I wanted to talk about the Colorado Avalanche a bit, because their recent stretch of three games is one we have not seen from them in recent memory and certainly no time in the 2021 regular season. They have been getting absolutely ran out of the building almost every night and despite blowing the doors off in Game 1, Colorado should consider themselves lucky to have a 2-2 series with home-ice advantage.

We can talk about all the reasons this is happening, and there are some good ones. In fact, Jesse Granger over at The Athletic talked about the Vegas forecheck just yesterday and how it's forcing Colorado's hand at times. It is a good piece and Vegas certainly has had great defensive gameplans this series.

What I want to talk about instead is Tyson Jost.

It wasn't that long ago – less than a month ago – that I was discussing how Jost had turned himself into a responsible middle-six forward:

shout out Tyson Jost. he had a tough start to his NHL career but looks as if he's carved himself a nice middle-6 role as a responsible forward. love seeing stuff like that. pic.twitter.com/gi3XOxwIB9

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) May 14, 2021

I stand by that. I do think Jost is a responsible middle-six forward. This Vegas series showed, however, that his middle-six role is not second-line centre for a Cup contender. At least, not yet.

Jost and Nichushkin have been the duo on the second line at even strength this postseason, post-Kadri suspension. These are their numbers together at 5-on-5 in the series against Vegas alone (from Nat Stat):

They are scoring, which is nice, but they are getting absolutely ran over when we look at their shots and expected goals rates. When you're getting out-xG'd by greater than a 2:1 margin, you're barely playing the same sport as your opponent.

The first question is what is the fate of Nazem Kadri? He has already missed six games and he's still waiting for his appeal to come in from the independent arbitrator. Uh, no rush, my guy. We only have a Stanley Cup appearance potentially on the line here.

The second question is what Colorado does in response to this? Because in Game 4, Nathan MacKinnon played about a minute less than Jost did (and they were about even in ice time through two periods). That kind of distribution is, in my opinion, a terrible allocation of ice time. The team is back home for Game 5, and in Game 2 when they were at home, the Jost line got manhandled by the Marchessault line. It would seem like now is the time to make the switch of Jost-Nichushkin being the second-line duo to Compher-Burakovsky being the second-line duo. This team cannot endure one of their three lines (they're barely playing the fourth) being ran over almost every single shift.

They should probably run top line vs. top line and Compher vs. Marchessault from here on out. They can do that in Game 5 and, if it should get that far, they'll get Kadri back for Game 7. Maybe it doesn't work out, but it's hard seeing Compher doing worse against Marchessault than a sub-30 percent expected goal share.

What about moving Alex Newhook up? There are options here besides just running back the same lines and matchups they've been running basically all series. This is where Jared Bednar is going to earn his paycheck.

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The Islanders have pushed the Bruins to the brink of elimination thanks to a 5-4 win on Monday night. New York is now up 3-2 in the series and have the chance to move to the final four with a win in Game 6.

As has been the theme for much of this series, Boston carried a lot of the play but just couldn't get enough pucks past Semyon Varlamov. His counterpart, Tuukka Rask, was pulled after the second period following his fourth goal against in the contest. It will be interesting to see if the Bruins go with Jeremy Swayman next. He played the third period so it's not out of the question.

Mat Barzal and Jordan Eberle both had a goal and assist on the top line while Josh Bailey had the same on the second line. Kyle Palmieri also scored, giving him six in the playoffs. Remember when he took some time to get used to his new teammates? I think it's safe to say those concerns are gone.

David Pastrnak had two goals and an assist in the loss while Brad Marchand scored one of the goals of the playoffs:

WATCH. THIS. GOAL.

BRAD MARCHAND. RIDICULOUS. #StanleyCup pic.twitter.com/Old9NEiqOr

— NHL on NBC Sports (@NHLonNBCSports) June 7, 2021

It wasn't enough to win the game, but maybe goals like that should count for two or something.

Charlie McAvoy had a great fantasy night with three assists and five shots. I expect him to take a big step forward in the fantasy game next year, provided he starts shooting a little bit more.

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Despite letting go of a 2-0 advantage in the game, Tyler Toffoli scored early in overtime for the Habs off a fantastic cross-ice pass from Cole Caufield to lift Montreal to a 3-2 win, and complete a 4-0 sweep of the Winnipeg Jets.

