During the first postseason that Brayden Point carried the Moose Jaw Warriors to great heights, the metaphor became slightly too real for team executive Alan Millar's liking.

The problem, in effect, was a veteran teammate’s haste to return the favor. Point had just turned 16 when, in the spring of 2012, the Warriors summoned him from the midget ranks for the duration of their Western Hockey League playoff run. Seldom does a young call-up make an immediate impact against players as old as 20.

However, the magic act Point conjured is still in a class of its own. He scored in overtime to win Game 4 of the first round - and again in Game 4 of Round 2 to seal a sweep.

Millar, the Warriors' director of hockey operations that season, recalls the passing alarm he felt in a low-ceilinged away dressing room when Dylan McIlrath raised Point onto his shoulders to celebrate that second OT goal: "I thought for sure he was going to pummel his head off the roof." McIlrath was a 6-foot-5 future NHL defenseman in a Moose Jaw lineup replete with bruisers. Counterintuitively, Point was the guy who played hero, an astounding debut for a center who'd been drafted to junior weighing all of 130 pounds.

"Size was always a topic of conversation. It certainly was a huge topic of conversation heading into his NHL draft year. That's why he ended up going late in the third round," Millar said about Point in a recent interview.

"I think that was a driving force for him. I think he's always had a little bit of a burr in his saddle about people questioning him. He continues to prove people wrong."

With Point in the fold, the Tampa Bay Lightning are a five-star team, and his ascent to stardom at the NHL level was the least expected of all. From the No. 79 draft slot in 2014, Point has bucked external doubts about his skating and his build - he's now listed at 5-foot-10, 166 pounds - to make himself indispensable to a juggernaut. Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, and Andrei Vasilevskiy were supposed to be as great as they are. With Point and Nikita Kucherov, the No. 58 pick in 2011, Tampa Bay, well, bottled lightning.

Never has that been more evident than in these playoffs. Stamkos, injured in the lead-up to the restart, hasn't played in the bubble and won't appear in the Eastern Conference Final. His is an absence that would rattle or doom most any other team, but Tampa hasn't wavered. The Lightning are 12-3 overall, have outscored opponents on average by more than a goal per game, and are two wins away from getting to the Stanley Cup Final - though they may have to pursue those next wins without Point, who was hurt in Game 2 against the New York Islanders. (Head coach Jon Cooper had no update on his status Thursday.)

Wednesday's 2-1 victory was the Lightning's 48th in the playoffs under Cooper, the most in the NHL since 2013-14 - his first season in charge. His tenure has produced a trip to the 2015 final, where the once-dynastic Chicago Blackhawks topped Tampa in six games, and a pair of Game 7 defeats a round earlier. Up until he exited Game 2, being able to count on Point looked like a potential salve, the kind of move that could yet enable a stacked core to finally deliver a championship.

Point's 23 points in 15 playoff games slot him second in the NHL behind Colorado's Nathan MacKinnon. His 19 points at even strength are three clear of MacKinnon and Kucherov for the league lead. His Corsi For (61.1%) and expected goals (64.8%) percentages rank top-10 among forwards who've played at least 150 minutes, according to Natural Stat Trick, and no player has matched his two OT winners.

"His emergence allows you to do so much more with your lineup," Cooper said in a recent media availability. "Having top-tier centermen who can score and check is a pretty good luxury to have."

Ever-dependable as Tampa exacted vengeance against the Columbus Blue Jackets and toppled the Presidents' Trophy-winning Boston Bruins, Point had recorded points in six straight games, and in 12 of 13 overall, entering the Islanders series. That was prologue to his magisterial five-point effort in Game 1, when the range of his offensive abilities - the footwork, the stickhandling, the sense to get open in scoring position or to find a teammate who is - helped the Lightning lay waste to New York's normally sturdy defensive structure.

Consider his opening goal 74 seconds in, when a nasty stutter-step let him loop around Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock and bear in alone on goalie Thomas Greiss. Consider his second goal, when he spearheaded a power-play zone entry, snuck backdoor to the crease, called for the puck once he established inside position, and tapped in Hedman's attentive shot-pass.

"He can do it any way you want to do it," said Moose Jaw coach Mark O'Leary, an assistant with the Warriors throughout Point's junior career. "You see what he does off the rush or tracking back for takeaways, to lift guys' sticks. He can play end-to-end that way, but then he can also do it down low. Down in and around the net, he's got that small stature, but he's got his nose close to the ice and is not afraid to get dirty to get the job done."

