The Playoff Draft List is now available for download! Easter comes early this year!

 

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I'm working on a playoff preview piece highlighting some of the statistical trends of the past few years. I hope it gives you some perspective on which teams might do well in the playoffs. Look for that later this afternoon.

 

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You know how the NBA has garbage time? We've basically reached the garbage time of the NHL season. How many games last night were meaningful? Three, maybe four? I guess, six of the games involved teams juking for playoff position but that means half of the games were still meaningless beyond the lottery odds.

 

The Washington Capitals took this opportunity to smoke the Hurricanes. Braden Holtby had himself a good start. If they can make a coaching change I suggest you buy low on him.

 

Naturally, Alexander Ovechkin was held scoreless and went minus-two. The 50-goal, minus-30 club is pretty damn exclusive.

 

The Caps third line of Joel Ward, Eric Fehr and Jason Chimera went off for three points apiece. Say what you will about the Caps at least they had a darn good third line this season. Both Ward and Chimera broke the 40-point plateau for the first time in their NHL careers. They were 33 and 34 respectively this season. #ageisjustanumber

 

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The New York Rangers took care of business against Buffalo to lock down the second spot in the Metro and home ice advantage for the first round.

 

Mats Zuccarello notched his 40^th assist of the season. He sits one point back of 60 points. Hands up if you thought Zuccarello would even clear 50 at this level, I sure as hell didn't.

 

Derek Stepan also reached the 40-assist plateau. I think most would consider his season disappointing after the way he played last year but Stepan has set a new career high in scoring. And obviously his 16.7% shooting percentage was unsustainable. Sure enough he dropped to nearly half of that at 8.7% this season. That's the difference between point-per-game scoring and where he's at this season.

 

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The Rangers will face either Philadelphia or Columbus in round one. The Flyers squandered an opportunity to gain a leg up on the Jackets losing their game in-hand against Tampa Bay last night.

 

Ray Emery got the start for the Flyers for God knows what reason. He was gouged for four goals by the Lightning in the loss.

 

The Erik Gustafsson-Kimmo Timonen pairing went minus-two on the game. The Flyers could really use some reinforcements on the blue line because I don't think that their deadline acquisition of Andrew MacDonald was a real solution.

 

The Flyers would love to get their top blue line prospect, Shayne Gostisbehere for the playoffs but his team at Union College won't stop winning. They are off to the Frozen Four Final after beating a powerful Boston College team featuring Flames wunderkind prospect John Gaudreau, the top scorer in college hockey by a country mile, yesterday. 

 

The Final goes Saturday night, in Philadelphia. Of course, Philly brass will mostly be down in Pittsburgh watching the Flyers take on the Penguins. Maybe the Flyers ink him to a deal and get him into the lineup when the Hurricanes come to town for the last game of the season on Sunday. Geography wouldn't be an issue.

 

There is precedent for this. Torey Krug got into Boston's playoff lineup after some injuries on the blue line. I seem to recall he played fairly well.

 

I've linked to Gostisbehere and Gaudreau's DobberProspects profiles so click on their names to read more. What I will say is that these are two prospects I am very high on.

 

It's impossible to ignore Gaudreau's scoring feats but Gostisbehere is an intriguing fantasy prospect even though he lacks the eye-popping numbers that normally get you excited. What I like is that Gostisbehere is a smart puck-mover but more importantly he's the first good defenseman prospect the Flyers have had since Joni Pitkanen. On team with their firepower even just being a smart puck-mover could mean fantasy points.

 

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The Lightning victory pulled them to within a point of Montreal for second in the Atlantic Division. We know those two are playing one another in round one so it's just a matter of sorting out home ice advantage.

 

They've won two in a row on the back of Anders Lindback. Who saw that coming? I'd have figured the season-ending injury to Ben Bishop would be the death knell for their hopes of home ice in round one. But here he is performing for the first time all season. It's only two games, of course, but still, good for him.

 

Victor Hedman is closing this season with a bang. Give him another two points tonight and eight in his last five. He now has sole possession of third on the defenseman scoring list. He's technically listed as fourth but we all know Dustin Byfuglien's played as much forward as defense this season. (Some would argue he's played no defense this season.)

