Puck Soup: Play Gloria

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The Blues win the Stanley Cup
- Our reactions to game seven
- Did voters get the Conn Smythe right?
- Breaking down the Cup handoff, including those weird fireworks
- The competition committee meets, so get ready to tinker with faceoff again
- Things get a little heated over Toronto fans and cheering injuries
- Also the USWNT celebration thing
- And more...

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Seven reasons why the Blues are definitely winning tonight (and also seven why the Bruins are)

We’re hours away from the first Game 7 of a Stanley Cup final in eight years. Are you pumped? I’m a little pumped. This is going to be fun.

So who’s going to win? I have no idea. Really, none at all. I could pretend that I do, but anyone who’s been following my predictions so far won’t be buying it for a second. And can you blame me? The 2019 playoffs have been total chaos. Anyone who tells you that they’ve got it all figured out now, with one game to go, is full of it. I’m not even going to try, because I’ve been trying to predict Game 7s for decades now and I’ve only ever been right once.

So no, I’m not going to be right. But could I get you to settle for half-right? I can come up with seven reasons why the Bruins are definitely going to win Game 7. I can also come up with seven more why the Blues are an absolute lock. If you’re an optimist, pick the team you like best and only read their entries. If you prefer feeling sick heading into a big game, only read the other team. Read all of them, and come away feeling just as confused as when you started. Or just wait until tomorrow, read the entries of the team that won, and then head to the comments to call me a genius.

Your call. There are no wrong answers here. Well, there are – seven out of 14, to be exact. But that’s a better batting average than I normally have, so let’s get to them.

The Bruins will win because: The first line is finally waking up.

The Patrice Bergeron/Brad Marchand/David Pastrnak line – and no, we’re not calling them the Perfection Line, knock that off – has been hit-and-miss for a lot of the postseason. They were broken up against Toronto, reunited, and certainly had their moments. But they never really rolled for long stretches the way we’ve seen in the past. It’s a credit to the rest of the Bruins forwards that they had the depth to keep winning in spite of their top line struggling.

For most of the final, it’s been the same story, with Brayden Schenn’s line winning the matchup. The Bergeron line’s struggles have been so noticeable that there’s been plenty of speculation that some or all of them may be playing through serious injuries.

But on Sunday, for the first time in the series, the Bergeron line looked dominant, while Schenn’s looked outclassed. That’s just about the best news you could get as a Bruins fan. Maybe they’ve made an adjustment, or maybe they’re healthy again, or maybe they’re just heating up. You don’t really care about the why right now. You just know that if the top line can dominate, every other matchup falls into place really nicely.

The Blues will win because: The stats tell us that Jordan Binnington can’t lose in this situation.

We’ve heard about it all postseason. Overall, Binnington’s playoff numbers aren’t all that great, and he’s had a few games in this series alone where he’s looked very ordinary. But after a loss, he gains some sort of weird superpowers where he becomes unbeatable.

In the playoffs, he’s 7-2 with a 1.83 GAA after a loss, which plays into the narrative that the kid has ice in his veins. And it is a narrative to some extent – every goalie who makes it deep into the playoffs has a good record after a loss, because the ones that don’t get eliminated early. But sometimes even a narrative can have value as long as everyone believes it. Under normal circumstances, a team heading into Game 7 with a young goalie who just got shelled in Game 6 might be worried. The Blues don’t have to be.

The Bruins will win because: The stats also tell us that Tuukka Rask can’t lose in this situation.

Wait, did you say Binnington is a 1.83 GAA in these types of games? Rask has that beat.

Tuukka Rask in an elimination game this postseason: 3-0, 1.33 GAA, .953 save pct (82 saves, 86 shots). Four goals allowed in 179.81 minutes.

— Emily Kaplan (@emilymkaplan) June 10, 2019

Can both goalies be unbeatable in the same game? Huh. We may be here a while.

But while we’re on the subject of goaltending, let’s point out that Rask has been the better of the two, both in the series and in the playoffs. I’m not sure I’m willing to give him the Conn Smythe even in a losing cause, but there’s a case to be made. He’s been that good. The Blues have already survived having one goaltender stand on his head in a Game 7 against them, but I don’t like their odds if it happens again.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Five hard questions the NHL needs to ask before they expand replay review

Expanded replay review is coming to the NHL, in some form. The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun reported over the weekend that league leadership has already met to come up with a proposal for expanded review and will present it to the competition committee on Tuesday, with the GMs getting a look next week.

LeBrun reports that the recommendation will not include judgment penalty reviews, at least this time around. That will be disappointing to some fans, especially in the wake of controversial moments like Cody Eakin’s major and Tyler Bozak’s uncalled trip. But it would likely include a review of plays like Timo Meier’s hand pass, among other scenarios that aren’t covered by the current rules.

I’m with pretty much everyone else in believing that the NHL has a crisis on its hands. The officials have become the story of the playoffs and that’s never a good thing. I think the Eakin call was a bad one, as I said at the time. I think the hand pass was an obvious miss. And I think Bozak should have been given two for tripping on Thursday. Three big missed calls, which is three too many.

But now what?

You already know what I think about replay review for penalties. I’ve made my case that it would be a disaster, and I’ll keep banging that drum if only because in a few years when we do have it and everybody hates it, I won’t have to hear about how nobody could have seen this coming. And I think there’s a good chance that any sort of expanded review will be a mess too because it’s being implemented by the same minds that came up with the current offside and goalie interference reviews. Are you happy with how those have worked? Not many of us seem to be.

But here’s the key point: I don’t want expanded replay review to be a mess. I’d have no issue with a well-implemented replay system that makes the game better. I don’t want this league to screw up yet again. I don’t want us to all be sitting around in a few years, screaming at each other over freeze-frames of plays we barely even notice today.

For now, I’m accepting reality by conceding that I’m probably going to lose this argument and that significantly expanded review is almost certainly coming in some form. And yes, that will likely include penalties at some point, even if it’s not this year. The question now is whether it can be done in a way that doesn’t prove my warnings right. I’m not optimistic, but I don’t think the task is impossible.

But the first step is that we have to stop pretending this is easy. Stop saying “just get it right,” as if that hasn’t occurred to the league or its officials. We all told ourselves that offside review was going to be easy, but it hasn’t been – and that’s for a call that in theory should be black-and-white. We figured we were just going to catch the Matt Duchene plays and nobody could object to that. Instead, we took a play that nobody had a serious problem with since Leon Stickle in 1980 and turned it into something we all fight about every few days. And we did all of that without catching even one single Duchene-style play along the way. We now have teams with employees whose job it is to watch every zone entry for potential offsides, all for the purpose of taking perfectly good goals off the board because of a fraction of an inch that nobody even noticed in real-time. If we’d seen what was coming, nobody would have been in favor of this four years ago.

Why did the offside review system we got end up being so different than what we expected? Because we didn’t really think it through about how it would work. We saw a missed call or two, we wanted to fix it and we figured that replay review would be easy. We were all wrong. Let’s learn some hard lessons from that.

Sure, complain about this year’s playoff officiating. If your team is one of the ones who got screwed by those ridiculous calls, you have every right. Scream at the sky, stomp your feet, type in all caps. Get it all out of your system. And then let’s start asking some tough questions about what we’re actually going to do.

Here are five to get us started.

What should be the standard for changing a call?

