The Hockey PDOcast - The Golden Knights, The Bruins, and Potential Playoff Paths

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

Jesse Granger joins Dimitri to discuss a potential Mark Stone return, and how the Golden Knights match up against their most likely postseason opponents. Then Matt Porter hops on to talk about the Boston Bruins, the three teams they could play in round 1, and whether any of them stand a chance at giving them some trouble.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

2015. It's the Hockey P.D.O.cast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey P.D.O.cast. My name's Dmitri Filippovich. And joining me today is my pal, Jesse Granger, to talk about the Vegas Golden Knights. But most importantly, Jesse, you must have known as soon as word broke that Mark Stone made an appearance of practice. I'll be it wearing a non-contact jersey, but still, may appearance back of practice after months of not doing so. I had to throw up the bad signal, get you on, and talk about it because it's a lot of practice. It's a lot of very, that's a topic very near, dear to my heart, and I hope it means that we're going to hopefully see Mark Stone back in NHL action sooner rather than later. Yeah, for sure. It's obviously at least a good sign, if nothing more. Talking to Bruce Cassidy after that practice, he tried to downplay

it as much as possible. I don't know if that's a little bit of gamesmanship, not wanting his moments to know if Stone's coming back or not, or if he's truly still a ways out. I mean, he when he stepped on the ice it was only 69 days after his second back surgery in nine months so we're talking an incredibly quick turnaround um i don't know what the expectations should be even if he does play but i can say last night they did the uh like fan appreciation night where the jurors the players give their jersees off their backs and stone was out on the ice walking around and uh he's just messing around with the players and like i miss covering marks He is so much fun. He brings so much fun to the ice. He's like, they showed him up on the Jumbotron, and obviously the fans haven't seen him in months. So the whole stadium erupts. He looks up to the Jumbotron sees that that's why they're cheering because he's on the screen and he gives a little like fist pump to the crowd. And he's just, Mark Stone is so much fun. Hockey is more fun with Mark Stone. So I hope we get to see him too.

Yeah, you miss covering him. I miss watching him. And, you know, he got hurt on January 12th. I believe he's missed 84 games the past two years. He's only played like 1,500 or so total minutes the past two seasons. I'm of two minds of this, though, because I remember at the end of last season when he came back and it was, you know, they were trying to kind of make that last-ditch effort to salvage the season and make the playoffs. And he was pretty clearly limited, right? Like he was gutting through it.

He did not. He looked like Mark Stone in the sense that there was a stone jersey on the ice. he was trying to do a lot of the stuff that he normally does and the stuff that we've grown to love from him but it was just it was painful it looked like he was pretty visibly in pain and i don't know it looked like he was not that he's ever this even if he's 100% not that i'm ever going to be like oh is that connor mac david i couldn't tell you're never going to mistake this too but it really looked like he was like he was like skating around with like a piano on his back you know it was like it was like very difficult to watch and so i'd love to see him back i don't know

if I'd like to see him playing under those circumstances and certainly just for his long-term health and future beyond playing in the NHL, it's clearly not a great thing to be pushing through that type of back pain. So I don't know. And I imagine that is where the uncertainty comes into this as well, right? Because it must be, like most injuries are kind of day-to-day in the sense that you never know how you're going to wake up or how you're going to feel when you escape. But in this case, it really feels like it's a very kind of precarious thing from a day-to-day basis. Yeah, and it's the interesting thing, and this is part of the reason we really don't know what to expect if he does play, at least what level, is because, so you're right, he came back last year and didn't look himself, but it's important to remember that that was before any surgeries, and that back injury had been bothering him for more than a year prior to that. I mean, going all the way back to the series against Montreal in the bubble, they have been trying to get his back right for. a very long time. So when he came back there at the end of last season, and you're right,

he didn't look himself at all. That was pre-back surgery. When he came back after the first back surgery at the beginning of this season, he was pretty awesome. I mean, especially that stretch there where Eichol was out. He was the best player on the ice pretty much every night. And then he gets hurt. So, sorry, I mean, then he has to have another back surgery. So it's part of me says, well last time he came back from back surgery he looked pretty good right off the bat um but then part of me is like well he's also had two now in in less than a year and he would be coming into playoff hockey after not having game and like mark stone's game is so predicated on him reading the play and being in the right spot he like you said he doesn't he's not the fleet of foot um he gets there by reading the

play and things happen so fast i just wonder if he's going to be playing catch up if he does come back um in when when hockey's at its fastest and he just hasn't been at game speed for a very long time well his game is predicated on timing it's also predicated on like very quick short movements right like because he could he like from a standstill and often like on the penalty kill you watch him he's kind of just standing on the blue line and he's like literally not moving at all and then he makes a quick move somewhere to try to read a passing lane or something and then kind of jump it, right? And so that's a pretty scary thing to think of. It's like, oh, your back is bothering you all of a sudden having to do all these movements as opposed to, you know, not that anyone would necessarily

be fine under those types of circumstances, but there's players where your games were kind of predicated on like cruising around and just your puck possession and not having to make those types of sudden movements. I think you might be able to get away with it a bit more from a pain tolerance perspective, but that's pretty tough. And you're right, at the start of the year, I thought he was fantastic. I mean, I had you on about a month into the season, and we were sort of marveling at how that line of Eichel, Stone and Stevenson, which we didn't get to see at all last season because of their injuries kind of never, the timelines never meshing. We finally got to see them. They were phenomenal.

They were one of the best lines in hockey. And Stone was back to being, looking like himself and performing as one of the best two-way five-on-five players in the league. And so it is pretty difficult to envision him bouncing back into the postseason without any sort of runway really to build up and be like, all right, we're going to get that version of him. But then again, if I see Mark Stone on the ice, I'm going to get my hopes up because that's what I've been trained to do. So I don't know. It's a really tough one.

