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Thanks summer, it's been real. With the NHL playoffs beginning, my days enjoying the nice weather are over. For the next number of weeks I will be living on my couch, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
The fun begins at noon Saturday in Toronto, with non-stop action taking us well beyond midnight. This is incredible.
New York Rangers (+110) @ Carolina Hurricanes (-130)
It's only right to have money on the first official game in nearly five months, and it just so happens to be my favorite bet of the day. Following such a long layoff, rust and fatigue are going to play big parts early on in the NHL's return to play. Because of that, coaching and depth are going to be huge in these play-in series - the Hurricanes hold significant edges in both.
Even without the injured Dougie Hamilton and Brett Pesce, the Canes are both deeper and stronger on the blue line, especially after acquiring Brady Skjei - from the Rangers - and Sami Vatanen at the deadline. But the big edge here comes at forward, where Carolina has far more depth scoring.
The Canes are stacked down the middle and pose a legitimate scoring threat with their bottom six. It's an area the Rangers struggle, and are even further shorthanded in that regard with Brendan Lemieux suspended. Carolina has four players in its bottom six that registered at least 29 points this season. New York has none.
With Rod Brind'Amour scheming behind the bench, the Canes will play the matchups and slow the Rangers' top lines, capitalizing on their depth to claim a crucial Game 1 victory.
Pick: Hurricanes (-130)
Florida Panthers (-105) @ New York Islanders (-115)
While there's a lot to like about the Panthers, they're going nowhere if Sergei Bobrovsky can't figure it out. The 31-year-old is coming off the worst statistical regular season of his career, and it crippled the team. Their hopes in this series hinge on the netminder turning a corner, but a miserable outing in their exhibition game on Wednesday - allowing five goals on 34 shots - doesn't inspire much confidence.
The Islanders aren't exactly an offensive juggernaut, but they will steadily attack with all four lines and grind the Panthers down. New York is incredibly deep down the middle - Matthew Barzal, Brock Nelson, Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Casey Cizikas - and on the blue line. Barry Trotz has transformed the Isles into a defensive juggernaut, and will have them ready to expose a fundamentally flawed Panthers team in Game 1.
Alex Moretto is a sports betting writer for theScore. A journalism graduate from Guelph-Humber University, he has worked in sports media for over a decade. He will bet on anything from the Super Bowl to amateur soccer, is too impatient for futures, and will never trust a kicker. Find him on Twitter @alexjmoretto.
Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Dougie Hamilton will not be in the club's lineup for Game 1 against the New York Rangers on Saturday, head coach Rod Brind'Amour confirmed, according to team reporter Michael Smith.
Brind'Amour said Hamilton is "getting better" but isn't yet ready for game action.
Hamilton, 27, suffered a broken fibula in January but was ready to return in April. However, he sustained an unspecified injury - which is reportedly not related to his broken leg - in practice last week.
The 6-foot-6 rearguard contributed 14 goals and 40 points through 47 games this season.
The Hurricanes will also be without blue-liner Brett Pesce, who continues to recover from shoulder surgery.
The NHL announced it will show support for Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements when the postseason begins Saturday.
Players will wear "#WeSkateFor Equality" helmet decals and receive sweaters to customize with the hashtag and the name of a person or movement they are representing.
#WeSkateForBlackLives will also be displayed on digital screens and seat coverings at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto and Rogers Place in Edmonton.
The initiative is also intended to honor frontline workers amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"We believe in terms of focusing on the need to combat racism and to also pay tribute to the responders from the medical community of COVID-19, we think we'll be paying the appropriate respect and focusing on, particularly, social justice," NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told NBC News' Craig Melvin on Friday. "That is something that is a priority for us going forward."
San Jose Sharks forward Evander Kane, who is the co-head of the Hockey Diversity Alliance, ripped the league Thursday for its social justice efforts thus far.
"The NHL can put 'Black Lives Matter' all over the rink, shout 'Black Lives Matter' from the mountains," Kane said. "No matter what they do or say, it's all going to fall on deaf ears with me and every other person in the HDA because the league has made no effort to support its own Black players."
