Lord Stanley Approaches
It's the most grueling tournament in professional sports. Let's take a look.
The National Hockey League’s (NHL) regular season is too long. By my reckoning, it’s about 14 games too long. And when you factor in an additional two weeks to accommodate the Four Nations Tournament the league sponsored in lieu of a traditional All-Star break, the 2024-25 NHL regular season would have seemed interminable had it not been for the six furious periods of hockey played by Team Canada and Team USA in the Four Nations, as well as Alex Ovechkin’s successful assault on Wayne Gretzky’s career goal scoring record.
Beginning tomorrow night, our patience will finally pay off as the Stanley Cup playoffs begin with a pair of first round games in Winnipeg and Dallas. Even though the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs are longer thanks to the addition of a “play-in” round, nobody doubts that the NHL’s springtime showcase is far more grueling and physically taxing. Home ice advantage means nothing more often than not. Teams that sleepwalked their way through the regular season can suddenly get hot and crush opponents that finished dozens of points ahead in the standings.
And don’t forget the goalies, warriors who have stood David-like astride the path to the Cup, felling heavily favored teams like Paul Bunyan swinging his mighty axe.
I might not follow the entire league as closely as I once did, but I still have plenty to say about this season’s tournament.
Eastern Conference
Washington Capitals vs. Montreal Canadiens: The Capitals were not supposed to make the playoffs this season, never mind finish first in the Eastern Conference and challenge for the President’s Trophy. But every bet the front office placed during the off season paid off big, and it resulted in a more competitive club that helped carry Ovechkin to break Gretzky’s record. But as Ovechkin closed in on Gretzky, the team started stripping its gears. They’re 4-6 in their last 10 games, including a 7-0 loss to a Columbus Blue Jackets team that just finished out of the money. Injuries have hurt down the stretch, but the defense has seemed Swiss cheese-like of late. I hate to say it, but I think they’re vulnerable. I saw the Caps and the Habs play on Halloween, and the game was tied 3-3 heading into the third period before Washington pulled away for a 6-3 win. There are few easy outs in the playoffs, and someone on Washington’s roster will have to step up in the absence of Aliaskei Protas, a young winger who has proven to be one of the best players in the NHL at even strength. Montreal is sneaky good, especially its top line anchored by Nick Suzuki. Better still for the Canadiens, they were able to sign Russian phenom Ivan Demidov just a few days ago. He seems to be pretty good. WASHINGTON IN SIX.
Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Ottawa Senators: Though they only finished three points in back of Washington for the top spot in the Eastern Conference, the Maple Leafs never seriously challenged the Capitals to secure that home ice advantage. But what they do have is serious momentum, going 9-1 in their last 10 games. And what do they get for their troubles? How about a renewal of their provincial blood feud with the Senators? I had the Senators ticketed for the playoffs a full year ago, but better late than never, I guess. They made some deals at the deadline that have paid off big. TV ratings should be sky high in Ontario for this one. If you have ESPN+ and access to their NHL package, you’d do well to watch at least one of these games. I expect the crowd in Ottawa, which has had little to cheer about since the days of Wade Redden, will be electric. TORONTO IN SIX.
Carolina Hurricanes vs. New Jersey Devils: Speed kills, and there will be speed aplenty in this series. Carolina is pesky, and has absorbed much of the personality of their head coach, Rod Brind’Amour. I saw them play the Caps a little more than a week ago, a game where they took a 2-0 lead, then went down 4-2 before tying it up in the dying moments of regulation. They don’t give up. If I played for “Rod the Bod,” I wouldn’t want to disappoint him either. As for New Jersey, a lot of folks had them ticketed for a Cup run this season, expectations that evaporated when superstar Jack Hughes was lost for the season to a shoulder injury. The team refused to add anyone at the trade deadline, so it seemed as if the organization had given up and the Devils finished with the same number of points as Ottawa, the lowest Wild Card qualifier. I expect this series to end quicker than most. CAROLINA IN FIVE.
Tampa Bay Lightning vs. Florida Panthers: The last five teams to qualify for the Stanley Cup Finals from the Eastern Conference have all come from the state of Florida (Tampa Bay X3, Florida X2). If it seems a touch unfair that these two teams have to play each other in the first round, you’re exactly right. Now that the conferences are balanced with an equal number of teams, there’s no reason to keep this Rube Goldberg-like format alive any longer. In the meantime, this should be an excellent series, with the teams very evenly matched in every way from the bench to the goal crease. Matthew Tkachuk, who gave everything he had for Team USA in the Four Nations tournament, will be returning in time for Game One of this series, where he’ll be joined by trade deadline acquisition, Brad Marchand. I think the latter will be the difference here. FLORIDA IN SEVEN.
