May 04, 2015

Stamkos breaks free; Flames turn to The Wolf; plus thoughts on Kuznetsov and more …

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Steven Stamkos now has a monkey-less back. He scored his first goal of the playoffs and as soon as he did that you just knew that he found his zone. The Habs could be in trouble here, and not just because they are down 2-0 and heading to Tampa.  If Stamkos is now at a point-per-game pace and Tyler Johnson continues to roll, Montreal’s promising playoff run will be over far quicker than anyone could have called. Stamkos added two assists, as if to put an exclamation point on his slump-busting goal.

Interesting how the plus/minus stat misleads. Johnson had two points and his team won 6-2, yet he was a minus-2. As a coach, would you take that minus-2? Sure  you would. His ES SAT wasn’t any better: minus-5. He was effective on the PP, but  at ES…not so much.

It all boiled down to the power play. The Habs can’t score on it, and the Lightning scored four times. Four times.

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And here is the slump-busting goal that set Stamkos free:

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We’re now at the point where I feel 100 percent safe about Patrick Kane‘s collar bone. It didn’t get reinjured and at this point enough time has passed since the injury that it would be fully healed by most standards. This could be because he never took the ‘perfect’ hit (right angle, right velocity, right spot against the boards) or because he was fully healed to begin with. We’ll never know, thankfully.

But the guy is back to normal – a five-game points streak and three-game goals streak. In fact, he has points in seven of his eight playoff games so far. All the Blackhawks are showing up, in fact – Kane, Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith each have at least nine points already and Marian Hossa has seven. Veterans. Cup experience. Why oh why did I pick the Wild (goaltending) to win this series (goaltending)? Goaltending vs. Experience – which one trumps the other? In this series, the answer is clear.

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Speaking of experience, Joel Quenneville played Brad Richards for nearly 19 minutes and Teuvo Terevainen for just over 12 minutes. Richards has had a solid postseason with four points in eight games, can’t really ask for more than that. But TT is looking real good out there and he’s probably earned some power-play time. And Richards wasn’t signed to log 19 minutes. He was signed as secondary scoring depth in that 14-15 minute range. The Rangers couldn’t give Richards the minutes last year in the playoffs, but the Blackhawks can a year later?

But if it ain’t broke…

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Thomas Vanek was minus-4 last night and Ryan Suter was minus-3. They are each minus-7 for the playoffs. That’s tops (?) bottoms in the league.

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Bryan Bickell was credited with 12 hits last night.

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