I've got to wrap my head around. Yeah, and I've said it all year. I think with Mark Stone at close to Mark Stone's 100%. I think the Golden Knights are a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. Without him, I mean, they've proven me wrong to this point. They're number one in the West. It seems like they can't lose a game. down the stretch,

I still don't think they're a contender without him. I just team, they don't have elite goal tending to lean on, and they don't have the offense to outscore teams in the playoffs. So they play great defense, but I just don't, like, goaltending gets magnified so much in the postseason. So it's like, with Mark Stone,

I think this team is legitimately terrifying to play against. I think they're right there with Colorado and it, Edmonton atop the West and could be the best of those three teams. Without him, I think they're behind Edmonton and Colorado. Yeah, you can certainly get yourself into trouble reading into too much into one game, especially in the regular season, right? But that most recent game they played against Edmonton at home, end of March, was pretty eye-opening from like a team speed perspective. It didn't really have too many answers to deal with them. And especially, Dreisaitel looks like he's finally healthy now and he's dominating a 5-15 again after pretty much taking a year off

of doing so as he nurses injuries with him playing at that level and carrying his own line it's a pretty uphill battle to try to match up with like david's unit and then having to do that as well right and i think we saw some of the difficulties of that if they have stone back healthy then they do have some very interesting personnel options of like and i'm curious because that would be the round two matchup theoretically right like what you would go how you would go about it in terms of i assume it would be like the combination of Carlson and Smith on one of those and then Stone and Ikel and I guess Stevenson on another. Do you have a preference for like how you would deploy those two guys against Edmonton's top two lines? Yeah, I feel like Stone probably is better suited to go against

dry sidle just because he's a big body like dry sidle. Drysidle's not going to blow by him like McDavid would. Whereas Stevenson and Carlson are the speedier of the options. It's kind of similar to like on the blue line, the Golden Knights for years, have normally Alex Petrangelo is their top defensive defenseman. He gets the toughest matchups. But against McDavid, they've pretty much always played Theodore against him. And Theodore's not the defensive anchor that Petrangelo, I mean, Patrangelo is still an offensive guy, but he's usually counted on more defensively, but because Theodore skates so well, and because he's paired with McNabb, who's excellent, they've always kind of tried to match him up more with McDavid, just because it's a closer

comparison and skating. So I think kind of similarly with the forwards, I would think that maybe Riley Smith and Carlson can fly around the ice with McDavid at least a little closer. I mean, nobody can fly with him, but at least a little closer than Mark Stone and Jack Eichel would.

So, yeah, I would think, and to be honest, I'm not sure if Chandler Stevenson would end up playing up there with Eichel and Stone. I think I could see Marcia Stowe on that line with those two, Marcheasso, Stone, and Eichel, and that leaves Stevenson to be.

be the third line center because I think if you're if you're the golden nights you're saying if you're going in that series you're saying if we can get a wash on the top two lines we feel great about the what's going to happen with the rest of it and lately they've had a third line of Chandler Stevenson Bill Kessel who's had a resurgence here this last half of the season he was bad like just flat out bad the first half of the season he's been very good on the stretch he looks like a different player and Ivan Barbashev who they added at the deadline who's been a perfect fit so That third line is about as good as you'll find of a third line outside of maybe Boston. So I think I could see Stevenson not going up with Stone and Eichol just to keep that bottom six strength

because that's really where they would have to win that series again, Seventon. It's just hope for a draw with the top six and beat him with depth. Well, I was reading one of your articles recently and you had a note in there about how Bruce Cassidy was saying, or I don't know if it was a direct quote or you were kind of like paraphrasing or hinting at what he was trying to say reading between the lines. but it was like Nick was because of the team's center depth, it's kind of a waste to have him playing down the lineup and having minimal usage in that role, whereas maybe bumping him up higher in the lineup on the wing is interesting.

And I'd be curious to see if they'd consider that as well, right? Because just from a size perspective, you'd have another body to kind of throw on a more methodical plotting, a game environment. But yeah, I know, I mean, it's a team that certainly kind of has the depth to mix around with the personnel and Cassidy's done that this season, sometimes out of necessity. But yeah, there's various options that's why.

But I think you need, like, for it to work, you need stone because otherwise you have options, but I don't think any of them are satisfactory to kind of go toe to toe in any of those consistent five-on-five minutes. Yeah, I agree. With Waugh, so like Cassidy's been obsessed with moving Waugh to the wing this year because he wants to get more off inside of him. I personally like Waugh better in the middle of the ice, even if it's at fourth-line center but what wa does i think it would help you especially like against a really good line with

dry saddle or macdavid on it or or mckinin whatever whatever team it is that they're playing he holds on to puck's in the offensive zone better than anyone on the goldenites like he is the guy that you could just dump it into the corner and he will waste the entire shift they can not get the puck from him and as we all know the easiest way to defend these elite offensive players is to make them defend not let them have the puck and i think putting a guy like wau on a line with whether it's Smith and Carlson or whether it's Eichl and Stone, I think he can buy you a lot of time in the offensive zone. You can spend those shifts cycling the puck around and not chasing them through the neutral

zone and trying to defend them because if you defend them, no matter how well you defend them, if you spend most of your time defending, they're going to score. They're too good not to. So, yeah, why is it an interesting weapon for this team? And to be honest, you could use them in the fourth line doing the same thing. You could say, you know what? our fourth line is going to kill their fourth line every game in the series. Keegan Colissar has been pretty good at doing it.

Waugh Carrier doesn't look like he's close to returning. He's been spectacular at that of this season for them. I mean, he leads the team in game winning goals, which is like insane. But I don't know if or when they'll ever get him back in the playoffs. It doesn't look like he's close to returning, so that obviously hurts. But yeah, I think Wa is an interesting weapon. And they just, this team doesn't have an elite goal score. I mean, I called, I picked him to score 100 points.