There are two basic schools of thought here. The first is that replay is there to catch the obvious errors. Mistakes happen, officials get screened and we need a failsafe for the really big misses that are obvious to everyone except the guy with the whistle. In theory, that means replays should be rare and short because it takes one look to see that yep, Timo Meier committed a hand pass. You don’t even need the slow-mo part most times and certainly not the frame-by-frame breakdowns. Often, one look at real speed is all you need.

It goes without saying that the NHL doesn’t do it this way because reviews aren’t rare and they’re certainly not short. The league has gone with the other philosophy, which says that once you’ve triggered a review, you might as well try to make the best call you can. After all, you’ve already stopped the whole game, you’ve got all these fancy cameras and multiple angles and everyone is standing around. Might as well take the time to really figure out what happened. If that means that you only end up being 60 percent sure that you got it wrong, well, that can still be a call worth changing.

Neither of these approaches is necessarily right or wrong, but you have to pick one. And you have to communicate it clearly to fans. Today, the NHL lives in a weird middle ground where the rules say that the call on the ice is supposed to stand unless the evidence is overwhelming, but the reviews clearly aren’t called that way. (Did you ever see a view of the Gabriel Landeskog offside that showed with 100 percent clarity that his skate wasn’t touching the line? Me neither.)

Pick a lane, and communicate it clearly every time you have a review. No more middle ground.

One more thing. If your standard is that we’ll only change the calls that are obviously wrong, prepare to be surprised by what people think is obvious. That Bozak trip? Not a penalty to everyone’s eyes. Lots of people thought the Cody Eakin major was absolutely the right call. Few penalty calls are ever really obvious to everyone watching. Stuff like hand passes and pucks into the netting should be better, but even there we can run into grey areas or views that might seem inconclusive.

Again, this isn’t a reason not to try. But it is a reason to stop pretending that any of this is going to be simple, or that you’ll make everyone happy with the results.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Grab Bag: Remembering history’s second most awkward Gary Bettman Cup handoff

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- OK, fine, I'm on board with letting coaches challenge anything they want -- on one condition.
- Debating NHL playoff game broadcasts
- An obscure player who went to John Cena's high school
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube look back at Gary Bettman trying to present the Cup in front of a very hostile crowd

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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The 2019 playoff disappointment index

The Blues and Bruins continue the Stanley Cup final tonight and yay, wonderful, good for them. What about the rest of us?

After all, it’s not easy to watch other teams (and fans) have all the fun. If your team didn’t make the playoffs at all, then there’s a chance you’ve already checked out. It can be refreshingly stress-free to watch the postseason without having a horse in the race, but not many of us want to hang around outside and stare into the window of a party we weren’t invited to. If you’ve spent the last six weeks ignoring the playoffs and just reloading Corey Pronman’s page instead, nobody could blame you.

And if you did have a team in the playoffs, you’re still furious over how they went out. I don’t even need to know what team you cheer for – I know that you think the refereeing was stacked against you, quite possibly on the direct orders of Gary Bettman, and that the team that beat you are unworthy cretins who didn’t deserve a thing. We’re hockey fans, sadness mixed with rage is what we do.

But not all exits are created equal, and some fans have a better claim at post-elimination misery than others. So today, let’s go through those 14 eliminated playoff teams and rank them from the least to the most disappointment their fans should be feeling right now. We’ll start with the teams that might actually feel vaguely good about their playoff experience, and work our way down to the ones that should still be sobbing.

It should be a real pick-me-up. Let’s get started.

Obviously, you want to win the Cup, and you’ll never be completely satisfied with a season that ends any other way. But the Hurricanes did just about everything else they could have hoped for this year. They made it back to the postseason after a nine-year absence. They rebuilt a fan base in their market, and forged an identity beyond it. They knocked off the defending Stanley Cup champions in a seven-game double-overtime thriller for the ages. And then they won another round on top of that.

It’s not a Cup, but for a franchise that had fallen on hard times over the last decade, it was the next best thing. The core is young, they’ve got their coach, and their fans have been reminded how much fun hockey can be. Once the initial bitterness over a conference final loss fades, it will be hard to look back on this year and find all that much disappointment at all.

#13: Colorado Avalanche

The Avs were the only team that came into the playoffs having lost more games than they won. They weren’t even one of the top 16 teams in the regular season, having finished six points back of non-playoff Montreal. And they drew a first-round matchup against a Flames team that finished 17 points ahead of them.

Given all of that, it’s hard to be too disappointed with how things worked out. The Avalanche didn’t just upset the Flames, they dominated stretches while knocking them off in five games. Then they took the star-studded Sharks to seven before finally bowing out.

Sure, that seventh game included a waved-off goal on an offside review that was nit-picky and maybe even wrong, so there’s a decent dose of what-might-have-been here. But ultimately, a young Avalanche team overachieved, setting the stage for future success. You’ll take that.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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A Stanley Cup final rooting guide for every other fan base

Friends, we’ve got a bit of a problem.

One of the columns I look forward to writing each year is my annual rooting guide to the Stanley Cup final. With two teams left standing, it’s usually fun to go through all the other fan bases and try to figure out who it makes the most sense for them to be rooting for. There’s a bit of debate, a few punchlines and a good time is had by all. Well, some. Probably at least a few.

Here’s the problem. Normally, the results play out pretty evenly. I don’t necessarily plan it that way, it’s just the nature of the exercise. Pick any two teams and have them face off in the Stanley Cup final and you’re going to wind up with roughly half of the hockey world getting behind each of them. Last year, the Knights and Capitals basically split things right down the middle. That works out well because you can bounce back and forth between options, and the whole thing never feels too repetitive because you’re not just listing the same team over and over.

Which brings us to this year.

I mean … well … (gestures at the Blues and Bruins) … what am I supposed to do with this?

The Blues are an irresistible story, an underdog chasing their first Stanley Cup in over half a century of existence and who were mired in dead last as recently as January before pulling off a near-miracle run back to contending. When we did our bandwagon-hopper’s guide back before the playoffs started, we had the Blues ranked in the top spot and nobody even argued.

Then there are the Bruins. They’re a team that already won a few years ago, from a city that wins pretty much everything all the time. They’ve faced two of the league’s best stories in the Blue Jackets and Hurricanes and quickly broke the hearts of both. Their best player occasionally licks people. Don Cherry likes them.

At first glance, here’s everyone who should clearly be cheering for this year’s Boston Bruins in the final: People who actually play for this year’s Boston Bruins. That’s it. That’s the full list. And even David Backes should probably be secretly rooting for the Blues.

Therefore, this year’s rooting guide is going to be a challenge. I’m going to try really hard to steer as many teams towards Boston as I can because just listing the Blues 30 times is going to get pretty boring. That may mean putting a thumb on the scale in a few spots. Can we get the Bruins all the way into double digits? I’m not making any promises, but let’s see what we can do.

 
Toronto Maple Leafs

If we pretend that anyone in Toronto is going to be watching hockey instead of basketball for the next few weeks, there’s actually a surprisingly decent case to be made for Leaf fans backing the Bruins. After all, Toronto took Boston to seven games in the first round, so a Bruins’ Cup win could turn what had seemed like a disastrous early exit into a near-miss that fans can feel at least a little bit better about. And remember, the Blues are tied with the Leafs for the longest Cup drought, so if they win then Toronto is all alone at the top of that unpleasant list. Might be better to root for the Bruins, if only because misery loves company.