Nor does Point shy from pressure. The Lightning's overtime record in the bubble is 4-0, and his handiwork has led directly to three of those winners.

Conforming to O'Leary's point, he's delivered in sudden death in different ways. A month ago, on his 60th shift of the Lightning's five-overtime epic against Columbus - Point's 46:59 of ice time led Tampa forwards - he had juice left to prolong a cycle under duress, slip into free space in the slot, and capitalize when the puck bounced to him.

Four games later, Point was the player who eliminated the Blue Jackets - righting the wrong of last year's infamous sweep - by winning a defensive-zone faceoff and, later in the shift, settling matters with a slick backhand off a giveaway.

Leap ahead to double overtime in Game 5 against Boston and there was Point, toward the end of a long shift, flagging down two loose pucks in the Bruins' zone to enable Hedman's series-clincher. Whether he was sharper in those chases or simply wanted possession more, the result was decisive.

"That's something Brayden has in his DNA. He's a big-time player, a big-moment player," Millar said.

"I feel like he's driving our team," Tampa defenseman Mikhail Sergachev told reporters ahead of the Islanders series. "He's everywhere. he's good defensively, great offensively. He's breaking the puck out for us. He's easy to play with. He talks a lot on the ice, off the ice. He's just that guy who helps you out, wants you to get better. He's been unreal for us ever since he got here."

The improvement that's unlocked this dream scenario has been to Point's speed. Preposterous as it may seem in the context of his runner-up finish to Connor McDavid at the 2018 fastest-skater competition, it was ultimately his feet, conspiring with his size, that knocked him down NHL draft boards. Point's always been quick, said Tyler Drader, his bantam hockey coach in Calgary, but he needed to work with revered Lightning skating consultant Barb Underhill to straighten and optimize his stride.

"He didn't lose many races (in junior) - those quick six-, 10-feet races - because he was so smart. He'd have a head start because he could read the play. It was the end-to-end skating that wasn't always pretty," O'Leary said. "He did all the work to turn something that was a knock against him into, you know, he's one of the fastest players in the league now."

At 24, Point's also a rare young regular in the Lightning's veteran lineup, and one of the relatively few under-25 impact players still competing. The group includes Sergachev and Tampa center Anthony Cirelli; New York's Mat Barzal and Anthony Beauvillier; Vegas' Alex Tuch; Denis Gurianov, Roope Hintz, and the masterful Miro Heiskanen of Dallas. On contenders that hew older, Heiskanen and Point are cornerstones, which in the Lightning's case could conceivably extend their title window well into Stamkos', Hedman's, and Kucherov's 30s.

In a sense, Point is only doing what he always has: rising to heights unforeseen from the outside, either earlier or to a greater degree than expected. Just as Millar, McIlrath, and the Warriors treasured his production at age 16, Drader can recall a time he considered Point his "secret weapon." During the 2009-10 Under-15 AAA season, when Point was 13 and stood about 5-foot-2, he set up the goal that won Drader's Calgary Bisons a provincial title.

The Cup spotlight awaits if Point heals soon and Tampa can finish off the Islanders. The Golden Knights are deep and dangerous and the Stars invariably play stingy, but unlike in 2015, no duo as electric as prime Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews is set to emerge from the Western Conference. MacKinnon's playoffs are over, and no other player has looked as singularly ready for the stage as Point.

Certainly not in the clutch, at least.

"I think it's his mental toughness. I think it's his competitiveness. He thrives in (pressurized) moments. People get nervous in those moments and try not to make a mistake. He wants to win the game," Drader said, teeing up a reflection on Point's first OT winner against Columbus.

"It was funny," Drader said. "That five-period overtime, I was just like, I know Brayden is going to (end it). He's going to set the goal up or he's going to score. I just knew it in my bones. That's just what he does."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Vegas Golden Knights eliminated the Vancouver Canucks from the NHL playoffs on Friday night. Here are three takeaways from Vegas' 3-0 Game 7 win.

Demko's hot streak will live on

Hockey is amusingly illogical sometimes. Nothing made sense about Thatcher Demko turning rock solid in Game 5 and 6. The untested rookie backup came in cold to deny 90 of 91 shots against the league's most relentless offensive team. All Vancouver needed to complete the postseason's unlikeliest turnaround - to beat Vegas a third time in four nights - was for logic to remain suspended a few more hours.

