The 2014 Fantasy Prospects Report (8th Edition) is ready for download – it was ready at 2:30pm ET today and I guess the note I put in the ramblings announcing this didn’t take. You can order it here for immediate download. – Dobber

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What’s a Saturday night without hockey? The worst.

We’d better get used to hockey-free Saturday evenings though, since Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final next week will mark the final Saturday of hockey this league year.

After that: we’ll just have make do with barbecuing and friends and baseball until October.  Could be worse!

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There’s nothing to recap tonight, but we can preview what could well be an epic seventh game of the 2014 Western Conference final. The Chicago Blackhawks will host the Los Angeles Kings in Game 7 on Sunday, and puck drop is at 8 p.m. ET.

This series has been the best of a very entertaining postseason in my estimation, and is being contested by the two teams that I’d describe as the top teams in the National Hockey Leauge in some order. We’ll know that order for sure late Sunday night, I suppose.

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Though you hate to bet against Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane in a do-or-die Game 7, I like the Kings in this one for the simple reason that they’ve got way more forward depth at the moment. The Kings are rolling Mike Richards on their fourth-line right now, while the Blackhawks had Michal Handzus, Brandon Bollig and Sheldon Brookbank at the bottom-end of their forward group in Game 6. You won’t believe it, but that group of stiffs got thrashed in limited minutes.

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Los Angeles appears to be doing something pretty interesting with their bottom six forward group, actually. It looks to me like Daryl Sutter has two pairs (Jarrett Stoll and Dwight King, Mike Richards and Kyle Clifford), and then allows Jason Williams and Trevor Lewis to take a few shifts with each line. It’s an interesting look to be sure, but I’m not convinced that the Kings wouldn’t be better off just giving 15ish minutes to Richards, Stoll, Williams as a set line, and riding a Lewis, Clifford, King group more sparringly.

Either way, consider that personnel versus what the Blackhawks have going on in the mess that is their bottom-six. In Game 6 the Blackhawks’ third-line featured Patrick Sharp, Marcus Kruger and Ben Smith. That’s their third-line!

Obviously Sharp is a star quality forward, and I definitely think Kruger is a top-nine centerman going forward. As under-rated as Smith is, he doesn’t crack the Kings roster at the moment, much less their top-nine.

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It’s a testament to how good the Kings are that they’ve managed to hollow out Chicago’s lineup to this extent. Obviously that won’t mean anything if Patrick Kane continues to roll Los Angeles’ secondary group, however. 

Kane was rendered ineffective through 4 games this series, but has blown up in Game 5 and Game 6 and is very probably the only reason a seventh game is necessary in this series. For much of the series the Kings have counted on Willie Mitchell and Slava Voynov to handle the mulleted one, but Doughty saw a lot more Kane in Game 6. Guess Sutter got tired of crossing his fingers desperately. 

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One thing I like so much about this matchup is the way the top-lines are so good that they pretty much cancel each other out. Early in the series, Los Angeles’ second-line carried the balance of play as Sutter fixed his second-line issue (by demoting Richards) well before Quenneville did (by demoting Handzus). Since Quenneville united Kane with Andrew Shaw and Brandon Saad, they’ve carried the series and have managed to churn things in Chicago’s favour. 

Both of these clubs have now played more than 100 games this season including playoffs, and this series has been particularly fast-paced and physical. I suspect that Los Angeles’ additional depth is going to make a difference in Game 7,  though of course, luck and the so-called “bounces” will likely be the biggest determining factor in which Western Conference juggernaut advances to the Stanley Cup Final.

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Whichever of Los Angeles or Chicago is left standing on Monday morning, they’ll be favored to flatten the New York Rangers in the Final. As they should be.

The Rangers are going to have a fighting chance though, particularly because they’ll have the edge in net regardless of opponent. I know Jonathan Quick has an out-sized reputation, and obviously both Corey Crawford and Quick have Stanley Cup rings where Henrik Lundqvist’s jewlery collection is lacking that obvious centerpiece. Still, Lundqvist is consistently elite whereas, if we’re talking about large samples of repeatable performance, Quick and Crawford are merely “modestly above average NHL starters.”

