First Round Preview Quick Hitters

300 words or less on each series

One of my favorite additions to the All Three Zone project this year is the Team Comparison Tool, which lets you look at how each team matches up in terms of microstats. It’s a cool way to look at teams playing styles & what they can exploit in a playoff series. Sometimes you have a clear mismatch, but every team in the dance has at least one area or two that they excel in (they wouldn’t have made it otherwise) and we can get a decent idea of how each series will go based on that.

I’m going to keep these brief so we’re not here all day..

Eastern Conference

Hurricanes vs. Islanders

This is probably the least anticipated series of the bunch & with good reason. You have two teams that don’t score (or give up) a lot of goals, LOVE dumping the puck in and base their offense around taking a million clappers from the point. If you want my serious thoughts on how these two teams match up, check out my preview at McKeens Hockey.

As for my general thoughts, I can see why this is an easy upset pick for the Islanders. The Hurricanes haven’t played great over the past month & the Isles should be getting Mathew Barzal back (who is the best player in this series if he plays). They also have a bedrock in Ilya Sorokin while the Hurricanes have yet to name a starting goaltender for Game 1 (which is tonight mind you).

That and the vibe around Carolina is just rotten right now. Maybe this is just the long-term effects of everyone on Twitter using me as their personal venting board for every single detail about why this team is going to fail in the playoffs again, but it has been hard for me to get worked up over a team that had so many roster spots filled by patchwork (Burns, Kotkaniemi, Drury, Gostisbehere, Jordan Staal remaining ageless) not winning the Cup. They overachieved and I wish more would enjoy the wins when you get them instead of treating everything like it has to be Stanley Cup or Nothing.

Now that I’m done venting, I do think Carolina drew a good opponent to “get right” against. The Isles were the least dangerous team off the rush among possible first round matchups & counter-attacks are what usually kills this team in the playoffs. Barzal & Sorokin could throw a wrench into this plan, though. Still, Carolina’s forecheck will keep them in most of the games & give them a territorial edge. It will just depend on if they can beat Sorokin enough for it to matter.

Bruins vs. Panthers

Jim Montgomery seems to have fixed the previous Boston team’s obsession with point shots and it’s not coming at the expense of well…anything. They’ve been a machine this year & added a top-pair defenseman at the deadline to go along with the two they already had on the roster. It’s hard to pick against them even if Florida looks more formidable than your average wild card team.

I do kind of feel for them. Most of their stats were in the black all year, including goal differential. They just seemed prone to games where they ran up the score & got killed in close games. If you want to blame that on the coaching or the talent drain on their defense corps you wouldn’t be wrong, but things evened out by April. Unfortunatley for them, their reward is a matchup against the best team of the modern NHL.

Where things get interesting is that Florida’s defense can be pressured into mistakes & Boston doesn’t need to run up the shot clock to score. Florida is a little more balanced with how they create offense compared to last year’s squad, but Boston doesn’t really give you much either way. It’s a similar issue to what they ran into against Tampa Bay last year. In theory, a series like this is why they gave Andrew Brunette the boot in favor of Paul Maurice, so we’ll see how this goes.

Devils vs. Rangers

There is always one team that goes completely berserk off the rush every season & it was New Jersey’s turn this year (see Buffalo next season). The Devils aren’t a one-dimensional offense & defend their blue line better than most teams with this profile, so there’s no reason they can’t go on a long playoff run. What is concerning, though is they’re sloppy with retrieving pucks in their own zone & this is where games are usually won in the playoffs.

The Rangers aren’t great either, but if they’re defending a lead, they have kind of mastered the art of at least taking a hit to get the puck out of the zone & making you reset. I don’t know if they can go as far as they did last year just by doing this, but they are a little more balanced now. Not to mention they tried to build a mini 2016 All-Star Team at the deadline, which undoubtably is going to change their approach compared to last year when they had more checkers in their top-six.

I think this is going to be a close, mistake-driven series and the team with the defenseman that will get snubbed of being a Norris finalist takes it in 7.

Lightning vs. Maple Leafs

Everybody should read Cam Charron’s three-part preview of this series because he did a better job of diving into the nuts & bolts of the matchup than I ever could.

