The 2015 NHL playoffs are about to begin, and hockey fans are filling out their brackets, using pencils left over from March Madness and making changes using the tears of University of Kentucky basketball fans).
The cousins and I put our heads together (seriously, Cheerless head-butted both Fearless and myself trying to get the bracket all to himself so he could pencil in the Cleveland Barons as Stanley Cup champion) and came up with a truly inspired bracket for our entry in the NHL Bracket Challenge...
(click on picture for larger image)
We're thinking that in the first round...
Ottawa's hotness will prevail over Montreal's Carey Price.
Tampa Bay's almost anonymously fine season continues.
The Pens get a couple of fine performances from Crosby and Malkin, but the Rangers are just far too deep at every position.
The Caps are healthier than the Islanders.
Dub stubs his toe against St. Louis.
The Blackhawks get a dose of Kane just in time.
Winnipeg fans get to cheer another day; Bruce is disappointed once more.
Calgary is more than Johnny Hockey.
In the second round...
The Ottawa run will end, but not in the second round.
The Rangers perform to their possession level.
It's just St. Louis' turn.
Winnipeg's feisty, frisky style overwhelms the Flames.
In the conference finals...
All good things come to an end, and you can only stay hot for so long, Senators, so... so long.
St. Louis is just better.
And, in the finals...
When all is said and done, Alex Ovechkin gets the prize that eluded him for ten years, and no one is going to be ignorant of who Nicklas Backstrom is and his place among the game's best.
There once was a sit-com on network television that featured
the clumsy antics of a low-rated cable network do-it-yourself show host.One of the continuing features of “Home
Improvement” was the appearance of the boys from “K&B Construction,”
professional tradesmen who were skilled at their craft, if a bit odd.
As the Washington Capitals prepare for the post-season
opener on Wednesday against the New York Islanders, they will be looking for
that slightest edge, the one thing that can enable them to craft an opening
series win over the New York Islanders and build a deep playoff run.
Perhaps the answer lies with their own “K&B” boys.Evgeny Kuznetsov and Andre Burakovsky have
had their ups and downs as rookies this season, but with a full regular season
in the book (granted, Burakovsky appeared in only 53 games) they have become
accustomed to the pace of the NHL game.
The playoffs are a different animal, but so, too, might
these two rookies.The Caps are one of
two Eastern Conference playoff teams (Ottawa is the other) with two rookies among the
top-20 rookies in points.Kuznetsov finished
ninth in rookie scoring (11-26-37), while Burakovsky finished in a tie for 20th
(9-13-22).Both finished in the top-15
among rookies in points per game.
Burakovsky’s availability is in question (he may be assigned to Hershey for
their playoff run), but Kuznetsov could get time as a scoring line
center.He certainly has stepped up his
scoring pace in the second half of the season.In his last 36 games, Kuznetsov went 7-15-22, plus-5, a 50-point scoring
pace over a full 82-game season.He
accomplished that despite having no games in which he skated as many as 20
minutes and skating fewer than 15 minutes a total of 21 times, largely in fourth
line duty.
As noted, Burakovsky’s presence in the post-season is iffy
(his call-up from Hershey late in the season was an emergency sort, owing to an
injury to another player).However, at
season’s end, among Capitals appearing in at least 20 games, Burakovsky had the
second highest points-per-60 minutes at 5-on-5 (2.07; numbers from
behindthenet.ca).He also had the team’s
best shooting percentage in those situations (10.9 percent) and its third best
PDO (1022).Although he had somewhat
sheltered minutes (64.3 percent offensive zone starts, tops on the club), he
was productive when called upon.
One does not expect either Kuznetsov or Burakovsky to
dominate in the post season.After all, Nicklas
Backstrom is the only Capital, age 22 or younger, to ever have averaged more
than half a point per playoff game in a post season, minimum of ten post season
games played (Kuznetsov is 22; Burakovsky is 20).However, to the extent they can surprise with
some timely offense, the “K&B Boys” might be the right tools for the job of
getting the Caps past the Islanders and deep into the 2015 post season.