It’s a solid case. But is it good enough? I don’t think it is, for many of the same reasons I laid out a few weeks ago when urging Toronto fans to bandwagon St. Louis. The Blues are long-time rivals going back to the Norris Division days, but most of that rivalry falls into the category of pleasant nostalgia these days. Long-suffering fan bases should have each other’s back, and besides, the Blues are packed with ex-Leafs including Tyler Bozak. If it’s between rooting for them or for the team that’s snuffed out three of the last four Leafs’ playoff runs, the choice isn’t all that tough.

Pick: Blues

 
Carolina Hurricanes

You don’t even need to dredge up Whalers history to know where this one is going. You only have to go back a few weeks, and the anticlimactic end to what had been a dream Hurricanes’ season. Does that mean the Blues are an automatic A+ alternative? Not really, but Carolina fans will give them a C.

Pick: Blues

 
New York Rangers

Hey New York, how would you feel about cheering on a Boston team to win a major sports championship? That’s what I thought.

Pick: Blues

 
Montreal Canadiens

Haha.

Pick: Blues

 
Chicago Blackhawks

OK, now we’re talking. The Hawks are probably the Blues’ oldest and most bitter rivals, with the occasional massacre thrown in. And the last time the Bruins were in the final it worked out pretty well for Chicago, so they can pay back some of that karma here.

The only downside here is that a Bruins’ win gets them within one of the Hawks for the most cap-era championships. But Chicago’s already sharing that status with Pittsburgh, so it should hardly be a deal-breaker. For what might be the only time in this entire piece, the case here for Boston is a pretty easy one to make. So there you go, Boston – the shutout is broken.

Pick: Bruins

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Puck Soup: Final countdown

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We preview the Stanley Cup final, including our picks for the Cup and Conn Smythe
- Where do the Sharks go from here?
- The Senators hire a coach as we're recording
- A conversation about spoilers and the people who complain about them
- And lots more...

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Grab Bag: Stanley Cup preview

In the Friday Grab Bag
- A Stanley Cup previews, as per hockey writing bylaws
- The schedule for the final is kind of terrible but that's not really the NHL's fault
- An obscure player who had a miraculous playoff game
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube look back at what may have been the greatest moment in Blues' playoff history, at least until this week

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Remembering each year’s ultimate playoff losers (and why the 2019 Penguins could top them all)

I’ve always been kind of fascinated with the concept of a postseason’s biggest loser. Maybe it has something to do with being into my fourth decade of cheering for a team that never wins the Stanley Cup, but I’ve never bought into the idea that one team wins, 15 teams don’t, and all those losers are basically in the same boat of leaguewide failure.

Nonsense. Not all losers are created equal, and some come closer to the Cup than others. Obviously, the team that loses in the final is a near-miss, one their fans will probably always remember. But depending on how you look at it, other teams could claim to have come close too.

And then you’ve got the other side of the coin: The one and only one team each year that has the worst possible playoff experience. That’s the one I’ve always been interested in.

Specifically, I’m looking for the team that lost to the team that lost to the team that lost to the team that lost to the team that won the Stanley Cup.

That’s a lot of losses. In fact, the first time you read through them all, it feels like too much losing to cram into one postseason. But it all adds up. We’re looking for the team that suffers a first-round exit at the hands of an opponent that goes out in the second round. And then the team that beat that team goes out in the third round. And that team goes to the final, where they lose to the Cup winner.

It all leaves that first team as far from the Cup as possible. Four degrees of playoff failure. The ultimate loser. A quad fraud. The tetrad of bad.

OK, maybe the name needs work, but I love the concept.

Let’s say you’re a team like this year’s Maple Leafs or Jets. Sure, you’re disappointed by a first-round exit, one that initially made you feel like you were still a long way away from contending for a Stanley Cup. But what if the Bruins or Blues go on to win it all? That changes your perception. Now, you gave the eventual champs all they could handle. If you really wanted to, you could tell yourself that you might even have been the second-best team in the entire playoffs, one that just had the bad luck to run into a tough early matchup with the eventual champs.

But if you’re the team that lost to the team that lost to the team that lost to the team that lost to the Stanley Cup winners? There’s no sugar-coating that. You were miles away from winning anything. You lost as badly as you could possibly lose.

Or at least, that’s what I always thought. But this year, the concept is getting a new twist that I’m almost afraid to bring up. You know how you’re not supposed to talk about a pitcher taking a perfect game into the ninth inning? That’s where I’m at on this. It’s almost too wonderful to mention. But I wouldn’t be much of a journalist if I didn’t talk about an important developing story, and besides, I know from my recent Twitter mentions that many of you are already on top of this one. So I might as well spit it out.

Ladies and gentlemen, we might actually see the first ever case of a team that got swept by the team that got swept by the team that got swept by the team that got swept by the Stanley Cup champions.

That is insane. It shouldn’t be mathematically possible for us to be anywhere close. And yet here we are. And it’s made even better by the identity of the team that might pull it off: Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

They were swept by the Islanders in Round 1. Then the Islanders were swept by the Hurricanes in Round 2. The Canes were swept by the Bruins in the conference final. If Boston goes out in four straight in the final, the Penguins will have finished as far from the Stanley Cup as is even theoretically possible. They’d basically be 0-for-16. If it happens, I’m pretty sure the entire league has to fold.

Needless to say, I am way too excited about this possibility. I’m not going to go as far as to ask the Bruins to come right out and throw the Cup final, because that would be ridiculous. But if they lose the first two games at home then yes, they should absolutely throw the Cup final. Just devote the rest of the series to hanging a historical embarrassment on a longtime rival. As the song goes, the chance may never come again.

Of course, if the Bruins refuse to play along and actually win the final, that will let the Penguins off the hook entirely. Instead, this year’s ultimate loser honors would go to the Flames, since they lost to the Avs who lost to the Sharks who lost to the Blues. Still fun, but not quite as mesmerizing as the possibility of the quattro-sweep.

As we all wait with bated breath to see which scenario plays out, let’s take a few moments to celebrate the history of the NHL’s ultimate playoff losers, dating back to the first four-round playoff back in 1975.

The recent history

By definition, the quadruple loser has to come from the opposite conference as the eventual Cup winner, so the last few years have been dominated by the West.

Last season, it was the Avalanche who earned the honors – they lost to the Predators, who lost to the Jets, who lost to the Knights, who lost to the Capitals. In 2017, it was Sharks; they lost to the Oilers, who lost to the Ducks, who lost to the Predators, who lost to the Penguins. And in 2016 it was the Wild, thanks to their loss to the Stars, who lost to the Blues, who lost to the Sharks, who lost to the Penguins.

So already, we can start to get some clarity on one of the questions that you may have been wondering about: Does any of this actually matter? And the answer: Apparently not!

The Avalanche followed up their nightmare playoffs by having pretty much the same season, making it back to the wild card this year. The Sharks rebounded to become one of the league’s best teams. The Wild are currently not that. Three teams in, and we’re already all over the map.

That’s where any reasonable person would probably give up on the whole concept. Gentle reader, I am not that reasonable person. We’re just getting started.

Going back a few years, we get to the 2015 Islanders, who lost to the Capitals who lost to the Rangers who lost to the Lightning who lost to the Blackhawks. That one nearly pulls off the opposite of this year’s Penguins scenario, as the first three series were all seven-gamers. Alas, the final only went six.