Well, that happened, and the Golden Knights advancing nonetheless is almost the secondary story here. This week's breakout star in the Edmonton bubble turned aside the first 32 pucks he saw in Game 7, and he made 33 stops in total. Demko exits the playoffs with a .985 save percentage. Let's just say that wasn't expected from him.

Consider the route Demko took from Boston College, out of which Vancouver drafted him No. 36 overall in 2014, to the postgame handshake line at Rogers Place, where everyone from Mark Stone to Robin Lehner to Vegas coach Peter DeBoer greeted him with bulged eyeballs and a shake of the head. Demko had only appeared in 10 NHL games before 2019-20, and he was pedestrian this season as Jacob Markstrom's regular backup, logging a .905 save percentage and a minus-3.67 goals saved above average mark.

Prior to Game 5 against Vegas, Demko had played all of eight competitive minutes - the length of his mop-up appearance in the series opener - since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March. But rust didn't faze him then, nor did fatigue on Friday on the latter half of a back-to-back. In Game 7, Demko stymied early Vegas pressure with glove, shoulder, and pad saves. He summoned a kick stop from his back and stoned Jonathan Marchessault and Nate Schmidt in close. He made 98 straight saves in all going back to Game 5, before Shea Theodore's late winner interrupted the streak.

Vegas absolutely swarmed Vancouver in Game 7. That they laid siege in the offensive zone - we'll get to the gory numbers shortly - enabled Demko to outshine the goalie who recorded three shutouts in the series. That's not to disparage Lehner, who vindicated DeBoer's confidence in him and surely made the save of his life with Brock Boeser bearing down. Demko's brilliance got Vancouver this far, and Lehner did what he had to do to ward off a collapse.

For more than a month now, zaniness has governed a good chunk of the action in the NHL bubble. Each conference's 12th-ranked team butted into the first round at the expense of Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby. This will be remembered as the postseason that featured a five-overtime epic and three clubs squandering 3-1 series leads simultaneously. The Dallas Stars redeemed themselves earlier Friday after 24-year-old rookie Joel Kiviranta became the first player since Wayne Gretzky to net a Game 7 hat trick.

Demko's star turn was a belated subplot of this spirited playoff run. It came after the Minnesota Wild were ousted and the defending champion St. Louis Blues coolly dispatched, and it lasted just four days, a quirk of a compressed series. But it was yet another prime example of this tournament's prevailing weirdness. It will be remembered, and if Vancouver's Demko era starts in earnest next year - Markstrom is set to hit unrestricted free agency - memories of Sept. 1-4, 2020, will boost the confidence of everyone involved.

Vegas' dominance was laughable but not meaningful

Game 7 was decided when Theodore struck on the power play, rendering moot 42-plus minutes of goalless five-on-five action.

Per Natural Stat Trick, here are some stats of note from that principal phase of the game: Vegas attempted 60 shots to Vancouver's 20. The Golden Knights lapped the Canucks in scoring chances (28-12) and nearly quintupled them in high-danger opportunities (14-3). If not for a late Vancouver surge following Theodore's goal, the expected goal percentage differential - Vegas finished at 75.7% - would have wound up even further out of whack.

It's hard to overstate how lopsided the run of play was in Game 7 and across the two Vancouver victories that preceded it. Had the Canucks managed to score and win again despite this disparity, the result would have gone down in history as an inconceivably strange way for a favored team to flame out of the playoffs. It would have been on par with last season when Cody Eakin went to the box for cross-checking and the San Jose Sharks scored four goals on the ensuing power play, costing Vegas a Game 7.

For such a young franchise, the Golden Knights have already flirted with their fair share of playoff anguish. Even in victory, with passage to the Western Conference final booked, it has to gnaw at Vegas' stable of accomplished scorers that no degree of O-zone dominance unsettled Demko.

Obviously, it's better to slam the opponent in puck possession and scoring chances than the alternative, and the Golden Knights' propensity to inundate teams is what makes them so dangerous. They led the league in shot share in the regular season, which translated to a top-three finish in the conference and the opportunity to snag the No. 1 seed in the playoff round robin.

The Golden Knights' approach to driving offense - wearing down defenders in waves that don't abate - is designed to bear fruit over long stretches. Small samples are unpredictable, and that almost doomed them. For now, Vegas can be heartened that Demko's departing, and by the likelihood that Dallas' Anton Khudobin, a goalie with a far greater track record, won't come close to duplicating his astounding form.