He hasn't been that. He's been a very good 200-foot player. He's worked on that part of his game. He hasn't had a bad season by any stretch. But they don't have those elite scores like some of these other top teams. They just have a lot of depth and a lot of different weapons down the lineup. Yeah, well, if you look at the landscape right now, they have one game left against Seattle again, right? And I don't want to be overly dramatic, but the difference between getting at least a point out of that game and finishing

first in the west and the Pacific and getting to play the Jets in round one versus having falling back Edmonton winning the division and then having to play L.A. in round one is about as dramatic of a swing as I think we're going to see in this year's postseason in terms of like the options that are still available of what could happen depending on first round opponents and I understand there's you know a round one series best to seven against Connor Hallibuck where he could be the best player in the series and I think the Golden Knights and I'm sure their fans listening are like, oh, like, we've, we've kind of been through this song and dance before where we go up against an elite goalie and we have these games where we have 45, 50 shots and score once or twice

and lose. And it's like, ah, we just couldn't, couldn't break through. You can envision that happening certainly. But I think just from like a stylistic and quality of opponent perspective, it's night and day. And I think for them, it would be a big luxury to just have Edmonton and L.A. Duke it out in like just a best of seven. They probably would go seven because those two the teams are so evenly matched. So I don't know. The last game of the season has pretty significant stakes for me from a Vegas perspective. Yeah, I agree.

And everything you, I agree with everything you said, including the hell of buck part. But the Golden Knights have matched up against the Jets really well. They're three at O against them this year and not just this year. It just feels like, without looking at the numbers, it feels like the Golden Knights have had the Jets number pretty much their entire existence. There are maybe a couple games. I think they went up to Winnipeg and got smacked. last year when they had a bunch of injuries.

But outside of that, they have played really well against that team. And Winnipeg can't win a game right now. I mean, they pulled one out against Minnesota the other night, but they have really struggled down the stretch. So I totally agree with you that that's the easier matchup. As a media member that is going to have to travel to one of these cities, I'm not rooting for Winnipeg. For L.A. Yeah.

A little warmer. Well, it's not even just that. I actually enjoy Winnipeg once I'm there. It's getting to Winnipeg. is not an easy task. Yeah, I'm curious for your take on the Golden Knights offense because, you know, circling back to that conversation we had earlier, at the time, Michael was playing at such a high level as well, right?

And we were sort of, we were thinking about how he could answer a lot of these problems they've had in previous post seasons of guys who can just take the puck, get into the middle of the ice, create shots for either themselves or others, that other Golden Knights members, even when they had really strong teams, just simply, like, didn't have in their range of outcomes or their skill set to do so. And since then, I think a lot of what we said about the team's defense under Bruce Cassidy has held up very well, right? You look at their heat map right now and it's basically a no-fly zone anywhere in the middle of the ice. They're very content with letting you tire yourself out with low percentage shots from the outside.

And that's a big reason I think why they've been able to use five different goalies this season and still be top 10 in team safe percentage, which is kind of remarkable to think about. But the offense has reverted back a little bit to a lot of point shots, low percentage stuff. efficiency has been fine. Like they haven't, their volume has come down and they've still managed to be kind of middle of the pack slightly above league average and goal scored. But it does concern me a little bit, especially in a series if they were to play Winnipeg where Conner Hellibuck is is so good at when he knows where his shot's coming from and he can line it up. He doesn't really, he has the athleticism, but he doesn't like thrive like some of these other top goalies and like moving east-west and having to make like miraculous saves. He's much more fundamentally sound. And so that

would worry me a little bit if Vegas is going to approach it from this perspective of like a very sort of minimalistic offensive approach versus what we hope they would be at the start of the season. Yeah, I agree. And like covering this team, I've seen this story over and over and over. Because this team scores in the regular season every year. If you look, they have never had a problem scoring in the regular season. At times, they've been like amongst the leaders in the league in scoring. And then they get to the playoffs and transition offense drives because that's how this team scores. I mean, they are so good in transition. Jack Eichael, Jonathan Marsha, so William Carlson, Riley Smith, they eat teams alive in transition. And then in the playoffs, when teams start playing

more conservative, they start buttoning up defensively, they force you to go 200 feet and score the hard way this team can't do it. I will say I've had some, I've seen some encouraging signs. Bruce Cassidy is the third coach to scream at these players to go to the front of the net. Pete DeBoer couldn't get him to do it. Throgglant couldn't get him to do it. I think for whatever reason, Cassidy's starting to get through to them. And the funny thing is it's guys you wouldn't expect. Phil Kessel has been a monster in front of the net down the stretch. Every goal he scored, go look, these aren't pretty Phil Kessel goals. He's around the net. He's scoring rebounds. He's that loose pucks are bouncing to him.

Last night, Michael LaMadio scores two goals. I think they were a combined three feet away from the net. And like Bruce Cassidy after the game was saying, this guy has basically reinvented his career if he can keep doing this. He was a skilled guy in junior. He got to the NHL. He wasn't skilled enough to play that role

in the NHL. We basically told him, look, Michael, you played with guys that went into the front of the net? You have to be that guy now if you want to play in the NHL. And he's done it. He's got 16 goals. This guy was average in four goals a season in his entire career. He had 11 last year with the Golden Knights. He's got 16 now.

So now, is Michael Amadio going to be able to get to the front of the net and score goals in the playoffs? That's a big ask. And same thing for Phil Kessel. But they're doing it. And they hadn't done that in the past. The Golden Knights are scoring, especially recently, this last month.