Next comes a three-year run of dominance by the Atlantic division, who give us the 2014 Red Wings, 2013 Canadiens and 2012 Bruins. Skip a few years and you get to the only repeat winner of the cap era, as the Bruins show up again in 2008.

Other cap era teams include the 2006 Stars, the 2009 Blues, the 2010 Senators, the 2011 Coyotes and our first team that no longer exists: the 2007 Thrashers, who lost to the Rangers who lost to the Sabres who lost to Senators who lost to the Ducks. Considering that Atlanta team was also swept in four straight and was making the only playoff appearance in Thrashers history, and it might well stand as the single worst example of the ultimate loser phenomenon ever. You know, until this year’s Penguins.

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Sharks vs. Blues: Which franchise holds the crown for making its fans miserable?

We may be just a few days away from deciding the most important title in the NHL.

No, not “Stanley Cup champion.” Those come and go. This is something bigger and more enduring. We’re talking about the title of the most miserable franchise in the entire league. Which team has done the most to torture its fan base over the years?

For a long time, there was a fairly easy answer. It was the Washington Capitals, a franchise that had built a reputation for finding new and exciting ways to raise expectations and then brutally crush them. Whether it was blowing 3-1 series leads, or losing quadruple overtime game sevens, or winning Presidents’ Trophies only to lose to a hot goalie or to the Penguins or to a hot goalie on the Penguins, the Capitals were the undisputed kings of hockey misery.

But then last year, it all came crashing down. They actually went out and won a Stanley Cup. It was confusing and even a little frightening. And it left the hockey world wondering: Which team has the best claim to the vacated throne?

The Canucks certainly have a strong case, one bolstered by nearly a half-decade without a title that includes two heart-breaking Game 7 losses in the final. The Sabres would be right there with them, with a Cup-losing goal that shouldn’t have counted highlighting their resume. The Maple Leafs could be in the mix too since their last Cup came before most of today’s fans were alive. Maybe you work in some consideration for fans in places like Winnipeg, Minnesota or Ottawa.

But the two teams that have to be near the top of just about any list are the St. Louis Blues and the San Jose Sharks. Those two teams have spent the last few decades doing what miserable teams do: Being pretty good just about every season, convincing their weary fan base that this just might be the year and then having something horrible happen to crush those hopes and dreams.

As a lifelong Maple Leafs fan, I know a thing or two about misery. And I think there’s a strong case to be made that when it comes to taking over the Capitals’ crown, the Sharks and the Blues are the two best candidates we have. But which one should earn the honors? That’s a tough call. As we wait for the two teams to face off in Game Six of the Western Conference final, let’s compare their cases in a head-to-head battle with even bigger stakes.

How long are we talking about?

True misery isn’t a short-term game, but a slow drip that builds over time. It’s not about a moment or a series or even a season. We’re looking for decades here.

The Sharks: San Jose entered the league as an expansion team (sort of) back in 1991, which doesn’t seem like all that long ago to some of us but actually puts the Sharks right around the middle of the current league in terms of longevity in their market. We are all so old.

They were historically awful for their first two years. But when you’re talking about their history of misery, you’re really starting the clock right around 2001, when they crack the 90-point mark for the first time and start heading into the postseason with expectations. That kicks off a long run of regular season success that’s still going to this day, with only two playoff misses in nearly two decades. But of course, no Cup.

The Blues: The Blues came into the league in the 1967 expansion and were the first quasi-success story among the half-dozen new teams. They won the all-expansion West Division in each of its first three years, earning trips to the Cup final each time but never winning. They didn’t have much success in the 1970s but had turned things around by the start of the 1980s.

That’s when the Blues really became the Blues – which is to say, a perfectly respectable regular season team that never seemed to do all that much in the playoffs. From 1979-80 through to the 2005 lockout, the Blues made the playoffs every year. That’s 25 straight seasons, the same as what the Red Wings pulled off in their much-hyped streak. And yet I’m guessing some of you may have never even heard of the Blues streak because it didn’t deliver any Cups or even any final appearances and only two trips out of the second round. The St. Louis Blues: Just kind of there™.

Misery edge: This one’s a pretty easy call as (furiously punches numbers into his calculator) 52 years is more than 28. The Sharks’ case here is that they may have had more seasons with serious expectations; they’ve had nine 100+ point seasons since 2001, compared to eight for the Blues since 1980. But St. Louis still takes this one.

Signature heart-breaking moment

Every truly miserable fan base has a few of those plays that they still can’t watch without wanting to whip the remote through the TV.

The Sharks: This ends up being a tougher call than you might think, for reasons we’ll get to down below. But for sheer hands-over-head disbelief, it’s hard to beat the way they were eliminated by the Canucks in the 2011 conference final.

That’s just the hockey gods toying with you right there.

The Blues: It’s the opening round of the 2000 playoffs and the Blues have just captured their first and only Presidents’ Trophy. They’re heavy favorites over the eighth-seeded Sharks, but the underdogs have stretched the series to a seventh game. And then, with seconds left in the first period in front of 19,000 stunned fans, this happens:

That ends up being the winning goal and the best season in franchise history ends in Round 1.

Misery edge: For creativity, it’s the Sharks for sure. But for actual psyche-scarring misery, the Blues get the nod here.

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In a copycat league, what lessons can we learn from the four conference finalists?

We often hear about how the NHL is a copycat league. A few teams do well and everyone else decides to try to be just like them. Then somebody new comes along, has success with a different approach and the entire league pivots and goes chasing after that. NHL GMs who’ve been tasked with building a Cup contender often end up reminding you of the flustered student in the back row desperately trying to copy off of the smart kid’s paper.

Now that we’re down to four teams left in this year’s playoffs, can we figure out what the league might be about to learn? Maybe, because when you look at the final four as a group, there are some similarities that stand out. Today, let’s look through a half-dozen lessons you might learn from this year’s conference finalists – you know, if you happened to be the copycat type.

Lesson No. 1: Be bold when it comes to coaching changes

Making a coaching change can’t be fun for a GM. You never like to see anyone lose their job, especially when they’ve worked hard for your organization over the years. Mix in an owner who might not appreciate paying somebody not to work and you can understand why a GM might prefer the status quo.

But as this year’s final four has shown, sometimes it pays to pull the trigger. The most obvious example was in St. Louis, where making the change from Mike Yeo to Craig Berube may have saved their season. At the time the move was made, you could understand why Doug Armstrong may have hesitated. After all, Yeo had only been given one full season behind the bench and it’s not like Berube’s resume made him an obvious upgrade. Armstrong probably could have talked himself into waiting another month or two, or maybe even the whole season. But he didn’t and the Blues were eventually rewarded.

The Hurricanes also have a first-year head coach and the change came under odd circumstances. Technically, they didn’t fire Bill Peters; he exercised an out clause in his contract. But the team didn’t exactly seem like they were all that eager to keep him, with owner Tom Dundon expressing disappointment at the team’s record, acknowledging that he was willing to be “pretty flexible” in regards to whatever decision Peters made. When Peters left for Calgary, the promotion of rookie head coach Rod Brind’Amour turned out to be a near-perfect fit for a young team looking to find the next level.

Boston and San Jose have had more recent stability behind the bench, but both have seen good results after making changes that took some courage. The Sharks moved on from Todd McLellan in 2015 after the first playoff miss of his career and then watched him get snapped up by a division rival within weeks, but Peter DeBoer has done well in four seasons since. And the Bruins took plenty of heat for firing Claude Julien midway through the 2016-17 season and replacing him with little-known assistant Bruce Cassidy, especially when the Habs hired him just one week later. But Cassidy has done a fantastic job ever since.

