Tonight is the beginning of the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs and we’re back for another year of first round playoff previews. Like last year, I’ll be doing a short summary on each team, some thoughts on each matchup and of course a prediction that is GUARANTEED to be correct:
(A1) Boston Bruins vs. (WC2) Florida Panthers
The Bruins: Encapsulated the WWE gif of Kevin Nash in the wheelchair, pretending he’s got a broken leg, just to toss off the blanket and reveal it was a fake cast and he’s fully healthy. The expectation was that the Bruins would be slow out of the gate due to injury and overall resemble a team on the decline. Instead, they came out of the gate like a bat out of hell and just kept flying like that. In the process, the Bruins achieved the highest point total in NHL history, with an unfathomable 135. They set the NHL wins record with an equally unfathomable 65, lost just 12 games in regulation, and have ignited a debate about whether it was the greatest regular season in NHL history, adjusting for era and context.
A lot of it was driven by a few players. Hampus Lindholm had a phenomenal season on defense, keeping the fort up while Charlie McAvoy was hurt. David Pastrnak had the ole Contract Year Overperformance and scored 61 goals(!) and more than anything else, the Bruins were helped by having both goalies (Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman) go from middling last season to destroyers of worlds this season. Ullmark was among the very best goalies in the league and Swayman was the best backup in the NHL. They were one of the best finishing teams in the NHL and the #1 goaltending squad. Only Edmonton scored more goals than Boston and no one allowed fewer. The Bruins are the juggernaut of all juggernauts and with Patrice Bergeron seemingly in his final season, it’s Cup or bust.
The Panthers: While the Bruins were a car driving 90 miles per hour towards a sign reading “exceeding expectations” the Panthers were on the other side of the road driving the opposite direction. Florida was in Boston’s position a year ago, the Presidents’ Trophy winners with >120 points, the best season in franchise history. They got swept by their rivals Tampa Bay in the second round, fired their coach and hired Mr. Retread (Paul Maurice), made a blockbuster trade to dismantle their core, and the result was a 2022-23 season that was choppier than water in a pool after a 300 lb. man does a cannonball. They were the laughingstock of the season for much of the year but a late winning streak got them into the playoffs.
The Panthers are still a high-end offensive team, not quite as much as last season (the depth has been hollowed out), but they have the stars. Sascha Barkov remains an exceptional 1C, Matthew Tkachuk scored 109 points in his first season in South Florida, Carter Verhaeghe scored 42 goals, and Sam Reinhart chipped in 31. They also get plenty of offense from their D, Brandon Montour setting the franchise record for points by a defenseman with 73. The issue is, after trading MacKenzie Weegar, Florida’s defense cratered (21st in xGA/60 at 5v5) and their goaltending, until Alex Lyon’s late season explosion, was only so-so. They scored the 5th most goals, but were 21st in GA and made the playoffs with 92 points. Not a great second act!
The Matchup: You could very well call this series the Expected Goals vs. Actual Goals Battle. These teams were separated by 43 points in the standings yet analytically, they are very similar. In fact, depending on which site you use, Florida finished ahead of Boston in key metrics like expected goals and scoring chances. The problem is, Florida was comically inept and turning those expected goals into actual goals and Boston was the best team at it in the analytics era. Boston’s GF% was 10 points higher than their xGF%, thanks to a 104 PDO in all situations(!!), while Florida’s GF% was a couple points worse than their xGF%. This was reflected in their meetings: the two teams played four times in the regular season, with scoring chances and expected goals being nearly even but Boston prevailing in goals on aggregate 17-15.
All of this is a long way of saying that despite this matchup pitting the team with the worst record of any playoff team against the team with the best record of any playoff team of all time, I don’t expect the balance of play to be crazy lopsided. In fact, Florida may well outshoot Boston for the series, given how trigger-happy they are. It just comes down to converting on all those shots, getting pucks by Linus Ullmark and the big ???? in Florida’s net. Sergei Bobrovsky is back healthy, but to me you have to go with Alex Lyon. He’s the reason Florida snuck into the playoffs, going 6-1-1 down the stretch with a .943 SV% over that span. Lyon also went 1-0 in his only meeting with the Bruins this year. You gotta ride the hot hand.
It’s definitely an uphill battle for Florida, but there’s more reason to believe they should be able to see their shooting luck improve than say, Carolina. The ‘Canes are a team who we’ve seen underperform their xGF for years now due to a lack of elite shooters. In Florida’s case, they have elite shooters. They were one of the best shooting teams one year ago. It would not shock me at all if the pucks start going in. Florida needs their top scorers to step up, they need to get saves, and they need to have a plan to defend this über-deep Boston team. My advice? Match Barkov’s line on the Bergeron line, and then find someone to be a shadow for Pastrnak and follow him around all over the ice when the Zacha line is out there. You can’t let #88 beat you.
