NHL Playoffs Roundup: Phil Kessel Quieting Critics as Dangerous Penguins Advance

As it turns out, the New York Rangers were little more than a speed bump for the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Pens dispatched their division rivals in just five games, lighting up all-world goaltender Henrik Lundqvist for 15 goals over the course of the series, with a half-dozen of them coming in Saturday’s decisive 6-3 victory.

With that kind of offence, there was obviously no shortage of contributors, but one who might surprise those who didn’t follow the series closely is much-maligned right wing Phil Kessel. Kessel, who scored three times and added a trio of assists in the five-game series, has a reputation as the kind of player who doesn’t really help his team win. It’s a reputation he has the opportunity to slay for good in these playoffs.

If he does, it would undoubtedly surprise a lot of his critics.

When Postmedia polled a sample of NHL players earlier this season, eight of 28 (29 percent) named Kessel the most overrated player in the game. Mike Brophy of the Hockey News described the Kessel trade as “addition by subtraction” for Toronto and claimed he “often demonstrated more passion and desire playing ping-pong after practice than he did on the ice.”

Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun went further, describing Kessel as a player who “didn’t eat right, train right, play right” and that from a Leafs perspective, “[w]hen you have an illness, you must get rid of the poison.”

One playoff series isn’t going to turn around that degree of negativity, and right now it’s too soon to tell how far the Penguins will go in the postseason and to what degree Kessel will get them there. It’s not too soon to say that in his first playoff action with the team, he’s been everything they could have hoped for.

Kessel scored in Game 5, but he wasn’t the star for Pittsburgh. Neither was Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin or any of the Pens’ other key stars. Instead, that honour went to a virtual unknown: 23-year-old Bryan Rust, a Calder-eligible winger who had all of 11 points this season. Rust scored twice in the game, but his best play was probably on the game-winning goal, where he forced a turnover, picked up the primary assist and ran some interference for teammate Matt Cullen:

For New York, the play of Lundqvist—who was pulled entering the third period—will get a lot of attention, but much of it will be misplaced. Lundqvist has been rock-solid in both regular-season and playoff action for years, and as L.A.’s Jonathan Quick showed this spring, even the most well-regarded playoff goaltenders can have a tough series.

Scapegoating Lundqvist would be a mistake, because the issues exposed in the Rangers’ disappointing 2015-16 campaign extend well beyond goaltending.

The Rangers were a bottom-third team in the NHL this year by virtually every shot metric; over the last 25 games of the year, they ranked 27th in the NHL by score-adjusted Fenwick (the percentage of shots and missed shots for and against for each team). Teams that get hammered on the shot clock by that amount don’t win in the NHL, no matter how good their shooters, their goalies or their special teams.

New York is a flawed team that has been getting by in large part thanks to a spectacular goaltender; when the goaltending faltered, as it did in this series, the results were embarrassing.

Can the Blues Possibly Win Game 7 vs. Blackhawks After Blowing 3-1 Leads in Series, Game 6?

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The truth is that the St. Louis Blues still have a chance to salvage an ugly first-round series against the Chicago Blackhawks. If they can win at home in Game 7, it’s likely that most will forget the ugly path the team took to victory. But having blown two great opportunities to put the ‘Hawks away, there’s little reason to believe the Blues will be successful on their third attempt.

After a 4-3 victory in Game 4, the Blues were in the driver’s seat of this series. That they lost a 4-3 double overtime contest in Game 5 was not terribly embarrassing; all of the games have been close, and losing by such a narrow margin to a team like Chicago could hardly be held against St. Louis.

A 6-3 loss in Game 6 is a very different story. St. Louis came out strong, took a 3-1 lead and should have won the game. Instead, it imploded in the second period and allowed Chicago to take a 4-3 lead. Then it surrendered a power-play goal and an empty-net marker in the third period as the game spun out of its control.

The second-period collapse, during which Chicago utterly dominated territorially, was completely indefensible. The Globe & Mail's James Mirtle tweeted a chart showing shot attempts for the two teams in that frame:

Without question, that inability to hold the ‘Hawks in check is a concern. Also concerning was visible tension between star forward Vladimir Tarasenko and St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock on the bench after Tarasenko was left off the ice for virtually the entirety of the Blues' one and only power play of the game:

It would be wrong to imagine that Tarasenko’s concerns are limited to one missed power play. Hitchcock has consistently favoured fellow right wing Troy Brouwer over Tarasenko throughout the first round, and it’s pretty difficult to understand why:

Player	GP	G	A	PTS	Shots	Avg. TOI
Vladimir Tarasenko	5	3	2	5	21	17:34
Troy Brouwer	5	0	0	0	4	21:53

Brouwer has averaged more ice time both on the power play and at even strength despite Tarasenko having a far better series. In Game 6, Tarasenko trailed Brouwer in ice time until the third period, when Chicago's lead finally compelled Hitchcock to play the best offensive weapon at his disposal.

Tarasenko certainly shouldn’t be embarrassing his coach on national television, but that’s by far the lesser of the two infractions here. In a series where the Blues have lost two one-goal games, Hitchcock is prioritizing ice time for a journeyman winger who didn’t even hit 40 points this year over a legitimate star who scored 40 goals. It’s baffling, and if St. Louis ultimately loses this series, it legitimately may come down to this coaching decision.

The Blues were a better team than Chicago during the regular season, posting comparable numbers on special teams and far superior numbers at even strength. They finished higher in the standings, secured home-ice advantage and carved out a massive series lead over the first four games. Despite that, this is going to a winner-take-all seventh game on Monday.

The Blackhawks deserve an incredible amount of credit for continuing to compete, but as admirable as that is, it is not the real story of this series. The real story so far is that St. Louis had both the talent and the opportunity to knock off the defending champions and couldn’t get the job done.

The Blues can change the narrative Monday, turning this series into a close call and a learning experience. Playing Tarasenko more and playing Brouwer less would almost certainly help with that.

Preds Drop Third Straight Game as Ducks Take Over Series

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It wasn’t all that long ago the Nashville Predators were looking like a team bound for the second round. After winning their first two games against the Ducks in Anaheim, the Preds headed home for two games with the chance to either knock their opponent out entirely or at least come away with a commanding lead.

Instead, they lost both home games. And now, thanks to a third straight defeat, they head home with a very different objective: survival.

Ryan Johansen, acquired from the Columbus Blue Jackets at midseason to be the Predators’ first-line centre, scored his first goal of the 2015-16 postseason to give Nashville the 1-0 lead, but 22 seconds later a fluky David Perron shot bounced past Pekka Rinne. Less than two minutes after that, Perron would add an assist on Ryan Garbutt’s short-side goal:

Anaheim never let go of that lead and ultimately won the game 5-2.

Rinne’s play is once again a concern for Nashville. He struggled for most of the season, finishing the year with an underwhelming 0.908 save percentage. He has allowed three or more goals and posted a sub-0.875 save percentage in each Predators loss this postseason.

Statistics courtesy of NHL.com, Natural Stat Trick and Puck On Net.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.