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On Quick’s reputation, by the way, it has to have taken a hit this season. He didn’t lead the U.S. Olympic team to a medal, he didn’t outperform Ben Scrivens of Martin Jones behind a stellar Kings defense in the regular season, and now he’s managed a brutal .906 save percentage over 20 playoff games.

Quick is still one of the best goaltenders at covering down-low; his fast, fluid movements along the ice make him pretty much impossible to beat along the ice. He’s a very good starter, who has done great things in his young NHL career and I’d imagine he’ll be on point in Sunday night’s do-or-die Game 7.

But people listing him alongside Lundqvist on the list of elite goalies are out to lunch.

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Beyond the obvious edge in net, New York has a lot of depth right through their lineup. Their defense corps is particularly good, even though they’ll be without John Moore for Game 1, and the emergence of Anton Stralman and Ryan McDonagh this season – both of whom took a serious step forward – is a major reason they’ll be competing for the Cup over the next two weeks.

It’s a similar story upfront, where the Rangers are every bit as deep as the Kings and are certainly deeper than Chicago. From a matchups perspective, I think some of Los Angeles’ slower defenders might struggle to keep up with New York’s faster skaters; but I think Chicago has significantly less forward depth than the Rangers do.

In short, there’s reason to believe that the Rangers could pull this thing off regardless of their Stanley Cup Final opponent, but I’ll still be betting on whichever team emerges from the West.

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How easy was New York’s path to the Stanley Cup Finals relatively speaking? Los Angeles had to go through San Jose, Anaheim, and Chicago – all top-10 teams. New York? They had to maybe one top-10 team (Pittsburgh), while Philadelphia and Montreal were both bottom-10 puck possession teams that just got hot. Alain Vigneault must be loving this, “it’s like the Northwest Division, but in the playoffs!”

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The Minnesota Wild announced a multi-year extension for head coach Mike Yeo on Saturday, reportedly a three-year deal worth $1 million per. That’s a healthy raise on the reported $600,000 Yeo earned last year, on the final year of his deal, when the Wild essentially took him through his lame duck season and forced him to earn this deal.

In interacting with Yeo in the past, I’ve found him bookish and extremely smart. Also an excellent dude, at least when it comes to dealing with the media.

Back in October I was writing a Wild piece with a particular angle (fancy-stats, shocker) for the Sporting News. Yeo’s club was playing the second of back-to-back games on the road and had cancelled their morning skate that day. Now the morning skate is usually the better time to grab an extended word with a player or team official, but I didn’t have that luxury, and I just sort of hijacked Yeo’s scrum after the in-house reporters and Michael Russo had got their questions in.

After the Wild P.R. team ended the scrum, I just casually asked Yeo if I might get in a couple of additional questions in and he seemed totally happy to chat with me for 10 extra minutes or so, mostly fielding technical question on the Wild’s new system.

Here’s the piece I ended up writing, but here’s a good quote that didn’t make it in, for the benefit of our regular Ramblings readers:

“There’s always trends. I think puck possession has always been important, the good teams are the teams that recognize opportunities where you can make a play and they attack in those situations. And there’s other times where they recognize the best play might be to get a puck into the offensive zone and try to create by doing that. I call it smart offense, you don’t try to barge down the door when it’s not open, you try to open one. That’s what it comes down too.”

The Wild locked up a smart head coach, and a seemingly decent guy too.

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NHL Central Scouting’s top draft eligible prospect Sam Bennett failed to complete a single pull up at the Scouting Combine, for which he’s being widely mocked. What is it with Sam’s and posting awful results at the combine?

I guess if you want Bennett to play next season, that lack of upper-body strength is a marginal concern. But it’s no more than that, and shouldn’t impact his draft stock. If it does, then the teams drafting 6-10 should be salivating – because Bennett is clearly a top-3 player in this class.

You remember the stories about Guy LaFleur or Mario Lemieux smoking cigarettes through fitness testing, doing a couple of push ups, and calling it a day? Fact is, Bennett is being drafted to play hockey, not lift weights. If I’m a director of amateur scouting, I’m filing this information under the “Do Not Care” pile; and I’m certainly not putting a Milo on Bennett.

Thomas Drance is a news editor at theScore.