Last Word: Some people saw this matchup and were instantly predicting Boston to run right over the Panthers but I’m not so sure. They don’t strike me as a total joke like Nashville was last year sans Saros. This team is fully healthy, played well down the stretch, has elite players, and was an elite team last season. Also they grade out well in the underlying numbers. The Panthers remind me of when the preseason #1 in college basketball slumps most of the year, finds their game late, and slips into the NCAA Tournament as a 8 seed. You would prefer not to see them in your pod if you’re a 1 seed. Boston went 2-1-1 against Florida this year… feels like a template for this series. The Bruins will be tested but they are still the better team no doubt. Bruins in 6.
(A2) Toronto Maple Leafs vs. (A3) Tampa Bay Lightning
The Maple Leafs: Decided to run it back with the same core and are an elite contender for the Stanley Cup yet again. 50 wins and 110+ points for the second straight season, all that seems boring by now. We all know it’s about these next two weeks. With that said, for a season that seemed to start so stale, quite a bit happened. Auston Matthews was not league MVP, battling injury and looking very un-Matthews for quite awhile before waking back up and going crazy down the stretch. Mitch Marner playing with John Tavares helped the captain hit 35+ goals while Marner himself hit 99 points, and William Nylander took another step forward with 40 goals, the team’s best player for a big stretch of the season.
The two lottery tickets in net went opposite directions, Matt Murray being alright but constantly injured while Ilya Samsonov has been stellar in a 1A role. The defense shouldered injuries and a down year from Morgan Rielly but the big story was what happened with this club at the deadline. GM Kyle Dubas, working on an expiring contract, pushed in a first round pick to snag veteran C Ryan O’Reilly (and depth F Noel Acciari) and then shipped out another first rounder to get sturdy D Jake McCabe to fill the void left by Jake Muzzin. Oh, and then he jettisoned Pierre Engvall and Rasmus Sandin, members of the team for several years, picking up a first rounder and Tough Guy defenseman/prodigal son Luke Schenn in the process. The whirlwind deadline resulted in a few rocky weeks before the team again gelled down the stretch (10-3-2 in L15) and they look sharp coming into the postseason.
The Lightning: The defending three-time Eastern Conference Champions were in cruise control up through mid-February, 35-16-2 on the season when they knocked off the Avalanche in Colorado. They’d lost some pieces in the offseason, veteran F Ondrej Palat and minutes-munching D Ryan McDonagh, but there weren’t any signs of major issues. Then it all started crumbling, Tampa entering a mighty slump and closed the season 11-14-4. The team slumped in March of last season too but the difference is this time, they didn’t pull out of it with a couple weeks to go. Whereas last season they closed 8-3 in their last 11, this year they finished 4-7 in their last 11, with much of the narrative right now being “what’s wrong with the Lightning?”.
There’s reason to believe they can re-find their old form. Not just do these guys have insane playoff experience, but they still have elite players playing like elite players. Their power play is still deadly, Brayden Point scored a career high 51 goals, Nikita Kucherov finished 3rd in league scoring with 113 points, Steven Stamkos scored 34 goals, and Andrei Vasilevskiy is still a top 5(ish) goalie in the league. Victor Hedman was mired in a down year, which is a cause for concern, but Mikhail Sergachev flourished on the blue line, 64 points with solid play at both ends of the ice. The stars are (mostly) still stars.
The Matchup: It’s a rematch of last season a series that was an all-timer, about as close as a series can be. It went to seven games, the last three were all decided by a single goal, the total number of goals scored in the series for each team were separated by one (Toronto actually outscored Tampa 24-23), and somehow shots on goal were separated by ONE (Toronto outshooting Tampa 216-215). You cannot craft a series any closer than that one was.
It felt razor close coming in and it was razor close all series. This year feels a bit different, that the Leafs are the better team. They finished 13 points higher in the standings and have a goal differential 28 goals better. Does that mean they’ll win? Not necessarily, but it feels less like a jump ball and more like a series Maple Leafs should win. My reasoning is that the rosters on paper, as well as the game results, indicate that Toronto is about as good (probably better) than they were a year ago, while the Lightning are clearly worse.
Tampa lost a key playoff performer in Palat (3-2-5 in this series last year) and their #3 ATOI defenseman in that series (McDonagh) and didn’t get proper replacements for either. In Palat’s case, no one in particular and in McDonagh’s, they got Ian Cole, who is a fine player, but he’s a 18-19 minute guy, not a 22-24 minute one. That’s a big difference in the playoffs. The Leafs got McCabe to fill the Muzzin hole, have improved the bottom six over last year’s horror show fourth line, and brought in Ryan O’Reilly, a former Conn Smythe winner.
The biggest matchup in the entire series is the one in net between Ilya Samsonov and Andrei Vasilevskiy. We know Vasilevskiy will provide a high level of play for the Lightning, but what about Samsonov? The reality is that Samsonov has been terrific for Toronto, a .919 SV% and +21.24 GSAx. On a per/60 basis, Samsonov was the better goalie in GSAx this season than Vasilevskiy(!). His QS% of 67.5% was also better than Vasilevskiy’s 58.3%. If Samsonov manages to roughly replicate that, matching his fellow Russian blow for blow in net, I feel very confident saying the Maple Leafs win the series. Tampa’s way to win this series hinges on Vasilevskiy being awesome and giving them a decisive edge in net. The Leafs probably don’t need Samsonov to match Vasilevskiy, though if he did, it’s gravy. He just can’t let the net be a big mismatch.
