NHL Play-In: Eastern Conference Preview

I won't spend too much time on the round-robin portion that is set to position the top four seeds, except to say this: it doesn't really matter. The Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning and Washington Capitals are by far the best teams in the Eastern Conference and can match up against any of the bottom-eight favourably, while the Philadelphia Flyers know they should be battling it out more seriously against a team that is facing elimination instead of just trying to reach game shape, so they'll still be happy with an 0-3 record but are aiming for a higher seed just so they can perhaps avoid playing a team like the Pittsburgh Penguins too early.

All four of these teams know their Round 1 opponent will be battle-tested and will have faced more recently the pressure of an elimination game.

Caroline Hurricanes vs New York Rangers
The Rangers are one of three teams (with the Montréal Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks) that have no business playing right now according to their regular-season performances. Don't get me wrong: having a Hart and Linsday candidate in Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad to back him up and feed off of him is great, but the supporting cast of Chris Kreider, Ryan Strome, Pavel Buchnevich and a green Kaapo Kakko is not the kind of depth that scares a top seed. Heck, they'll be facing perhaps the best defense in the league in this series - whether Dougie Hamilton - who should have been on the Norris Trophy finalist list this season - plays or not; Jaccob Slavin is still there, Jake Gardiner can provide some of Hamilton's offense, Brady Skeij was once the Rangers' top guy, Sami Vatanen is a luxury on the second pair, and the likes of Brett Pesce, Trevor Van Riemsdyk, Stanley Cup winner Joel Edmundson and youngster Haydn Fleury can all replace in the middle pairing, be it for a game or a series.

The Rags' defense isn't shabby either, with Tony DeAngelo, Adam Fox, and Jacon Trouba, but they lack the Canes' depth and star power. All three of their goalies - yes, even the aging Henrik Lundqvist - are better than Carolina's.

Offense: Rangers
Defense: Hurricanes
Goaltending: Rangers
Coaching: Hurricanes
My heart: Rangers

My pick: Rangers in 4. The team that scores more goals wins. The Rangers will have a hard time between the red line and the offensive zone's face-off circles, but they'll score on every other shot they take and stop 90% of Carolina's. The math is in their favour.


New York Islanders vs Florida Panthers
This one pits two of the best coaches in the game - the Islanders' Barry Trotz and the Panthers' Joel Quenneville - against each other for a chance to enter the Stanley Cup playoffs. Quenneville's three Cups with the Hawks trumps Trotz' single one from his days with the Caps following a decade building the Nashville Predators into contenders, but Trotz still has the edge because he can remake an entire organization in a single season while keeping more than half the same staff. That's a master tactician at work.

I also want to give the Isles the edge in nets, not because Thomas Greiss or Semyon Varlamov at their best could ever be in the same zone as the Cats' Sergei Bobrovsky, but this is Bob's second-straight sub-par season, and a Varlamov at the top of his game is better than Bob at 80% of his.

If Aaron Ekblad uses this series to pull out of his shell and become the Norris contender he should be, Florida will also have the endge on D, but if he merely remains "pretty good", he and Keith Yandle will get outshined by the Isles' group in a hurry.

Where the matchup is uneven is on offense, as the Panthers boast two of the ten best two-way forwards in the game in Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau, two 90+-point players in their prime who do not fear the opposition's top lines - and they've seen better than Mathew Barzal, Brock Nelson, Anders Lee, and the rest of the 40-point producers from Long Island.

Offense: Panthers
Defense: Islanders
Goaltending: Panthers (I believe!)
Coaching: Islanders
My heart: Panthers

My pick: Islanders in 5. They're too deep and balanced to not advance against the Panthers, but it won't be easy.


Pittsburgh Penguins vs Montréal Canadiens
Forget Carey Price - the NHL doesn't even consider him in the top-10 anymore - and rightfully so. If the Habs are to have a chance, Phillip Danault has to outplay Sidney Crosby and/or Evgeni Malkin (doable in a short series), Shea Weber has to shut down the Pens for 30 minutes per game with Jeff Petry handling the other half (not likely, but stranger things have happened) and the Canadiens' offensive support cast has to outplay Pittsburgh's, with at least one middle-six forward - so, not Danault, Brendan Gallagher or Tomas Tatar - scoring 5 goals in the series (sure, why not?) and the Pens have to forget they can also enter the Montréal zone from the left side (not likely).

These games can all go to overtime - that's how much parity there is in today's NHL - but they will all end in Pittsburgh's favour. They are superior in every way despite being on the back end of their Cup contention window.

This scenario is ideal for Habs GM Marc Bergevin, however: he can claim the team didn't have that bad a season since they made the play-in round and still ice a bad enough team to have a fair shot (25% chance at this point) at the first-overall pick in the next draft, Alexis Lafrenière, a generational talent.

Offense: Penguins
Defense: Penguins
Goaltending: Penguins
Coaching: Penguins
My heart: Canadiens

My pick: Penguins in 2. This is a dress rehearsal for the first round, the intensity will mount with each game, but try as they might, Claude Julien's men will be overmatched.


Toronto Maple Leafs vs Columbus Blue Jackets
No team is facing more pressure than the Leafs. Sure, the Edmonton Oilers are also playing at home for whatever that means in an empty building - the city is still abuzz and the home teams will get preferred treatment in the media in each hub - but the Oilers will benefit from an excitement factor unseen since 2006 while the Leafs have been expected to contend for the Stanley Cup for three years now, and the fans and media are getting impatient.

Add to that the fact that the Blue Jackets swept the Presidents' Trophy-winning Bolts last year and made the play-in despite losing Panarin and Bobrovsky (as well as Ryan Dzingel and Matt Duchene) on the strength of even better team play and even better goaltending from a pair of rookies and you've got a recipe for disaster in the 416.

The Leafs have the second-best offense in the Conference after Tampa, but their defense is questionable and their goalie has had a bad year; the Jackets score by committee,  but both goalies have ranked in the NHL's top-10 for most of the season, helped by the fact that they're playing behind one of the five best defenses in the league (behind Carolina's and Tampa's, on par with Nashville's and ahead of Calgary's).

Offense: Leafs, by far
Defense: Jackets
Goaltending: Jackets
Coaching: Jackets
My heart: Jackets

My pick: Blue Jackets in 5. The smile on John Tortorella's face when he eliminates the Queen City's boys in blue will be worth the NHL Center Ice subscription on its own.