Here’s the first thing you should know about the NHL’s upcoming Stanley Cup playoffs, which open across north America Monday and Tuesday:
Former Cup winners Sidney Crosby (35) and Alex Ovechkin (37), the closest thing the NHL has to crossover stars, are out. It’s the first time in 16 years that at least one of their teams—the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals—didn’t make the playoffs.
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That sets up Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers to become the face of the league he deserves to be. McDavid led the league in goals (64), assists (89) and total points (153), the first player since Wayne Gretzky to do so since 1986-87.
McDavid won the Ross Trophy as the NHL’s leading scorer and the Richard Trophy as the top goal scorer, and he leads a wave of younger generation stars, including Toronto’s Auston Matthews and New Jersey’s Jack Hughes, into a wide-open playoff race.
Out west, the high-flying Oilers host the Los Angeles Kings beginning Monday night. The Oilers defeated the Kings in a tough seven-game opening round series last year.
“I’m excited about just playing in the playoffs,” McDavid told reporters this weekend about the upcoming opportunity. “It’s not easy to get in. Being there before definitely helps. I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
The defending champion Colorado Avalanche host the Seattle Kraken, a second-year expansion team in the playoffs for the first time, Tuesday night. And that matchup wasn’t decided until the last day of the regular season.
The down-to-the-wire race gave commissioner Gary Bettman plenty to talk about during an interview this week.
“We went into the last two games of the season not knowing all the matchups, or three of the four division winners,” he said. “That shows the incredible competitive balance we have. And there’s nothing like the playoffs, particularly the first round. We couldn’t be more excited.”
In the east, the Boston Bruins shattered the record for the most victories in a season, finishing 65-12-5 for a Presidents’ Cup-winning and league-leading 135 points. The Bruins host the Florida Panthers Monday night and face what could be called the Presidents’ Cup Curse.
The Bruins are only the fourth NHL team to win 60 games in a season, and just one other has gone on to win the Cup. Since the expansion season of 1967-68, only 35% of the teams that finished first overall have won the Cup, the most recent being the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013.
A few hours south of Boston, all three New York-area teams are in for the first time since 2007, with the New York Rangers playing the New Jersey Devils in the first round. The series between the heated rivals begins at the Prudential Center in downtown Newark Tuesday night.
The teams are so close geographically that there’s only one stop on the New Jersey Transit rail line between New York’s Penn Station under Madison Square Garden and Newark Penn Station, blocks from where the Devils play.
“It’s going to be exciting for everybody,” Devils forward Erik Haula said last week. “It’s going to be crazy in both buildings.”
The Devils and the Rangers have played each other six times in the playoffs with the Rangers winning four. One of those series led to a double-overtime Game 7 showdown in the 1994 Eastern Conference finals, which sent the Rangers to the finals where they captured their only Cup since 1940.
“This is what you play for,” Rangers’ defenseman Adam Fox said. “The playoffs, we got that taste of it, got pretty close last year, and it made us hungry for it this year.”
The Rangers were eliminated by the then two-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning in a six-game Eastern Conference final last year. The Devils are back in the playoffs for the first time since 2018. The NHL playoffs always seems better when the New York teams are involved.
“You’re focusing on one particular area,” Bettman said. “I’m looking at the whole thing and the global view is great.”
Five of the top six teams are in the East this year, the Vegas Golden Knights led the West, finishing fifth overall with a franchise record 111 points.
Elsewhere, the fourth-place Maple Leafs haven’t been to the Cup Final in the expansion era and haven’t won the Cup since 1967. They’ll host the Lightning, who’ve been to the final round the past three seasons, winning two in a row before losing to Colorado in six games last postseason.
The Avalanche open the postseason with injury trouble for two of their top players: captain Gabriel Landeskog, who missed the season with a knee injury, is out, and reigning Norris Trophy winner Cale Makar is day-to-day with a lower body injury.
Vegas opens its first round series Tuesday at home against Winnipeg, the fifth time the Knights have been in the playoffs in only their sixth season of existence. It’s star center Jack Eichel’s first trip to the playoffs after spending the first six years of his career in Buffalo.
In their expansion season of 2017-18, the Knights lost the Cup to the Capitals in five games, and have returned to the playoffs every season except last year. “A lot of people counted us out,” Vegas left wing Reilly Smith said.
As the Stanley Cup playoffs begin, some old faces are out, new stars are rising, and 16 teams have begun their own counting.
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