; the Blackhawks practically live here. In a series in which most of the matchups are too close to call, the experience factor is a laughably one-sided mismatch.

The question is, will any of it matter?

As fans, we love the idea that experience counts, and that having been there before confers some sort of advantage. It feeds into something we want to believe about how difficult this game’s journey to a championship really is. We drone on endlessly about the Stanley Cup being the hardest trophy to win in all of sports, and if that’s really true, then it seems like something that you shouldn’t be able to do on the first try. We want to see you fail, and learn from that, and then come back older and wiser, having finally figured out how to win.

However, the Stanley Cup memories we seem to love best all play against this theme. It’s Ray Bourque finally getting his hands on the Cup after two decades. It’s the lightbulb going off for Steve Yzerman and the Red Wings. It’s the 1983 Oilers, young and cocky, getting their butts kicked by the veteran Islanders, and only then realizing how much further they had to go.

And because we love the idea so much, we tend to forget about the stories that don’t fit the narrative. We forget about the teams that skip the years of hardship and near misses and jump straight to a championship. If anything, they’re the exceptions that prove the rule.

There’s a common-sense test that kicks in here, and the experience mythos doesn’t exactly pass with flying colors. After all, how much different can playing for the Stanley Cup really be? How much can a game that most of these guys have been playing their entire lives really change — how much more can there really be to learn, simply because it’s the Cup?

Is it possible that we’ve all just been telling ourselves a story? Could any of this possibly matter as much as we want it to?

Hockey fans have argued about the subject for decades, and attempts have been made to quantify it. One recent study suggested that experience may have mattered in the pre-cap era but doesn’t seem to anymore. But maybe it’s the sort of thing that you can’t really capture with the numbers. Maybe you really do have to have been there, under the bright lights and a few million eyes, and had the chance to feel it in your gut.

Lightning defenseman Matt Carle is one of the few Tampa Bay players who has been here before, back in 2010 with the Flyers. That would seem to give him license to buy into the idea. But when he was asked about it on Wednesday, he wouldn’t take the bait.

“It’s hockey, you know? It’s the same sized ice sheet. Same building we’ve always been playing in,” Carle said. Then he gestured at a locker room packed full of media. “This is the only thing that’s really different, is how many people are in here covering the series, and the people watching. That’s all that’s different.”

“Once the puck drops, we’re just trying to play a structured system and play the way we know how … Once that puck drops, it’s playing hockey and having fun.”

Stamkos hasn’t been here before, but his words echoed Carle’s when I asked him if anything about playing in the final would feel different.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Stanley Cup preview

The Stanley Cup final gets started tonight in Tampa, as the young Lightning face the seasoned Blackhawks. It’s a fantastic matchup, one featuring plenty of star power and two teams that have at times looked both vulnerable and invincible over the past few weeks.

The Blackhawks have won two Cups since 2010; the Lightning look poised to win a few more down the road. But it’s this year’s that is up for grabs, so let’s see if we can figure out who’s going to win this thing by breaking down all the usual categories — plus a few more.

Forwards

Lightning: Tampa Bay is stacked up front, so much so that franchise player Steven Stamkos has somehow wound up as an afterthought for much of the playoffs. After a slow start to the postseason, Stamkos heated up against the Rangers with goals in four straight games, and linemates Alex Killorn and Valtteri Filppula have come along for the ride. That essentially gives the Lightning two no. 1 lines, since the “Triplets” trio of Ondrej Palat, Tyler Johnson, and Nikita Kucherov shows no signs of slowing down.

If there’s a concern, it’s that the top six is basically doing all the team’s scoring. Filppula has three goals, while the other five each have at least seven; by comparison, nobody else on the team has more than one. That includes guys like Ryan Callahan and Cedric Paquette, who’ve been largely invisible on the offensive side. If you’re a Lightning fan, you could look at that as a good thing — the bottom six are playing other roles, and if they ever did start chipping in, the offense would basically be unstoppable. But with a matchup coming for one of those top lines against Jonathan Toews and friends, there has to be at least a little bit of concern with how top-heavy the Lightning lines are.

Blackhawks: The Blackhawks feature just as much star power as the Lightning, and maybe more. Toews and Patrick Kane get most of the attention, especially when they’re playing together (as they did in the late stages of the Anaheim series). Toews is that rare player who can be dominant at both ends, and Kane’s knack for scoring big goals is becoming legendary. Mix in a young star in Brandon Saad and a pair of old ones in Marian Hossa and ex-Lightning Brad Richards, and you’ve got enough firepower in the top six to push a guy like Patrick Sharp down to the third line.

The edge: There aren’t many teams that can match the Lightning’s top six, but the Hawks are one of them. And Chicago’s better depth and more balanced scoring gives it an edge here.

Defense

Lightning: Victor Hedman is the kind of guy you might not fully appreciate until you see him play live. You watch a Lightning shift and find yourself thinking Who’s that huge guy back there? and you realize it’s Hedman (he’s listed at 6-foot-6 and 230 pounds). Then a few seconds later you think Who’s that fast guy up there? and you realize it’s Hedman again. He’s smart, skilled, and just 24 years old; it’s scary to think about what he could be in another year or two.

The rest of the blue line is solid, which is an upgrade from the unit of recent years that was often a weak link. The other key guy to watch is Anton Stralman, a longtime darling of the analytics crowd who finally seems to be breaking through to some mainstream attention. He’s not big, but he’s a skilled puck-mover and a possession monster who doesn’t make many mistakes.