The other way for Tampa to win this series is on special teams. Toronto has been a better 5v5 team this season and the second half of the year has seen Tampa’s play at even strength crater. I expect the Leafs will carry the balance of play at even strength, which is where the goaltending and special teams come into play. The Lightning have a great PP when it’s clicking and they scored 7 goals in 33 opportunities (21%) last year, at least one goal in 5 of the 7 games. Meanwhile, the Maple Leaf PP stalled again, going 4 for 28 (14%). The Leafs need better results on special teams to get it done and for Tampa, the pathway has to be running up the score here yet again.
Last Word: The Leafs loaded up at the deadline to win this series with big time trades, while Tampa made a series of odd moves to tweak the bottom six, the main deal in jeopardy with the recent injury to Tanner Jeannot (who was struggling anyway). The Lightning have played more hockey than any other team over the past three seasons by a gigantic margin, and Vasilevskiy more than any goalie by an equally huge margin. There are a lot of arrows pointing towards the Maple Leafs with the only arrow pointing the other way being a sign that reads “they are the 2017-23 Maple Leafs”. If the Leafs win this series, other than everyone acknowledging that hell has frozen over, reaction league-wide will probably be “yeah, an early flame out for Tampa was probably coming, they need a long offseason to rest up”.
I have the utmost respect for Tampa Bay. They are great champions and will always have that title. They are also going to have to reach back and find another gear they have not shown us in several months to win this series. I think they will play better than they have recently in this series and will be a tough out. Vasilevskiy will steal a game and their fearsome home crowd will play a factor. But if the Leafs simply replicate the series they played last year, the changes to the two respective rosters should be enough to push them over the finish line. Tampa will put up a hell of a fight, but the Maple Leafs find a way to move on. Ryan O’Reilly scores the clinching goal and Kyle Dubas will have spent that first round pick well. Leafs in 6.
(M1) Carolina Hurricanes vs. (WC1) New York Islanders
The Hurricanes: Carolina finished with 113 points, 2nd-most in the NHL. This team just keeps rolling along within their Moneyball-like system that cycles forwards and defensemen in and out while maintaining immaculate underlying metrics. They control play against most anyone and are tremendous defensively. Martin Nečas took a major step forward and led the team with 71 points, Sebastian Aho scored 36 goals to remain one of the NHL’s most consistent goal-producers, Brent Burns fit in seamlessly on the blue line, and Jaccob Slavin is still an elite shutdown defenseman.
What Carolina is usually good at, shooting from everywhere, forechecking like crazy, and defending dangerous areas of the ice, they’re still really good at. What Carolina usually struggles with is magnified compared to years’ past. The Hurricanes typically struggle to finish chances in the playoffs and they struggled with that in the regular season, only 15th in goals for and that’s with Andrei Svechnikov playing 3/4 of the season. The Russian winger was one of their two pure goalscorers before he tore his ACL, a devastating injury for the team that already lost Max Pacioretty for the season. Those two injuries leave Aho as the only goalscorer of note and even he is not a Point or Pastrnak-level scorer. And in net, the Hurricanes didn’t have a goalie finish above a .910 SV%, not necessarily a great sign for a team with an elite defense.
The Islanders: After a year in the wilderness, the Isles are back in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It took down to the final game of the regular season and a blockbuster trade to get there, but they got it done. The Islanders were challenged offensively, 23rd in goals for this season, with old standbys Brock Nelson and Anders Lee each scoring 28+ goals and not a whole lot else happening. Mat Barzal missed a chunk of the season and trade acquisition Bo Horvat scored just 7 goals in 30 games after coming over from Vancouver. Besides Lee and Nelson, only Zach Parise surpassed 16 goals for the Islanders (Horvat did so in Vancouver), a rough picture offensively. They got juuust enough offense to slip into the playoffs, but they have to hope that the late return of Barzal gives them the juice they need in the postseason.
The Islanders teams that made the Eastern Conference Finals in 2020 and 2021 were bolstered by elite defensive metrics, but those are nowhere to be found this season. Evolving Hockey pegs them 21st in xGA/60 at 5v5, attributing their 5th place finish in goals against this season to netminder Ilya Sorokin. Sorokin, my personal pick for the Vezina Trophy, posted a .924 SV% and started 62 games for the team. He was a monster and his +51.36 finish in GSAx is one of the best in the analytics era. I think the public analytics models undersell their defense to some degree, but there’s no question that Sorokin is a massive component to what has made the Islanders a top five team in goal prevention. He’s also the biggest piece of optimism for them headed into the playoffs.
The Matchup: The moment this matchup was locked in, the Islanders became everyone’s sexy pick for a big first round upset because they have the look of a team that knocks Carolina out. The Hurricanes have been eliminated by Igor Shesterkin and Andrei Vasilevskiy the past two playoffs and the Islanders boast a goalie who right now is arguably better than either of those two guys. The quantity over quality approach to Carolina’s offense has hit a wall in the past when they face elite goaltenders and Sorokin’s season was as elite as it gets. It’s easy to close your eyes and see this as a series that the Islanders win in six while being outshot 45-20 every game.