Theodore deserved his spin in the spotlight

All four teams that reached Game 7s in the Western Conference bracket featured one of the sport's finest blue-liners. Calder Trophy co-favorites Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar leave the bubble having each surpassed the playoff scoring record for rookie defensemen. (Hughes' 16 points bested Makar by one.) Miro Heiskanen retains a leg up on both of them, and not just because the Stars are still playing - his five goals and 21 points are the most of any skater not named Nathan MacKinnon or Mikko Rantanen.

If Heiskanen is Dallas' de facto Conn Smythe Trophy nominee at this stage, he has competition with Theodore, the only Golden Knight to solve Demko in Game 5 and 7. On a squad with a deep forward corps that tends to get lauded for tilting the ice, Theodore has asserted himself in these playoffs as an essential offensive catalyst. His six goals lead defensemen league-wide, and his 16 points are most on the team.

Every Golden Knight drove positive offensive figures against the Canucks, but it's Theodore whose 72.9% expected goals percentage topped the club for the series. The precision of his wrister from the point on the man advantage stood in contrast to the aimlessness of Vancouver's power play, which by going 0-for-4 in Game 7 failed to compensate for the Canucks' even-strength woes.

That Vancouver got this deep a full year before Hughes and Elias Pettersson's entry-level contracts expire is doubtlessly positive. They unseated the champs and startled a juggernaut that might yet win the Stanley Cup. Nothing is assured in hockey, though, as Demko reminded Vegas, and every lost playoff opportunity hurts, no matter how long the Canucks anticipate they'll contend. Credit Theodore - who in retrospect might be the catch of the 2017 expansion draft - with delivering that blow.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Vegas Golden Knights eliminated the Vancouver Canucks from the NHL playoffs on Friday night. Here are three takeaways from Vegas' 3-0 Game 7 win.

Demko's hot streak will live on

Hockey is amusingly illogical sometimes. Nothing made sense about Thatcher Demko turning rock solid in Game 5 and 6. The untested rookie backup came in cold to deny 90 of 91 shots against the league's most relentless offensive team. All Vancouver needed to complete the postseason's unlikeliest turnaround - to beat Vegas a third time in four nights - was for logic to remain suspended a few more hours.

Well, that happened, and the Golden Knights advancing nonetheless is almost the secondary story here. This week's breakout star in the Edmonton bubble turned aside the first 32 pucks he saw in Game 7, and he made 33 stops in total. Demko exits the playoffs with a .985 save percentage. Let's just say that wasn't expected from him.

Consider the route Demko took from Boston College, out of which Vancouver drafted him No. 36 overall in 2014, to the postgame handshake line at Rogers Place, where everyone from Mark Stone to Robin Lehner to Vegas coach Peter DeBoer greeted him with bulged eyeballs and a shake of the head. Demko had only appeared in 10 NHL games before 2019-20, and he was pedestrian this season as Jacob Markstrom's regular backup, logging a .905 save percentage and a minus-3.67 goals saved above average mark.

Prior to Game 5 against Vegas, Demko had played all of eight competitive minutes - the length of his mop-up appearance in the series opener - since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March. But rust didn't faze him then, nor did fatigue on Friday on the latter half of a back-to-back. In Game 7, Demko stymied early Vegas pressure with glove, shoulder, and pad saves. He summoned a kick stop from his back and stoned Jonathan Marchessault and Nate Schmidt in close. He made 98 straight saves in all going back to Game 5, before Shea Theodore's late winner interrupted the streak.

Vegas absolutely swarmed Vancouver in Game 7. That they laid siege in the offensive zone - we'll get to the gory numbers shortly - enabled Demko to outshine the goalie who recorded three shutouts in the series. That's not to disparage Lehner, who vindicated DeBoer's confidence in him and surely made the save of his life with Brock Boeser bearing down. Demko's brilliance got Vancouver this far, and Lehner did what he had to do to ward off a collapse.

For more than a month now, zaniness has governed a good chunk of the action in the NHL bubble. Each conference's 12th-ranked team butted into the first round at the expense of Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby. This will be remembered as the postseason that featured a five-overtime epic and three clubs squandering 3-1 series leads simultaneously. The Dallas Stars redeemed themselves earlier Friday after 24-year-old rookie Joel Kiviranta became the first player since Wayne Gretzky to net a Game 7 hat trick.

