It was the Penguins teams of recent Cup years that really cemented home to me the necessity of depth in the playoffs. This is very rudimentary, but this is roughly how I see playoff teams at the outset of every year:

• One good line: playoff contender
• Two good lines: may win a round or two
• Three or four good lines: Cup contender

Just look at Cup Finalists in recent seasons: St. Louis, Boston, Washington, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Vegas. Most of those teams had reliable third lines, and the ones that didn’t generally had good depth to cobble one together.

It's a little cheat I use when trying to figure out before any season starts to separate the contenders from the non-contenders. Now, teams change at the deadline, and Tampa adding players like Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman wildly changed their fortunes.

The Vancouver Canucks have a fantastic core of Pettersson-Horvat-Hughes that any team would covet. They have a nice pair of wingers in J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser, and pending re-signings with guys like Tyler Toffoli, and Jacob Markstrom. That's a great group of players to build around. But the difference we're seeing in the series with Vegas isn't necessarily the difference between Pettersson-Horvat-Miller-Boeser-Hughes and Karlsson-Stastny-Stone-Pacioretty -Theodore. The difference is between Alex Tuch, Nick Cousins, and William Carrier over Brandon Sutter, Jay Beagle, and Adam Gaudette.

This isn't to pick on Vancouver, it just happens to be a series going on now where the conversation revolves around depth. Chicago had the same issue with Vegas, as Columbus did with Tampa Bay. We saw that play out between Tampa/Boston. [These stats were all going into Monday’s game.] Tampa's third line of Goodrow-Gourde-Coleman had three goals in the first four games at 5-on-5 while each player was rocking an expected goal share over 66 percent. Conversely, the Bruins had two goals at 5-on-5 in four games from players not on their top line and Anders Bjork was the only member of their third line sporting an expected goal share over 45 percent. Tampa Bay's depth was running wild on Boston, and that's a big reason why they were up 3-1 in their series heading into Monday night.

There is a lesson in here for fantasy hockey. Generally speaking, there aren't a lot of busts at the top of fantasy hockey drafts. Outside of goalies and injuries, guys generally perform similarly year after year; names like Crosby, Matthews, McDavid, Kucherov, Ovechkin and on and on. They usually bring it season in and season out. It's the depth that matters. This year, did you draft Ryan Strome in the 30^th round? Good for you! It may have helped you win a fantasy season. Bryan Rust? Alex Killorn? Ryan Graves? Those are the guys that probably won your fantasy season, and not McDavid or Marchand or Aho.

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Just as a small aside: while looking up stats for the bit on Tampa Bay, I came across this: their second line of Killorn-Cirelli-Johnson, heading into Monday night, had an on-ice shooting percentage of 1.6 percent at 5-on-5. That means the team is shooting 1.6 percent so far these playoffs with that trio on the ice. Obviously, that will regress, but the line hasn't been good by underlying processes, either. I can't help but feel they really need Stamkos back if they want a Cup and not a Cup Final appearance.

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It was announced that the international Quebec tournament that takes place every winter for youth hockey players will not go on as it normally does. I didn't get to take part in it as a kid but I have friends who did and they still talk about the time they got to meet Bob McKenzie. It's a huge deal for a lot of young hockey players. I have a lot of sympathy for these kids. Hopefully it can be made up in some fashion a couple years down the road.

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Had someone share an interesting tweet with me a couple days ago:

Elliotte Friedman on SN650 says now that the Coyotes have been hit with a pretty big penalty (2020 2nd, 2021 1st), he thinks they’ll consider rebuilding and that Darcy Keumper’s name will be out there.

Also says Markstrom wants a 6M+ AAV.

— J (@Account4hockey) August 30, 2020

This makes a lot of sense, right? All reports are that Taylor Hall wants to go somewhere and win, and that's not Arizona. They have a couple of nice prospects on the way but when they were bounced out of the playoffs, I wrote about how much more they need to restock the cupboards. The penalties handed down last week by the NHL, stripping them of a first- and second-round pick while already missing a first-round pick, will make it really hard to restock that cupboard. There's a process to all this. Draft picks -> development -> promotion to the NHL -> progress towards a Cup. It's really hard to build a successful team when skipping steps, and even harder when you don't have access to the steps in the first place.

Trading away older players makes sense. Realistically, what's the timeline here for a rebuild? Like, if they're starting almost completely from scratch. Four or five years? Anyone approaching 30 years old now, or past that mark, should be firmly in the mix for a trade. While the tweet mentions Darcy Kuemper specifically, guys like Derek Stepan, Alex Goligoski, Nik Hjalmarsson, Phil Kessel, and Jason Demers should all be on the block with varying degrees of interest (one or two of those may end up being cap dumps, which isn't helpful). If they really want to drill down, they could add guys like Christian Dvorak, Nick Schmaltz, and yes, even Oliver Ekman-Larsson to the list. Again, if we're looking at 4-5 years to turn the franchise around, why keep around a guy who will turn 30 years old next summer? If they do want a tear down, I could see Clayton Keller, Jakob Chychrun, and Victor Soderstrom being the only real untouchables. Maybe another prospect or two like Jan Jenik, but that's it.

The argument for keeping around guys like Schmaltz or OEL is that as the young guys start filtering into the NHL team, they'll want veteran guys in the locker room. OEL is certainly that, and others could help. Arizona has a decision to make in that regard.

For fantasy, this is all bad news. Sure, guys that stick around could see big TOI bumps, but the lack of talent should suppress scoring, and that negates any gains made by TOI. It's really just a terrible situation in the Desert from top to bottom.

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Brady Keeper was signed to a one-year deal by the Florida Panthers. They said they were impressed with him in the Return to Play and wanted to have him around another year. I'll say this much: that Panthers blue line is awful and he should have as good a chance as any at earning a depth role. We'll see how the rest of the off-season shakes out.

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Nikita Kucherov took a high-stick from Zdeno Chara in the first period and it seemed to be an issue for him all game. He left after the incident with about seven minutes left in the opening frame. He came back for the second period but left with about six minutes left in the period. Kucherov did not return at all. They went 11-7 to start the game so that put them down to 10 forwards for a third period in a tie game.

On another injury note, Charlie McAvoy took a questionable hit from Cedric Paquette early in the third period and left the game. He did return about 10 minutes later.

A late goal from Playoff David Krejci, his fourth tally and 11^th point of the postseason tied things up 2-2 to send the elimination Game 5 to overtime.

A wrist shot from Victor Hedman late in the second overtime knicked off Pat Maroon in front of the net and sealed a 3-2 win for the Bolts, and a place in the Eastern Conference Final. For those keeping score, yes, another double overtime goal for Maroon in an elimination game in the second round.

Now, we wait the status of Kucherov, and maybe Stamkos.

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Conor Timmins lined up for Colorado in their win-or-go-home game against Dallas. It was his first game since early October, and just the third of his career. Welcome to the big leagues, I guess.

I went to bed midway through the second with Colorado up 5-0 on Dallas. They started Michael Hutchinson with Pavel Françouz not dressed, deemed "unfit to play". The Avs got goals from three different lines, which portends good things to come if it's something they can maintain.

Ben Bishop surprisingly got the start for Dallas and was pulled after allowing four goals on 19 shots. It was an early barrage, and not all of it can be laid at his feet.