That feeling has been compounded by two more factors. First off, Carolina is starting Antti Raanta in net, a decent goalie but not anything special. He had a strong playoffs last year but does not compare to Sorokin and thus Carolina projects to be at a sizable goaltending disadvantage. Secondly, Carolina has looked very un-scary down the stretch, 9-8-1 to finish the year after the Svechnikov injury. Outside of Aho, Svechnikov was the player Carolina could least afford to lose and now they’ve lost him. A lot of signs seem to be pointing towards and upset so my question for this series is “is an upset as obvious as it seems”?
Last Word: These two teams played one time after the Svechnikov injury, two weeks ago. The game ended 2-1 in favor of the Hurricanes, with shots being 35-22 for Carolina, yet the game was tied 1-1 after one and was intense. That’s what I think this series is. A lot of nasty, low-scoring games and probably quite a bit of overtime. The Islanders will likely try to get back to their Barry Trotz roots while trapping quite a bit and the Canes already suppress chances exceptionally well. Sorokin is a monster and he’s going to make Carolina have to dig deep to beat him. At the end of the day, I want to zag while everyone else zigs, so I’m holding off from picking the upset, taking Carolina’s structure to survive, but it’ll be close. Canes in Seven.
(M2) New Jersey Devils vs. (M3) New York Rangers
The Devils: Last season the Devils were a low-key good team of skaters that got apocalyptic goaltending, destroying their season. This year they got decent goaltending while the skaters took another step forward and the result was a gargantuan improvement. From 63 points all the way up to 112 points, one of the largest single-season jumps of all time. They were aggressive in loading up at the deadline, have a nucleus of great young players, and are ready for their first playoff run with this core, only their second playoff trip since the 2012 Stanley Cup Final run.
While the 1990s-2000s Devils dynasty was a cancer on the sport of hockey, encouraging a lifeless but ruthlessly effective style of play that greatly helped to destroy the sport’s watchability for two decades, the current Devils are the exact opposite, a hyper fast, skilled, and explosive team of dudes who will skate you out of the rink. That rocks! Jack Hughes is a budding superstar after scoring 99 points, Nico Hischier is a future Selke winner and notched 80 points of his own, Jesper Bratt is a great young forward himself, and the addition of Timo Meier gives them another 40 goal scorer. No team likes to let the horses out of the barn more than New Jersey, the best rush offense in the league, and it helps to have a great puck-mover like Dougie Hamilton at the back-end. They’re a solid defensive team, but more about puck-possession than pure off-puck defense. The big question is in net, where Vitek Vaneček was solid this year but was rancid in the playoffs last year in Washington.
The Rangers: Came painfully close to making the Stanley Cup Final last spring and decided to push their chips in even further. Despite some idiots claiming they were a disappointment candidate, the Rangers saw their underlying numbers improve and were never a serious threat to miss the playoffs. Igor Shesterkin was not Dominik Hašek-caliber in net like last year, but a down year for Shesterkin still results in top 10 play. When it comes to star power, this Rangers team has it, not just Shesterkin but Adam Fox on the blue line, who has a strong case to win the Norris this season. Toss in Artemi Panarin up front and the Rangers are rife with top tier performers.
The Rangers also loaded up at the trade deadline, spending significant assets to get a pair of rental wingers who would be knock-your-socks-off additions if the year was 2016 in Vladimir Tarasenko and Patrick Kane. Neither guy has done a whole lot but they have loads of playoff experience, boast rings on their fingers, and make New York’s lineup much deeper by accenting the Panarins, Chris Kreiders, and Mika Zibanejads. The “Kid Line” of Kaapo Kakko, Filip Chytil, and Alexis Lafreniere is massively overhyped, but it is a solid line you have to take seriously and it’s what helps make the Rangers nice and deep at forward. Like the Leafs, the Rangers took a bit of time after the deadline to gel but enter the postseason strong, 12-3-4 in their last 19.
The Matchup: Hoo boy is this a fun matchup. This is the playoff series I wanted more than any other, a firecracker series between two in-market rivals and one with tons of star power. No matter who loses, a really good team will be going home far earlier than is deserved. This matchup obviously hinges on the contrasting styles of offense and whether the Devils can skate right over over the Rangers with their rush offense. The microstats indicate that the Rangers are not the best at defending the rush ($), but I would expect that Gerrard Gallant is going to shorten the rope significantly and lean on his top two pairs, Fox-Lindgren and Trouba-Miller, who are much better against the rush. If the Rangers can keep the Devils in front of them and force them to play off the cycle, where New York can leverage their size advantage of big hulking D up against slender Devil forwards, that favors the Rangers.
Another question is the playoff experience of these two teams. A bunch of Devils will be playing their first playoff games and it remains to be seen how their games will translate. We have a baseline for John Marino, Ondrej Palat, and Dougie Hamilton, but the rest are more up in the air and in a couple cases (Tomas Tatar, Vaneček), what we have seen is not great. The Rangers are the opposite, many players for whom this is not their first rodeo, including Chris Kreider, the only remaining player on either team from when these two sides last met in the playoffs. Does that give New York a bit of an edge late in the series if this goes to a sixth or seventh game, as we presume?