Blackhawks: Duncan Keith is getting all the attention these days, and rightfully so. He’s been ridiculously good at both ends of the rink, and would probably win the Conn Smythe if voting were held today. He plays huge minutes, and at some point you’d assume that fatigue would have to become a factor, but he’s such a physical freak that maybe he really can play 30 minutes a game (with gusts to 40 in overtime) without wearing down, at least for up to seven more games.

Beyond Keith, the rest of the Hawks’ top four is excellent, with Niklas Hjalmarsson, Brent Seabrook, and Johnny Oduya playing big roles. Things then get dodgy, though, because the fifth and sixth slots have been a mess. The Hawks have been using some combination of David Rundblad, Kimmo Timonen, and Kyle Cumiskey and don’t seem to trust any of them, limiting their minutes and sheltering them as much as possible. That’s tough to do, especially on the road, and it tends to catch up with teams. It hasn’t really yet for the Hawks, but it would make life a lot easier if at least one of those guys could up his game enough to take some of the heat off the big four.

The edge: We’ll give the edge here to the Blackhawks, at least for as long as Keith can keep up the Superman routine, but Hedman and Stralman mean it’s not as big a gap as you might think.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

What went wrong? How 14 playoff teams ended up on the sidelines

And so we’re down to two. After a pair of weekend Game 7s, we finally have our Stanley Cup final matchup, as the Tampa Bay Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks prepare to drop the puck for Game 1 tomorrow night.

We’ll spend the next few weeks picking apart the Hawks and Lightning, starting with a detailed final preview that will run tomorrow. But before we get there, let’s take today as an opportunity to look back at the 14 playoff teams that didn’t make it to the promised land and are left to ask the question: What went wrong? What fatal flaw kept each of this year’s playoff casualties from taking their place on the league’s biggest stage? And perhaps more importantly, can they fix it?

Needless to say, this will be easier for some teams than others. Sometimes a well-built team runs into another well-built team and somebody has to lose, and digging for some greater shortcoming feels like nitpicking. Of course, in other cases, we’ll have to work a bit to narrow the list of flaws down to just one.

Here’s a look at each of the 14 teams that fell short of the final and why it happened, in the order that they were eliminated.

Winnipeg Jets

What went wrong? Ondrej Pavelec just wasn’t good enough. That wouldn’t have been a surprise based on his career numbers, which are decidedly average, but he was very good for most of this season and downright fantastic over the season’s final month. So as strange as it now seems in hindsight, there was reason to look at the Jets-Ducks series and figure that Winnipeg held an advantage in goal.

Instead, Pavelec posted a sub-.900 save percentage and gave up four or more in three of the series’ four games. Would the Jets have won with better goaltending? Probably not. The Ducks just crushed them, and anyone short of late-’90s Dominik Hasek probably would have only delayed the inevitable. But Pavelec was the weakest link in a series full of them.

Can they fix it? The Jets have stuck by Pavelec for years, so they apparently don’t think there’s anything here to fix. Backup Michael Hutchinson was excellent as a rookie, and Team USA World Championship hero Connor Hellebuyck is in the system, so there’s depth at the position. Trading Pavelec now would be a gutsy move that could pay off, but it seems exceedingly unlikely.

Pittsburgh Penguins

What went wrong? There wasn’t enough depth. That’s been an issue in Pittsburgh for years, as a top-heavy lineup hasn’t been able to get the timely contributions from role players that seem to define Cup contenders. When Sidney Crosby didn’t dominate and Evgeni Malkin disappeared, there wasn’t enough talent to pick up the slack.

All that said, we’re leaving out a pretty important detail: The Penguins were devastated by injuries, especially on the blue line, where key players like Kris Letang and Christian Ehrhoff weren’t available. That kind of bad luck will thin out any team, no matter how well built, and the Penguins deserve credit for still playing a very good Rangers team fairly tight.

Can they fix it? They’ll get healthy again, and it’s always easier to add depth than top-end talent. The bigger question in Pittsburgh is whether they should tear down the core by moving a guy like Malkin. I don’t think they need to do that — you’ll notice that I didn’t go with “Malkin choked” as their biggest problem — but I don’t get a vote. The Pens wouldn’t be the first team to overreact to a disappointing playoffs, so they’ll be interesting to watch this summer.

Nashville Predators

What went wrong? Shea Weber got hurt. Oh, there were other flaws, not least of which was a lack of scoring up front and Pekka Rinne’s second-half regression into a merely average goaltender. But even with those problems hanging over them, the Predators still gave the Blackhawks all they could handle, and they did it while losing their best player to a dislocated kneecap midway through Game 2. If Weber had returned to the series, maybe it would have been enough to flip the result of Chicago’s triple-OT win in Game 4. And if that had been the case, then the Predators would have hosted Game 7, and … well, who knows, right?

Can they fix it? Weber is expected to be back at full health in time for training camp, so this one’s an easy “yes.” Now about Rinne and those forwards …

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Seven thoughts on a pair of game sevens

For the first time since 2000, hockey fans have a pair of Game 7s to look forward to in the conference finals. The Rangers will host the Lightning on Friday, with the Ducks welcoming the Blackhawks on Saturday, and by the time it’s all over we’ll have our Stanley Cup final matchup.

Game 7s tend to be just about impossible to figure out ahead of time, but that’s no reason not to at least try. So let’s take a look at seven factors that could help decide a Game 7 … or two.