Colorado Avalanche forward and HDA member Nazem Kadri also criticized the league this week for its lack of action.
"From a league standpoint, I think we'd like to maybe see a little more acknowledgment and having them address the situation and know that they stand with their players," he said.
Kadri and teammate Pierre-Edouard Bellemare stood side by side in solidarity with Minnesota Wild players Matt Dumba and Jordan Greenway during the anthems before the two teams squared off in an exhibition game Wednesday. All four players are racial minorities.
After spending a year playing overseas, Jesse Puljujarvi has come to the realization his best chance at continuing his NHL career is returning to the Edmonton Oilers.
Puljujarvi requested a trade from the Oilers last year, but with a new regime in place, he's not ruling out the possibility of a reunion.
"You can never say no," he told Finnish news outlet Tampere Iltalehti, as translated by NHL.com. "I have grown and I see things a little differently. There's now a different GM (Ken Holland) and head coach (Dave Tippett) out there.
"They're building a winning team in Edmonton. It may be possible that I will still be playing there."
The 22-year-old gave the Oilers an ultimatum last year, stating he would spend the year in Europe if he wasn't traded. That proposition came about a month after the team hired both Holland and Tippett.
Puljujarvi wound up playing the 2019-20 season with Karpat in the Finnish Elite League, finishing fifth in the league with 24 goals and fourth with 53 points in 56 games.
He said a recent conference call with Holland and Tippett "left a positive overall picture," though he wouldn't divulge details.
The Carolina Hurricanes were one team to reportedly kick tires on the fourth overall pick of the 2016 NHL Draft, but no deal ever came to fruition.
Puljujarvi remains a restricted free agent. The Oilers retained his rights by giving him a qualifying offer.
The 6-foot-4 winger has collected 17 goals and 37 points in 139 career NHL games.
Nathan MacKinnon had been a Hart Trophy nominee for 24 hours when, one afternoon last week, he leaned forward in a chair at the Colorado Avalanche's practice facility and flashed a scarcely perceptible smile. If his brilliance on the ice this season was enough to establish his MVP case, he still wanted to make a point about his team - the best for which he's played, in his estimation, since he arrived to revive the franchise as the No. 1 draft pick in 2013.
"I think our record speaks for itself," MacKinnon said on a Zoom conference call with reporters. "We're (two points) out of first in the West with a hurt team all season. I think when our team's healthy, we've lost one or two games all year."
Pedants and doubters could quibble with the significance of that last remark. The Avalanche were almost never healthy in 2019-20, so it's understandable that a small sample would produce few defeats. Yet it's also easy to grasp the transcendent 24-year-old center's logic. Except for MacKinnon, every member of Colorado's core - from Gabriel Landeskog to Mikko Rantanen to Cale Makar to Philipp Grubauer - missed extended time because of injury, often in tandem, and the Avs didn't falter. Imagine what they could do as a group at full bore.
The Avalanche's first genuine Stanley Cup contender of the MacKinnon era is fit and itching to steal the show in the NHL's bubbled playoff tournament. Not since Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg's overlapping heyday has an Avs team been this equipped to go deep. If Vancouver's Quinn Hughes doesn't win the Calder Trophy, Makar will. Even in a regular season cut short by the coronavirus, MacKinnon's 93 points in 69 games were just shy of his career high. Together they form the foundation of a potential juggernaut.
L-R: MacKinnon, Rantanen, Landeskog, Makar. Brian Babineau / NHL / Getty Images
The Western Conference, winnowed to 12 remaining teams, offers a huge challenge for Colorado. The defending champion St. Louis Blues seem as safe a pick as any to return to the Cup Final. They've been there before, as have the Vegas Golden Knights, a phenomenal puck-possession team whose .606 points percentage - third in the Western Conference behind the Blues (.662) and Avalanche (.657) - probably understates the threat they pose. The fourth-place Dallas Stars conceded the fewest goals (2.52 per game) in the conference. No other dark-horse Cup candidate can match Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl's Edmonton Oilers in star power.