You look at all their metrics tell you this is an average team, but they haven't lost any games down the stretch. They've won all these games, and I think a big part of it is they're going to the net. they're like you said, the volume of shots is down, but they're getting those dirty goals. It looks more like a team, like a style that can translate into the playoffs. And having watched it not work in the playoffs for so many years, I'm still very skeptical that it will. But like I said, there's some little signs, some little threads you can pull on that

that give you hope that this team will be able to score some goals like that in the playoffs. Yeah. Yeah, it's tricky because on the one hand, it sounds good in theory to have a lot of depth in that be your calling card. and it's like, oh, our fourth line is chipping in with goals. It's great, right? But then you come to the playoffs and all of a sudden, teams can prepare more for you. You're not catching them off guard. They're able to play their top players more. Yeah, as you said, you're able to load up your defense

and you're not getting caught off guard with some of these transition opportunities. And all of a sudden, that's why star players are so important because when the other teams loading up, they're the ones that can break through and kind of do it all themselves. And so that's something I'll be watching for. Okay, final question here. goal tending, who's going to be the goalie or does it not matter because the right answer is Bruce Cassidy's defensive system? Yeah, I think the latter is true. Cassidy's goalie-friendly system,

I've written about it all year because it's so fascinating. I think I might be able to play goalie for the Golden Knights. It's incredible how many low danger chances and how few high danger chances they allow. That's going to be, I mean, they are not going to ride a goalie to the Stanley Cup final. I'll tell you that. It's going to be the defensive system. In terms of who's going to be a net, I think it's going to be Bresua for multiple reasons. He's played the fewest games of all of them this year, but he's healthy at the right time. He, to me, is the best stylistic fit.

We talk about this system that doesn't allow hide into chances, and it doesn't, most importantly, it doesn't allow east-to-west passes through the slot. Rousseau is such a sound positional goalie. He's so calm. He's patient. He's always on his anger. goal. His weakness is he doesn't have the explosion to get it across like a Logan Thompson does. Even Aiden Hill, who's a bigger guy, he's got that athleticism to get across. I think a patient,

quiet goalie who doesn't give up bad goals is the guy you want behind this defense. And to me, stylistically, that's persuas. So you combine, I think he's the best stylistic fit with the fact that Logan Thompson and Aiden Hill haven't played for a while. They've been out with injuries. Now, they have both joined the team for practice the last few days. And it's a lot. looks like they are getting close to being out of the play. But with no runway to get them game action before the playoffs, I just don't see Cassidy choosing one of those two over Berswold. And quick, to me, is not really in the conversation.

No, he's, it was a great pickup because they needed a goalie at the time. We needed a warm body to throw in the Bennett, and he did well enough to get them some wins. So credit to him for for that. But I just don't think he is in the conversation in terms of the playoffs. At least I don't think he should be. The leash on Brousswa probably won't be super long, though. Logan Thompson has been the number one guy on this team

basically most of the season when healthy. So if he's healthy and showing he can play in practice, if Bershua has a bad game or two, I wouldn't shock me at all if they go back to Logan Thompson. So I think it's Logan Thompson, sorry, I think it's Lauren Breswa's start the playoffs, but it's definitely not in concrete. Yeah, that's a really good note on Brasua's

sort of like fundamental approach and how it works behind this team. I know he's a Kevin Woodley favorite, and he's been phenomenal in his nine starts since. Yeah, Aidan Hill's interesting to me because you mentioned sort of like the athleticism or I guess. I always think of him as he's got probably the highest outside for me of these guys, especially in a single game setting, but maybe in a series against a deep offensive team that attacks you in a certain way. I mean, maybe I'm just, I can't shake that game against the devils earlier this season out of my mind, but he was just so unbelievable in that and the degree of difficulty of saves he was making.

made me think like, all right, in a series against Edmonton that's going to sort of stretch you thin in that way, maybe that would all of a sudden give you a better fighting shot of kind of competing in there as opposed to Braswell's fundamentals or Logan Thompson. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think ultimately, at least knowing where the shots are going to be coming from gives all of these guys a good fighting chance. And it should be curious to see kind of how that shakes out because it seems like, well, if they're healthy, all three are options for me. Aiden Hill is such a difficult goalie for me to judge. I believe every game Aden Hill plays saying, man, he was great tonight, except for that one play he made that was a complete disaster,

and I can't believe they gave up a goal on it. And it's like every single game. Every game plays. He's great for 99% of the game, and he plays the puck a lot. Like, he's super adventurous playing the puck out, and then he's had quite a few that are turnovers, and then end up in the back of his net while he's behind it.

But not even just that. There will just be a save that it's like, I can't believe he didn't make that. Man, I have such a difficult time because every game I'm like, man, he's so good. Like, that's a good goalie. But you can't have those mistakes in the playoffs. That is a killer. I mean, Mark Andre Fleury against the Montreal Canadiens. He was spectacular the entire series.

He makes one mistake. Everyone blames him for that series loss. Yeah. I agree with you. I think if you told me the Oilers are going to, tear you up tonight and they're going to have 18 high danger chances, which goal he gives you the best chance to, I think it's between Thompson and Hill and, yeah, I'd probably say Hill. Hill got better as the season went on. I think he kind of struggled early on and right before

he got hurt, he was looking really good. He had like three or four games in a row where he was spectacular. Thompson, to me, Trent did the other way. He was excellent early in the year and maybe because he's never been the guy, he's very inexperienced, maybe the kind of season war on him. I'm not sure, but he was kind of training the other direction. So yeah, I agree. Hill I wouldn't surprise me if he'll get it's into a game in the playoffs either. They've not been afraid to use many goalies this year for InVVVu. Who knows? They might pop you in for one of these as well.

Thanks keep going this way. All right, Jesse, this is a blast. I'm glad we got to catch up. I'll let the listeners know where they can check you on and what you've been working on because I know you've been really busy. Yeah, it's been fun. Obviously, week before the playoffs, got a lot of preview, playoff preview stuff.