 

I feel like we'd collectively thrown the towel on Hedman's chances of being a fantasy superstar and instead capped him out as a very solid two-way guy. But here he is ahead of top defensemen like Shea Weber, PK Subban, Kris Letang and Keith Yandle, to name a few. Most impressive.

 

I cannot help but harp on how unruly a dynasty I think the Lightning could have had if they'd drafted Seth Jones instead of Jonathan Drouin. I mean, can you imagine Jones paired with Hedman? UNRULY!

 

Maybe the Lightning get there anyway if Drouin is a hit but the Lightning obviously are not hurting for young forwards, what with Ondrej Palat, Tyler Johnson and approximately 100 other guys all crushing the league as rookies this season. So I genuinely believe that pick is going to go down as one of the biggest "what if" moments in NHL history.

 

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Montreal allowed the Lightning to close the distance after they lost to an Islanders team featuring, I shit you not, 10 rookies in their lineup last night. How does that even happen?

 

I thought you'd never ask, please allow me to enlighten you. That happens when the Islanders open the scoring on a power play granted after Douglas Murray took a major penalty for boarding mid-way through the second period of his first game back from suspension. You can't make this stuff up.

 

How many games does he get this time? Do the Canadiens even bother suiting him up in the playoffs?

 

The player he hit, Johan Sundstrom, was taken to the hospital for observation.

 

By the way, word is that Alex Galchenyuk will miss the first round of the playoffs. Adjust your playoff pool strategy accordingly.

 

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The Nashville Predators played spoiler last night blanking the Coyotes 2-0. With that the Stars can clinch the final playoff spot with a win tonight against a Blues team still chasing the top seed in the West. I think we are all hoping they lose opening the door once again for the Coyotes.

 

Phoenix host a San Jose team bound to be resting players on Saturday night so that should be a win, which would setup the battle between the Stars and Coyotes for the final playoff spot in the season's final game on Sunday night. Regardless of your affiliation, you have to be rooting for this, right?

 

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The loss makes six in a row for Thomas Greiss, though a few were of the overtime/shootout variety. Hard to blame him too much. The Coyotes offense hasn't really helped, producing a total of seven goals over this crushing losing streak.

 

Where has the offense gone? Good question. Owners of Yandle, Shane Doan, Mike Ribeiro and Radim Vrbata would certainly like to know. Those four have produced no more than two points apiece across the last seven games or more. If I was Doan, I'd be claiming another case of Rocky Mountain Fever.

 

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Craig Smith scored the game winner for Nashville, his 21^st goal of the season. Major strides by him this season setting career highs in goals, points and SOG. Next season is his fourth year in the league. He could be primed for the magical breakout season. That could especially be true if Barry Trotz is on his way out (as has been rumoured) simply because another coach might be more apt to ride a specific line more often. It also helps that Smith is finding some chemistry with offensive dynamo Calle Jarnkrok since the latter has come over from Detroit.

 

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The Minnesota Wild sent a message to potential first round opponent St. Louis, winning a gritty game 4-2. They chased Ryan Miller in the process, scoring four goals on just 13 shots. That makes it four of the last five games where he's allowed that many goals. He's also allowed three or more goals in seven of the last nine games. Suddenly things are looking shaky.

 

The Wild dealt another blow knocking TJ Oshie out of the lineup on a headshot from Mike Rupp. Oshie did not return. You can expect supplemental discipline for Rupp.

 

That the Blues outshot the Wild 45-15 for the game should give them some confidence, as long as they trust in the process but it's hard to imagine some doubt isn't creeping into the back of their minds.

 

You have to hand it to the Wild for being opportunistic though. They got some major production out of their third line of Matt Cooke, Kyle Brodziak and Nino Niederreiter who notched two points apiece.

 

Even Dany Heatley's corpse made an appearance on the score sheet after a six-game absence. He made a really nice saucer pass to Matt Moulson for the game winner.

 

 

Who says zombie hands can't be money hands.