1. Goaltending

It’s the goaltending. It’s always the goaltending. In fact, this seems like such an obvious category that I spent way too much time trying to figure out a way to get around including it at all. But I can’t, because it will be the biggest factor in both games, so we might as well start with it. Here’s the short version: The team with the better goaltender will probably win.

The slightly longer version is that both series feature battles between goalies who’ve taken turns looking both unbeatable and awful, often in the same game. That’s probably caused an ulcer or two on the coaching staffs, but it’s made for some fascinating hockey, where no shot is harmless and no lead is safe.

Let’s break down the numbers. As you’d expect, Henrik Lundqvist has been the best of the four remaining goalies, putting up a .928 save percentage. He’s also been the best in the third round at 5v5, where he’s at .934, although his poor .720 while shorthanded has dragged his overall numbers down. That gives him an edge over Ben Bishop, who’s at .917 overall and just .898 at 5v5. Both Bishop and Lundqvist have had awful games in what’s been a surprisingly high-scoring series, so nobody’s looking unbeatable, but Lundqvist has clearly been better.

Out west, Frederik Andersen and Corey Crawford have very similar numbers over the course of the playoffs. In this series, Andersen has been better 5v5 while Crawford’s numbers are slightly better overall, although we’re dealing with a six-game sample size, so we won’t read too much into small gaps. The eye test says both have looked shaky in recent games, but Andersen in particular has been fighting the puck over the past two games, including this stinker that almost certainly cost the Ducks Game 4.

2. The big stars

We like to think of a Game 7 as the time when the biggest stars shine brightest, and it’s certainly true that it works out that way sometimes. But just as often the stars go quiet, some random scrub plays the hero, and we all agree to never speak of it again.

Given all the star power spread out between these four teams, it seems likely that at least one big name will break through. That would bode well for Chicago, since its top guns are already hot. Jonathan Toews had those two late goals in Game 5, and Patrick Kane has scored in three of the past four. Meanwhile, Duncan Keith may be playing better than anyone else in the playoffs right now, which works out well since at this point he rarely leaves the ice.

By comparison, the Ducks’ big two of Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry has had mixed results, combining for just two goals in the series. Getzlaf has been held scoreless but has chipped in seven assists, so he’s creating offense even if he’s started blaming himself for losses. Perry has been quieter, with two goals and no assists after racking up 15 points through the first nine games of the postseason.

In the East, the Lightning continue to get big production from the Triplets line of Ondrej Palat, Tyler Johnson, and Nikita Kucherov, and Steven Stamkos has now heated up (bringing Alex Killorn along with him). They’ve been more consistent than the Rangers’ top stars, although both Rick Nash and Derick Brassard have posted huge games late in the series. Meanwhile, Martin St. Louis has remained mostly invisible, and now has just one opportunity left to haunt his former team.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Win or lose, are we witnessing the end of the Blackhawks?

Heading into Game 6 of the Western Conference final last night, the Anaheim Ducks held a 3-2 series lead, making it impossible not to watch the game without thinking that this might be the end of the Blackhawks.

Not the end of the Blackhawks’ 2015 season, mind you. That wasn’t the source of the drama. It was the realization that had the Ducks eliminated Chicago on Wednesday, they would be finishing off the Hawks for years to come. Finishing off the team that has spent the past seven years winning two Cups, going to five conference finals, and generally being just about the closest thing the league has seen to a dynasty in the salary-cap era.

Those Blackhawks are a brilliantly constructed team, but their pending cap crunch has been an inescapable subplot to their postseason. The question, never quite front and center but always just under the surface, has followed them all spring: Is this finally their last run? Last night, with the team facing elimination for the first time this year, everything that happened carried the weighty possibility that we were seeing something special for the last time.

You thought it when Hawks forward Brandon Saad finally scored the opener, midway through the second period after a lackluster first in which Chicago was outshot and largely outplayed. A harmless-looking play suddenly turned into a breakaway, and Saad snapped one past Frederik Andersen between the legs. The United Center erupted, Saad was mobbed by teammates, and you wondered how the heck the Blackhawks are supposed to get this guy signed when he hits restricted free agency this summer.

You thought it again when Marian Hossa made it 2-0 just three minutes later, and you wondered just how much his heavily front-loaded contract, which stretches until he’ll be 42 years old, will handcuff this team in the years to come.

You thought it when Patrick Kane trickled a shot past Andersen after a beautiful individual effort, which I am linking to here not so much for your benefit but just in case Matt Beleskey is still trying to figure out where Kane went. That one came just two minutes after Hossa’s goal, made it 3-0 for Chicago, and reminded you that both Kane and Hawks captain Jonathan Toews have new deals kicking in this summer, ones that give them the league’s two highest individual cap hits. They’re fair deals, and other stars will catch up and pass them soon enough, but, man, will they eat a big chunk of cap space.

You thought it as Duncan Keith was putting up three assists while logging 28:35 and saving goals in his own end, and you looked at the eight years left on his deal and … well, and you thought Duncan Keith is a beast. Sorry, I can stretch this whole concept only so far. Keith’s deal will look bad someday, but last night he was a bargain at any price.

But you had to keep thinking about the future of these Hawks, whether you wanted to or not. Brent Seabrook played his usual solid game on the second pairing; how do you get him the extension he’s eligible for this summer? Andrew Shaw scored the insurance goal to make it 4-2; he should be in for a nice raise after next season too. Corey Crawford made 30 saves for the win; is it completely crazy to think that maybe he’s the guy they should trade?

