Monday Morning Musings With Me, "The Big E": NHL Playoffs—Holy Mackinaw!

The NHL postseason has been in full swing for a little under a week now and has been so far, completely unpredictable.

With Colarado's win last night against the San Jose Sharks, the seventh and eighth place teams are a combined 8-4 and half of those wins have come in overtime.

This years playoff has not been for the faint of heart. With seven games having already gone into overtime in the first five days, there are hordes of sleepy eyed and bearded NHL fans under performing at their respective jobs as we speak.

In 12 of the first 15 playoff games, the winning team trailed at some point during the game before coming back to win. No longer can teams sit on leads late in the game.

Simply, there are too many high-octane offenses in the League today. Eight of the 16 playoff teams have already scored at least five goals in a game.

Not surprisingly, fans are packing arenas and viewers are watching in record numbers. The White-Out crowd that packed Jobing.com Arena in Phoenix on Opening Night—which was Wednesday, only five nights ago—was nothing short of Loud.

In the 1990's there were an incredible 168 playoff games that required extra time to decide, that's 16.8 games a year. The NHL record for most overtime games played in the playoffs is a whopping 28 games during the 1993 campaign, a year that fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs remember well.

While this years version of the playoffs may not have much chance of eclipsing the record, they have no less been "heart poundingly" entertaining!

The heroes this season have been somewhat unexpected as well.

The Flyers' Dan Carcillo, who in an effort to make up for what was perhaps the worst attempt to draw a penalty I have ever witnessed, not only assisted on the go ahead goal in the second period of yesterday's game, but also scored on a wrap around to end the game in OT. He put his team up two games to one in the series against the Devils.

Top seeded teams have certainly had their struggles early on.

Western Conference top seed San Jose, is expected to fail. Hockey fans and media everywhere have already doomed them to failure. I don't know why, not getting to the cup final is one thing, but their overall record simply isn't that bad.

The Ottawa Senators for example have a much worse playoff record than do the Sharks. You don't hear the same kind of talk surrounding the Sens' though.

The Detroit Red Wings, who at times this season did not appear to be playoff bound period, are trailing their series to a younger faster Phoenix's Coyote team that minus superstar coach Wayne Gretzky, has been doing pretty well. That is not a slight against arguably the greatest player who ever laced up a pair of skates, just a fact.

The Penguins and Capitals in the East seem to be finding their way after they both lost the first game of their respective series.

After going shotless in Game One against the Montreal Canadiens, "The Great 8" responded to his critics (including yours truly), by netting a goal and three assists in Game Two to help his team edge the Habs 6-5 in overtime.

The 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs resume tonight with two Eastern Conference and one Western Conference game. All three of these series are tied at one game a piece and chances are two of the three of them will go into overtime.

L.A. has proven so far to be more of a test than the Canucks had anticipated, but Jonathan Quick, as good as he has been for the Kings this year, may yet fold under the pressure. Look for Vancouver to come out and absolutely pepper him with shots en route to a blow out.

If the Canadiens are to have any hope at all of winning their series, they will have to find a way to silence Ovechkin. This is obviously easier said than done, but not impossible.

"It's not one line and it's not one guy," said Habs right winger Brian Gionta. "They have a lot of guys that can cause some damage and unfortunately they hurt us, but we're happy with how things turned out in the two games in Washington."

As the series swings into Montreal at the Bell Centre, look for the Canadiens to win another nail bitter.

This years' crop of rookies are also off to a fine start in the playoffs. No less than seven first year NHL players have already scored including Ottwa's Erik Karlsson, Buffalo's Tyler Myers, and the Caps' John Carlson.