Western Conference
Winnipeg Jets vs. St. Louis Blues: After the Florida Panthers won their first Stanley Cup in 2024, Head Coach Paul Maurice took time in the game’s aftermath to express his hope that one day that the team he once coached, the Winnipeg Jets, would win the Cup themselves. He may very well get what he asked for this season. The team that plays in the NHL’s smallest market was its best team, winning the President’s Trophy, and had the best goal differential thanks to the incredible goaltending of Connor Hellebuyck, generally acknowledged to be the best net minder in all of ice hockey. The one goalie who most recently outplayed Hellebuyck, however, is Jordan Binnington, who happens to play for the Blues and guarded the opposite goal mouth for Canada in the Four Nations tourney. This season has been a mixed one for the veteran, and a lot of Team Canada observers were angered that the coaching staff picked him to start in goal in the Four Nations. Team Canada might have lost their first meeting with the Americans, but Binnington came up big when it counted in the final to give Canada the tournament win. I shouldn’t need to remind you that Binnington won the Cup as a rookie with St. Louis in 2019, something his counterpart hasn’t gotten a sniff of yet. I smell trouble. ST. LOUIS IN SEVEN.
Vegas Golden Knights vs. Minnesota Wild: Thanks once again to the NHL’s ridiculous playoff format, the Knights had to face an incredibly tough Dallas Stars team last year in the first playoff round since their 2023 Stanley Cup win. Vegas dropped that series, 4-3, in what turned out to be an abbreviated defense of their Cup victory. This season, they’ve sort of lucked out, and will face the top Wild Card qualifier in the West, the Wild. I expect Vegas to cut through Minnesota like a buzz saw, which means we may very well see Marc-André Fleury make one final on-ice appearance before his retirement against the team he took to the Finals in 2018. VEGAS IN FIVE.
Dallas (Helsinki) Stars vs. Colorado Avalanche: One season ago, Dallas took the eventual Western Conference champion Edmonton Oilers to six games in the Western Conference Final, which I thought set them up for a long run this season. After all, you usually have to fail before you succeed, and that goes double in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Stars were near the top of the table, hot on the heels of the Winnipeg Jets in the Central Division, and then they got even better when they stole an unhappy Mikko Rantanen from the Carolina Hurricanes at the deadline. He’s played great for Dallas, tallying 18 points in 20 games, but the wheels came off the bus later in the season, as the Stars lost seven straight to end the schedule. Winger Jason Robertson was injured in the regular season finale, and his availability for the series is up in the air right now. Waiting for the Stars is Colorado, the team where Rantanen started the season. The Avalanche went all in at the trade deadline, bringing in five new players, including center Brock Nelson, and finished the season just four points in back of Dallas. The Rantanen deal with Carolina was definitely addition by subtraction, as the team simply couldn’t afford his contract demands. The new parts have all meshed really, really well. Better still, Gabriel Landeskog, who hasn’t played for the Avalanche since the 2022 Stanley Cup Finals due to injury, has rejoined the team and may play in the series. There are so many moving parts here, and I could go on forever, but I have to cut this off. COLORADO IN SEVEN.
Los Angeles Kings vs. Edmonton Oilers: You’d have to be something of a cad not to sympathize with the Oilers after the way their season ended in 2024. After falling behind 3-0 in the Stanley Cup Finals to the Florida Panthers, the Oilers defied the odds and forced a Game Seven in Florida. But the hockey gods are mercurial, even to the pure of heart, and the Oilers had their collective hearts removed with an ice cream scooper after a 2-1 loss in a deciding Game Seven. And to add insult to injury, the press decided to award Connor McDavid with the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP. Needless to say, he didn’t stick around on ice to pick up the trophy. Their regular season this time around was more than good enough to qualify for the playoffs, especially considering that McDavid and a passel of other players missed significant time to injury. They are still very dangerous. Waiting for them is a surprising Kings squad, who will own home ice in this series. As I wrote earlier, normally home ice doesn’t mean a thing in the playoffs. Unfortunately for Edmonton, the Kings owned the best home record in all of the NHL this season. And while everyone knows Anže Kopitar and Drew Doughty, the real revelation this season has been goalie Darcy Kuemper. The last time he was in the playoffs was 2022, where he backstopped Colorado to their third Stanley Cup. After two lackluster seasons in Washington, Kuemper was dealt to LA in exchange for serial underachiever Pierre-Luc Dubois. It turned out to be one of those “win-win” trades general managers dream about, as both players rediscovered their game in new environs. Now that Kuemper is back in the playoffs, I think he has something to prove. L.A. IN SEVEN.
You might be asking, just where have I been since January? As you might suspect, life and work ballooned so much that time and space for blogging were reduced to near zero. And just recently, my wife lost her mother. Noreen was 93, which is a heck of a run for a girl who was born on a cattle farm in the west of Ireland.
Much of our time has been spent shuttling between Virginia and the Eastern Shore of Maryland to look in on my father-in-law, who is hurting like you wouldn’t believe. Such will be the case through the Summer, as we sort through the myriad issues that must be confronted when a parent passes on. Please keep my wife and her family in your thoughts and prayers, as they really need them.