Who could learn from them: I know you all want me to say Toronto here, but it seems like it’s one season too early to really dig into that possibility. Rather than call for any specific coach’s job, I’ll just point out that there are seven teams in the league who’ve had the same coach since the 2015 offseason, and only one – the Sharks – made it out of the first round. Tampa, Winnipeg, Nashville and Toronto all went out early, while New Jersey and Detroit didn’t even make it in.

Lesson No. 2: Don’t be afraid to take a big swing on the trade market, especially in the offseason

One of the early themes of the 2019 playoffs was the positive impact that a team could gain from being active at the trade deadline, as big movers like the Golden Knights and Blue Jackets started strong. But with those teams out, that narrative has faded. Instead, maybe we should be talking about summer blockbusters, since three of these teams made big trades in the 2018 offseason.

The biggest was the Sharks acquiring Erik Karlsson in a move that’s paid off nicely now that he’s healthy enough to play. The Hurricanes pulled off the Dougie Hamilton blockbuster with the Flames and also sent Jeff Skinner to the Sabres, while the Blues pulled off the Ryan O’Reilly deal (not to mention Brayden Schenn the summer before). Those were four very different types of deals, but they all took some guts to pull off and all of them are big parts of why these teams are where they are today.

The outlier here is Don Sweeney and the Bruins. He’s not much of a trader – he’s been on the job for four years and his NHL Trade Tracker entry still doesn’t have a second page. And after a busy first offseason in which he made deals featuring names like Dougie Hamilton, Milan Lucic and Martin Jones, he’s basically taken summers off. He’s more of a deadline guy, but that’s paid off for Boston, as the additions of Charlie Coyle and Marcus Johansson have helped.

Who could learn from them: Any GM who prefers to sit on their hands and mumble about how making big trades is just too hard, which is to say most of today’s GMs. That could even include David Poile in Nashville, an aggressive trader who somewhat surprisingly hasn’t made a big summer move since the P.K. Subban trade almost three years ago.

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Grab Bag: Terrible offside reviews, missed head shots, injured goalies and another round of playoff outrage

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- We need another playoff outrage lightning round, as we deal with offside review, injured goalies, and Brad Marchand being a jerk
- A quick request to media covering the playoffs from the press box
- An obscure player or two
- The week's three comedy stars, where (almost) everyone is excited about the Blues
- And a YouTube breakdown of a 24-year-old the fake injury that helped kill a franchise and changed the rulebook

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Building a roster for the 2019 Playoff Disappointment Team

The first two rounds of the playoffs are over, and we’ve made it through one of the most unpredictable and outright shocking months of postseason action we’ve ever seen. Twelve teams are out and four more are on to the conference final, just eight wins away from the sport’s ultimate prize. So you know what time it is now.

No, not time to celebrate the accomplishments of the winners. Ew. Is this your first day here?

No, we’re hockey fans, so we’re going to do what we do best: Point and yell “SHAME” at those who have displeased us. So today, let’s assemble a full roster’s worth of playoff disappointment. These are the players who didn’t live up to expectations once the postseason started, and may now be part of the reason their team isn’t playing anymore.

And why did they let us down? (Ignores that one guy with a pocket protector shouting “Small sample size!”) That’s right – they didn’t want it bad enough. Try harder next time, guys, and everything will work out fine. Consider it a lesson learned.

Like all great teams, we’ll build from the net out. Please welcome your 2019 All Playoff Disappointment Team.

Goaltenders

Andrei Vasilevskiy, Lightning: Spoiler alert – Vasilevskiy won’t be the only Lightning player to show up on this list. And in a sense, that should shield him from some criticism, since a goalie is only as good as the team in front of him. But the series between the Lightning and Blue Jackets was closer than you probably remember it, and an extra save here or there could have at least extended it, if not changed the outcome. The Lightning never seemed to get that save. Put it this way: So far, 17 goalies have started at least one playoff game, and 16 of them have posted a save percentage over .900. The 17th is Vasilevskiy, with a downright ugly .856.

Matt Murray, Penguins: The story of the Islanders’ surprising sweep over the Penguins was how Pittsburgh just couldn’t ever seem to hold any momentum. They’d score a big goal, you’d think “OK, here we go,” and then the Islanders would come right back down and score almost immediately. Those goals weren’t always Murray’s fault, but some sure were, and the Penguins were always going to need something more than .906 goaltending to get past Robin Lehner and the Islanders.

Missed the cut: Martin Jones looked like he had a spot on this team all wrapped up after the first week, but he’s been fantastic ever since. Pekka Rinne has a stronger case, and he certainly didn’t get that redemption he was looking for after last year’s disastrous finish. But he had three games where he was .950 or better, including 49 saves in the OT loss that ended the Predators’ season. And unlike Murray or Vasilevskiy, at least he won a game. Marc-Andre Fleury did too, and would have won a series if the Knights could kill off a penalty.

First pair

Kris Letang, Penguins: You can’t accuse him of not showing up, as he averaged over 27 minutes a game. But in a series where the Penguins always seemed one goal away from turning things around, their only high-scoring defenseman managed just one assist. Worse, he was front and center on several key goals against, as his aggressive style seemed to backfire just about every time. As Letang himself pointed out, you can’t just tell an offensive defenseman not to make mistakes. But when your style is high risk/high reward, sometimes you wind up high on the list of goats.

Jacob Trouba, Jets: In what could be his last games in a Jets uniform, Trouba had a rough series against the Blues. His offense dried up, to the tune of just one assist in six games. But his most memorable moment came in his own end, where a disastrous decision may have been the series turning point.

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What was the most unexpected final four in NHL playoff history?

It’s​ been the year​ of​ the​ wildcard​ in​ the​ NHL playoffs.​ The Hurricanes are​ already through to​ the​ conference final, having​​ knocked off the Metro’s top two seeds along the way. The Dallas Stars have a chance to head to the Western final if they can win tomorrow night’s Game 7. And the Blue Jackets and Avalanche are still alive in their quests to win divisions they aren’t even in.

It’s all added up to a postseason that’s been, to borrow a technical hockey term that the insiders use, “weird-ass.” And if all four wildcard teams make it through to the conference finals, it would be safe to call this year the most unpredictable postseason we’ve ever seen. It wouldn’t even be all that close.

But even if a few of the favorites survive, this season will still have a solid claim to the “most unpredictable” crown. Today, let’s take a look back through the history books and try to figure out which other seasons are in the running.

There are a few ways you could do this, including just trying to remember which years felt the most surprising. But that’s tricky because hockey fans are good at fooling ourselves into thinking we knew more than we did. Instead, let’s stick with something objective.

I went back through all the postseasons since the league went to a full sixteen-team format in 1979-80 and looked at where each of the final four teams finished in their conference standings. If they had the best record, they get one point. The second best is two, down through to the team with the eighth-best record among playoff teams in the conference. Add those four scores up and you’ve got a pretty decent idea of just how unlikely that season’s conference finalists were.