I have a big feature coming out on Jack Eichel, getting ready for his first playoff games of his nine-year NHL career, hard to believe, but yeah, I've been talking to some people that have known him for a long time. A lot of excitement to see what he can do on the biggest stage. And I've also got a big story coming out before the playoffs on some goalies around the league. Three of the best goalies in the NHL and what connects them. So yeah, some good playoff preview stuff coming up at the athletic. All right, looking forward to that, man, keep up the great work. I will certainly be bugging you again. I mean, if we see Stelling back on ice in a game setting, we're breaking that down.

I'm in the style shift by shift. But even if not, if not, I'm sure there will be plenty of talk about this postseason with the Golden Knights. Okay, we're going to stay by to Jesse here. We're going to take our break. And then when we come back, we're going to have Matt Porter join us on the other side to talk about the Boston Bruins and look ahead at the various challenges they're going to present for whoever draws them in round one. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.Ocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. Discussing the biggest stories that matter to Vancouver sports fans.

Halford and Brough in the morning. Subscribe and download the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back with more of the Hockeypedo guest and joining us now live from an Uber where he's currently in transit, gallivanting the globe while covering the Boston Bruins. It's my good buddy, Matt Porter. Matt, what's going on, man? Hi, are you, Dimitri. Yeah, I'm on my way to Montreal for the, I don't know if it's going to be a coronation or maybe the fans up there will applaud respectfully.

But, yeah, it should be fun. Always fun for ruins and haps, no matter what of the situation. The grind never ends. I thought it would be a fun exercise for us today to work through kind of doing going through the teams that are still alive, I guess, in the Eastern Conference Wildcar Race, because that's the one thing that is still uncertain in the league, right? We still don't know who that final East Wildcar team is and that team will most likely play the Boston Bruins in round one. And so it'd be fun to kind of talk about which, which of those three teams could give them the most trouble kind of forecast what that series would look like. I think

it's, you know, the Bruins are clearly going to be a heavy favorite against any of those teams. I think it's kind of like boring and ultimately unimaginative to just be like, ah, let's hand wave them. It's going to be a sweep because we know that regardless of what type of regular season you have, it doesn't necessarily guarantee you playoff success as we've seen in the past. And so I think it's fun to kind of work our way through this. So I don't know, do you want to start this from the Bruins angle in terms of how they match up with these teams?

Or do you want to take them one by one with the teams being the Panthers, the Penguins, and the Islanders? however you want. I would say you're right off top. None of these teams I think will really push the Bruins maybe the Islanders a little bit.

Maybe we should start there kind of from an Islander's perspective. I think they're probably the team that gives them or could give them the most trouble for a variety of reasons. Well, here's the thing. I remember back in 2019 during that historic Tampa Bay Lightning season,

I wrote up sort of the blueprint or the checklist list for what a heavy underdog needs to do in a playoff series like this to take down the Goliath, right? And at the time, it was slow down the pace and limit the events, kind of just like bog the game down, go large stretches out, anything happening, limit the number of power play opportunities because of the time that Lightning Power Play was just so devastating. And every time you gave them an advantage to go there, they would make you pay and just

have a hot goalie, and Sergey Bobrovsky did that in this series. I think if you're looking at that from this lens, the Islanders probably would check that the most just because I feel like Ilya Sorokin standing on his head and stealing games by himself is probably the most likely outcome, especially compared to Alex Lyon and interest in Jerry, compared to like either of any of these three teams actually outplaying the Bruins meaningfully in terms of their skaters through a seven game series. I feel like for this to happen, you're going to need some help from the goalie. And in that case, Sorokin, who's going to be first, second or third on every single person's president of ballot is the primary candidate for that.

I totally agree. I think he's the one player in this first round that should give the Bruins the most cause for pause. He actually hasn't seen them at all this year. It's kind of an interesting wrinkle when you go back and look. It kind of dawned on me in their last meeting in February that it's been Samuel and Varlamov for all three of those games and would not say he's performed very well. It was kind of the game in February they're coming off back to back and Varlamov had to eat six goals. I mean, he just looked terrible and they refused to put Sorokin in. So it kind of interesting. And he, you know, was the victor in that six game series against the Bruins in 2021 where the Bruins offense kind of dried up. They tried to get all of their chances off the rush.

And it just really wasn't working, you know, Taylor Hall and David Creachie that line that was there at the time, you know, went from like this super effective rush line to just nothing. You know, they really could barely even enter the zone against the Islanders. that to me would be the blueprint as you said. You know, just hope that Sorokin is Sorokin as you'd expect them to be. And they can just make it, you know, a grinded out series and probably put a few bruises on the Bruins as well. I think from a physical standpoint, you know, with the wear and tear that's on these guys

right now, the Bruins obviously, you know, given their lead in the standings, they've been able to rest guys and still win games. But you are concerned if you're the Bruins, you play David Craichie and all of a sudden his knee axe up again because, you know, he runs into Matt Martin the wrong way. That's certainly something that could start to wear them down. And even if they do emerge from that series, still, you know, lead them into a series against Toronto or Tampa at less than 100%. So I definitely think just the Islanders being the Islanders is enough to push the Bruins,

probably not beat them, given how strong the Bruins are and how deep they are. But a six-game series against that team could really be something. to deal with going forward for them. Okay, well, here's a question for you then, for any of these teams that are going up against the Bruins, how do you knock them off their game, having watched them play whatever 80, 81 games or something now? It's clearly a well-rounded group, right? If you look statistically, their second-best team at offense at 5-1-5 in all situations,

they're the best at goal suppression at both states. They're top-10 on the power play. They're first in every single category on the penalty kill. It's tough to kind of identify one weakness. I'm curious for what type of game setting or game environment these teams would want to force on the Bruins if they could have their way. Because looking back to that 2019 thing, right, maybe this should have been a red flag. John Cooper at the time was talking like, yeah, part of our past postseason failures have been, we're very comfortable winning games when they get into that 5-4 range.