Last Word: This is the most watchable first round series to me and it’s even more infuriating that the NHL scheduled it the same night as Leafs/Lightning. I think it’s probably the most likely series to go to seven games, a Devils team that’s been firing on all cylinders wire to wire against a Rangers squad that looked excellent down the stretch of the season. Both teams can roll four lines and feel good about it and both have two strong pairs. The Devils have the big edge on the third pair, but the Rangers have the big edge in net. Between those two, the latter is a much more important place to have an advantage. It’s why I generally lean towards the Rangers in this series, betting on the goalie with the higher SV%, the team with the higher S%, and the team with more playoff experience. It’s a coin flip, but I’m not quite sure it’s New Jersey’s time yet. Rangers in Seven.
(C1) Colorado Avalanche vs. (WC2) Seattle Kraken
The Avalanche: The defending champs had what always happens to them strike again, a zillion injuries in the regular season that make it hard to get a proper read on them. There was a time around the mid-way point in the season where the Avs looked to be in some trouble for making the playoffs, but they predictably turned it on once more players got healthy and managed to scrape out the Central Division title on the last day of the regular season. Nathan MacKinnon scored 111 points despite his regularly-scheduled injury absence, Mikko Rantanen was the star’s MVP in my books for playing all 82 games and scoring 55 goals, and Cale Makar scored more than a point-per-game from the blue line, but he missed 22 games.
Colorado lost the man who was in net for the championship last year, Darcy Kuemper, but they took a bet on Alexandar Georgiev and it paid off in resounding fashion, a .918 SV% and +17.29 GSAx. This will be his first real playoff run as a starter but Georgiev looks as ready to go as anyone in net. The Avs have seen their once mighty depth hollowed out some over the past few offseasons (Burakovsky, Saad, Kadri) and the season-ending injury to Gabriel Landeskog hurts, but Val Nichushkin, Artturi Lehkonen, and Evan Rodrigues all make their stars better. And it’s hard to argue with stars who are as good as Colorado’s, Makar being a top four defenseman in the game and MacKinnon being roughly a top four forward. They are still a very good team.
The Kraken: Was there a better story in the NHL this season than the emergence of the Seattle Kraken? The Devils improving dramatically and Boston going crazy are possible answers, but Seattle turning the franchise’s fortunes around in Year #2 was cool and totally out of nowhere. Their wretched goaltending from last season only improved a small amount, yet the team improved by 40 points. How? The offensive graveyard turned into a fertile garden of goals. If the underlying numbers are to be believed, it wasn’t through drastically improved chance generation, but because the Kraken had exceptional finishing luck. Either way you look at it, they did shoot 11.6% and scored the 6th most goals in the NHL, doing so without any true stars.
Matty Beniers is probably the face of the franchise, slated to win the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year after 24 goals and 57 points. Jared McCann got deal-with-the-devil-level finishing ability, shooting 19%(!!!) en route to 40 goals, and the rest of the team was an offensive ensemble. Five players scored between 20 and 24 goals and another five scored between 14 and 16. In a league where most playoff teams are capped out and have a Stars ‘N Scrubs approach to their forward group, Seattle is a team that can feel just as comfortable scoring with a bottom six line out there as a top six line because their depth chart is all players best described as “solid”. No elite players at F or D, but a lot that most teams would love to have. The team somehow got into the playoffs with .890 SV% goaltending, but will need more than that to go far.
The Matchup: If some are to be believed, this is the most lopsided first round series, something that the Colorado Avalanche have a remarkable knack for finding themselves in. I’ve been a bigger fan of the Kraken than many this year, because I think having a deep lineup of scorers is a market inefficiency, but their failure to upgrade in net at the deadline hurts. Philipp Grubauer will likely be fired up to face his former team in Colorado, but they need him to actually stop pucks from going in, something he has done little of since leaving the Avs. Grubauer was much better than last year, but that’s not saying much. It’s hard to see Seattle winning this series if they get <.915 goaltending, let alone the .895 that Grubauer has posted this year.
I think the biggest matchup in this series is whoever Dave Hakstol elects to use against the MacKinnon line. If I’m the Kraken, I don’t hate my second/third/fourth lines against Colorado’s. That’s where Seattle’s approach to roster construction should pay off. But they don’t have the elite talent. The best two forwards in this series will both be wearing Avalanche sweaters, as will the two best D in the series. There’s your problem. If Seattle can craft a shutdown line of forwards that can muzzle MacKinnon/Rantanen, they’ve got a shot to win this series assuming goaltending holds up (a very large question). But if MacKinnon goes Psycho Mode like he often does in the first round against punching bag opponents, the series is over before it starts. Whether it’s a hybrid line of say Beniers, Brandon Tanev, and Morgan Geekie or just a top line configuration, there needs to be a plan for dealing with 29/96.