Demko's star turn was a belated subplot of this spirited playoff run. It came after the Minnesota Wild were ousted and the defending champion St. Louis Blues coolly dispatched, and it lasted just four days, a quirk of a compressed series. But it was yet another prime example of this tournament's prevailing weirdness. It will be remembered, and if Vancouver's Demko era starts in earnest next year - Markstrom is set to hit unrestricted free agency - memories of Sept. 1-4, 2020, will boost the confidence of everyone involved.

Vegas' dominance was laughable but not meaningful

Game 7 was decided when Theodore struck on the power play, rendering moot 42-plus minutes of goalless five-on-five action.

Per Natural Stat Trick, here are some stats of note from that principal phase of the game: Vegas attempted 60 shots to Vancouver's 20. The Golden Knights lapped the Canucks in scoring chances (28-12) and nearly quintupled them in high-danger opportunities (14-3). If not for a late Vancouver surge following Theodore's goal, the expected goal percentage differential - Vegas finished at 75.7% - would have wound up even further out of whack.

It's hard to overstate how lopsided the run of play was in Game 7 and across the two Vancouver victories that preceded it. Had the Canucks managed to score and win again despite this disparity, the result would have gone down in history as an inconceivably strange way for a favored team to flame out of the playoffs. It would have been on par with last season when Cody Eakin went to the box for cross-checking and the San Jose Sharks scored four goals on the ensuing power play, costing Vegas a Game 7.

For such a young franchise, the Golden Knights have already flirted with their fair share of playoff anguish. Even in victory, with passage to the Western Conference final booked, it has to gnaw at Vegas' stable of accomplished scorers that no degree of O-zone dominance unsettled Demko.

Obviously, it's better to slam the opponent in puck possession and scoring chances than the alternative, and the Golden Knights' propensity to inundate teams is what makes them so dangerous. They led the league in shot share in the regular season, which translated to a top-three finish in the conference and the opportunity to snag the No. 1 seed in the playoff round robin.

The Golden Knights' approach to driving offense - wearing down defenders in waves that don't abate - is designed to bear fruit over long stretches. Small samples are unpredictable, and that almost doomed them. For now, Vegas can be heartened that Demko's departing, and by the likelihood that Dallas' Anton Khudobin, a goalie with a far greater track record, won't come close to duplicating his astounding form.

Theodore deserved his spin in the spotlight

All four teams that reached Game 7s in the Western Conference bracket featured one of the sport's finest blue-liners. Calder Trophy co-favorites Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar leave the bubble having each surpassed the playoff scoring record for rookie defensemen. (Hughes' 16 points bested Makar by one.) Miro Heiskanen retains a leg up on both of them, and not just because the Stars are still playing - his five goals and 21 points are the most of any skater not named Nathan MacKinnon or Mikko Rantanen.

If Heiskanen is Dallas' de facto Conn Smythe Trophy nominee at this stage, he has competition with Theodore, the only Golden Knight to solve Demko in Game 5 and 7. On a squad with a deep forward corps that tends to get lauded for tilting the ice, Theodore has asserted himself in these playoffs as an essential offensive catalyst. His six goals lead defensemen league-wide, and his 16 points are most on the team.

Every Golden Knight drove positive offensive figures against the Canucks, but it's Theodore whose 72.9% expected goals percentage topped the club for the series. The precision of his wrister from the point on the man advantage stood in contrast to the aimlessness of Vancouver's power play, which by going 0-for-4 in Game 7 failed to compensate for the Canucks' even-strength woes.

That Vancouver got this deep a full year before Hughes and Elias Pettersson's entry-level contracts expire is doubtlessly positive. They unseated the champs and startled a juggernaut that might yet win the Stanley Cup. Nothing is assured in hockey, though, as Demko reminded Vegas, and every lost playoff opportunity hurts, no matter how long the Canucks anticipate they'll contend. Credit Theodore - who in retrospect might be the catch of the 2017 expansion draft - with delivering that blow.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Long before he lifted the Stanley Cup as head coach of the Washington Capitals, Barry Trotz won his first pro championship one rung down in the organization. In 1994, the AHL's Portland Pirates teemed with skill. Future Vezina Trophy goalie Olaf Kolzig manned the crease. Trotz's roster was so crowded with past and budding NHLers - Brian Curran, Ken Klee, Jason Woolley, Jason Allison - that prized 20-year-olds Sergei Gonchar and Andrew Brunette only dressed for two playoff games apiece.