But if you make us play a 2-1 game, we still sometimes struggle with that. And that's going to happen over the course of a playoff series. Now, the Bruins are clearly very comfortable given how few goals. they give up playing those types of games they certainly score a lot themselves but they're cool with playing a one nothing two one three one three two game so if you're the islanders the panthers or the penguins like what type of game are you trying to how are you knocking them off how are you frustrated and what are you doing to them stylistically that's going to at least give them some pause and be like all right this isn't necessarily how we want to play i don't come on in the pediocast

to cop out and i don't want this answer to sound like this but basically you hope you have a hot goalie because this team is built to win those games, like you said, that 20-21 team much less so against the Islanders. I'm thinking of how they got a lot of those chances off the rush. And really the only line that could effectively get into the zone, get below the circles, make it tough, cycle, tire teams out, you know, was the Bergeron line. And they had to put David Postmark on that line to make it, you know,

as effective as it could be because Jake DeBrusk wasn't the player that he is today. So that was, you know, they were really essentially a one-line team. Right now you have not only the Bergeron line playing that way. You have the, right now with David Creachio, it's this newfound, effective line of, of, with Pavel Zaka in the middle of Tyler Bertuzzi and David Posternak, which is creating a ton of chances, really creative line with a ton of puck handling ability. And, you know, with guys like Bertuzzi and a bigger guy like Zaka.

They're able to get into the corners. The third line with coil playing as effective possession, big boy hockey as you'll find, that to me is the line that matched up well against really, you know, anybody, especially a team like the Islanders, that that's, you know, that's the game that they want to try to play. That line can defend and play in the offensive zone in that style. You know, and then the fourth line's doing their thing with Garnett Hathaway, et cetera. So I think basically you have to hope that your goal is up for the task.

That's why one reason why I don't think we're going to spend a whole lot of time talking about the penguins because they're just not there and they're a complete mess right now. If you were asking me what team of the brutes want, as everybody seems to ask me this time of year, it's going to be the penguins. I mean, that could be a sweep and I don't think it would be particularly close. Well, here's the thing. And that's not even recency bias either. And I'm with everyone. Like, I'd love to see it feels weird having a postseason without Sidney Crosby in it, right? When he was healthy last in that Rangers series, he just did every.

everything he wanted. He dominated and single-handly took that over and almost won it himself. But the thing is, we've seen 80 plus games now with this Penguins team, and they're third in the league and shots generated. They're middle of the packing goals because they have one of the worst shooting percentages in the league. And I don't think that's entirely unlucky. You look at the types of shots they're creating. It's not the most inspiring bunch. They're the oldest team in the league. I imagine part of like efficiency dipping is because of that as well. And then you just look at the depth on the team. The top six forwards have combined. And and that's Crosby, Malkin, Zucker, Rust, and Gensel have combined for,

and Raquel, 107, 5-15 goals. Every other forward that's played on that team has 42, 5-15 goals this season combined, and that's 15 guys that have played whatever, nearly 500 games total. It's against a team like the Bruins, they would find a way to eventually just absolutely punish any single time that bottom six stepped on the ice. And that's kind of a problem for a lot of these teams, even the Islanders and the Panthers. they're kind of top heavy, especially up front, right? And you're going to have minutes occasionally

where you're just not going to be able to create anything in the Bruins, especially with the way they're constructed now, will be able to punish you. I guess my question for you is, and they might not be pushed in that series to ever really consider this seriously. It might be more of a second round thing. But how quickly do you think we see Jim Montgomery sort of feel the pressure in one of these series and revert back to a nuclear option

of either loading up Pasternak with Bergeron and Marshan full-time or putting McAvoy and Lynn Holm together on the back end because he's sort of just as a luxury because of the team he's had this season, been able to, for the most part, just balance everything out and have a star player on ice at all times. I imagine at some point during this playoff run, maybe things aren't going to work for a couple games, and all of a sudden, we know it's like coaching one on 101,

all of a sudden put the lines in a blender and go back to what you're most comfortable with, and it feels like that's probably going to be something we see. Yeah, like I really haven't seen him do that since, mid-season. And I'm not, I'm not sure that. Well, it's because there hasn't really been any need to, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, he's tried to spark. He's tried to spark his guys with, you know, like a second period shift, that kind of thing. But, yeah, he's gone five forwards on the, on critical power plays late in games. One time he started over time, five forwards on the power play. So he will do that, but, you know, obviously hasn't had to lately. I think the, the one, The question I would have back is who's healthy, basically, because if he needs a spark,

he could bring a Jacob Lauko off the bench who brings, as an energy guy in the fourth line, he has that kind of speed that can beat a lot of defenders to be outside with the puck races, get them into the offensive zone. He's good, like, really good for like eight to ten minutes, you know, and could that help in the playoffs? You know, a guy like Jake DeBruz, like moving him off the top line, I'm just not sure that that's your best option when you have David Pops. Astronaut and David Creachie and Pablo Zaka and or Tyler Bertuzzi,

if Grachie's out on that second line creating so much, you know, if they get shut down completely, you know, maybe you've depressed onto that line, but I'm not sure if that's a, you know, an upgrade in really any meaningful way. I think if Creachie comes back, you know, you're going to see Tyler Bertuzzi slide down to that third line, which, you know,

which would push Fred Frederick down in the fourth line, which makes that line more effective. You know, the depth is insane. You know, they really do have 14. Ford's right now that they can reliably play and be, you know, and can be effective for them. And then on the back end, you know, Orlov and McAvoy right now would be the, you know, their top pair if they really, you know, wanted to balance things because Lindholm and Carlo have been so effective to, you know, it's a six foot four guy and a six foot five guy. Opponents really

struggle with that length on entries and in the zone. And then, you know, with Carlo hanging back a little bit. I mean, Lindholm's basically able to do whatever he wants, you know, in the zone, breaking the puck out, beating that first and second four checker if need be. So it's just a, that's really their most effective play. It's to the point where in the past, they were thinking, you know, Grizzlick and McAvoy kind of have to be paired because that's what makes Grizzlick the most effective. Right now, Grizzlick's kind of a, not a spare part, but he's basically your six, seven. And, you know, they kind of play him with, you know, with Orlov on his offside or Clifton on the third pair.

