5 Storylines to Watch Ahead of the 2023 NHL Playoffs
The NHL just had its most entertaining trade deadline in recent memory for a reason: Teams had to gear up for an especially competitive playoff race. Now we're about two weeks out from the end of the regular season, and the playoff race has been exactly as heated as expected.
You've got wild-card hopefuls like the Penguins and the Flames fighting to extend their seasons each night, the Maple Leafs fighting for the home ice we know they could use, and the Bruins, well, still winning just for funsies.
About half of the league has clinched at this point, though, and with that comes our favorite thing headed into the Stanley Cup Playoffs: narratives!
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Here are some postseason storylines to familiarize yourself with as we get ready for the 2023 postseason.
Which Legendary Cores Might Be Making Their Last Cup Runs?
You never know how long a professional athlete's career will last, but huge advancements in information and technology have helped greats like Zdeno Chara achieve peak longevity. But as the playoffs roll around, it never hurts to tip our hats to some aging cores who might be making their last postseason runs with their respective teams.
Pittsburgh Penguins: We've had the pleasure of watching Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang dominate the league for the past 17 years, and Pittsburgh will always be relevant with Crosby around. Period. But with Malkin's needlessly contentious contract negotiations, management's failure to truly figure it out in net after Marc-André Fleury and Matt Murray, and father time, we could be looking at this core's last run together.
That is, if the Penguins hold it together long enough to secure a wild-card berth. The Penguins have been inconsistent of late (more like the whole season) with a 4-6-0 record in their last 10 games, and following Tuesday's results, sit one game back of the Panthers and Islanders of a spot in the playoffs.
Tampa Bay Lightning: Any heartbroken opponent from the latter half of this decade will tell you the Lightning have a gift for "turning it on" out of nowhere. This "it" factor is a hallmark of many dynasties, and it's tough to declare a true end for this Tampa Bay team until it flat-out fails to qualify for the postseason, especially with goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy still kicking—literally, sometimes.
But it's been a rough few months for the Lightning, and not even the great head coach Jon Cooper's tricks (like benching his stars in the third period) have worked at times. That said, a "rough few months for the Lightning" still means playoffs. Let's make sure to appreciate Vasilevskiy, Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman, Brayden Point and whichever "overpaid" depth player decides to shine this year (as is tradition) while they're all still playing together.
Boston Bruins: The Bruins have a blend of young and "old" on their current roster, and that's clearly been a favorable blend for the Presidents' Trophy winners. With Patrice Bergeron and David Krejčí on one-year contracts, you just never know what could happen after this run. Love or hate Brad Marchand, his presence makes the NHL a much more interesting league. These three from the 2011 Cup team have a real shot at another one this postseason.
Vegas Golden Knights: Just kidding!
Will the Leafs Reverse the Curse?
Morale was at a rare high for Leafs Nation after the trade deadline after GM Kyle Dubas made the biggest deadline splash of his tenure, landing Ryan O'Reilly.
The Cup-winning veteran center was the perfect depth-y puzzle piece for the Leafs. He gave them the flexibility to shuffle things around like John Tavares at the wing, much to the benefit of the captain.
Of course, something had to go wrong. O'Reilly broke his finger on March 4 and has missed 14 games. It looks like he'll be back for the playoffs, though, as he's returned to skating and is "really close," per head coach Sheldon Keefe.
Before they could even celebrate O'Reilly's return, the Leafs were hit with more bad luck. Goaltender Matt Murray, who has a history of concussions, sustained a head injury after a collision with Detroit's Lucas Raymond Sunday.
"It will be difficult to put any real timeline on it until we give him more time to settle. ... He's got some other stuff as well, but it will have to be a take it a day at a time in terms of seeing really where he's at," Keefe told reporters.
Other stuff as well? Yikes.
This is Murray's third injury of the season after an early-season adductor muscle injury and an ankle injury that kept him out from late January to early March. You have to feel for Murray, as he was putting together a decent comeback season with a 14-8-2 record, a 3.01 goals against average and a .903 save percentage.
It's another unfortunate blow for the Maple Leafs, tentatively without Murray's playoff veteran presence in their goalie tandem while looking to advance to the second round for the first time in seven tries.
At least Ilya Samsonov has stepped up throughout each of Murray's injuries and has made a case to be the starter with a 25-10-4 record, 2.41 goals against average and a .915 save percentage. According to MoneyPuck.com, Samsonov ranks No. 11 among all NHL goalies with at least 30 starts, with 15.5 goals saved above expected, and 10th in goals saved above expected per 60 at .406.
The Leafs have also called up Joseph Woll. While his NHL experience is limited, he's posted a promising 4-1-0 record, 2.02 goals against average and a .932 save percentage with Toronto.
The goaltending situation is not nearly as bad as it could be, so long as they stay calm and locked in.
Besides, bad luck is nothing new for this franchise. If this is the year they finally break through to the second round, wouldn't adversity make the feat even more awesome? Their first-round matchup with the Lightning is set, and it would be poetic if the Leafs could take down an aging dynasty on their way to reversing the curse.