 

The star of the game was John Curry however. Curry made his first appearance in over four years.

 

Since his last appearance Curry has spent another year in the AHL, then over to Germany for one season, after which he was named to the US World Championship roster. He follows that up with a season spent mostly in the ECHL. He starts this season in the ECHL again before finally making his way up to the show and stealing this game for the Wild.

 

We may never hear from Curry again but he'll always have last night.

 

 

Steve Ott is still convinced that puck went in.

 

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You don't want to overreact to a game against the Oilers but Marian Gaborik, Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams combined for seven points last night. If that line gets humming no one is beating the Kings in the playoffs.

 

My buddy just laid $100 down on the Kings to win the Cup at 15/1. I feel like he could probably get better odds betting the Kings round by round but dammit if I don't like that bet all the same.

 

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With the Blues losing earlier in the night the Colorado Avalanche had a chance to grab the Central Division lead with a win over the Canucks. They did just that with a 4-2 win. The Avalanche are really tied with St. Louis but because they hold the tiebreaker Colorado actually has first place, for now…

 

The fancy stats crowd will not be pleased if Colorado hangs on to first in the Central. That would leave four of the league's eight best possession teams to face one another in round one with the Kings and Sharks already doomed to a California grudge match and the Blues and Blackhawks now looking at a Midwestern bloodbath in the opening round.

 

That's not to say we don't want to see these matchups but it just seems like these are all legitimate Cup contenders who should probably be meeting later in the post-season rather than wearing each other out in round one. This is reminiscent of when the Flyers and Penguins annihilated each other in the greatest opening round playoff series. Sure the Flyers won but they were easy pickings in the next round after the physical toll they'd endured.

 

Meanwhile, the Ducks and Avalanche who rate as average and horrible respectively as far as the fancy stats go would open up with much friendlier opponents in the first round. The good news is that the Dallas Stars are something of a fancy stat darling themselves and will make a tough opponent for one of these teams, assuming the Avalanche hang on.

 

It might seem like I'm arguing that the Ducks and Avalanche don't deserve their places in the standings. They obviously do. The games are played to score goals not accrue shot attempts. I may believe that their performance thus far is a bit of smoke and mirrors because of their inability to consistently outshoot opponents but you cannot take away what they’ve done in outscoring opponents. I’m amazed at how they’ve bucked the odds. Let’s see if it holds up.

 

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Paul Stastny led the way with two goals. He'll need to be huge with Matt Duchene likely to miss the first round of the playoffs.

 

Tyson Barrie scored the game winner, a real beauty. That gives him 13 goals on the season. He's technically not a rookie but it's still been an impressive season for the young defenseman. Barrie has the makings of a future stud.

 

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Apparently Mika Zibanejad was taken to the hospital for precautionary reasons. No word yet on how serious his injury was.

 

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Elliotte Friedman thinks Evander Kane is too good to give up on, and you should too:

Here is the list of current NHL players who scored 30 goals in a season at age 20: Alexander Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, Ryan Smyth, Jaromir Jagr, Jonathan Toews, Evgeni Malkin, Anze Kopitar, Patrice Bergeron, Marian Gaborik.

And Evander Kane.

 

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Tyler Dellow takes an interesting look at the question of Toughness vs. Skill including some excellent quotes from a Mark Spector interview with Dallas Eakins:

To tie that back to what Eakins was saying, I think that there's at least some reason to suspect that his new age side is right. It's one of the better questions in hockey analytics these days. Everyone wants to figure out which players are undervalued by the market. My suspicion is that "soft puck movers" are pretty high on that list and that toughness and defensive defencemen are on the overvalued list.

 

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Brendan Shanahan was officially named President of the Toronto Maple Leafs. It will be interesting to see how big of a splash he looks to make out of the gate. I'm curious how much directive Shanahan will give with regard to the types of players the Leafs should seek or if he'll involve himself much in that process at all.

 

It also opens the door for a new head of discipline at the NHL. It's a thankless job but someone has to do it.

 

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Sean McIndoe hands out some regular season awards.

 

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You can follow me on Twitter @SteveLaidlaw.