And that's, I mean, I guess if that doesn't work, if you're, if that top force somehow doesn't get the job done and maybe you think about moving guys around and, you know, adding a Derek forward to the bottom of the pairing. I'm not sure. But I don't know. It's just hard to, the ways that they can attack and the depth they have is just so remarkable right now that I'm not sure what's going to make them change. I mean, if they, even if they get shut out, I feel like they maybe take.

take a, you know, take a punch or two and then come back the next game, the same lineup. I'm not sure that you make wholesale changes. Well, yeah, thinking back to the series you mentioned earlier against the Islanders a couple years ago where I thought their defense core was exposed because pretty much every time other than Charlie McAvoy, if one other defense would go back to play the puck, the Islanders were just teeing off on the forecheck, right? Like they were just going in heavy. They were throwing the body around.

They were forcing turnovers and making life miserable for them. and then creating pretty much the entirety of their offense off of those broken plays that ensued. And once again, the Islanders, especially without Matt Barzal, and we'll see if he's going to come back. I think he started skating at least with the team. They're the team that dumps the puck in most frequently in the league. The Panthers and the penguins are both kind of middle of the pack. The Panthers has clearly changed the way they played from last year,

where they carried it in pretty much every single time. And that's not really going to work against the Bruins, right? Like no team has better connectivity between their four. and defensemen in the neutral zone. No team defends the blue line other than maybe the hurricanes more aggressively than them. So like you have to. Yeah. Even if you don't want to, you have to dump the puck in against the Bruins.

So the thing is though is, you know, the Islanders create a ton of their offense once again. I think they're like eighth most in the league off the forecheck. According to Corey Schneider's tracking, the Panthers and Penguins similarly create quite a bit surprisingly off of their forecheck. The Bruins don't really give up anything that way. I mean, that's true for a lot of game states for them, but their defensemen have been so much better this year at controlling the play by getting, by kind of eating those four-jackers and getting the puck out clearly

and certainly adding Lynn Holm last year and then adding Orlov this season helps a ton with that. And so I think that would kind of go against the idea of loading those guys up because you essentially want to have at least some combination of one of those guys out at all times to help kind of fight, fight against that and avoid reverting back to that previous situation where, you know, you've got a foreborder, or you've got a carlo having to go back and play the puck where they're not comfortable

and all of a sudden you're fishing the puck out of your own net because, you know, the Islanders fortune created a turnover against you. Yeah, like I think if you're, you almost have to look at it at a player by player level in that way. Like if you're the Islanders, you want to try to get Matt Krasick to have to do something physically. You want to try to rub him out along the boards, make him eat a puck and then, you know, have two guys try to get the puck away, create something quick off of that. Connor Clifton has had a few rough, not rough games, but very shaky games for his standard down the stretch here. So, you know, is he somebody who you can kind of confuse a little bit, get moving the wrong way, you know, on a two-on-one, down low possibly?

I don't see McAvoy Orlov, especially when he told him, you know, being anything but what they have been. you know like you mentioned you you want randy carlo handling the buck but he has been relatively clean um with his first pass uh down on the stretch here so that's a good sign for the bruns um you know and if you know uh jakes of orl's not going to be playing i can't see him getting nice time but obviously he's somebody that that can be exposed you know given what he's shown so far in his relatively limited at hl experience so you know i think i hate I just say attack Matt Grizzly because I love Matt Grisly. I think he's a fantastic player in five and five especially.

But as we've seen in the past, when it gets harder and heavier in April, May, and June, that is where he struggles. That's one of the reasons why they decided to go out and get enhanced and tell me to be true of love. So, you know, I think that's kind of your recipe is attack the few certain guys that you can and try to do whatever you can within the rules to make it tough on them. Well, even outside of the rules, right, when you think back to that Blue Jackets, Lightning series, which is obviously for a variety of reasons, and we brought it up here on the show, is going to be kind of pointed to it as like, ah, this is what could happen.

You remember, like, the Lightning got very frustrated with the Blue Jackets, right? And the Blue Jackets were going out of the way to try to, like, post whistle, just like get these skirmishes going, get these scrums going, try to knock them off their game physically. And then the Lightning, you know, Kutrov got suspended for a game because he retaliated. They clearly got, like, fed up and frustrated with it. And for the Bruins, I think, you know, like the Panthers play, I think, the least in the league at 5-15 this season. And that's part of like the, that's the Matthew Kichuk chaos factor, right? He's either taking a penalty or drawing a penalty himself.

So they're not playing that much at 5-1-5. But the Bruins, because of their special teams, I guess the power play has been a bit of a concern at some points this season. But like, relatively speaking. But very good lately. If you're just trying to nitpick, though, right? I'm saying like they're like ninth in the league this season or something at goals for 60. But compared to every other stat, whether they're first or second, I guess. that's going to stick out a little bit like a sore thumb.