You wouldn’t think this way about most teams. Most teams make the playoffs, eventually lose, and go home, and nobody really offers up much sympathy because that’s just how the playoffs work for the also-rans. And you certainly wouldn’t think it about the Ducks, seemingly poised to be back here next year and beyond because of their young talent and solid cap situation.

But the Blackhawks, yeah, you can’t really escape it. Hell, you even had to think it during the pregame pump-up video that welcomed them to the ice. It’s brilliant, a chill-inducing production that juxtaposes the players from the current roster with the stars of the franchise’s past, and it’s a reminder of just how long this team went without a championship. Fans in Chicago waited 49 years for a Stanley Cup, many of those seasons agonizingly ordinary, some utterly without hope. Nobody ever really deserves a dynasty, but these guys at least come close. And they know as well as anyone that once something slips away, it can take a very long time to get it back.

It wasn’t always like this. For decades, more than any other pro sports league, the NHL was a league of dynasties. You had the Maple Leafs of the early ’60s, the Oilers and Islanders of the ’80s, and the Canadiens of, well, just about every other era. That had faded by the first decade of the Gary Bettman era, but teams like the Red Wings, Avalanche, and Devils still dominated, combining to win eight of nine Cups from 1995 to 2003.

The 2005 lockout changed that. In the decade since, there’s yet to have been so much as a repeat champion, and only a handful of teams have been able to put together more than a few seasons as top-tier contenders. The salary cap is the biggest and most obvious reason, although revenue-sharing and liberalized free agency help too. Even beyond the rule changes, the gap between the league’s smart teams and the patsies — which used to be huge — has been narrowing for years. With so much information available to anyone interested enough to look for it, the margins for competitive advantage have grown smaller and smaller.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

A look back at 20 controversies from this year's playoffs

I want you to think back to the afternoon of April 15. It was the first day of the NHL playoffs, with the opening faceoff just hours away. Do you remember how you felt back then? Calm. Happy. Even peaceful. Look at you. You were so young back then.

And then the playoffs started, and you’ve been filled with rage ever since.

This is what the NHL playoffs do. They sucker you in with the promise of the world’s greatest sport being played by elite teams with win-or-go-home stakes. Then they sideswipe you with one controversy after another, some serious, but most ridiculous. This continues until you’ve spent so much time screaming at your television that it becomes self-aware and starts automatically switching you to something less exciting, like gardening shows, test patterns, and the NBA playoffs.

This year has been no exception. We’re not even done with the conference finals, and there have already been at least 20 controversies in the playoffs. (I say “at least” because the fun thing about this sort of list is that while 20 controversies seem like way too many, I’m sure there are at least a few I missed. I look forward to hearing from irate Blues fans who can’t believe I didn’t mention that faceoff violation call in Game 4.)

It’s probably a good idea to pause for a look at the list now, before we all lose track and/or get committed. So in chronological order, here are 20 of the controversies we witnessed, debated, and severed friendships and family ties over during the 2015 NHL playoffs.

1. Stick and Stone Might Microfracture Your Bone

When: April 15, in Game 1 of the Senators-Canadiens series. The playoffs were roughly an hour old when all hell broke loose. Or, as hockey fans call it, “a slow start.”

What: Midway through the second period, Canadiens defenseman P.K. Subban slashed Mark Stone in front of Montreal’s net. The Senators rookie immediately fell to the ice writhing in pain. Subban was ejected; Stone left but returned in time for the power play before missing further action in the game.

That’s the short version; we covered the incident in-depth when it happened. Senators fans saw a vicious, premeditated attempt to injure. Canadiens fans saw a standard front-of-the-net battle gone wrong, made notable mainly by a player embellishing an injury to draw a penalty.

The aftermath: The league saw a five-minute major and nothing more, declining to suspend Subban despite intense lobbying by the Senators, who announced that Stone had suffered a microfracture. After all, Subban is a star defenseman, and those guys just don’t get suspended during the playoffs. (That sound you hear is every Detroit Red Wings fan putting their fist through their monitor.)

>> Read the full post on Grantland

When goalies lose their minds, and more conference finals thoughts

We’re almost there. One conference final is into elimination territory, and the other will be after tonight. We’re just days away from having our Stanley Cup final matchup, at which point the NHL scheduling department will probably give us two weeks off to think about it.

Here are 10 thoughts on a weekend’s worth of conference finals action.

1. Ben Bishop makes his move. Like most playoff series, this Rangers-Lightning battle has largely been about the goalies. After a defensive battle in Game 1 resulted in a 2-1 Rangers win, the Lightning poured it on with a dozen goals over the next two games. That led to speculation over what was wrong with Henrik Lundqvist. Was he tired? Hurt? Had the Lightning, who’d also lit him up during the regular season, somehow figured something out that the rest of the league had missed?

Apparently not, since he looked fine Friday, as the Rangers stormed to an easy 5-1 win. That meant it was Bishop’s turn under the microscope, with Jon Cooper even being asked whether he’d considered switching goalies for last night’s Game 5 in New York. That led to a weird discussion over whether the word “asinine” could appear in a newspaper (don’t ask), and an assurance that Bishop would be back in the net. And indeed he was, although that briefly seemed in doubt when he took a puck in the groin during warm-ups.

One shutout win later, we can safely say that was the right call. Bishop didn’t make any especially spectacular saves last night, but he didn’t need to. This was a night when a solid performance was all it would take to grab the series lead, and Bishop delivered at least that. He even kind of sort of seemed to take a shot at the empty net when the Rangers pulled Lundqvist with three minutes left; his weak shot was the only thing he screwed up all night.