The highest possible score would be 30, from two sevens and two eights. If all this year’s wildcards make it through, that would give this season an unpredictability score of 29. (The Stars were a wildcard but actually had the sixth-best record in the West, ahead of Vegas.) It won’t surprise you to know that that would be the highest score ever by a wide margin. But what if the three remaining favorites all make it through? That drops us down to a seven (Carolina), five (St. Louis) and a pair of twos (Boston and San Jose), for a total of 16. Still not bad.

Not bad, but not the best. I could find ten seasons that could beat that total, which seems like a good place to draw the line. Let’s revisit some of those other seasons that left us scratching our heads and trashing our brackets, as we work our way up to the highest score.

1988-89

The final four: Calgary (1), Chicago (8), Montreal (1), Philadelphia (7), giving us a total of 17 points.

The path there: This was a weird year, with two top seeds that finished miles ahead of the pack and that everyone expected to see in the conference final and then two longshots who both made unexpected runs. The Flyers’ push wasn’t all that shocking; they’d been a decent team during the season and only had to navigate a lukewarm Patrick Division and they’d been to the Cup final in 1985 and 1987. But the Hawks had finished with just 66 points before knocking off the Wings and Blues to win the typically terrible Norris.

Fair warning: For reasons I’m not quite clear on, the Hawks show up in these seasons a lot.

The epilogue: Do you believe in miracles? No? Good, because the Flames and Canadiens both advanced, giving us a rare Cup final between the league’s two top teams. The Flames won that one in six.

2009-10

The final four: San Jose (1), Chicago (2), Philadelphia (7) and Montreal (8), for a total of 18 points.

The path there: This might have been one of the first seasons that popped into your mind when you saw the premise for this piece. And rightly so, since it’s the only season (until maybe this year) when one conference saw its two worst playoff teams by regular season record meet in the conference final. The Flyers and Habs were both big underdogs who wrote stunning playoff stories, Montreal on the strength of Jaroslav Halak’s red-hot goaltending and Philadelphia by coming back from down 3-0 to stun the Bruins.

Unfortunately for our rankings, while all that was going on the West played out exactly as expected, with the top two teams rolling through the early rounds. Therefore, this season won’t rank as high on our list as it probably deserves to.

The epilogue: Halak’s magic dried up and the Flyers won the battle of the underdogs. But they couldn’t finish the story against the Hawks, who swept the Sharks and then ended their 49-year Cup drought with Patrick Kane’s overtime winner. It was a fittingly weird end to an unpredictable postseason.

1991-92

The final four: Pittsburgh (4), Boston (6), Chicago (3) and Edmonton (6), for a total of 19 points.

The path there: This one looks more surprising on paper than it felt at the time. The Bruins/Penguins conference final was a rematch of the year before, so not exactly a shocker there. The Oilers had won five of the last eight Cups, so even in the post-Gretzky era, it wasn’t that stunning to see them advance. And the Hawks were a decent enough team.

Still, the 1992 postseason marked the first time in the 16-team era that neither conference sent a top-two team to the final four. And even in the pre-loser point days, it was at least a little bit odd to see that none of the four finalists even cracked 90 points.

The epilogue: This may have been the worst final four of all time. Both conference finals ended in sweeps, and then the final did too, with Mario Lemieux and the Penguins knocking off the Hawks to win their second straight Cup.

1981-82

The final four: Vancouver (4), Chicago (7), the Islanders (1) and Quebec (7), a total of 19 points.

The path there: It was the Kings who did the heavy lifting here, knocking out the powerhouse Oilers in the first round thanks to the Miracle on Manchester. That opened a path for the 77-point Canucks, who lost just once while knocking out the Flames and Kings. The Nordiques knocked off the heavily favored Habs and then survived the Bruins, while the top-seeded Islanders handled their business. Meanwhile, the 72-point Hawks only had to escape the Norris, which they did by knocking off the North Stars and Blues.

The epilogue: This was the mid-dynasty Islanders of Al Arbour, Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin and Bryan Trottier, so when they arrived in the conference finals to find all these scrappy underdogs waiting for them, they probably weren’t too worried. They shouldn’t have been; they didn’t lose a game the rest of the way while rolling to their third straight Cup.

2005-06

The final four: Anaheim (6), Edmonton (8), Carolina (2) and Buffalo (3), giving us another 19-point total.

The path there: This is another memorable postseason that you might expect to have higher on the list. You could make a case that it should be, since the Sabres were technically the four-seed in the East because of the three-division format. But they had the conference’s third-best record, so they earn three points towards our total. And the Hurricanes only contribute two, because while most fans seem to remember their Cup win being a big surprise, they were actually a really good team that year, racking up 112 points.

But the real action was in the West, where the Oilers shocked the 124-point Wings in a first-round in which all four underdogs advanced. If you wanted to call the 2006 West the craziest playoff year that any one conference has ever seen, I wouldn’t argue with you. But the East was relatively straightforward, so they bring down the overall total.

The epilogue: The Oilers dispatched the Ducks fairly quickly, while the Hurricanes barely held off the Sabres. That left us with a Carolina/Edmonton final that gave us one of the worst-timed injuries ever, Gary Bettman’s most awkward Cup handoff and the start of a decade of darkness.

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Which surviving playoff teams should Canadian fans root for?

It’s​ another year without​ a Stanley​ Cup​ for​ Canada but​ at​ least the​ hockey gods didn’t​ toy with us​ for​ too long this​​ time. Four of the country’s seven teams didn’t make the playoffs at all and the three that did all made first-round exits. When the Maple Leafs are your longest surviving team, it hasn’t been a great year.

And if we’re being honest, most Canadian fans are probably fine with that. The whole national Cup drought thing has always been the sort of narrative that seems to be more important to the media than to most of the fans. Let’s face it, most of the country’s fans don’t want to see any Canadian team other than their own win a Cup. When our team is out, we don’t jump on the bandwagon of the Leafs or Jets or whoever. We want everyone else in the country to be miserable too.

But now everyone is miserable and we’ve still got three rounds to get through. And that’s had some fans wondering what comes next:

Would love to see a guide from @DownGoesBrown for which remaining team Canadians should adopt for the rest of the playoffs.

— Dan Greenberg (@dmgreenberg340) April 24, 2019

That’s a great question. We’ve already done the annual guide for bandwagon-hopping, but that was a league-wide initiative. Today, we’re looking for the best remaining bandwagon for fans of each Canadian team. We’ll consider a few factors, like rivalries and history, hometown players on the roster and any popular former figures who might show up in another team’s story.

And since Canadian fans don’t do unity, let’s make sure that each fan base gets a team of its own, with no duplicates. We’ll go through all seven teams, starting with the easiest pairing we’re going to find …

Ottawa Senators

The Senators give us a couple of obvious options to consider. The first is in Columbus, which is writing the kind of underdog success story that Ottawa will be shooting for over the next few years. More importantly, they’re doing it with a pair of former Sens in Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel. Granted, there may be some mixed feelings towards Duchene given how his tenure in Ottawa played out. But if he’s happy in Columbus, he’s more likely to re-sign there, which would deliver another first-round pick to the Senators. That makes the Blue Jackets a decent choice.

But there’s an even better one and it’s one of Pierre Dorion’s other key trading partners. That would be San Jose, where former captain Erik Karlsson is chasing the Cup he never managed to bring to Ottawa. Karlsson remains universally beloved among Senator fans, so it shouldn’t be tough to convince them to cheer him on. Let’s face it, most of them already are.

Mix in Logan Couture being a former 67s star and we’re all set. And if you’re a Sens fan who still somehow needs just a little extra incentive, remember that Ottawa can get the Sharks’ 2021 first-round pick if they make the final.