Obviously not a concern when you have the personnel that they have. I think that's wildly overblown. But they also have, they're literally first, as I said, in everything on the penalty kill. So it's not a situation where it's like, oh,

you know, they certainly don't want to be spending large stretches of the game playing with one skater or less than their opponents. But it's not a matter of that being a weakness for them where it's like, okay, well, if we can just draw a few penalties here or there

and knock them off their game, all of a sudden, we can really take advantage of their penalty kill. So that's another issue for these teams as well, where you, you probably don't want the game being played at even strength for large stretches because that's when the Bruins can really kind of, you know, they're a well-old machine and they're going to get it going.

But it's not like the special teams is enough of a weakness for you to target one of those areas specifically. Yeah. Like their penalty kill has been so good this year. Last night they just broke a streak of 38 straight kills, which is like just kind of ho-hum for them. And that's without Derek Forbert as well. He's been out of the lineup for weeks here.

You know, kind of a specialist in that area, obviously. you know the panthers are an interesting matchup for that perspective the kachuk factor barkoff you know finds a way to make to get things done you know on the back end is really not not very deep at all but at glad can you can can make a series happen when you talk about not targeting guys but you know kind of going outside the rules I think if you're a team that looks at what the bruns have done on the power on the power play down the stretch how you know my mention they've been very good lately but you know, for maybe like the month and a half, two months before that, not so much.

And really falling from top three in the league to kind of more middle of the pack. You know, maybe that's the strategies. You know, I mean, do you, I hate to talk like this because this is not the way I want to see the game played it. I don't want to put that out there. But, you know, Andres Svetchnikoff last year in the Carolina series caught Hamas Lindholm with a clean check, a hard clean check. That's kind of like the blueprint, right? Like you knock a guy like that out of the series. again, I don't want to wish that on anybody, but, you know, maybe you take a game suspension

and maybe that's kind of the way you have to get through a seven-game series by having somebody target a guy. The Bruins are equipped to push back, obviously. They really don't have a, you know, a problem. I'd say probably it does, would step up there in that regard. But if they maybe go against a guy like Soroket, you know, is there confidence on the power play ticket hit if they can't capitalize on their first bunch of opportunities. It's something to think about. Maybe that is, maybe we've kind of hit on the weakness there is get the brutes, you know, off their game and, you know, in that way, make them play on the power play

and then have your goalie step up and say, no, no, this is actually my soon, it's not yours. I mean, you know, for a team that's lost, I don't know how many games they've lost, but I know they've lost by more than one goal just six times this season. if you're just thinking of how decisive games were, how many times they're blown out, it's been a very few and far between. On your recollection, like, is there any teams in particular that you watch them play this season that gave them trouble, even if it wasn't necessarily over the course of a full series in individual games?

Like, I think back to that, there was the one Cracken game. They avenged it in Seattle. But I think a team like the Cracken and maybe even the Hurricanes at times gives them trouble because they can sort of go large stretches of games where, you know, nothing's really happening. limit events. They're, they're very stingy. They can really pressure you a lot. And it feels like those were certain situations where they had a little bit of trouble, clearly, you know, nitpicking here because it was so few and far between. But that's kind of what I recall from this season. Are there any of the that stick out to you as like, all right, this is a game that I would go

watch this to see where things could potentially become interesting? I was going to say the hurricane is exciting. You know, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of long stretches of those games against the Bruins go. You know, teams regrouping, bringing the puck up, dumping it in because the, you know, the entry gets jammed up, trying to get it back, not being successful. It goes the other way, the same way, in the same method. You know, all of a sudden, like you mentioned, hurricanes are comfortable playing in that style.

And that, you know, if they can capitalize on one or two mistakes, it becomes, you know, one goal lead that they can build on that sort of thing. That could be their recipe. They have given the Bruins trouble. they do have the confidence of playing incredibly well in their building against the Bruins and winning that seven-game series last year. Toronto is always tough if Toronto's on its game.

I'd worry about the goaltending, obviously, but they beat the Bruins in Toronto earlier in the season. You know, if they can get by Tampa, if at full strength is always a tough matchup. You know, tons of confidence, obviously, and weaponry. Then you look out west, it's, you know, it's Edmonton because of the McDavid factor. I mean, I think that would be a fantastic final if we get to that.

You know, guys like him, McKinnon, you know, seeing them go off, you know, really are the things that you look at when you say, you know, what could take down the Bruins. It's, you know, it's fantastic individual performances that just push a team just a little bit beyond, get that extra goal that they need to win in a game. And then, you know, bring it into a game five, six and seven. But systematically, in the playoffs, I just think the programs are so well equipped. I just don't see, you know, anyone other than those teams. And I mentioned really pose a super serious threat in that way. Well, you were just basically listing the series there as you hop out of this Uber based on standings. The point that I was trying to make there was, I think, a team that limiting events and kind of slowing it down is and frustrating them because

they go five, six minutes and you look at the shocklock and nothing has changed, those are the teams that give them issues. And the penguins and panthers are first and second in the league at playing high event hockey the season. So I don't really see that in their future, whereas I guess the Islanders would check that box a little bit more so. But all right, Matt, we're going to let you go here. Thanks for hopping on on short notice here in your transit. I'll let you quickly let the listeners know where they can check you out before I'll let you go. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm covering the Bruins in the NHL for Boston Globe, and I'm on Twitter at Maddie Ports. That's where I post most of my stuff. If I could throw a plug for something I just wrote, I did a piece on one of the reasons why the Bruins kind of work this year is they have this thing with t-shirts, and I'll let you check it out on my Twitter, M-A-T-Y-P-O-R-T-S. I'll also have something coming up about Providence guys. Bruins have a lot of really interesting prospects,

and I think they are poised to kind of go up, shoot up people's prospect rankings just because of the way they've been able to develop some of these guys. Well, that's all the time we've offered today's show. Thank you to everyone for listening to us. We're going to be back tomorrow with another episode of the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network.