Last Word: The Kraken actually did pretty well against Colorado this year, 2-0-1 and owning shots/expected goals, while high-danger chances and scoring chances were even. Of course, the Avalanche were constantly injured in the regular season, so it’s not quite the same team they’ll be playing. I like Seattle to hang in there much better than a lot of people are predicting, but unless Grubauer plays his best two weeks of hockey in several years, the Avs have this. I always look for two things when forecasting upsets: high end scorers and great goalies. Seattle has neither of these and so I can’t pick them in good conscience. Avs in Five.
(C2) Dallas Stars vs. (C3) Minnesota Wild
The Stars: Made a major coaching change in switching from the eternally bland Rick Bowness to Pete DeBoer, whose more open approach to offense greatly improved the Stars and transformed them from a firmly mediocre bubble team to a legit contender. The team had stars coming into the season, but the return of veterans Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin to legit play has made the lineup much deeper. Dallas is still headlined by perhaps the NHL’s best line, Joe Pavelski centering Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz, but they now have a vintage-looking Benn driving the second line and can bury Tyler Seguin down on the third line with wingers like Max Domi and Mason Marchment, who aren’t stars but are legit players.
It also helps to have great players at defense and in net too. I don’t love the rest of the defensive depth chart after Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell, but that’s a top notch 1st pair and Heiskanen gives them a true #1 defenseman. The growth of Jake Oettinger into a top-end starting goalie rounds out the package and makes Dallas a team team that can say they have an elite player at all three positions in Robertson (109 points!), Heiskanen, and Oettinger. That’s the starter template for an ideal Cup-contender and it’s the one Dallas mirrors. It’s the easiest way to tell they’re a great team, but 108 standings points a +67 goal differential help too. This team is very good.
Minnesota Wild: Each year the Wild’s roster becomes increasingly watered down as the pain from the buyouts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter gets worse, yet Dean Evason’s Minnesota Wild team just keeps finding a way to make the playoffs in spite of it. This year you can chalk it up to the greatness of Kirill Kaprizov, who carried the offense single-handedly for much of the year, the surge of Matt Boldy when Kaprizov went down, and a strong defensive system backstopped by great goaltending from Filip Gustavsson. The Kaprizov element was the least surprising, as he’s been an elite player for a few seasons now. Boldy’s breakthrough was stark, but also probably wasn’t surprising, as the young forward was looking very promising last year too.
But Gustavsson came totally out of nowhere. Cam Talbot wanted out last summer and Minnesota shipped him to Ottawa, where the Sens were more than happy to move on from Gustavsson in return. The Swede got to Minnesota and proceeded to post a .931 SV% over 39 games, one of the very best stat lines of the season and stealing the net from Marc-Andre Fleury in the process. Gustavsson has been fantastic, but I also respect Minnesota’s commitment to defense, even if it is visually unappealing and the same kind of thing I complained about the old Devils doing earlier in this piece. Evason has drilled this team very well on the system and they have two of my favorite underrated players in Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin. This team is greater than the sum of their parts, but don’t sleep on Spurgeon, Brodin, Boldy, and Kaprizov, the Wild have some awesome parts.
The Matchup: This has the potential to be extremely grim hockey. You have two great goalies going at it, one of which backstops the most boring team in the NHL, and the other team is a formerly boring team. Dallas has played more exciting hockey this season, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Stars go right back into their shell in this series. Expect low-scoring games and play that resembles 2002. Yikes!
The Stars have a better roster here, and it’s not close after the injury to Joel Eriksson Ek. In my view, the path for Minnesota to win is to have their stars be the best players on the ice. They need Boldy to fill the net, they need Kaprizov to outclass Robertson, and they need a matchup line to shut down Dallas’ top line. If that latter part happens, there’s a plausible path for the Wild to win. Dallas’ depth has improved, as I noted earlier, but they still lean heavily on the Pavelski line to do a lot of the heavy lifting. I would expect Jared Spurgeon to play a lot of minutes, and most of them against that line. If you can take the Pavelski line away, you’re in a good spot, and it makes it all the more likely that Kaprizov could be the best player in the series. Oh, and of course they need Filip Gustavsson to outduel Oettinger (something that feels plausible).
Last Word: The Eriksson Ek injury feels so massive for Minnesota. They don’t have too many high level players and Eriksson Ek was one of them. That alone is a major loss, but then you consider that he would be your matchup center to try and stymie the Pavelski line, and it hurts doubly as much. I think this Wild team is dangerous, even if they are extremely dull, but I think they’d be a better fit to bog down a high flying team a la Colorado vs. a team like Dallas that may well make the series two tractors trying to grind through the muck. I do think this series will go pretty long and while I can’t dismiss the chance Gustavsson helps the Wild steal a bunch of games 2-1, I’m betting on talent, health, and home-ice in taking Dallas. Stars in Six.
(P1) Vegas Golden Knights vs. (WC2) Winnipeg Jets
The Golden Knights: Return to the playoffs after last season’s humiliating miss, improving by 17 points and snagging the top seed in the West. They did it without finishing top ten in goals for or goals against, without a 70 point scorer(!), and without dominant goaltending. If you showed me their player stats before the season, I’d probably have predicted them to be a playoff bubble team, yet here they are. They came out of the gate strong and kept it up without too many hiccups, leading the Pacific wire-to-wire and holding off a hot Edmonton team late to win it. Point for new coach Bruce Cassidy there.
