With Charle-Edouard D'Astous out, and Victor Hedman ruled out for Round 1, the Lightning turned to Declan Carlile on defence and it went similarly to how it went in the regular season, with Montreal getting the better of him. After going minus-one with one SOG and one Hit last night, Carlile is now minus-three in three games against the Habs this season, with 17 PIMs.

The Bolts and Habs have had a few big PIM games already this year, and last night more than kept pace with it, stacking up 15 minor penalties in the first period alone (most of them offsetting), while the latter two periods and overtime brought five penalties and a fight.

Lane Hutson scored the only power play marker of the game though. Him and Josh Anderson were the goal scorers, and led the team lead in shots with six for Hutson and four for Anderson. Nikita Kucherov scored one goal on his game-high five shots – that was his first goal in his last 17 playoff games. J.J. Moser supplied the winner in the first OT period, His first goal since March 10th, and also his first career playoff goal.

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Boston rolled through Buffalo and only allowed a partial comeback this time around, holding a 4-2 win after going up 4-0 early in the third period. Jeremy Swayman led the way for the Bruins with even though he did allow the two goals late if the Bruins want to come out of this series, they can’t keep letting the foot off the gas.

The one positive for Buffalo was that the goal that Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen allowed from center ice didn't end up mattering much in the grand scheme of the game. It's also more evidence that Morgan Geekie is performing some kind of wizardry to keep his shooting percentage up.

UPL got replaced in the third period after the fourth goal, but they should be right back to him for game three, albeit with a short leash.

Viktor Arvidsson had two goals for the Bruins, while David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy, and Jonathan Aspirot (?!) each had two assists. Aspirot is the surprise name here

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Dylan Guenther (goal and an assist) and Kailer Yamamoto (two assists) paced the offence for the Mammoth who hung around long enough to get a late third period goal from Logan Cooley to take game two by a score of 3-2.

Vegas only mustered 21 shots during the game, four of which came from the stick of Shea Theodore. Odds of winning a game are probably a lot lower when you have less than 20 SOG from your highly skilled and highly paid forwards. Jack Eichel still registered two assists and led the team in ice time, but it wasn't quite enough.

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The first-round pick that the Avs traded away at the deadline is already paying dividends, with Nic Roy scoring the OT winner in his second playoff game with the Avs. Gabe Landeskog netted the other goal.

While it's a feat that the Kings have only allowed two goals in each of the first two games, they still haven't really felt like they're in the series. Having the matchups they want at home could really help sway things, but this series is still looking like a sweep.

Scott Wedgewood and Anton Forsberg were very sharp, making 24 and 34 saves respectively. This could spell the end of Darcy Kuemper's larger fantasy relevance, as he turns 36 in another two weeks.

Artemi Panarin scored for the Kings, who are really missing Kevin Fiala's offence right now as well.

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I was down with a virus last week, so stick taps to Dobber for pinch hitting with his thoughts on the season wrap up and playoff previews.

I'm playing catch up on the season wrap up and the beginning of the playoffs, but allow me to rectify that now.

One thing I like to follow is the rise and fall of playoff teams, the cyclical nature of it, and how it helps project which teams might be better to jump in for fantasy purposes.

Overall the 2025-26 regular season had a big turnover in the NHL playoff teams, there were quite a few injuries to navigate with the condensed Olympic schedule, and while the names right at the top of the scoring race remained consistent from the previous years, a good portion of top-10 saw some turnover. It does feel like this year was a bit of a changing of the guard, as the balance of power in the NHL shifts towards Anaheim, San Jose, Chicago, Montreal, and Buffalo. There might still be time for you to get in on those teams on the up who didn't make the playoffs this year, but the teams like Los Angeles, Toronto, and Florida who really fell off, might present a problem if you're trying to offload some of them in the offseason.