I will say that Tampa is coming into the playoffs in the worst shape of anyone, at least over the past 25 games. I understand that the regular season isn’t important to them & they knew this would be their matchup four months ago, but it’s still putting a lot of faith in them to flip the switch.

They’re capable of it, though. This year was another solid year at the office for them with guys like Brandon Hagel & Ross Colton becoming more key parts than support players. Toronto is a little tougher to figure out because they have so many moving parts on the roster. Ryan O’Reilly got hurt almost immediately after joining the team, they have a nine-headed monster on defense, Matthew Knies could see some games. They had trouble attacking off the rush against Tampa in last year’s series, so I get having extra players at your disposal. It’s possible they overthink it, but with their playoff history I don’t blame them. Will this be this year? I’m tempted to pick them as my Cup winner because doing that bit with Washington eventually paid off.

Western Conference

Golden Knights vs. Jets

This is either going to be a uncompetitive sweep or a slog to seven games. Vegas’ game is all about transition, both creating & shutting it down while the Jets want the puck off the glass or along the boards as much as humanly possible. Even if Mark Stone isn’t healthy, Vegas shouldn’t have much of a problem going coast-to-coast against this team. It’s just a matter of sticking with it if Connor Hellebuyck has one of his 35-40 save performances.

The last time the Knights got goalie’d in the playoffs, they went on a mission to trade for Jack Eichel so I’m not sure what the next step is if it happens again. Maybe they can sell Timo Meier on moving back West.

Avalanche vs. Kraken

This is a tough draw for Seattle even if they played Colorado well in the season series. They had the invincibility star with goal-scoring and their defensive game slowly rounded into form. The one bugaboo is they play such a tight game with limiting shots & chances that they tend to leave the middle of the ice open if the first defender gets beat. It’s an aggressive style of defending that works for them, but against Colorado it might be a problem.

The Avs had a rough season with so many injuries & still did well for themselves. Nathan MacKinnon having his best year & Mikko Rantanen scoring 55 goals had a lot to do with that. They aren’t as deep as they were last year & Seattle can roll 4 lines without sweating, but the top of the Avs roster is hard to bet against.

Stars vs. Wild

The Pete DeBoer bounce is real and Dallas is getting the full experience. It kind of amuses me that their profile matches how the media describes Bowness Hockey, but it’s actually better. They’re not piling up shot totals & aren’t a great rush team, but they don’t allow much and their offense values quality over quantity.

Minnesota, on the other hand, is a team I haven’t had a good read on all season. I’ve watched at least 35 of their games and I still can’t tell you if this team is good or not aside from Kaprizov, Spurgeon, Eriksson Ek & Zuccarello (who is chief chairman of the Good Guy Hall of Fame). They’ve also been walking wounded since the trade deadline, but they were racking up wins while letting Marcus Johansson, John Klingberg & Oskar Sundqvist run wild. It was like watching someone make a bunch of trades to get to the salary cap floor with an expansion team in NHL 23.

This isn’t even getting into the goaltending situation where Marc-Andre Fleury, once again, is in a situation where he might be the Number 2. It’s a less awkward than last year where he got benched for Cam Talbot, as it’s easier to transition from him to Gustavsson going forward. Still, this guy might be the best goalie to always be part of an unexpected tandem come playoff time.

Oilers vs. Kings

This is another series I previewed at McKeens. Growing up a hockey fan in the 2010’s means that it’s tough for me to trust the Oilers. Even though they have Connor McDavid in Superstar Mode & have been playing excellent hockey since adding Mattias Ekholm, you just can’t help but be reluctant about showing confidence in this team. Last year has to earn them some clout. They took a few gut-punches, retaliated and ran into a buzzsaw in Colorado. Woodcroft has done a good job with getting them to check when they need to & it showed in the season series against LA. That and two of the Kings game-breakers are currently injured (Fiala, Vilardi). Even with them they have been limited to a pop-gun offense where they get into the zone with a lot of speed & waste it with long-distance shots.

If they do play this could be a different story because the Kings can make this series a coinflip if they stay out of the penalty box when it matters. Still, McDavid has a real supporting cast now and that’s going to be a pretty big difference maker even if LA slows him down.