NHL post-season brings much needed fun and entertainment

A Matthew Tkachuk card.

    It feels so great to be hooked into the NHL hockey world now more than ever.

    On July 28, the NHL resumed its 2019-20 campaign after being on pause since March 12 due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic with three exhibition tilts. Skating in the hub cities of Edmonton and Toronto with no fans in either building, NHL teams played a short exhibition schedule to prepare for post-season action.

    On Aug. 1, the NHL post-season opened in those hub cities with 16 teams taking part in a qualifying round that consisted of eight series that were best-of-five in length.
    As those games went on, eight clubs that comprised the top four overall spots in the regular season standings in the Eastern and Western Conferences played round robin games for seeding.

    The eight qualifying round series gave fans the NHL playoff fix they needed in spades. It was so easy to get wrapped up in storylines.

    Calgary Flames left-winger Matthew Tkachuk shined as the punk type pest as the Flames took out the Winnipeg Jets in four games in Edmonton.

    The Jets came unglued in the first game of the series, when their star centre Mark Scheifele was injured on a hit attempt from Tkachuk.

A Mark Scheifele card.

    Tkachuk was trying to finish a check and Scheifele turned awkwardly, avoided most of the contact and was lost for the rest of the series with an Achilles injury.

    After the Flames won Game 1 by a 4-1 score, Jets head coach Paul Maurice went off on Tkachuk saying the Flames forward tried to kick at Scheifele’s Achilles.
    Maurice was pulling classic gamesmanship, because even though Tkachuk is a punk, it is hard to imagine he would have time to even think about intentionally injuring Scheifele on that play with a kick.

    The posturing by Maurice led to the Jets pulling out a 3-2 win in Game 2. However, it seemed the Jets continued to be too distracted by Tkachuk and combined with the injuries piling up on the Winnipeg side, the Flames sealed the series with respective 6-2 and 4-0 victories.

    What makes Tkachuk more infuriating to play against is he puts up good statistics on top of being an agitator. He had a goal and an assist and was a plus-three in the plus-minus department in four games against the Jets.

    Tkachuk appeared in 69 regular season games with the Flames in 2019-20 piling up 28 goals and 38 assists.

A Connor McDavid card.

    The time off the NHL had from March to July provided some unpredictability when the post-season got underway too. That resulted in two of the NHL’s biggest names in Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby getting eliminated in the qualifying round.

    In McDavid’s case, you also expected deep down the superstar centre would have a good series, but his Edmonton Oilers would still get knocked out of the playoffs.

    The Oilers proved they are the modern day “weak-kneed wimps” and couldn’t be saves by McDavid piling up five goals and four assists. They were eliminated by the 12-seeded Chicago Blackhawks in four games.

    In a normal season, the Blackhawks, who were the final Western Conference team placed in the post-season, wouldn’t have a sniff of the playoffs. Still, they had been improving during a reloading year with steady star veterans and young guns that were ready to take off.

    On the veteran side, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane showed a pedigree that allowed the Blackhawks to win three Stanley Cup titles in the 2010s. Chicago netminder Corey Crawford rounded back into his post-season best form.
    Young 19-year-old centre Kirby Dach established that he could be a force with the Blackhawks piling up four assists and a plus-three rating. 

A Sidney Crosby Card.

    The graduate of the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades threw some big hits and executed tough defensive assignments against the Oilers biggest stars.

    Crosby and his Pittsburgh Penguins were done in by a tough goalie in Montreal Canadiens netminder Carey Price.

    Price stopped 126-of-133 shots fired his way for a .947 save percentage as the Canadiens, who were the 12^th seed in the Eastern Conference, took out the Penguins in four games.

    Crosby did collect a pair of goals and an assist for the Penguins in the series loss.
    Then there was the Toronto Maple Leafs. Loaded with young stars, they still couldn’t find a way to produce a long playoff run playing a back-and-forth qualifying series with the Columbus Blue Jackets that went to a series deciding Game 5.

    The Maple Leafs series with the Blue Jackets was the only qualifying series to go the distance. In that Game 5 that was played Sunday in Toronto, Blue Jackets netminder Joonas Korpisalo made 33 saves in his team’s 3-0 shutout win to take the series 3-2.

    For haters of the Maple Leafs, Sunday was an annual day of joy and celebration.

    Overall, the qualifying round of the NHL playoffs allowed the mind for a few hours to get immersed in the familiar ritual of following hockey playoffs.

    No matter who you follow, it was fun to have that back in life again, and here is to the rest of the NHL playoffs going off without a hook.

Hurricanes are good for the NHL playoffs, other notes

We the North Carolina pic.twitter.com/qxiwgkg2t8

— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) August 5, 2020

    It is so great to have the Carolina Hurricanes in the NHL playoffs.

    The staffers that work in their communications, social media and marking departments are the best. The Hurricanes swept the New York Rangers 3-0 in a best-of-five qualifying series. Before taking Game 3 of the set 4-1 on Aug. 4, the Hurricanes put up a beauty tweet on Twitter.

    Playing in the hub city of Toronto, the Hurricanes on Aug. 4 walked past the lighted up sign of the NBA’s Toronto Raptors to get to the ice surface. The Raptors won last year’s NBA title.

    Hurricanes Twitter showed video of their players walking by that Raptors sign and put up the caption, “We the North Carolina.”

    It was funny.

    Of course, it played off the Raptors slogan, “We the North.”

    Still, it is those type of little things from Hurricanes Twitter that make the NHL playoffs that much more fun.

The Hurricanes made David Ayres famous.

    The Hurricanes have hit a few homers in the last couple of years. They made emergency backup goalie David Ayres famous after he dressed for the Hurricanes on Feb. 22 and entered their regular season game after both regular Carolina netminders went down with injury.

    The 42-year-old Ayres turned away eight of 10 shots sent his way picking up a regular season win as the Hurricanes beat the host Maple Leafs in Toronto 6-3.

    Following that contest, Ayres went on seemingly a hero’s tour across North America.

    Last season, the Hurricanes advanced to the Eastern Conference Championship series and sold a tonne of T-shirts with a “bunch of jerks” written on them after long time hockey commentator Don Cherry used that line to describe that hockey club.

    As the playoffs move along, you wonder what the Hurricanes office crew will come up with next.

• Phase 2 of the confusing 2020 NHL Draft Lottery goes Monday at the NHL Network studios in Secaucus, N.J. The first overall pick for the NHL Entry Draft tentatively scheduled for Oct. 9 and 10 is still up for grabs. Left-winger Alexis Lafreniere of the QMJHL’s Rimouski Oceanic is expected to be the first overall selection.
• On Friday, the NHL’s Washington Capitals loaned centre Aliaksei Protas to Dinamo Minsk of the Kontinental Hockey League to start the 2020-21 campaign. Last season, Protas topped the WHL’s Prince Albert Raiders in scoring with 31 goals and 59 assists for 80 points in 58 regular season games. He had a plus-37 rating in the plus-minus department. Protas is eligible to return to the Raiders for his 19-year-old season. The start of the WHL’s regular season has been pushed back to Dec. 4 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Protas is expected to be recalled when activities start for the 2020-21 season in the NHL or WHL.
• I had a pair of stories appear on the newly created Howe Happenings blog that was created for the Gordie Howe Sports Complex. The post “Aiming for new future heights building on a storied past” about the evolution of the Gordie Howe Sports Complex Management Corporation can be found by clicking right here. The story “McCullough’s day at Bob Van Impe” about Devon McCullough’s glorious win at softball worlds in 2015 can be found by clicking right here.

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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