Let me be the first to observe that there has never been a week like this in NHL history.
The teams that finish 22nd, 23rd and 24th in the overall standings are in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and a team that finished in the top 10 lives in the lottery for the first overall draft pick. The stuff about the bubble, COVID-19 tests and protocols, and no fans in the building (s)? Old news.
At around 10:15 Friday night, the general wisdom was that the Maple Leafs were a structural disaster and, of course, the wisdom of spending $ 40.5 million on cap space – essentially half the club’s allotment – should be seen. to four forward.
Fifteen minutes later, those four strikers – Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner and William Nylander – had been for the three goals from Toronto within the final 3:57 of the third period that erased a 3-0 Columbus lead and the overtime ensured in which the Leafs completed the most formidable comeback in playoff history to eliminate elimination.
Which means we’ll only know late on Sunday night, after the decisive Game 5, if anyone was right about the Maple Leafs in the first place.
Checked to see if, 45 years and 4 months later, Zach Parise was on the ice for Alex Edler’s overdue goal for the Canucks at 0:11 that KO’d’s Wild on Friday just like his father, JP Parise, was for the goal he scored at 0:11 to beat the Rangers at the Garden in 1975.
The answer was no.
Incidentally, two wins in the playoff round to see for the eight years that Paris and Ryan Suter have been teammates in Minnesota after signing those twin, 13-year-old, $ 98 million free agent contracts in July 2012 tekene.
Can I say this? If the Rangers had beaten Carolina, David Quinn would have received a fair share of credit. But I’m still trying to figure out what share of the blame, if any, should fall on the coach for his team’s abysmal displays in Toronto.
He was not part of the solution, so he was obviously part of the problem. But I can not figure out if it went wrong after the Rangers arrived in the bubble as before?
Because I think after Montreal-Pittsburgh we can compensate for the catch-all of infinity against a grizzled playoff team.
Although Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov are barely grizzled.
New rule: A moratorium on comparison of Kaapo Kakko with Svechnikov.
Por favor.
Here’s one next week 1 of August Madness: Two of the three Hart Trophy finalists, Artemi Panarin of the Rangers and Leon Draisaitl of the Oilers, are from teams wrapped up not to make the playoffs.
But you say Draisaitl’s official career record includes a three-goal statline, three assists in six points in four playoff games? (And Panarin’s showing one goal, one assist and two points in three playoff games?)
That’s so in 2020.
And while we’re on that topic, no, it does not occur to me that, say, Matthews has these extra five games to produce playoff scoring records more than it occurred to me that Jean Beliveau had a 12-goal playoff record in 1956. while playing two rounds was broken by 13 of Phil Esposito in 1970 while playing four rounds.
Montreal and Chicago, of course, and Vancouver, too, but no team was better served by the 4 ¹ / moanne-month pope than the Islanders, who suddenly look like the team that went to the second round of the playoffs. last year and not the floundering outfit that lost its last seven (0-3-4) and went 2-7-4 in its last 13 games.
It is never fiver hockey with the islanders.
It’s Despite Hockey.
And for the second straight year, Barry Trotz is one win away in Washington (Sunday against Boston) from a matchup with his former team.
Quick quiz: Which Rangers goaltender has the highest winning percentage of the playoffs (minimum five decisions) in the modern era that is traditionally recognized as having started in 1944-45?
It’s not Mike Richter, third at .554 with 41-33.
It’s not Davey Kerr, .567 at 17-13 (and two ties).
Not John Davidson, either, at .552 with his 16-13 record.
It’s … Eddie Mio, clocked in at .600 by going 9-6 in 1982 and 1983.
The Puddy Tats of Florida, now coached by the esteemed Joel Quenneville, have not won a playoff round since 1996 and look forward to six years of Sergei Bobrovsky at $ 10 million apiece.
Are you really so sure that Alexander Barkov, 25 in September, will hang if his contract expires in two more years?
I’ve heard it from a number of sources over the last few months as well. The people at Sixth Avenue are lobbying for Peter Chiarelli to take another shot as general manager of the NHL team, and I think I should ask why?
Finally, ratings for the past weekend were loud in the heat, with the audience for Pittsburgh-Montreal on NBC about 9 percent down from the first round of Boston-Toronto in 2019 over the network.
What serves as a welcome reminder to those who think this new crazy calendar may fit the NHL: It’s summer and it’s not.
.
