For over two months, hockey fans have been treated to the most extraordinary postseason in the NHL’s history.
It began in the very first game when Montreal beat Tampa in overtime and ended on Friday night when the L.A. Kings’ thrilling 3-2 double-overtime win over the Rangers decided the Stanley Cup. In between we saw hockey at its best on a nightly basis. There was excruciating drama. The games were played at breakneck speed with great players making great plays. And, best of all, no lead was safe because there were so many goals; beautiful, beautiful goals.
This, we’d remind you, was after an ordinary regular season in which the league struggled to present exciting, imaginative hockey. Or maybe that was just in Vancouver. But the NHL delivered something worth celebrating this spring, leaving one final question.
What did we learn from these playoffs?
As much as the Stanley Cup tournament is about the most prized trophy in professional sports, it also reveals much about the direction of the game and the trends which will shape the NHL over the next couple of seasons. Here, then, is a review of what we’ve just witnessed and what it means, along with the sincere hope that the NHL will be able to recapture what it had in the 2014 playoffs and present it again next season.
CONTENDERS, PRETENDERS and RETURN TO SENDERS
This is all you need to know about the NHL’s balance of power. In the West, the Kings survived three gruelling seven-game series in which they were tested beyond all human endurance, and still had enough to dispose of the New York Rangers in five games.
The West remains more difficult to get out of than a lie to the taxman. The Kings and Blackhawks, who sit on top of the food chain, have now won four of the last five Cups and don’t appear to be going anywhere any time soon. Behind them sit three teams which are also legitimate Stanley Cup contenders: St. Louis, Anaheim and San Jose. Then you get to three mostly young teams which are going to be a handful until the end of this decade in Colorado, Dallas and Minnesota, and you wouldn’t trade the Avalanche’s core for any group in the game.
Then you get to the Canucks, and that’s assuming they’re on the same level as Winnipeg, Nashville and Phoenix. They were Stanley Cup finalists in 2011. That seems like a lifetime ago.
For the teams which reside in the East, the good news is any one of about 10 of them has a realistic claim to the title. On paper the two best teams are Boston and Pittsburgh, but they were both gone by the end of the second round and they’re both light years from L.A. and Chicago. Things broke for the Rangers this year but, really, are they that much better than Philadelphia, Montreal or Tampa?
Columbus and Tampa are both young teams trending in the right direction and you can see them making noise next season. As for the remaining teams, again, if you’re in Detroit, Washington, Ottawa, Long Island and, yes, even Toronto, you can legitimately say with a couple of breaks, we can be right there.
That doesn’t put them anywhere near the best teams in the West, or even the second tier. But it will hold their fans’ attention next season.
MASS VERSUS VELOCITY
In 2011 and 2012, the Boston Bruins and Los Angeles Kings won Stanley Cups and the concept of the “heavy team” came into vogue. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to last.
The Kings, to be sure, could still get a group discount at Weight Watchers. But they’ve also added youngsters Tyler Toffoli and Tanner Pearson up front and Jake Muzzin to the blueline, and they can skate with most teams. Elsewhere, the Bruins went out in the second round to a fast Canadiens team and the Blues, another beefy bunch, were knocked out in the first round by the Blackhawks.
Look around the playoffs, in fact, and speed was the recurring theme in almost all the series. The Rangers were the fastest team in the East and came out of that side. Montreal, Tampa, Philly and Columbus are all good skating clubs.
In the West, if you can’t skate, you don’t have a chance — which is more cheery news for the Canucks. We’ll find out soon enough if these playoffs have officially ended Dead Puck Era II, The Sequel. We can only hope that’s the case.
YOUTH WILL BE SERVED
It goes without saying the hockey has been exciting this postseason. What’s more exciting is the number of young players who’ve announced themselves to the game: Toffoli and Pearson in L.A., Mats Zuccarello and Chris Kreider with the Rangers; Lars Eller, Brendan Gallagher and Alex Galchenyuk with Montreal; Brandon Saad with Chicago; everybody with Colorado; Mikael Granlund and Erik Haula with Minnesota; Cam Fowler and John Gibson in Anaheim; a bunch of Columbus Blue Jackets led by Ryan Johansen; San Jose’s Matt Nieto and still there’s more.
Not all the kids played frontline roles, but they brought speed and depth to the party and it now seems you can’t win in the NHL unless you’ve got a layer of young talent making an impact on your lineup. That’s also a reflection of teams’ ability to draft. The Canucks haven’t been able to integrate those young players into their lineup. You might say it’s shown.
The flip side to that is the accelerated aging process which seems to have taken place. L.A.’s Mike Richards is 29 and he looked like he had trouble keeping up in the final. Same with Montreal’s Thomas Vanek. Detroit has some young players coming but their core group, which has kept them near the top of the standings forever, isn’t as intimidating anymore.
Pittsburgh, you ask? Well it’s hard to conceive of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin starting to decline but that group has been together for the better part of seven seasons and, clearly, they’re not the force they were.
John Tortorella wasn’t right about a lot of things in his year in Vancouver. But he couldn’t have been more right when he said it’s a young man’s game in today’s NHL.
THE MOST IMPORTANT POSITION ON THE TEAM
OK, it’s still the goalie. But if you’re going to compete at the game’s highest level, you have to have a Norris Trophy-calibre defenceman in your lineup.
L.A. has Drew Doughty. The Rangers have Ryan McDonagh (regular season: 14-29-43, plus-11, 24:49 ice time — sorry, that’s in the Norris conversation). Montreal has P.K. Subban. The Blackhawks have Duncan Keith.
Pittsburgh, San Jose, Anaheim, Dallas, Tampa and Philly, meanwhile, are all missing that high-end blueliner. Boston’s Zdeno Chara was that guy until last season’s final. But he doesn’t dominate as he once did.
Very few teams — Carolina in 2006 is the one which pops to mind — have been able to win a Stanley Cup without that No. 1 on the back end. The Canucks have never had him in their history. Again, that explains a lot.
THE FUTURE
It just doesn’t seem possible that the NHL could regress to dull, low-scoring hockey after these playoffs, and the indicators are we should be in store for a different game in 2014-15. No one in their right mind should expect the intensity of what we just witnessed, but the other factors — the speed of the game, the influx of youth, the great players at the top of their game — are still there.
As great as these playoffs have been, they’d be even more memorable if they brought about a sea change in the NHL. We’ll be watching next season. Don’t disappoint us.
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