That covers Ottawa and it takes the Sharks off the board. That’s the easiest pick we’re going to able to find, but let’s see if we can pair up a few more Canadian fans with a temporary team that makes sense.

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The 2019 playoffs are total chaos. Is that good? It depends on your door

The​ 2019 NHL playoffs​ are​ chaos.

On​ that,​ we​ can​ all agree.​ The argument comes​ with the second​ half​ of the equation,​​ which we’ll get to in a minute. But chaos? Honestly, that might be underselling it.

As far as things playing out as expected, we’ve got the Maple Leafs and Bruins going to Game 7, which we all figured was coming. The Capitals are in good position to beat the Hurricanes, although it’s been a tougher battle that most one-versus-wildcard matchups. The Islanders were technically the favorite over the Penguins, although nobody saw that one ending in four.

Beyond that? Madness. The first round has been a steady stream of upset exits, ranging from mildly surprising (Jets) to shocking (maybe the Predators Monday) to stunning (Flames) to incomprehensible (Lightning). Both top seeds are out, and it’s possible that all four division winners could be done in Round 1. The Islanders might be the only home-ice team to make it out alive. I don’t know what your bracket looks like, but I know it’s busted, and I wouldn’t be shocked if more than a few of you are staring down the possibility of an oh-for-eight.

That should be pretty close to impossible, but here we are. Nothing makes sense, nobody knows what’s going on, and none of us have the slightest clue what’s going to happen next. It’s chaos. We all agree.

Here’s the part where the argument starts: Is all this chaos a good thing?

I’ve asked that question in a few places, and something very strange happens whenever I do. Take this tweet, which quotes from a post I wrote a few weeks ago and then adds what seems like a reasonably lukewarm take: “I’m not sure this kind of Tampa upset is really a good thing for the NHL.” I tweeted that a week ago, and lots of people called me an idiot. That’s not strange – it’s Twitter, you can’t say anything without getting called an idiot. But the reaction was split almost exactly down the middle, with half of the people in the “Can you believe this idiot?” camp and half on the “Yep, this is how I feel too” side of the fence.

Here’s the strange part: More than a few fans on both sides didn’t seem to understand why the point even needed to be made. It was either the dumbest thing they’d ever heard, or the most obvious. There were all these hockey fans, just about evenly divided, who didn’t even seem to be aware that the other side of the debate even existed. It was Yanny vs. Laurel for the NHL playoff crowd.

It’s weird. Even when hockey fans get really mad over replay review or suspensions or fighting or whatever else, they tend to at least be aware that there’s another side. Not here. All of these upsets are obviously a good thing. Or they’re very obviously not. Why are we even talking about this?

I think I’ve figured out what’s going on.

Picture yourself standing in front of two doors. It’s Day 1 of the playoffs, when everything is still all shiny and new and nobody’s brackets are busted yet. You’re about to settle in for two months of NHL postseason action. But first, you have to decide which door you want to go through. You’re probably going to pick the same door you pick every year. You’re probably so used to picking that door that you don’t even realize the other one is there. But which door you pick ends up deciding a lot about how you view the playoffs, and whether you’re enjoying this year’s edition.

The first door stars with a belief, and it goes like this: The best team always wins the Stanley Cup.

It’s not the team with the best regular season record, because while the regular season tells us something, it’s not enough. It’s not the team with the biggest stars, or even the most talent top-to-bottom. It’s not the team with the best special teams or the smartest coach or the loudest fans or even the hottest goaltender, because while all of that certainly helps, it can only take you so far. And that’s what it’s all about: How far you can go.

One team goes all the way, while the other fifteen go home. When it’s over, one team is left standing, and that team is the best. They always were, even if we didn’t realize it until the very end.

In essence, if you choose door No. 1, you view the Stanley Cup playoffs as a two-month tournament designed to reveal the identity of the best team. The system can be ruthlessly efficient, discarding some teams almost immediately. It can also tease us with fakes and misdirection, baiting us into thinking we’ve figured out the identity of the best team, only to have the case dramatically collapse, leaving some other team as the new favorite.

But the key point is that the best team always wins. The occasional controversy aside, the system has a pretty much perfect success rate. It’s brutal and exhausting for everyone involved, but it works, and in the end the best team is left standing. They win because they’re the best. They’re the best because they won.

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Grab Bag: Penguins/Lightning excuses

In a special Thursday edition of the Grab Bag:
- Penguins and Lightning excuses
- Breaking down a week of first-round outrage
- An obscure player who was at least consistent
- The week's three comedy stars
- And our old friend Alan Thicke helps us remember when the Lightning were just starting out...

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The bandwagon-hopper’s guide to the 2019 playoffs

The​ playoffs begin tonight,​ as​ we​ start​ a journey​ that​ will see​ 16 teams battle​ it out until​ only​ one is left​​ to lift the Stanley Cup. Of course, that means there are also 15 teams that didn’t get an invite, so nearly half the league’s fans don’t have anyone to root for.

When your team doesn’t make the postseason, there are two ways you can respond. The first is to spend the next two months hating the world, openly cheering against all 16 playoff teams and dedicating yourself to stomping out any spark of happiness you find in any other fan base. This is the default setting and I highly recommend it.

But not everyone leans that way. For some, it’s more fun to have some sort rooting interest in the postseason, even if it’s only temporary. Those fans have an important decision to make, and they’ve only got a few hours left to make it.

Those fans need a bandwagon.

It’s a tough call to make. You want to pick a team that’s fun and easy to get behind. Some inspiring plotlines certainly help. Ideally you also want a team that might actually win something, so that you’re not just signing up for the misery of an early exit. But you also don’t want a team that’s already got a trophy case full of hardware, because even in the bandwagon game there’s nothing worse than a front-runner.

I’m here to help. So today, I’ve ranked the 16 playoffs teams in terms of their bandwagon potential for you fans who are into that sort of thing. We’re here for a good time, not for a long time, so let’s find you a temporary team.

16. Pittsburgh Penguins

Why you should get on board: They’ve got Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and a ton of star power, and there’s a decent chance they’re gong to win it all. You know… again.

Why you shouldn’t: Remember what we said about front-running? The Penguins have won three Cups in the last decade, including two of the last three. They didn’t win last year, so this wouldn’t be quite as bad as jumping on the bandwagon of, say, the Patriots or Warriors. But it wouldn’t be far off.

Bottom line: Also, they’re facing a classic feel-good story in the first round. If you choose this moment to jump on the Penguins’ bandwagon, you might be a bad person.

15. Dallas Stars

Why you should get on board: It’s always fun to hop on the bandwagon of an underdog and then watch them pull off an upset or two. The Stars could certainly do that, as they’ll face a favored Predators team that seems beatable. If they can pull it off, you’ll be along for the ride. And if they can’t, there’s a good chance they’ll at least get all dramatic about it.

Why you shouldn’t: The Stars feature great defence and goaltending but don’t score much. If you can pick any team in the league to root for, do you really want to go with the one that’s going to try to bore its way to a title?

Bottom line: I’m all for a classic underdog pick, but there are better options available.

14. Colorado Avalanche

Why you should get on board: They’re a fun team with three star forwards, not to mention plenty of underdog cred given where they were just a few years ago. And like the Stars, they’ll go into the first round as longshots but it’s hardly inconceivable that they could pull of the upset.

