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Good morning to everyone except whoever approved the Hurricanes getting a week off in the middle of the playoffs. Come on guys, if I wanted to watch a team in red not play hockey in the spring, I’d be a Red Wings fan.
Cruise Control
Unstoppable Avs
The Wild are in trouble. They dropped a 5-2 final last night in Minnesota, and while the game was much closer than the score, that barely matters. The Avalanche now lead the series 3-1 and are heading home with a chance to close it out on Wednesday night.
Maybe worse for the Avs, this was the type of win the rest of the league should be afraid of. As Peter Baugh writes, it was a top-to-bottom effort that featured not just the team’s (many) stars, but a big serving of depth. At one point, the Avs held the Wild without a shot for nearly 20 straight minutes. When the Avalanche are on their game, it gets hard to imagine anyone beating them. They were on their game last night.
To their credit, the Wild gave them a game. Minnesota took the early lead, and got what felt like a massive tying goal midway through the third. But that’s when the Avs flipped a switch and pulled away, quickly getting the winner from Parker Kelly before adding two late empty-netters. Joe Smith thinks it’s the sort of game that could haunt the Wild.
The series isn’t over, but it’s close. Ah well, at least Wild fans still have their beer twigs.
Trivia time💡
Carolina is off to a great start in this year’s postseason, sweeping both of its first two series. If the Hurricanes can do it again in the next round, they’ll set an NHL record with 12 straight wins in the same spring.
Three teams share that record with 11-game win streaks in one postseason. The most recent is the 1993 Canadiens, who dropped their first two games against the Nordiques in Round 1 before rolling off 11 straight wins. Can you name the other two teams, which both managed to have 11-game win streaks in the same postseason?
I’ll even be extra nice and give you the year it happened: 1992. You’ll find the answer at the bottom of the email.
(Abbie Parr / Associated Press)
Twists and Turns
🏆 A big PWHL question mark
We were supposed to have our Walter Cup matchup set for the PWHL by now. Instead, we’re halfway there, with a bit of a mystery around the second spot.
First, the simple part: On Sunday, the Ottawa Charge finished off the Boston Fleet in a 4-3 double-OT thriller, earning their second straight trip to the final. Michela Cava got the winner, her first with the Charge since coming over from Vancouver in a six-player deal back in January. She spent the previous two seasons with a Frost team that won the league’s first two championships.
Where it gets complicated: We’re not sure whether Cava will face her former team. Last night’s winner-take-all Game 5 between the Frost and the Montreal Victoire was postponed due to illness, with the decision coming just a few hours before the scheduled puck drop in Montreal. The game was rescheduled for tonight, meaning Montreal hockey fans will have two playoff games to watch at once.
The league didn’t reveal any details about the illness involved or how many players on which teams may be affected. (The league did note that symptoms were “not consistent with hantavirus,” and our PWHL expert Hailey Salvian has a source who says the illness is contained to the Montreal side.)
The news is one more twist in a tight and mostly low-scoring series. Montreal had a chance to end it in Friday’s Game 4, but the Frost extended the series with a home win. That’s kind of their thing; they’re now 5-0 all-time when facing elimination. For now, we’ll wait to find out if they can nudge that number up to 6-0 and set up a rematch with the Charge, or whether Montreal can close on home ice and guarantee a new champion.
It’s all part of a busy month for the third-year league, which is also in the process of adding up to four new teams. Last week, the first of those teams was made official with Detroit. Hailey has also reported that San Jose is a favorite and previously weighed in on rumors about Chicago and Hamilton.
Whichever teams do join the league will have to get their heads around the league’s complicated new expansion process while hoping they can debut with more on-ice success than this year’s two newbies, Vancouver and Seattle.
Coast to Coast
👶 Corey Pronman is out with his first mock draft of the season, and there’s plenty of intrigue at the top — not just over whether the Maple Leafs will stick with the consensus and take Gavin McKenna, but on what the Sharks do in the two-spot and what that means for the Canucks at three.