The Knights got a mostly healthy season from Jack Eichel, who scored a point-per-game, though he did still miss 15. He was their top scorer at 66 points, as this is more of a depth over stars sort of team. Mark Stone is their best forward when healthy, but he missed half the season, though is set to return for the playoffs. William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault, Chandler Stephenson, Reilly Smith, all useful players, but no one wows you. Same thing on defense, Shea Theodore, Alec Martinez, and Alex Pietrangelo are all good players but is anyone a superstar? Not currently. Hasn’t been a problem though! Nor has been the use of four different goalies who each played at least 10 games. It seems like Laurent Brossoit (.927 in 11 games) will get the first crack in net, until Logan Thompson (.915 in 37) is healthy. Both are fine, I guess, but like the whole team, are not flashy.
The Jets: Hired Rick Bowness to help them play boring defensive hockey and it mostly worked. For much of the year, the Jets were having a resurgence and seemed like a contender but a disastrous final two months of the season saw them reduced to the last team in the playoffs, barely beating out Calgary and Nashville to get in. After starting 29-14-1, Winnipeg finished 17-19-2 in their final 38 games, seesawing in a way that had everyone up in arms up until they went 5-1 down the stretch to finally seal a playoff berth. The result was a sour taste in everyone’s mouth and an aura of iffy vibes with this team headed into the playoffs.
Yet there are still reasons to like the Jets. Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, and Pierre Luc-Dubois all had good seasons and rate as high-end offensive players. Josh Morrissey had a stunning transformation into an elite offensive defenseman en route to scoring 76 points(!!!) and Bowness’ schematic improvements to the defense had them hewing more towards the middle of the league in defensive metrics as opposed to bottom barrel under Paul Maurice. That reduced the load some on Connor Hellebuyck, who is still the single biggest source of optimism for the Jets going into the playoffs. Over the past four seasons, only Andrei Vasilevskiy has been as consistently good in net as Hellebuyck and he was dominant in the first round to steal a series the last time this team was in the playoffs (2021). I don’t hate having that guy in the crease for me.
The Matchup: I came into the writing of this breakdown expecting to be really swayed by Vegas but the more I thought about it, the less impressed I was by the Knights, or at the very least, the more startled I was at how little of a gap between the two teams there seems to be. In xGF% at 5v5, the two teams are separated by less than a point. Winnipeg tailed off in the second half but if you were sizing up this matchup on January 15, you probably would’ve said it was a coinflip. So how much of the analysis should have changed since then? The Jets’ top scorers have gone into prolonged offensive slumps since the All-Star Game and that’s cause for concern. Again, the vibes are bad. But they have a lot of talent on paper and depending on Mark Stone’s health, you can make the case that Winnipeg’s got three or four of the top five to six forwards in this series. Obviously I like Vegas’ forward depth and defense better, but Winnipeg has (presumably) a massive edge in net. The more I look at it, the closer it seems.
For me the biggest storyline in this series is the uncertainty and the variability. The Jets have some nice pieces, but it’s unclear if they fit together terribly well. It’s also unclear which version of the Jets’ offensive stars we’re getting. On Vegas’ end, how does their goaltending situation shape up? It’s hard to see them winning this series if there’s a gigantic gap in goaltending performance. How does Jack Eichel do in his first playoffs? Can he elevate himself and will Vegas forward? Will Mark Stone be healthy enough to be the fantastic player he is at 100%? There are a ton of moving pieces here.
Last Word: I struggle to see a scenario where Winnipeg sweeps, but everything between Winnipeg in 5 to Vegas in 7 seems completely plausible. Hellebucyk could just steal the series. Or the Jets could lay down and roll over in a sweep. Or it could be a hell of a battle and go to the wire, hell if I know! I think Vegas is a decent bit weaker than their seed rank may indicate, but the Jets didn’t look like a playoff team for long stretches of time in the last couple months. I decided against picking the Islanders over Carolina since it had become such a trendy upset pick, so instead I’m going to go with this as my upset pick. I’m betting on the superiority of us Michiganders by saying Hellebuyck does it again, a .930 in the series, while Kyle Connor goes off and outscores Jack Eichel or Mark Stone. Jets to the second round! Jets in Six
(P2) Edmonton Oilers vs. (P3) Los Angeles Kings
The Oilers: Saw one of the greatest offensive seasons of all time (adjusting for era) as Connor McDavid published his magnum opus by winning the triple crown, leading the NHL in goals, assists, and points in the same season, the first player to do it since Mario Lemieux in 1996. He was also the first player since Mario to break 150 points (153) and approached Ovechkin’s cap-era single-season goal record of 65 (McDavid had 63). McDavid is one of the very best players to ever play the sport of hockey and he’s in his prime right now, 26 years old. McDavid’s magic helped engineer the most successful power play in NHL history, setting a new record for efficiency by firing at 32.4% for the season. Leon Draisaitl scored 52 goals, 32 of them on the PP (tying Dave Andreychuk for 2nd most in a season all-time), while Ryan Nugent-Hopkins collected 53 points on the power play, helping himself finish with 104 points. Edmonton is the first team since Mario’s 96 Pens to have three 100+ point scorers.
