What a night for upsets, bracket breaking, and really unhappy betters. The NHL playoffs once again showed why it is the best playoff in North American sports as the Seattle Kraken and the Florida Panthers completed MASSIVE UPSET victories to advance to the Second Round.
This is definitely not a year for the frontrunners.
In a single night, the President’s Trophy winner, the Boston Bruins, and the reigning Stanley Cup champion, the Colorado Avalanche, have been eliminated by their lower-seeded opponents as the 8th seeded Panthers pulled off the 3-1 comeback to win the series 4-3 and the 7th seeded Kraken made NHL history by being the first expansion team to win their first series against the defending champions.
And, to be honest, both the Kraken and the Panthers deserved their incredible series win.
Starting off with the Kraken, I have heard a lot of people online say that the Kraken only won this series because of the Avalanche’s injury crisis and Philip Grubauer playing out of his mind as not a single Kraken player averaged a point per game. Yet, that take completely misunderstands the very reason why the Kraken are in the Stanley Cup playoffs in the first place.
Yes, the Avalanche losing Gabriel Landeskog, Valterti Nichushkin, Andrew Cogliano, Darren Helm, and Josh Manson at various stages of the regular season and the postseason (all of whom were unavailable for Game 7) hurt their offense tremendously, but it was not game breaking. They wouldn’t have won three games against the Kraken if it was.
No, what was game breaking was the fact that every single Kraken line had the ability to score on them, which was the bread-and-butter of this Seattle attack all last season long. 15 of the 20 skaters to take the ice for the Kraken in the series scored at least 1 goal (9/22 scored for the Avalanche), 18 of 20 players registered at least 1 point (12/22 had a point for the Avalanche), and 13/20 players scored at least 2 points (9/22 for the Avs did the same).
Relying on Mikko Rantanen (7 G, 3 A, 10 PTS), Nathan MacKinnon (3 G, 4 A, 7 PTS), Devon Toews (1 G, 8 A, 9 PTS), and Cale Makar (1 G, 4 A, 5 PTS) to score all your points is good enough for the regular season, but you need secondary scoring and great goaltending to win series in the playoffs.
And, obviously, the Kraken had both as along with 15 of 20 skaters scoring points, Philip Grubauer had 4 wins, saved 214/231 shots against, a .926 SV%, and a 2.44 GAA. Reversely, the Avalanche only had one (maybe two) lines capable of scoring and goalie Alex Georgiev had 3 wins, saved 192/210 shots against, a .914 SV%, and a 2.60 GAA.
These aren’t awful numbers, but they were second to Grubauer’s and it was one of the reasons why the Avalanche now find themselves twiddling their thumbs at home.
The Panthers comeback series victory was a totally different story.
I’m sure some people predicted a potential series upset with the Kraken vs. Avs as the Avs had key injuries, but nobody (and I mean nobody) thought the Boston Bruins would lose a game to Florida, let alone get knocked out of the playoff altogether.
This was a Bruins team in the regular season that won 65 games (NHL record), 31 road games (tied NHL record with 2005/06 Red Wings), won 33 homes games (tied for 4th most in NHL history with 6 other teams), lost just 12 regular season games (tied for 4th least since 1960 with 4 other teams), accumulated 135 points (NHL record), had one of the 11 100+ point scorers (David Pastrňák), had one of the two 60 goal scorers (David Pastrňák), had the presumptive Vezina winner (Linus Ullmark), and had 8 players scorer over 50 points (the only team in the league to do so).
How were the Panthers, a team that barley made the playoffs and finished 17th in the entire league, going to beat the Bruins? Well, grinding the Bruins down to the bone and never giving up would be their solution.
Whether it was going down 3-1 in the series, going down twice in the third period in Game 6, or trailing 3-2 with a minute left in Game 7, the Florida Panthers simply never gave up when most of the league would have quit under the weight of the Bruins’ sensational talent.
Led by Matthew Tkachuk (5 G, 6 A, 11 PTS), Sam Bennett (3 G, 2 A, 5 PTS), Aleksander Barkov (1 G, 5 A, 6 PTS), Carter Verhaeghe (2 G, 6 A, 8 PTS), and Brandon Montour (5 G, 3 A, 8 PTS) on the offensive side, the Panthers continued to grind down the Bruins defender, force them into countless, uncharacteristic giveaways, and then simply wait before an injured Linus Ullmark (3 wins, saved 172/192, .896 SV%, 2.24 GAA) or a cold Jeremy Swayman (1 start, saved 28/32, .875 SV%, 3.34 GAA) would give up a juicy rebound or make a mistake to pounce.
That’s exactly what happened on the Verhaeghe OT winner last night.
And it happened over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again in the series. Sorry, that may seem a little erratic, but you should have seen me after the Bruins lost.
Nevertheless, I’ll give a much more detailed look at the Bruins historic choke in a later article, but I just wanted to focus and congratulate the winners of these two series as they deserve all the credit in the world for their massive upsets.
The NHL playoffs really never does disappoint, does it? Well, unless you’re a Bruins fan.
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