It's not going to be easy, but hey, at least it's not the Bruins.
Is the West Wild or Mild?
The narratives that emerged after the trade deadline have some truth to them: The East was far more active than the West. This didn't happen in a vacuum—the middle of the pack in the East is much closer, and thus all with hopes of contention wanted to bolster their rosters. Meanwhile, the West was more open, with a more obvious divide between contenders and the bottom of the barrel.
The narratives start to fall apart here, with way too many folks jumping to several conclusions. The most dangerous is that the East's best teams are automatically better than the West's best. Arguably no team has played better hockey against the Bruins than the Kraken this season.
You've got the defending champion Avalanche in the West, and you know they could sneakily gain momentum at any point. Maybe that's the biggest threat the West has to offer—the overall sneak factor—and it's a threat Eastern Conference teams cannot underestimate.
Think of it this way: If the season ended today, you'd have first-round matchups like the Oilers vs. the Kings, the Wild vs. the Avalanche, and the Kraken vs. the Stars. It's incredibly hard to predict who would emerge in any of these series, and when it comes to Stanley Cup playoff strategy, the devil you know is often better than the devil you don't. Don't let the parity of the best teams in the West fool you into thinking they can't hang with the upper echelon of the East.
Then there's the assumption that the first round in the East will be more entertaining than the West. Sure, the East will feature more matchups between teams that are all "supposed" to go far, and desperation will be high. But there's a certain feeling that anything could happen in the wild, wild West, and I'm not sleeping on that entertainment value.
Will the Bruins Make More History?
Which storyline are you sicker of at this point: the Leafs vs. the first round or the curse of the Presidents' Trophy?
Both of these bother me to some degree. On one hand, all the stuff about the Leafs is pretty overblown. While it stinks that they've yet to advance to the second round since 2004, very few teams have made the playoffs six years in a row like Toronto.
The Stanley Cup Playoffs are also pretty random—especially all the Game 7s—and the Leafs have had some stiff competition every single year. They're a good, young team with some large contracts and bad luck. It is what it is.
The Presidents' Trophy stuff kind of feels like a similar discussion. Yes, there have been several cases of the winningest regular-season team blowing it in the playoffs recently, like the Panthers getting swept last season in the second round.
Yes, people love to throw out the fact that "only" eight Presidents' Trophy winners have gone on to win the Stanley Cup since the trophy was first awarded in 1985-86.
But isn't the Stanley Cup the hardest trophy in all of sports to win? And when you really think about it, if someone told you you'd win the Cup eight out of 33 years, you might take those odds considering only one out of 32 teams wins the Cup each year.
The Presidents' Trophy isn't a guarantee to win the Cup. It's just that nothing is, especially in a league with parity like the NHL.
That being said, the pressure is on for the Bruins to be the first Presidents' Trophy winners to also lift the Cup since the Blackhawks in 2013, and I don't think a curse is going to break them.
Besides, these Bruins aren't just Presidents' Trophy winners; they're the fourth team in NHL history to win 60 games. They were the fastest team to both 50 and 100 points in NHL history. With five games left on the regular season schedule, the Bruins need eight points to beat the NHL record of 132 points in a single season.
Logically, there's no good reason to think the Bruins won't continue on their path of dominance, other than the randomness of the playoffs. Even with the trophy secured, home ice clinched and load management coming into play, they cannot stop winning. Why would they stop when it actually means something?
A New Chapter in the Devils-Rangers Rivalry Could Be upon Us
It isn't official yet, but every day, we get closer to a Devils vs. Rangers first-round matchup, and every day, the possibility gets more exciting.
The Battle of the Hudson River has given us some of the most iconic moments in NHL history spanning decades. There was the 1994 Eastern Conference final, with Rangers captain Mark Messier guaranteeing a victory in Game 6 and making good on it with a hat trick to tie the series, followed by double overtime in Game 7 that the Rangers won. New York went on to win the Cup that year, but the Devils matched that feat the following season.
Then came Sean Avery vs. Martin Brodeur in 2008, and the "Avery Rule" was born out of the rivalry and Avery's antics.
Things had slowed down as both teams faded in and out of relevance, but the 2019 draft in which the Devils selected Jack Hughes first overall and the Rangers selected Kaapo Kakko second overall reinvigorated things.
Now both teams are back near the top of the Metropolitan Division and back in playoff contention with super exciting rosters. Both teams also made considerable splashes at the trade deadline, with the Devils adding deadline darling Timo Meier and the Rangers adding literally everyone (just kidding, but Patrick Kane, Vladimir Tarasenko and Co. was a lot).
This series is anyone's to take, and you just know it'll etch a young star or two in the respective franchise lore. Will it be Hughes or Adam Fox? Jesper Bratt or K'Andre Miller? If the hockey gods really do love us, we'll find out soon when this series becomes a reality.
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