Bishop is now 6-1 after losses in this year’s playoffs, which is a bad sign for the Rangers if they can win tomorrow in Tampa Bay and extend the series to a Game 7. Of course, Lunqvist is 12-3 when facing elimination since 2012, so go ahead and pick the stat you want to believe in.

Either way, it’s safe to say there won’t be any question about Bishop’s status heading into Game 6. (Barring another shot to the pills, of course.)

2. They can’t all be winners. Last week, we talked about how the Rangers’ tendency to play low-scoring games didn’t necessarily translate into a boring style. In that spirit, let’s just chalk up last night as the exception that proves the rule. It wasn’t a dull game, but it certainly wasn’t exciting, as the Lightning played the sort of smothering road game that coaches love and fans have learned to tolerate.

The teams combined for just 48 shots, with the Lightning blocking more (26) than they got on the Rangers’ net (22). At one point, that included almost an entire half-period without a single save. Every NHL playoff series includes a few memorable games and a few that will be largely forgotten. Let’s chalk this one up as a stage-setter for whatever comes next and move on.

3. Steven Stamkos stays hot. Remember when the main Lightning story line was that the Triplets line of Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, and Nikita Kucherov were producing enough offense to mask a disappointing postseason from Stamkos? You probably do, since it was a week ago. Well, the Lightning captain has now scored in four straight games, including last night’s power-play tap-in off a brilliant tic-tac-toe passing play.

Needless to say, that’s yet another thing to worry about for the Rangers, and it could soon be something to worry about for whoever comes out of the West. The Lightning were the league’s highest-scoring team in the regular season, and that doesn’t tend to translate to Stanley Cups. When they were largely a one-line team, the Lightning still managed to look dynamic offensively. If the big line stays hot while Stamkos and linemates Alex Killorn and Valtteri Filppula (who also scored last night) also get rolling, look out.

Now, about that third line …

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Ranking the OGWACs

As we inch our way through the NHL playoffs and draw closer to the appearance of the Stanley Cup, we’ve reached the point when we can get started on one of hockey’s most cherished springtime traditions: It’s time to start hunting OGWACs.

That stands for “Old Guy Without a Cup,” the beloved specimen of hockey player who finally finds himself on the verge of his first championship after a long career. Fans love OGWACs. Their teammates love them, too; they’re often the first guy to get their hands on the Cup when it’s passed around. The greatest OGWAC story ever told is that of Ray Bourque back in 2001, when he finally lifted the Cup in his very last NHL game after 22 Hall of Fame seasons. Other memorable OGWACs include Teemu Selanne in 2007 and Lanny McDonald in 1989; just about every team that wins a Cup has one or two.

But which of this year’s OGWACs should fans be rooting for? Let’s take a look at all the players still left in the playoffs who are (a) over 30 years old, (b) in at least their 10th NHL season, (c) playing a regular role for their team, and (d) lacking a Cup ring. By my count, that gives us 12 guys to consider. And while any of them would make for a good story, some would be better than others.

Antoine Vermette, Blackhawks

Experience: At 32, he’s finishing up his 11th NHL season.

Near miss: He was a kid on the 2007 Senators team that made it to the final. He was also part of the 2012 Coyotes team that made a surprise run to a conference final.

Sympathy factor: If you’re a Hawks fan? Not high. Vermette was the team’s big trade-deadline acquisition, and he’s been a bust so far.

OGWAC rating: 1/10. Wait, how is it that Antoine Vermette is 32 years old but still looks exactly the same as he did in his rookie year?

Tomas Fleischmann, Ducks

Experience: The 10-year veteran turned 31 on Saturday. Happy birthday, Tomas!

Near miss: Fleischmann was a member of those Washington Capital teams that suffered playoff collapses in 2009 and 2010, then was shipped out as part of the misguided shakeup that followed.

Sympathy factor: He suffered a blood clot in 2009 that threatened to derail his career, but recovered.

OGWAC rating: 2/10. Fleischmann is a likable enough player. But he’s been a Duck only since the trade deadline, so even if Anaheim wins he’s going to have to wait at the back of the line for his Cup handoff.

Matt Carle, Lightning

Experience: He’s 30 and finishing off his 10th NHL season.

Near miss: He was part of the 2010 Flyers team that made a surprise run to the final, then lost on an overtime goal by a former no. 1 overall pick that they would have drafted if they hadn’t lost the lottery three years earlier. I feel like we don’t make a big enough deal out of that one when we’re talking about brutal losses in recent sports history.

Sympathy factor: He wants to win a Stanley Cup, but he’s spent most of his career with the Sharks and Flyers.

OGWAC rating: 3/10. Should we be at all concerned that the Lightning apparently looked at their leaky blue line and thought, You know what would fix this? Ex-Flyers!

Braydon Coburn, Lightning

Experience: He’s 30 and in his 10th season.

Near miss: He was a teammate of Carle’s on that 2010 Flyers team.

Sympathy factor: Ideally, you’d like an OGWAC to have overcome some sort of personal adversity at some point in their career. In Coburn’s case, he was drafted by the Thrashers.

OGWAC rating: 2/10. He’s only 30. Give him a few more years and he’d be a decent pick.

Kevin Klein, Rangers

Experience: He’s 30 years old and in his 10th NHL season.

Near miss: Like many of this year’s Rangers, his closest call came last season when New York made it to the final before losing to the Kings in five. He also had a couple of trips past the first round with the Predators.