This is more anecdotal than anything, but it feels to me like there are cycles in the NHL playoff teams that last three years, with minor variations of playoff teams between those cycles, and then a larger shift approximately every third year. This was that larger shift, especially in the East. In the West, there might be a bit of lag with San Jose jumping up next year while LA should have fallen off. It wouldn't surprise me if with that SJ/LA switch next year, the same eight then made the playoffs without any new teams jumping in until 2029 when the Chicago wave finally breaks through. That is to say, the next few regular season in the West may be pretty boring and predictable (though Connor McDavid's contract expires in July of 2028, so a departure could accelerate the Edmonton fall).

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For my own fantasy teams in the 2025-26 season, I managed to come out with two first place finishes, one 2^nd place finish, and two losses in the semi-finals. Overall, that's a top-four finish in all five leagues, which is a very solid result. One of the wins was my Roto league which is a full redraft with smart GMs which makes it incredibly difficult to compete for a podium finish every year. However, this was a back-to-back-championship win for me, so I'm going to brag a little there. My luck has probably run out though, so odds are I'll be fighting to finish outside of the bottom three next year.

That roto league win was thanks to a loose draft plan to just take the best player available almost regardless of positions, for the first few rounds, and only start to loosely fill positions after the first eight or 10 rounds. I lucked into draft value with William Nylander, MacKenzie Blackwood, Miro Heiskanen, and Joseph Woll slipping farther than they should have, along with being timely with my FA adds on the season, including Steven Stamkos, Charlie Coyle, and Pavel Zacha. Drafting Matthew Schaefer past pick 200 was also a huge boon – hardly a repeatable strategy in a redraft league though.

The other win was a long-running partial keeper, where I eked out the finals win against last season's champ, who put up a real tough fight. Maybe even more impressive though is that the 3^rd place finisher there has now placed on the podium every season of the 10 years that the league has been running, which might be one of the most impressive streaks that I have seen in all of fantasy sports. Does anyone else have an active streak of that nature?

The three leagues I lost were a combination of running into hot goaltending (Andrei Vasilevskiy key among them) and a bit of my own teams going cold at the wrong time. There might be some smaller lessons to be learned, but sometimes your team doesn't win even if you managed it extremely well throughout the year, and planned around the injuries, the schedule, and to cover all of your leagues categories. You have to be good to be lucky, and lucky to be good… and even if you get both, sometimes you lose anyways. But we'll be back, and next year I'm again chasing my perfect five-for-five championship win.

Across those four H2H leagues, the draft prep does come in handy, but with various league setups, the schedule management week-to-week for the micro advantages does really stack up across the length of a full season, ensuring that when you're making an add for a hot waiver-wire player, you have a decent upcoming schedule from them too, and they're filling categories you actually need. The little bits stack up, and lead to a noticeable jump in the overall standings by the end of the year, and if you manage the schedule well for your playoff weeks, you're going to win closer to 66% of your series, instead of the coin flip that they can usually be.

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Two of my fantasy teams lost Aleksander Barkov in training camp last season, and despite that one of them won the championship with him on the IR. In that league, I did shop him around a little, but IR spots can be tight and no one really wanted to bite on it. I was open to selling if my team got off to a cold start, but a few timely pick ups there kept my team in it long enough for me to decide to go all-in around the healthy core. It's a limited keeper and now I enter the offseason with too many keepable players, and hardly any draft picks. With Barkov back I regain the C depth that typically helps me contend year after year, and while I will try to sell off a few keeper options for picks, it might lead to a slow start to next season unless I can get lucky at the draft table.

In my Cap league, losing Barkov was a tough blow, but I made the most of it weaponizing the cap space and turning it into Logan Thompson and Chris Kreider for lesser assets from teams who needed the cap space sorted out before the start of the season. Now with the cap rising (and some foresight) Barkov will return for the upcoming season without me having to lose any players due to a cap crunch of new contracts. You can only play the hand you're dealt, and if you play it with confidence, then more often than not things will spin a little in your favour.

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See you next Wednesday, and if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments you can find me on BlueSky @alexdmaclean.