The offensive brilliance of the PP and the Oilers as a whole (1st in goals for) was true pretty much the whole season. What changed dramatically was after the trade deadline. Before that, it seemed like same ole Edmonton, McDavid and Draisaitl dragging a carcass that is weak in depth scoring and defense and without true upside. After the deadline, which saw the Oilers trade for but veteran D Mattias Ekholm (and C Nick Bjugstad), Edmonton seemed to transform into a monster. They went 18-2-1 to close the regular season after picking up Ekholm(!!), who turned back the clock to look like a #1 defenseman and gave them a true top pair with Evan Bouchard. The depth looks improved too, the first time in this era that they aren’t getting caved in when McDavid/Draisaitl are off the ice, and Stuart Skinner’s breakout in net has helped make up for the folly of the Jack Campbell contract. This squad looks terrifying.
The Kings: If not for the Oilers stealing their thunder, the Kings were the team that seemed the hottest in the West, and also made aggressive upgrades to their team. They got Kevin Fiala in the offseason to bolster the offense and then saddled up with Vlad Gavrikov and Joonas Korpisalo at the deadline, fixing holes in net and on defense. There was a prolonged stretch from December into March where the Kings played like one of the top teams in the league, 27-8-5 over a 40 game stretch(!!!). However, a 4-5 finish to the season dampened those vibes quite a bit and ceded home ice to Edmonton for this series. Still, most Kings fans would’ve been pleased with 104 points and a goal differential that improved by 20 over last season.
2012-14 era veterans Anže Kopitar and Drew Doughty are still reliable cogs while a younger group of supporting players fill in around them. Gavrikov was a huge pickup who has helped stabilize their second pair with Matt Roy, while PP specialist Sean Durzi anchors the third pair. Fiala added 72 points, Adrian Kempe scored a shocking 41 goals, while Viktor Arvidsson was his reliable self with 26. The once-heralded Kings farm system still has yet to churn out many NHL gems, but Gabe Vilardi’s progression to a middle six, 20 goal center has been nice to see. Los Angeles’ bugaboo for much of this year was in net, where legend of the franchise Jonathan Quick regressed rapidly in his old age, leading to him being unceremoniously cap-dumped at the deadline. One-time Goalie of the Future Cal Petersen is unplayable at the NHL level now, leading journeyman Phoenix Copley to hold the net down until Korpisalo arrived from Columbus. The Finn has been strong all year but was phenomenal for LA after coming over, 7-3-1 with a.921 SV%. Seems to have filled a hole.
The Matchup: This is our other playoff rematch, after Toronto-Tampa. Last year it was a compelling seven game series, one where the difference was that one squad had Connor McDavid and the other one didn’t. That still feels pretty relevant. Both teams have improved from last year, the Kings adding Gavrikov and Fiala, the Oilers adding Ekholm and improving their bottom six. Both teams have changed goalies, but I don’t think the needle has moved much on either side since Mike Smith was strong for Edmonton last year and Quick wasn’t half-bad either. So both teams are better, but did one get a ton better?
I would say yes in Edmonton’s case. LA feels pretty similar. They improved, sure, but the Kings are still a team without any superstars, who lean on depth and a glut of solid players as well as strong structure and coaching to win. That hasn’t changed too much and for what it’s worth, their underlying numbers are pretty static. Edmonton on the other hand has seen the paradigm shift quite a bit, better results when McDavid/Draisaitl aren’t out there, which was formerly a years-long Achilles heel, and acquiring a hoss on defense, another piece that had been missing. To back that up, Edmonton’s xGF% at 5v5 has improved more than 3 full points, now sitting #3 in the NHL and best in the west. The Oilers had 45 regulation wins this season, which is a strong indicator for the playoffs. That was tops in the west and second-best in the NHL behind Boston. The Kings had a respectable 37. Both teams got better, but one got quite a bit better and deserve to be the favorites.
Last Word: The hope for LA in this series is that between Phil Danault and Kopitar, Todd McLellan pieces together a matchup line that can slow McDavid down. It didn’t really work last year, but they still almost won the series. Problem is, this year, it feels imperative. If you’re not slowing McDavid down this year, I’m not sure how you’re beating the Oilers, who are deeper and better built to survive without McDavid going wild. I’m curious to see whether McLellan tries Gavrikov-Doughty on D together to try and stop McDavid, for example. He’s gotta try something targeted and specific, because you can’t let #97 put up 14 points on you again this series.
I respect the Kings enough to think they’ll hang in there and push this series. They have a number of good players and lack big black holes in the lineup. They also don’t have superstars. Edmonton has two and with the way Ekholm is playing right now, arguably three. McDavid is playing in a way that feels so supreme that I don’t know when he will be stopped, but it doesn’t feel like it will be by LA. This is the best Edmonton roster they’ve had since Wayne Gretzky was suiting up for them and the ride doesn’t stop here. Oilers in Six.