Hurricanes making emphatic statement on rest vs. rust argument; Revisiting one of offseason's biggest trades

Let's talk about the Carolina Hurricanes playoff run and one of the players driving it.

When the Pittsburgh Penguins secured their playoff spot with three games to play in the regular season, with no chance of moving up or down in the standings, they made the decision to aggressively rest most of their top players.

It was a controversial decision.

The argument against it was that you can’t go 10 days without playing a meaningful game, it would disrupt too much momentum, and they would come out flat in their playoff series against the Philadelphia Flyers. The thing is, they didn’t go 10 days without playing a meaningful game. They still played the three games, and while a lot of players sat for one or two of them, everybody played at some point. It didn’t matter. The debate still rolled on.

When they fell into a 3-0 series hole, the criticism and debate only increased.

But that’s ultimately not why the Penguins lost. They lost because they simply did not play well enough, lost their composure at times, and lost the goaltending battle early on. If anything, as the series progressed, the Penguins decision to rest people seemed to be (in my view) validated because they became the stronger team with each passing game. They were playing better. Philadelphia was wearing down. Had it not been for Flyers goalie Dan Vladar standing on his head in a 1-0 Game 6 overtime decision, they would have been playing a winner-take-all Game 7 in that series back in Pittsburgh.

This brings me to the Carolina Hurricanes, who are now one win away from reaching their first Stanley Cup Final since the 2005-06 season after taking a commanding 3-1 series lead against the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday night.

The thing about the Hurricanes is they actually did go 10 days (12 to be exact) without playing a game (of any kind) coming into their Eastern Conference Final matchup. Not only did they sweep their first two opponents, Montreal had to play a second consecutive seven-game series, creating a wild disparity where the Hurricanes were going in having played the minimum number of games for a Conference Finalist (eight) and the Canadiens playing the maximum number of games for a Conference Finalist (14).

That meant a nearly two-week gap between games.

That meant a big discussion on what sort of impact the rest would have on them, if it would hurt them, if rust would break their momentum, and if that layoff was just too much.

Through four games they are answering all of those questions. Emphatically.

The rest mattered more.

And it wasn’t just about the rest. It was also about the fact they played so many fewer games than the Canadiens did going in. That six-game disparity going into the Conference Finals was the biggest disparity since the league went to the four, best-of-seven series format. I wrote about this briefly at YardBarker (you can go back to it here) but the basic, most important numbers were:

• Since 1990 no Conference Finals matchup had more than a four-game disparity in games played. There were two matchups that had a four-game gap.

• In both of those instances, the team that played fewer games won.

• There were eight matchups with at least a three-game gap.

• The team that played fewer games won seven of those series, and the only one that did NOT win was a Montreal Canadiens team that lost starting goalie Carey Price in the first game of the series to an injury. Had he been healthy, they very likely win that series as well.

• In 33 instances of a two-game gap, the team with fewer games played won 26 times.

There is a chicken or egg situation happening here in the sense that, did these teams win because they were more rested, or because they were simply better teams? Better teams will tend to win series, especially early in the playoffs, faster than other teams. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle and that both factors play a role.

Either way, Carolina is one win away from adding another checkmark into the “rest” column.

And while Carolina IS a better team, and even though this Montreal team is still a somewhat unfinished product as part of its rebuild, the gap wasn’t that big during the regular season. Montreal was able to hang with this team, winning all three regular season matchups, including two games in late March just before the start of the playoffs.

But right now, in this series, there is a clear gap starting to surface, and the fact Carolina came into this thing completely fresh, healthy and rested is only adding to it.

Carolina has not only won each of the past three games, it has done so while allowing the Canadiens to generate just 43 total shots on goal. And that is with two games going to overtime. It is the worst three-game stretch of shot generation in NHL history (regular season or playoffs), and when you add in the extra time with overtime it only adds to the absurdity of it.

Carolina had 43 shots on goal in Game 4 alone.

The one area where you are really seeing it start to show itself is late in games as the series progresses. Specifically in the third period and overtime.

Just look at the numbers from those situations over the past two games:

• Carolina has a 70-26 total shot attempt advantage. That is a 72.9 percent share.

• Carolina has a 32-5 shots on goal advantage. That is an 86.4 percent share.

• Carolina has a 4.7 to 0.5 expected goal share. That is a 90.3 percent share.

That is over 50 minutes of hockey. Just complete domination. Montreal has nothing left in these games.

I am not going to completely dismiss the idea of Montreal coming back and still making this a series. Jakub Dobes is playing well enough that he could steal a couple of games here. But even if that happens we are well beyond the point of rust from Carolina playing a factor.

I also know this is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison with the Penguins example I made at the beginning, mainly because those teams were coming in with an equal number of games played and Montreal was coming into this having played an entire series worth of extra games, but the main point remains the same: Rust is temporary and short-lived. Rest, especially when it comes to the playoffs, is massive if your team is good enough to take advantage of it.

If the Stanley Cup Playoffs are the physical, grueling grind hockey people love to tell us that it is, there is no way rest like this is not important.

The Penguins were not good enough to take advantage of it.

Carolina is.

The biggest reason Carolina is good enough is a deep, balanced, talented roster. One of the best players on that roster in the playoffs has been defenseman K’Andre Miller, who was the focal point of one of the offseason’s biggest trades.

Let’s revisit that and take a look at Miller’s impact in the playoffs

If you have not already done so, it might be time to put him on your Conn Smythe watch list.