Sympathy factor: He had to recover from a broken arm to make it back into the Rangers’ lineup last round. There’s also this, via Wikipedia: “On December 9, 2014, Klein lost part of his left ear on a high stick in the first period of a game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. He had it stitched back on, came back to play, then scored the game-winning goal in overtime.”

OGWAC rating: 4/10. How can you root against a guy who’s basically the NHL’s Mick Foley?

>> Read the full post on Grantland

The NHL playoffs all-bust team

We’ve crossed the halfway point in this year’s playoffs, which means we’re down to four teams left battling it out for the Stanley Cup. Making it this far is an enormous accomplishment, and we should take some time to celebrate the excellence of the players who are making it happen.

We should, but we won’t, because it’s way more fun to point fingers at the guys who didn’t get it done. So today, let’s assemble a dream team of playoff busts from the first two rounds.

One obvious disclaimer here: “disappointment” is relative. A first-liner who suffers through an awful series may still be more productive than a fourth-liner who meets expectations, but the star still gets the dreaded bust label. Fair? Maybe not, but that’s why these guys get paid the big bucks.

These lists are always tricky, since you’re dealing with a small handful of games and the boxcar stats can be misleading; I fully expect to wake up tomorrow to find the words “small sample size” spray-painted on my garage door. But I’m willing to take that chance, mainly because I just want to write a post about disappointing hockey players that doesn’t include any Leafs.

We’ll pick a full roster of centers, wingers, defensemen, and goalies. Spoiler alert: This is going to end up being a pretty impressive group that would win an awful lot of games under normal circumstances (if you could squeeze them under the salary cap). But if you had many of them in your playoff pool, you’re already out.

Center

Evgeni Malkin, Penguins — Let’s start with an easy one. The Penguins bowed out to the Rangers in five, but all were one-goal games. An extra goal or two could have turned the series around, which is why it was so frustrating to watch a superstar talent like Malkin struggle through a point-less series. That slump extended beyond the playoffs — he had no goals and just three points in his final 10 regular-season games — and it’s contributed to calls for the Penguins to trade him. (So far, it sounds like the team will stay the course.)

Paul Stastny, Blues — Stastny was the league’s biggest UFA signing last summer, at least in terms of average annual salary, and while his 46-point season was well under his career best, his solid two-way play still made him a key component of the Blues’ hopes. But his playoff numbers — just one goal and no assists in six games — were even worse. He didn’t play badly (his lined outscored and outchanced their opponents), and he certainly wasn’t alone, as pretty much every Blues forward not named Tarasenko could make an appearance on this list. But after yet another disappointingly short playoff run in St. Louis, it’s hard to argue that the Blues got what they paid for.

Tomas Plekanec, Canadiens — That Plekanec is, in theory, the Canadiens’ no. 1 center probably says more about the way the roster has been built than it does about the player. But that’s where he’s slotted in, and one goal and four points in 12 games doesn’t really cut it.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

10 Conference Finals Thoughts

The NHL conference finals kicked off over the weekend with a pair of afternoon games. Both home teams came out with wins, with the Rangers edging the Lightning 2-1 on Saturday and the Ducks beating the Blackhawks 4-1 yesterday.

Here are 10 thoughts on what you missed while you were outside in the sunshine doing something other than watching hockey:

1. It’s time to start talking about Frederik Andersen. Ducks fans will no doubt argue that we’re a few weeks late on this, but you could be forgiven for not quite trusting Andersen heading into the playoffs. He didn’t play well in last year’s postseason, and his numbers this season were decent but not especially impressive. With John Gibson waiting in the wings, there was a decent chance that Andersen would eventually cough up the starter’s job altogether.

Ten games later, Andersen is looking rock solid. Yesterday he made 32 saves, including an early beauty on Patrick Kane that helped the Ducks weather a shaky first period. He’s not standing on his head and stealing games — he doesn’t need to, for reasons we’ll get to in the next section. But with the Ducks firing on all cylinders, they could probably get by with goaltending that was merely adequate. Andersen has been far better than that, and he’s a big reason why the Ducks are now 9-1 since the playoffs began.

2. The Ducks keep finding the net. They beat Corey Crawford three times on just 26 shots, and are now shooting 9.8 percent as a team at even strength in the playoffs. That’s a full 2 percent better than the St. Louis Blues, who rank second, and it’s well above the 9.03 percent with which the Lightning led the league during the regular season (when scoring rates were higher).

This is the place in any discussion of percentages where the word “unsustainable” makes its inevitable appearance, and that’s appropriate here even though the Ducks are certainly talented enough up front that you’d expect above-average shooting. Does that mean they can sustain 9.5 percent? Not over a full season, no, but right now they’re just seven wins away from a Cup, so regression to the mean better hurry up if it intends to put in an appearance for anything beyond a parade.

Another good sign: On Sunday, it wasn’t even the big names who were scoring, with Ryan Getzlaf limited to one assist and Corey Perry held pointless for just the third time in the playoffs. Secondary scoring is crucial at this time of year, and the Ducks are getting it.

3. The Blackhawks really miss Michal Rozsival. The veteran defenseman, who suffered a fractured ankle in the Hawks’ series-clinching win over the Wild nearly two weeks ago, isn’t exactly the first player you’d think of as an irreplaceable piece of Chicago’s roster. But his absence was felt yesterday, as an already thin Hawks blueline now seems stretched dangerously close to the breaking point.

