The Stanley Cup Playoffs begin with three games Wednesday night. The most unpredictable postseason in professional sports is fun every year, but this one’s positioned to be a little extra fun.
On one end of the spectrum, it features the Penguins trying to become the first major North American pro team to three-peat a title since the 2000-02 Lakers. On the other, it has an expansion team, the Golden Knights, that won a division and looks primed to make a run toward the Cup in its first year of existence. In between, there are a bunch of teams that don’t feel at all like long shots to lift that big chalice.
Someone’s going to win 16 games over the next two months. Another 15 teams will not. Answers to these questions — one for every team in the field — will help us sort out a lot of the playoffs’ mystery. Here’s a full schedule, but these are arranged by series matchup:
Do the Penguins have enough left in the tank?
In the course of winning the last two Cups, Pittsburgh has played 49 playoff games, well more than half of an entire season’s worth of extra minutes. Nobody else has played more than 36 in that span, and only four other teams have even played half as many extra games as the Pens. Add in that a handful of their top contributors played in the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, and you’ve got a recipe for a lot of tired Penguins. No team in the playoffs has as much tread on its tires as this one, and that could sting eventually.
Can the Flyers’ penalty-killing unit pull a rabbit out of its hat?
The Flyers are bad at killing penalties. Their 75.8 percent kill rate during the regular season was 29th of 31 teams and worst among teams that made the playoffs. They were good at not taking penalties, but they got burned when they did. Against Pittsburgh, they’re playing the top power play in the league, and one that scored at least once with the man advantage in all four of the teams’ meetings this year. Philadelphia has avoid getting torched here.
Just how stabile is the Capitals’ goalie situation?
Philipp Grubauer is starting Washington’s series against Columbus. Grubauer’s played well this year, and he’s definitely earned the nod. But that’s not great, right? Braden Holtby had been a world-class goaltender for several years before this one, and it’d be better for Washington if he were playing well enough to not have lost his job to his backup. Coach Barry Trotz will probably move to Holtby if Grubauer struggles, but it’d be ideal to have more certainty at the position heading into the spring. Of course, the other question with this team is the same as every year: Can it get over whatever humps or mental blocks have kept it from getting beyond the second round any time in the Alex Ovechkin era?
Will the Blue Jackets’ Sergei Bobrovsky break with previous protocol and actually stop some pucks shot in his direction this year?
Bobrovsky is an elite goalie. He’s won two of the last five Vezina Trophies and had a .921 save percentage this year, seventh-best among 32 goalies who appeared in 40 games or more. He’s been inexplicably terrible in past playoff runs, though. He has a career .887 playoff save percentage (compared to .920 in the regular season) and has given up a massive 3.63 goals-against average in the postseason (compared to 2.44). We’re still dealing with a pretty small sample size of just 18 career playoff appearances. But they’ve been enough to make people wonder whether he’ll be there in crunch time.
Can anyone keep the puck out of the net against the Lightning?
Probably not. The Lightning scored a league-best 3.6 goals per game, and they have so many high-end scoring options that they could win track meets all the way to a Cup.
Will a New Jersey Devil not named Taylor Hall please stand up?
Probably not. The non-Hall Devils are pretty bad.
Can the Bruins’ Patrice Bergeron neutralize elite centers for an entire series?
Bergeron, now 32, is a marvel. He’s been one of the two or three best defensive forwards in the world for around a decade now. He scored 63 points in 64 regular-season games, and he seems healthy after missing 13 games up to the end of March with a broken foot. He’s Boston’s best possession-driver by far, and coach Bruce Cassidy’s going to deploy him against top scoring lines whenever he can (so, whenever Boston’s at home and has the last line change). As incredible as Bergeron is, he’ll be tested over a seven-game series, whether that’s against a Toronto young gun like Auston Matthews or Mitch Marner another old master later in the playoffs, like Sidney Crosby or Steven Stamkos.
Are the Maple Leafs ready to come into their own?
The Leafs have an excellent young core. It’s not hard to imagine this group contending seriously for multiple Cups. Most young cores walk before they run, and maybe Toronto got through that phase in the course of a plucky first-round loss to Washington last year. This year’s team is way better than that one, and it has veteran punch in newish additions Patrick Marleau, Ron Hainsey (a Cup winner last year), Tomas Plekanec, who’s been disappointing since coming over at the trade deadline from Montreal. Maybe they’re ready to level up.
