Playoff thoughts, Mike Sullivan and more

Talking some NHL.

Before we dig into some assorted NHL thoughts here, I took a few days off from the Better Luck Next Year series, but it is continuing this week. We still have a few regular season teams to get through and will soon be getting into the teams that lose in the playoffs.

1. The most fascinating series for me in the first-round of this year’s playoffs has to be the Los Angeles Kings-Edmonton Oilers matchup. I am just captivated by it and the pressure both teams have to be facing.

In Edmonton’s case, the pressure is all about winning a championship while it has Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

I know they reached Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final a year ago, but you don’t get a banner or a ring for that. They are nearly a decade into their careers, and to this point the franchise has made just two deep playoff runs with them. Management has not always done a good job building out the team around them, there are still major depth questions on the roster, and they do not seem to have much urgency in finding a goalie that can consistently stop pucks. Basically everything this team does is because of McDavid, Draisaitl and I will include Evan Bouchard in this as well.

Beyond those three? The team tends to be a black hole offensively and tends to get absolutely caved in when none of them are on the ice.

You need a couple of great players to win, but you can not win with only a couple of great players doing all of the heavy lifting.

Through the first four games of this series that exact storyline is playing out. McDavid, Draisaitl and Bouchard are on an absolute heater with at least one of them being on the ice for 15 of the team’s 18 goals. The goaltending is ice cold. It’s the Oilers as we have known them for years.

Maybe it gets them through this round. But what if it doesn’t? What if it doesn’t get them through the next round? How long do you keep trying it like this?

As for the Kings … holy crap. They are an outstanding defensive team. They do pretty. much everything well. They quickly rebuilt themselves into a strong playoff team without having to totally bottom out. But they have lost to this same Oilers team three years in a row in the first round, and after jumping out to a 2-0 series lead have blown back-to-back third period leads (including a two-goal third period lead) when they had chances to completely take control of the series.

What sort of fallout happens here if they lose to this team AGAIN?

Losing in the first round a few times in a row? Okay. Fine. Not ideal, but it happens. Doing so against the same team? That has to stick with you.

2. Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper is tired of answering questions about borderline hits in his team’s first-round series against the Florida Panthers, and I can’t say that I blame him. It’s been maddening to watch as an outside observer with no dog in the fight, so I can’t even imagine how pissed off he is getting. I wouldn’t blame him if he went full Robbie Ftorek and threw a bench on the ice at some point.

He watched one of his top guys, Brandon Hagel, get a one-game suspension for a late, high hit on Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov early in the series. It was a surprising suspension, but it was a deserved suspension. And that is what made it so surprising. Usually the NHL’s Department of Player Safety lets things like that slide in the playoffs, and it usually takes a LOT to get them to remove somebody from a playoff series for even one game. You either have to do something hellacious, or be a habitual repeat offender. Sometimes it has to be both.

But it happened, and you would think that would set some sort of standard.

And then Matthew Tkachuk crushed Jake Guentzel with a late a hit in Game 3, resulting in a five-minute major.

But no suspension.

And then Aaron Ekblad delivered a flying forearm to Hagel’s head in Game 4 with zero penalty, when it probably could have been an ejection-worthy play. And then Ekblad scored a pivotal, potentially series changing goal late in the third period to tie the game and ignite a Panthers rally. He will have a disciplinary hearing for the hit, which leaves the door open for a suspension.

And then there was Niko Mikkola driving Zemgus Girgensons head-first into the boards on a play that did get a five-minute major and a game misconduct, but only resulted in a $5,000 fine and no suspension.

Look, the Lightning are not exactly a team full of Lady Byng nominees. They can be as gritty, and greasy, and dirty, and slimy as any team in the league. That style of play, combined with the Panthers’ style of play (and their roster) is what made this series such a potential powder keg when it was set. But the Panthers are taking every extra liberty they can, and mostly getting away with it, all while head coach Paul Maurice makes comments about how “we only hit people with the puck.”

The NHL’s argument for not suspending Tkachuk is that he did not make contact with Guentzel’s head (while Hagel did on Barkov) and that Guentzel had previously touched the puck (while Barkov did not).

I just … don’t fully get this.

Let’s talk about it, and some other NHL related topics….