⚡ Martin St. Louis isn’t the only former Lightning star helping the Habs chase a Cup. Pierre LeBrun caught up with Montreal’s special adviser in hockey ops, Vincent Lecavalier.
🥅 Dom Luszczyszyn’s been working his way through various teams to see how they measure up to his Stanley Cup contender checklist, and I’m sorry, I knew the Canucks weren’t going to be great but this headline made me laugh. For their part, the Hawks come out a bit better.
🔔 The second round didn’t go the way the Flyers had hoped, but Kevin Kurz says their surprise playoff run should pay dividends for years to come.
🎙️ On Monday’s “The Athletic Hockey Show,” Max Bultman and Mark Lazerus discuss whether there’s a new Stanley Cup favorite. Listen or watch right here.
(Eric Bolte / Imagn Images)
Let’s See It
Ranking potential conference finals
It feels like the second round has only just started, but with one series already over, it’s time to look ahead.
Typically, that means all the way to the Stanley Cup Final. And I did that yesterday, ranking all 12 potential final matchups from worst to best, based purely on narratives. But is that getting ahead of ourselves? What about the conference final?
We’re down to just six options for the two conference finals. So, here’s my ranking, from worst to best. Spoiler alert: I think all six matchups are good-to-great.
6. Wild vs. Ducks
The novelty factor here would be high, since I can’t imagine anyone had these two teams penciled into the Western final. Both teams have some fun players, so there’s the potential for some exciting moments. But of all the possibilities, this feels like the toughest sell. Maybe I’m just scarred by memories of the only other meeting between these teams: the 2003 conference final, which became the lowest-scoring best-of-seven series ever played.
5. Golden Knights vs. Wild
The good: lots of star power in what should be a close series. The bad: Marc-André Fleury would definitely show up and prank everyone, and there’s nothing we could do to stop it. The worst: way too many “Wild Knights in Vegas” puns.
4. Ducks vs. Avalanche
It’s hard to really lean into the David vs. Goliath thing when David has already won two rounds, but we could pull it off here. The Avs looked unstoppable all year, and the Ducks weren’t even supposed to be a playoff team, so anyone who loves an underdog would know what to do.
3. Sabres vs. Hurricanes
Do you know any Sabres fans? If not, you’re just going to have to trust me when I say that they still think about the 2006 conference final, and how some badly timed injuries and one puck-over-glass penalty cost them their Stanley Cup. You know what they say, revenge is a dish best served with wing sauce all over it.
2. Avalanche vs. Golden Knights
For pure star power, this might be as good as we get. My only real concern is neutral fans might find it hard to get behind either team, given how dominant Colorado was during the season and how easy the Knights are to hate.
1. Canadiens vs. Hurricanes
The undefeated Hurricanes would be the favorites, but Montreal swept the season series. They’ve got history on and off the ice, with bad blood over those dueling offer sheets a few years ago still simmering. Mix in a ton of talent, an old-school-versus-newish market narrative and two very loud buildings, and the only downside is the real possibility Rod Brind’Amour and Martin St. Louis would refuse to stop lifting weights long enough to coach in the series.
(Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
What to Watch
Two games tonight, and they both feel crucial …
📺 Sabres @ Canadiens (Game 4)
7 p.m. ET on ESPN / CBC / Sportsnet / TVA
In theory, it’s still early in a series just about everyone penciled in for seven games. But there’s no question about which side has the momentum, with the Habs looking better with every passing contest, including a 6-2 romp in Game 3. Now they’ve got home ice and a chance to really take control of the series.
As Pierre LeBrun reports, the Bell Centre has been rocking, and Matthew Fairburn’s right when he says the Sabres look overwhelmed. Tonight feels like the night that either Buffalo flips the script yet again, or we have to start wondering if this series will be over quicker than anyone thought.
📺 Ducks @ Golden Knights (Game 5)
9:30 p.m. ET on ESPN / CBC / Sportsnet360 / TVA
The Ducks are hanging tough with the more experienced Knights, and they finally got the power play clicking in their Game 4 win. For Vegas, we got a rare Tomáš Hertl sighting, as the former sniper scored to snap a 29-game goal drought for a team that doesn’t seem fazed by these Ducks … yet.