Rozsival’s absence leaves Chicago with two defense pairings that it seems to trust. Veteran Kimmo Timonen barely played, clocking in at just over five minutes. And David Rundblad saw a little over 10 while managing to play a key role in each of the first two Ducks goals. It was a rough night for the 24-year-old, and the Blackhawks will need him to find his game quickly. Their top four defensemen are a very solid group, but it’s asking a lot to expect them to shoulder such a heavy load for up to 13 more games.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Conference Finals preview

Twelve down, four to go. We’re on to the NHL’s conference finals, and if you’re at all confident that you know who’s going to the Stanley Cup finals, then you’re a much smarter fan than I am.

Luckily, the NHL has wisely given us the next two days to think about it, because honestly, who’d actually be in the mood for more hockey now? Instead, let’s all take a few days off to mull over the matchups, comb through the story lines, and come up with some predictions.

Will they be good predictions? No. That would take two months, minimum. But we’ll do the best with what we have. On to Round 3 …

Western Conference: Anaheim Ducks vs. Chicago Blackhawks

Series starts: Sunday afternoon in Anaheim.

Season series: The Blackhawks took two out of the three games; the Ducks never managed to score more than one goal in any of them.

Playoff history: They’ve never met before in the playoffs. But they did meet once in a movie, according to this image that’s shown up 400 times in your twitter feed this week.

Dominant narrative: Two teams that have both looked just about completely unbeatable face each other in a battle of the powerhouses.

In this corner: Chicago Blackhawks (48-28-6, 102 points, plus-34 goal differential)

How they got here: After a hard-fought win over the Predators in the opening round, the Hawks cruised to a surprisingly easy four-game sweep over a Wild team that we’d been led to believe was pretty good.

Conn Smythe candidate: Patrick Kane. Why is Kane so good in the playoffs? Old-school hockey wisdom tells us he shouldn’t be. After all, he’s a speed and skill guy, and while he’s not exactly soft, he’s never been confused for a power forward. Guys like that are supposed to fade in the playoffs, when every square foot of ice turns into a war zone. And yet Kane seems to get even better during the postseason, especially in close games. What’s the secret? Is it the mullet? It’s probably the mullet.

Wakey-wakey: Marian Hossa. Counting back to last year, it’s now been 23 games since Hossa scored on a goaltender in the playoffs. He’s still productive — of his seven assists this spring, six have been the primary — and he’s so good defensively that the Blackhawks don’t necessarily need him to score goals. But he usually does, and when the puck finally does start going in for him, a stacked Chicago roster gets even scarier.

The big question: Which Corey Crawford shows up? In the first round, Crawford struggled and lost his job to backup Scott Darling, who eventually struggled and handed it back. In the second round, Crawford was excellent. Maybe you look at him as a guy who needed a wake-up call in Round 1 and is now locked in and ready to win another Cup, but I’m still a little nervous if I’m a Blackhawks fan.

Health watch: Defenseman Michal Rozsival broke his ankle on this play which I cannot implore you strongly enough not to watch. He’s done for the year, and perhaps beyond. Kris Versteeg is day-to-day.

Key number: 72.7 percent — The Blackhawks’ penalty-killing efficiency in both the first and second round. You always like for your special teams to be consistent, but you’d prefer they weren’t consistently bad. It wasn’t enough to cost the Hawks against the uneven Predators and the overmatched Wild, but the Ducks could be a different story. In what projects to be a physical series, power plays will be crucial — Chicago will need to be much better at killing them off.

Bandwagon status: They’re on the verge of a mini dynasty and a hell of a fun team to watch, but the bandwagon already filled up and left the station during the regular season. Check back this summer after the salary cap dismantles half the team; we should have some vacancies then.

They win this series if: Crawford doesn’t implode, they sort out the penalty kill, and the Hawks’ best players can at least match the Ducks’ best.

And in this corner: Anaheim Ducks (51-24-7, 109 points, plus-7 goal differential)

How they got here: They swept the Jets in Round 1, and had only slightly more trouble knocking off the Flames in five in Round 2. They really, really hate heartwarming underdogs that used to be in Atlanta.

Conn Smythe candidate: Corey Perry, bless his punchable little face, has been on fire, racking up seven goals and 15 points in just nine games. He left the final game against the Flames with what looked like a nasty leg injury after being clipped, and then came back in time to score the series winner in overtime.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

The Lightning move on

We’ve always known what this year’s version of the Tampa Bay Lightning could do. One look at the roster was enough for that, and if you caught them on a good night, the highlight reel would drive it home. What they could do has never been in doubt; we’ve just been waiting to see them do it, and do it consistently enough to be considered a legitimate contender for the Stanley Cup.

Last night, for one game at least, we saw them do it all. They smothered the Canadiens, choking the life out of Montreal’s comeback hopes in an impressive 4-1 win that ended the second-round series and sent the Lightning on to the conference finals. It was easily their best game of the series, probably their best game of the playoffs, and maybe even their best game of the season, all things considered. The hockey world was watching, waiting for Montreal to continue its comeback. Instead, the Habs got smoked.

So did we learn anything last night? Maybe not. On paper, the Lightning are one of the league’s best young teams. We’ve known that since last year, when they ended a two-year playoff drought with a 101-point season before being swept by the Canadiens in the opening round.¹ We knew it when general manager Steve Yzerman spent the offseason patching over all the roster’s visible holes, rebuilding the blue line and adding depth up front. We knew it during the regular season, as they racked up 108 points while posting the second-best goals differential in the league.