Are the Golden Knights just on an incredibly long magic carpet ride? (Unofficial follow-up: If yes, can this continue long enough to win the Cup?)
I still don’t really get the Vegas Golden Knights. Like everyone else, I thought the roster they fielded at last summer’s expansion draft would get them drubbed for all of his season and several after that. But you don’t put up 109 points and win your division by accident, and the underlying possession stats point to a team that’s absolutely real. It’ll be weird if a team of mostly castoffs from 10 months ago wins the Stanley Cup, but at this point, it feels more dangerous to assume Vegas is going to collapse than the opposite.
Does Anze Kopitar have to haul the Kings offense along all by himself?
Other than Hall, there might not be a single player in the league who’s had to do more to lug the load of his team’s offense than Kopitar, whose 92 points were 31 more than the next-closest guy on the roster. How far the Kings go might depend on how much material support Kopitar can get from some of the centers down-ballot on L.A.’s depth chart. Jeff Carter’s missed a bunch of the year, but he seems healthy enough for playoff time. How much he can help Kopitar in giving L.A. multiple dangerous lines will be telling.
Does a healthy Ryan Johansen put the Predators over the top?
Nashville’s defense is excellent, just like it was on a run to the Final last year. But in a six-game loss to Pittsburgh, the biggest difference between the teams was depth up the middle. It’s hard to beat Crosby and Evgeni Malkin when you’re icing a center depth chart of Colton Sissons, a 94-year-old Mike Fisher, Calle Jarnkrok, and Frederick Gaudreau. This year, No. 1 center Johansen isn’t out with a significant leg injury, as he was during the ‘17 Final. The Predators were the best team in the league in the regular season, and they came a bad bounce and a bad call from forcing a Game 7 in the Final last time around.
Can a backup goalie take the Avalanche anywhere?
Semyon Varlamov is the Avs’ starting goalie, and he’s a good one (.920 save percentage, 2.68 GAA in 51 appearances). He’s injured and not playing. Enter backup Jonathan Bernier, a 29-year-old journeyman who’s shown flashes in the past but hasn’t been able to stick as a starter for a reason. (He’s been a roughly 33-start backup for three different teams the last three years.) There’s a lot on Bernier’s shoulders, and it’s not clear he can hold it.
Is Patrik Laine finally about to go mainstream as the Jets superstar he is?
The hockey world knows Laine is amazing. He’s going to be one of the best players of his era, and he could be a Hall of Famer when everything’s done. But this is hockey, and this is America, and this not-quite-20-year-old 44-goal-scorer plays his home games in Manitoba. Non-hockey people don’t know Laine yet, but if he’s filling the net to an outrageous extent in the playoffs, more people will learn about him. Also, maybe Winnipeg will go far.
Can the Wild win despite never having the puck?
As long as you’re finishing enough scoring chances and getting quality goaltending, you don’t need to be an elite possession team to win the Stanley Cup. The Pittsburgh team that won last year was 15th of 30 teams in percentage of total shot attempts controlled, at 49.8 percent. But this year’s Wild made the playoffs despite controlling a league-worst 46.9 percent, surviving anyway with the finishing and goalie play they needed. It’s a point of uncertainty whether Minnesota can keep pulling that off much longer.
Can the Ducks score enough to have a chance?
Anaheim scored fewer goals than any other team to make the playoffs. Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry aren’t the players they used to be, and while 24-year-old center Rickard Rakell is a nice player, you’d rather not have him leading your team with 69 points. The Ducks have, obviously, a great team defense, or they wouldn’t be here. But defense only wins championships if pucks are going into nets, and Anaheim’s especially vulnerable if goalie John Gibson can’t be Superman on any given night. Absent a Getzlaf or Perry cameo as a 2012 version of himself, it’s hard to see where Anaheim’s scoring depth will come from.
Why should this good Sharks team be any different than every other good Sharks team, all of which have fallen short in the end?
The Sharks have failed in the spring so many times that it’s no longer in style to point out their futility. Winning Cups is challenging, but the Sharks have had so many good teams that their inability to close the deal has gone from notable to a sore thumb to downright boring at this point. This core is similar to the one the Sharks have had over the last few years, which means both that it’s good and used to losing in the playoffs. It wouldn’t be surprising if San Jose finally broke through, but it needs a healthy Joe Thornton, who’s had an injured knee and isn’t expected back for the beginning of the playoffs.