With MacKinnon and Rantanen signed long term, stud prospects in the pipeline, and the cap space to accommodate a raise for Makar next summer, Colorado appears primed to surpass each of those teams and run the West for years to come. That forecast might not even have to wait till 2021, though. Hockey Reference's Simple Rating System judged the Avalanche to be the conference's best team this season, the product of finishing in the top five league-wide in offense and defense despite that rash of important absences.
This point bears repeating: None of the aforementioned stars are hurt anymore. Suffice to say they're excited for the round robin to begin Sunday in Edmonton.
"We have no weaknesses," MacKinnon said.
"I came (into Colorado) a couple years before Nate," Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog said, "so we've been through the same lineups and the same teams, and I don't think we've ever seen a stronger lineup than this in our tenure here. I think we're just scratching the surface on what we can do."
MacKinnon skates against the Minnesota Wild on Wednesday. Dave Sandford / NHL / Getty Images
The last time Colorado reached a conference final was in 2002, the year after Sakic, Milan Hejduk, Alex Tanguay, and Patrick Roy led a stacked roster to the club's second Stanley Cup title. (You might recall that Ray Bourque, then 40 and on the verge of retiring without a Cup, was also on the team.) The Avalanche's next 16 seasons produced as many first-round series victories as top-five draft picks - four each, characteristic of their swing between fleetingly good, wretched, and the mucky ground in between. (A fifth high pick, last year's No. 4 choice Bowen Byram, arrived in the system as the result of a trade with Ottawa. More on him later.)
Following three straight down seasons early in MacKinnon's career, the last few have looked increasingly promising under head coach Jared Bednar. Colorado started 2019-20 hot with seven wins in eight games, but the injury onslaught began in the ninth contest when Rantanen toe-picked and twisted his left ankle, and it never abated. Rantanen sat out for 16 games; so did Landeskog starting five nights later. Makar missed eight games in December and five in March. Rantanen (again), Grubauer, Nazem Kadri, and Andre Burakovsky had each been shelved with various ailments for weeks when the regular season was suspended on March 12.
Colorado's savior was MacKinnon, who wound up registering 43 more points than his closest teammate, Makar, due to these circumstances and his own dominance. MacKinnon scored in bunches, such as the 24 points he supplied in the 14 games that Rantanen and Landeskog both missed in the fall. He scored beautifully, as when he burned three Canucks defenders on an end-to-end rush and potted a wrister in overtime. His 318 shots were the most in the NHL. Draisaitl and Artemi Panarin - MacKinnon's fellow Hart and Ted Lindsay Award finalists - had splendid seasons, but couldn't elevate their teams to the same heights in less adverse situations.
"It's tough when you're missing six, seven guys who are usually in the lineup, and then you have to kind of carry the team," Rantanen said. "Guys did a really good job stepping in, but he was the horse leading the army."
Among those contributors who pitched in were four offseason acquisitions brought in by Sakic, now the Avalanche's longtime general manager, to replenish the forward ranks: Burakovsky (a 20-goal scorer for the first time), Kadri, Joonas Donskoi, and Valeri Nichushkin. Colorado is deeper offensively and much stronger defensively than in years past, aided in the latter category by the sterling play of goalies Grubauer and 30-year-old rookie Pavel Francouz. The Avs posted this season's third-best team save percentage (.932) at five-on-five, per Natural Stat Trick. Obliged to handle a month's worth of starts when Grubauer was hurt in a Feb. 15 outdoor game, Francouz excelled in his longest stretch as an NHL No. 1, winning eight of 12 appearances.
Splitting time against the Minnesota Wild on Wednesday, Grubauer and Francouz combined to make 32 saves as the Avs won their lone tune-up game in Edmonton 3-2. Which goalie will start beyond the round robin remains undecided, and Bednar has classified the question as a good problem to have.