And we knew it during the first three games of the series, as the Lightning opened up a 3-0 lead thanks to two close wins and a blowout. Then we tried not to forget everything we knew as Montreal clawed its way back into the series, posting a dominating win in Game 4 and then holding on for a narrow Game 5 win at home. Suddenly, the Canadiens had the momentum, and there was a sense of history in the air. Or at least there was until Game 6 started, when the Lightning looked like champions.

Maybe the most impressive aspect of the Lightning win last night was that they ran over Montreal without their best lineup. They did it without Ryan Callahan, the veteran winger who underwent an emergency appendectomy on Monday. They did it without Jonathan Drouin, the third overall pick from the 2013 draft who the team seems to have lost faith in; he was a healthy scratch in all but two games in the series.

And perhaps most impressively, they did it without Steven Stamkos. Oh sure, the Lightning captain was in the lineup last night. He even scored the second goal, snapping one past Carey Price five minutes into the second. But that was a Steven Stamkos; it wasn’t the Steven Stamkos. That Stamkos is borderline unstoppable; the one we got in this series was stoppable. Throughout the postseason, he’s never looked quite right. He’s not listed on the injury report, but if the Lightning season ends and we find out he’s been playing through something and is headed off for surgery, nobody will be surprised.

And yet, half of Stamkos was enough for Tampa Bay in this series. That speaks to the depth this team has put around him, the guys like Tyler Johnson and Ondrej Palat and Nikita Kucherov. On the opening goal, Kucherov tipped Palat’s feed past Price, and Kucherov later added an empty-netter. Palat scored the 3-0 marker, and Johnson’s key goals this postseason have him solidly in the Conn Smythe picture.

All three of those guys were rookies last year. They’re going to get better, just like 24-year-old defensive stud Victor Hedman will get better. The Lightning are one of the youngest teams in the league. And that’s what made them so hard to project.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

A brief history of Washington Capitals playoff collapses

The Capitals and Rangers face off tomorrow night in Game 7 of their second-round series, setting up a dramatic showdown that seemed unlikely just a few days ago. The Rangers looked like they were in big trouble when they fell behind 3-1 in the series, and they seemed all but done when the Caps held a lead late in Game 5. But a New York comeback has flipped the series around, and now the Rangers head into Game 7 in their own building with all the momentum. Who could have seen this coming?

Well, any Capitals fan could have, if we’re being honest. After all, this is a franchise that carries a certain reputation when it comes to blowing playoff leads. In fact, a loss tomorrow would mark the 10th time in franchise history that the Capitals found a way to lose a series in which they held a two-game lead. That’s not easy to do; historically, teams that lead a series 3-1 go on to win 90 percent of the time, with those that lead 2-0 faring almost as well. And yet the Capitals find a way to do it every few years. That’s almost impressive.

So in the lead-up to Game 7 and what could be yet another Capitals’ collapse, let’s take a trip back through the history of some of those series that got away. Maybe we can learn a few lessons that will help this year’s team avoid a similar fate. Or maybe we’ll just call it a dry run for the inevitable. Either way, it should make for a fun look back.¹

1985, first round, New York Islanders

The Capitals: This was a good young Caps team featuring three future Hall of Famers just entering their primes in Mike Gartner, Larry Murphy, and Scott Stevens. They finished the season with 101 points.

The opponents: The Islanders were at the tail end of the Bossy/Potvin/Trottier dynasty; they had won the conference five straight years and still had most of the core that had won four consecutive Cups from 1980 to 1983. But they had struggled to stay over .500 and finished 15 points back of the Caps.

The lead: Washington took the first two games in overtime in what was then a best-of-five opening-round format. No team in NHL history had ever blown a 2-0 lead in a best-of-five series.

The collapse: The series went back to Uniondale, where the Islanders stayed alive with a pair of wins. That set up a deciding game in Washington, in which goals by Brent Sutter and Anders Kallur were enough for the Isles to edge the Capitals, 2-1, and take the series.

The lesson: Watch out for those New York teams that lost in the Stanley Cup final the year before.

Heartbreak rating: 5/10. It’s never fun to become the first team in NHL history to squander a specific type of lead, but somebody has to be first. At least they got it over with quickly, right?

1987, first round, New York Islanders

The Capitals: A slightly older and wiser version of the 1985 squad, these Capitals featured names like Mike Ridley, Kevin Hatcher, and Michal Pivonka, who would become the core of the late-’80s/early-’90s teams.

The opponents: The Islanders still featured many of their legendary names, but were now four years removed from their last Cup and firmly transitioning into the Pat LaFontaine era.

The lead: After splitting the first two games in Washington, the Caps stole Games 3 and 4 on the road, giving up only one goal in the process and heading back home with a commanding 3-1 series lead.

The collapse: The Islanders took Game 5 by a 4-2 final, then held on for a 5-4 win in Game 6 at home. That set up a seventh game in Washington, and it turned out to be a classic: the Easter Epic, a quadruple-overtime marathon that ended on LaFontaine’s long-distance bomb.

The lesson: Why settle for losing one Game 7 when you can lose the equivalent of two in the same night?

Heartbreak rating: 9/10. This was the first time in NHL history that a team had blown a 3-1 series lead,² and the drama of the final game made the loss devastating — Bob Mason’s stunned drop to one knee is still burned into the minds of old-time Caps fans. I’d say it can’t possibly get any worse than this, but I’d be worried that this year’s Caps would take that as a challenge.

>> Read the full post on Grantland