Full playoff schedule here. Try streaming games like these for free on Fubo.
Eric Lindros, Nordiques jersey in hand at the 1991 draft in Buffalo. (Scott Levy / Getty Images)
No Dumb Questions
We believe that in hockey, as in life, there are no dumb questions. So if you have something you’ve always wondered about the sport, ask away by emailing us at [email protected].
You can’t draft me, I quit
Do draft-eligible players get any sort of agency as to where they go? Would it be worth it to voice concerns over being drafted by a particular team, or is being drafted to the NHL enough of an honor to prevent those conversations? — Camilla
We’ve seen players in other sports refuse to play for the team that drafted them, including big names like John Elway, Dominique Wilkins and Eli Manning. But it’s relatively rare in the NHL, and almost unheard of in the cap era.
In terms of players taken at the top of the NHL Draft outright refusing to report to the team that took them, I think you have to go back to Bryan Berard shunning Ottawa in 1995. The most famous example is Eric Lindros and the Nordiques in 1991. Going back even further, Mario Lemieux also initially indicated that he didn’t want to play in Pittsburgh, even refusing to put on their jersey at the 1984 draft. Obviously, they ended up working that one out.
So, could a player do that today? Just for example, if Gavin McKenna decided he wanted no part of the Maple Leafs for some strange reason, could he do anything to stop them from drafting him at No. 1?
The answer is that players do have a little leverage here, but it’s only a little. A player can’t prevent a team from drafting him, but he could refuse to play for that team. After all, you can’t force a player to sign a contract with the team that drafted him, and no contract means no obligation to play.
In McKenna’s case, that might initially mean communicating his preference to the Leafs. If they shrugged, the next step could be making his discontent public, and maybe even refusing to attend the draft. He could vow to go back to college, leaving the Leafs (or whoever else) holding his rights but with no player to show for it.
Any team in that situation might want to hold out as long as possible, either in hopes the player would change his mind or at least to punish him for his decision and send a message to anyone considering a similar move in the future. But eventually, a team will want to maximize its assets and might feel like it has no choice but to trade the player’s rights. That’s essentially how it played out with Lindros and the Nordiques, albeit with additional twists and turns.
So, yes, there’s a path to a player trying to take some control of his situation. But why does it never happen, at least anymore?
Put simply, I just don’t think the risk/reward calculation makes sense for a player. Any draft-topping prospect who tried to pull a Lindros these days would get ripped by many (although not all) fans and media. He’d instantly become a pariah in the market he snubbed. He’d eventually be under enormous pressure to perform, even more than a typical top pick. And of course, there’s the non-zero risk that he could be injured while playing elsewhere, potentially costing himself some or even all of his future NHL earnings.
In other words, the potential cost to the player could be high. While it’s certainly true that some teams and/or markets are more attractive than others, would it really make sense for a player to risk so much just to avoid a specific destination? It could, and we’ve seen it with some players who were drafted later, especially out of college — the Adam Fox saga is one example.
But a No. 1 pick, sitting there at 18 years old with near-instant fame and fortune being dangled in front of him? It feels unlikely. Most players, even those picked by a team they didn’t truly want to play for, would choose to at least get their careers started, knowing there will always be opportunities to force a move down the line.
Mario Lemieux and Chris Chelios in the 1992 Stanley Cup Final. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Trivia Answer
Those two record-setting teams from the 1992 playoffs were, as you probably figured out, the year’s two finalists: the Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins.
The Hawks fell behind 2-1 in their opening-round series with the St. Louis Blues before rolling off 11 straight wins to cruise to the final. Waiting for them were the Pens, who’d won seven straight to get there. One sweep later, and Pittsburgh had an 11-game streak too, with the Stanley Cup as a bonus.
By the way, the Penguins went on to win the first three games of their 1993 playoff run, bringing their total streak to 14 straight postseason wins, the most ever if you allow them to wrap from one year to the next.
In other words: Nice job so far, Hurricanes, but you’ve got some work to do to get to the record books.
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