Why you shouldn’t: Could they beat the Flames? It’s possible, sure. Are they going to win the Cup? It would take a near-miracle. That means you’re basically signing up for heartbreak, and it’s just a question of how quickly it arrives.

Bottom line: They should be more fun than the Stars, but you’re still probably looking for a new team after a round or two.

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Weekend rankings: Why every playoff team will (and won’t) win the Cup in a season-ending top 16

Well,​ that turned out​ to​ be​ an​ interesting​ weekend.

It​ wasn’t an​ especially important one,​ at least in​ terms​ of the playoffs.​​ Despite a loaded Saturday night schedule that had seemed like it would make for can’t-miss viewing a few weeks ago, we came into the weekend with only one spot up for grabs, and that one was wrapped up by the Blue Jackets on Friday.

Still, there were seedings and home ice to figure out, so let’s start with a quick roundup. The Predators held off the Jets and Blues to win the Central, the Islanders held onto home ice in the Metro, and we narrowly missed a first-round dream matchup of Caps/Pens. Instead, Pittsburgh will face the Islanders while the Caps get a tricky wildcard matchup with the Hurricanes. The Flames get the Avs, the Stars head to Nashville, and the Blue Jackets gets the fun task of trying to knock off the Lightning. The full matchups and schedule can be found here.

The highlight of the weekend came on Saturday, with the final game of Bob Cole’s legendary career. The Leafs and Habs gave him plenty of action to call, abandoning defence to near-historic levels and serving up an all-timer debut by Ryan Poehling that had the Bell Centre rocking. It all ended in a shootout – yes, the streak is over – and an outpouring of tributes for Cole from around the hockey world.

“The truth is you have to sell the song with your sincerity. That’s Bob’s magic. He sings the game.” – @RonMacLeanHTH

Tonight the voice of Saturday night, Bob Cole, calls his last #HockeyNight in Canada. pic.twitter.com/F6TctTw2qn

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 6, 2019

That game was followed by the Oilers and Flames, and what briefly seemed like it would be by far the biggest story of the weekend. Connor McDavid’s high-speed collision with the goal post left him writhing on the ice with what we all assumed was a broken leg.

And then, just as we were still figuring out timelines for his return and how they’d impact next season, word came that X-rays were negative. That’s huge for the Oilers, an organization that clearly can’t afford any more bad news as they head into a crucial offseason.

In individual news, Nikita Kucherov finished with the highest point total since 1995-96 while breaking the scoring record for Russian players, Leon Draisaitl hit the 50-goal mark, Alexander Ovechkin won his eighth Rocket Richard, and Robin Lehner and Thomas Griess held off the Stars to win the Jennings.

On Sunday, we didn’t waste any time getting to the coaching casualties, as the Panthers parted ways with Bob Boughner while releasing a hilarious press release that basically said “We’re hiring Joel Quenneville” without mentioning his name. They’ve schedule a news conference for noon today, where they will introduce Quenneville as coach. We’ve also got a new opening in Buffalo, where Phil Housley was relieved of his duties yesterday after two years on the job, and Los Angeles, where interim coach Willie Desjardins will not return.

So now it’s on to the playoffs. But first, one last set of power rankings. All year long, we’ve been presenting a top five and bottom five every Monday morning. But in this final edition, it seems like a top five just isn’t enough. After all, we’ve got 16 teams still standing. Shouldn’t we close out the season by ranking each and every one of them?

No, we should not. This is a terrible idea that will make everyone hate me. But we’re doing it anyway, complete with reasons why each playoff team will (and won’t) win the Cup.

But since we’re already playing with the format this week, let’s switch it up a bit more and lead things off with one last look at the bottom five before we move on to the main event.

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Ranking the ten best first-round matchups we might realistically see

We’re​ down to less​ than​ two​ weeks​ left​ in​ the regular​ season, and for​ a handful of teams​ still​ jockeying for wild-card​​ positions, there’s plenty left to play for. But for most fans, our teams are either locked into a playoff spot or already eliminated. There’s still seeding and home ice to play for, sure, but for the most part, we know whether our team is in or out.

And that means it’s time to start looking ahead to the single best time to be a hockey fan: The first round of the playoffs. It’s the best, just two straight weeks of non-stop hockey between teams that either already hate each other or are about to.

Let’s start the hype. But we have to do it responsibly. After all, there’s no point getting all worked up over a matchup that’s almost definitely not going to happen. I’d love to see the Jets face the Predators or Leafs vs. Habs as much as the next guy, but it would take a near-miracle to make those happen in the first round. We need to figure out which pairings actually have a shot at happening.

Luckily, our pal Dom Luszczyszyn has done that work for us. His projections page now includes a section for most likely playoff matchups. Today, let’s pick an arbitrary cutoff – let’s say 30 percent based on the March 26 update – and count down the ten best first-round matchups that we have a realistic shot at seeing. We’re looking for the total package: good teams that are legitimate contenders, an established rivalry, as much star power as possible and some interesting storylines.

With that in mind, here are the ten best matchups that look like they might actually happen.

10. Avalanche vs. Flames (47 percent likelihood)

Contender status: Not bad on the Flames side. The Avalanche are a major longshot.

Rivalry factor: Low. They’re not in the same division and they’ve never met in the playoffs. Aside from the whole Ian Cole/Sam Bennett incident back in November, there hasn’t been all that much bad blood between the two teams that didn’t involve poorly thought-out offers sheets.

Potential storylines: Only one of these teams made the playoffs last year and it was the Avalanche. That makes it kind of tough to call this some sort of classic underdog battle, even though it would probably feature a one-seed against a second wildcard. Instead, let’s focus on all the offensive firepower and questionable goaltending and hope we’d get some shootouts. (No, not those, the good kind.)

Random clip to get you fired up: The Flames score five straight in the third period to roar back to win that November game.

Bottom line: Calgary is one of those teams that’s going to make the playoffs but doesn’t yet have a clear opponent emerging, although the Avalanche are getting close. Personally, I’d probably rather see them face the Coyotes, but they don’t meet our 30 percent threshold. Still, the Avs at least bring some star power and it’s not like the Flames and their shaky goaltending are exactly looking upset-proof.

9. Hurricanes vs. Capitals (35 percent)

Contender status: The Caps are the defending champs. The Hurricanes haven’t made the playoffs in nine years, although that won’t stop all the analytics types from picking them to win this series anyway.

Rivalry factor: Who has fond memories of the Southeast Division? (Scans room.) Right, nobody. Still, they’ve at least been division rivals for two decades, even though they’ve never met in the playoffs.

Potential storylines: Celebrations. Last year, the Capitals took post-Cup hijinks to a new level. This year, it’s the Hurricanes and their Storm Surge. Does that prove that having a bit of fun is OK? Or are the Capitals still the counter-example, because they waited until they’d actually won something to get goofy? Get ready to hear all about it, whether you want to or not.

Once we get that out of the way, this sets up nicely for the well-worn storyline of the young up-and-comers running into the grizzled veterans who aren’t ready to give up the throne quite yet. Having a respected veteran like Justin Williams face his old team adds a bit of intrigue.

Random clip to get you fired up: OK, “fired up” may be overselling it a bit, but how about Alexander Ovechkin scoring a hat trick in a 6-5 win?

Bottom line: There’s no real history here to speak of. But the present features two good teams who could make for an intriguing matchup. We could do worse.

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