"We haven't accomplished anything yet," Landeskog said. "But at the same time, there's no reason for us not to feel confident going into (the playoffs), knowing that we have 20-plus guys that are out here and can really contribute."
Grubauer (right) and Francouz. Andy Devlin / NHL / Getty Images
Stars coach Rick Bowness recently told NHL Network that he considers the Avalanche the hardest team to beat in the West, citing their abundant speed and skill as a major edge in this accelerated restart.That combination is the expected product of a squad's elite players skewing young - compared to MacKinnon, Rantanen, and Makar, Landeskog is an old head at age 27 - and it only figures to intensify. As soon as next year, the Avs' defense could feature Makar, Samuel Girard (already a top-four mainstay at 22), and Byram and Conor Timmins, celebrated prospects who both made the 31-player bubble roster. Alex Newhook, college hockey's rookie of the year in 2019-20, should follow shortly at center.
Keeping this core intact under the salary cap - Colorado had more than $5 million in space when the season ended, per CapFriendly - is attainable because of MacKinnon's criminally team-friendly deal, which he signed in 2016 before his ascent to megastardom at an average annual value of $6.3 million. St. Louis and Vegas, those other incumbent Western powers, are up against the cap with much older cores. MacKinnon is inked at that price through 2022-23, providing three years of runway beyond this postseason to solidify a renewed Avs reign.
Not that MacKinnon is in the mood to wait. On his Zoom call before the Avalanche departed for Edmonton, his MVP nomination already bagged, he praised his teammates for uplifting him on the ice this season and for their closeness as a group. He thought about what's attainable right now, with competitive games afoot again and this roster finally at full health.
He scored against the Wild on Wednesday, off another solo rush, fewer than five minutes into the unofficial start to his playoffs.
"To leave a legacy, you have to win," MacKinnon said. "That's not what I'm really looking to do, leave a legacy, but I want to win with these guys."
Since the Hockey Diversity Alliance formed a bit over a month ago, Evander Kane says the group has been unable to find common ground with the NHL in its discussions.
"The NHL can put ‘Black Lives Matter’ all over the rink, shout ‘Black Lives Matter’ from the mountains,” the San Jose Sharks forward said, according to TSN's Frank Seravalli. "No matter what they do or say, it’s all going to fall on deaf ears with me and every other person in the HDA because the league has made no effort to support its own Black players.”
The HDA has presented ways the league can help the cause to the NHL over the past few weeks, but they have yet to agree on anything, and discussions remain ongoing, Kane said.
The 28-year-old added that the HDA and NHL met over a Zoom call on Wednesday and that it was "pretty hostile at times."
Kane criticized the league's upcoming #WeSkateFor initiative that will roll out when games resume on Aug. 1. The NHL's plan revolves around several issues and causes that encompass the Black community, LGBTQ community, frontline workers, and many others.
"We support all of those issues and we always have. But this is the NHL’s campaign to talk about our issue," Kane added.
"They’re trying to wrap all of these separate issues – including mental health, LGTBQ, women’s rights, everything – into one when our message is about racism. It completely yet again misses the mark and is so out of touch with what we’re talking about."
The NHL's senior vice president of social impact Kim Davis responded to this by saying, "Until you see how the treatment of anti-racism and ‘Black Lives’ actually rolls out on Saturday, it’s probably premature to judge how effectively we deliver the message, and whether we’ve ‘missed the mark.'"
Earlier on Thursday the HDA released a video that included a number of star athletes from across all sports leagues such as Patrick Mahomes, Brooks Koepka, and Connor McDavid expressing their support for the organization:
Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand left his team's exhibition game against the Columbus Blue Jackets early Thursday after hitting Zach Werenski along the boards. The incident occurred near the end of the third period, and he did not return.
“He left. I don’t think it’s anything serious,” head coach Bruce Cassidy said, according to MassLive's Matt Vautour. “But we’ll have a better idea in the morning.”
The Bruins will take on the Philadelphia Flyers in their first round-robin game on Sunday. Marchand racked up 28 goals and 87 points in 70 games this season.