This was a game thoroughly dominated by the Canadiens and Winnipeg's depth without Mark Scheifele showed through – the final shot tally was 41-17 for the home team. That second point is one that should be remembered: the Jets were without their top-line centre. That matters a lot.

Phillip Danault and Corey Perry each had six shots each in this one. Sure, why not.

Logan Stanley had scored a pair of goals about four minutes apart in the second period to erase Montreal's 2-0 lead. Erik Gustafsson and Artturi Lehkonen scored the first-period goals for Montreal.

Waiting in the next round for Montreal is the winner of Colorado/Vegas, and it's fair to say that will be a step up in competition from Winnipeg. Jeff Petry – who didn't warm up or play in this game after the dislocated finger in Game 3 – will get some time to rest, pending the rest of that other series.

More on both of these teams in my Ramblings later this week but I will say, as a Habs fan, I am excited to see how they truly stack up at 5-on-5 against a team based outside of their country.  

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*note here: I wrote the pieces below in the afternoon before Game 4.

Speaking of things I'm nearly at a loss for explaining, Carey Price.

Yesterday, Dobber talked about him briefly in his Ramblings yesterday and I wanted to go a bit deeper here.

It has been a really long time since Price has had a great regular season. Just by surface stats like overall save percentage, he has one good year in his last four seasons, when he posted a .918 in 2018-19. Conversely, his save percentage over his last five postseason appearances is .928, and that rises over .935 when we include just the last three playoffs.

That is why I have a hard time believing in a Price turnaround. I get that he's been excellent often in the postseason of late. But we literally just went through this about nine months ago. Price was an absolute wall in the playoffs last year, posting a .936 across 10 games, which included a series win in the play-in round against Pittsburgh.  How did he follow that up in 2021? He got hurt and posted a .901 save percentage. The most recent great playoff performance before that was 2016-17 when he posed a .933 in a first-round loss. How did he follow that up the next regular season? A .900 save percentage. Remember that he was battling fatigue (or a concussion) all those years ago so maybe it wasn't all his fault.

All the same, we have a goalie who has been, at best, wildly inconsistent in the regular season for five years and has been more bad than good. He also turns 34 years old in August. Like Dobber, I think there's hope he has a good regular season as the team in front of him keeps maturing, but I'm not sure it's because Price is "back" or whatever. I am willing to eat crow here, as goalies can be very, very fickle. All I will say is that we've been burned twice recently by Price in this exact situation. Do not over-buy at the draft table.

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While staying with the Habs, if nothing else comes out of this postseason, the fact that Toffoli-Suzuki-Caufield have looked so good together is a great sign for next year. Ostensibly, with that line and whatever the line with Brendan Gallagher is, they don't have to worry about their top-6. At least not as a top priority. That might be the first time in over a decade they've been able to say that.

So far this postseason, that trio has an expected goal share of nearly 60 percent, putting them between the Crosby line and the Krejci line league-wide in that respect. In limited minutes during the regular season, the duo of Caufield-Suzuki posted an expected goal share over 60 percent. These are all small samples, but taken in totality, in over 100 minutes together, Caufield-Suzuki have about a 60 percent goal share this year. That is great, instant chemistry.

Now, we could chalk a lot of this up to "the North Division isn't very good" but half of Caufield's career NHL games, regular and postseason, have come against the Leafs (9/18). Whatever we think about Toronto, they were generally a strong team. Being able to post strong numbers in a schedule that features half their games against Toronto is a great sign.

The sad thing, as a Habs fan, is Ducharme refuses to run a top-6 of Tatar-Danault-Gallagher and Toffoli-Suzuki-Caufield. The Danault line, with Tatar/Gallagher, was elite for years, and was elite again this year. (That trio led the NHL this year in both expected goal share and actual goal share. Yes, they put up better goal-share numbers than the Matthews line, the Nelson line, the Pacioretty line, and the MacKinnon line. Why Tomas Tatar is a healthy scratch is completely beyond me.)

All that aside, Caufield has shown up and been great, and has shown instant ability with the team's future top-line centre. That is great news for the Habs, their fans, and fantasy hockey owners, There should be plenty of fantasy goodness with that duo for years to come.