Barely older than some of his players at 31, Trotz was already an adept counterpuncher behind the bench, said Paul Gardner, Trotz's assistant coach in Portland and later with the expansion Nashville Predators. Trotz had a knack for processing how to negate what the opponent set out to do and moving swiftly to act. This aligned with the priority Trotz preached to his team: the need for five skaters to commit to defending in unison.

The approach was Calder Cup-caliber. Its proponent has since become the fourth-winningest coach in NHL history.

"Let's play defense, boys, and the other end will take care of itself," Gardner said, summarizing the foundation of Trotz's philosophy. "We had a lot of talent, but we made it a team game."

In his finest NHL seasons, Trotz has leveraged this focus on the collective to great effect, elevating the fortunes of scrappy Predators teams and guiding Alex Ovechkin's mighty Capitals to that elusive title in 2018. His current club is a different beast entirely. Depending on how you rate Mathew Barzal, the New York Islanders either have one star or none, but the difference is trivial. The Isles are a monolith, chock full of unacclaimed players who chip in for the cause and who, by trusting and executing Trotz's system, have made New York the breakout team of this postseason.

Losing Game 5 in overtime to the Philadelphia Flyers dented the Islanders' sparkling record in the Toronto bubble, but hardly. Ostensibly the underdog in matchups with the Capitals and Philly, they've won 10 of 14 playoff games on the strength of a 46-26 goal differential. New York's outscored those opponents and the Florida Panthers 30-16 at five-on-five. The results evince dominance, not unsustainable overachievement or luck.

The Isles haven't looked the part of a Cup contender in 27 years, dating to the franchise's most recent appearance in a conference final. (Shoutout to David Volek.) Their next shot to oust the Flyers and join the Tampa Bay Lightning in Round 3 comes Thursday night in Game 6. Winning is the road out of the wilderness. It's characteristic of Trotz that his group has charted this course together.

"When you get contributions right through the whole lineup and you can contribute as a bottom-six forward or a top-six forward or a D-man, I think it goes into the Islander concept," Trotz told reporters recently.

"Barry makes you feel like you're part of a family," said Brent Peterson, Trotz's assistant coach with the Predators from 1998 to 2011. "He builds such a good culture around his team. He's done it in three places. We had to redo it about three times (in Nashville). Then he did it in Washington and now he's done it there."

"He's very confident in how he wants the guys to play," Peterson added. "They listen to him and they go play that way. That's why they've been successful this year. They're the best 'team' team (in the playoffs), I think."

It's hard to rebut Peterson's assessment when New York's defensive structure clicks. At their best, the Islanders hound opposing blue-liners with a high, pesky two-man forecheck, behind which the supporting forward and defense pair congest center ice with active sticks. When hemmed in the defensive zone, the Isles retreat into a shell formation to inhibit the quality of the shots that reach goaltender Semyon Varlamov. Forced turnovers spur rapid counterattacks, and the members of Trotz's mobile, balanced defense corps are empowered to join the rush.

The method isn't infallible. Adam Pelech's futile pinch late in the second period of Game 5 led to an odd-man rush and a Philadelphia goal. The Flyers also scored on an offensive-zone steal and two deflected point shots. Big picture, though, New York's 4-3 defeat was an outlying blip in a month's worth of commanding performances.

Consider the Philly series on the whole. Before Claude Giroux, Scott Laughton, and James van Riemsdyk finally scored goals in Game 5, the Islanders had kept each of those forwards, as well as Travis Konecny, Jakub Voracek, and Joel Farabee, from scoring. New York has also gotten to Carter Hart, whose save percentage in the matchup is .902. The Isles own just 45.7% of shot attempts at five-on-five but have conjured 58.0% of high-danger chances in the series, according to Natural Stat Trick, a sign that the rope-a-dope strategy is working as intended.

The Isles are scoring a half-goal more per game in the playoffs than in the regular season (3.29 to 2.78), and credit can be spread around. Josh Bailey's 13 assists put him in the company of Nathan MacKinnon. Anthony Beauvillier, Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Brock Nelson, Anders Lee, and Barzal have combined to net 30 goals, 24 of which have come at even strength. Among defensemen who've logged more than 100 minutes, Pelech and top-pair partner Ryan Pulock each rank in the top 10 league-wide in expected-goals percentage. It helps that Varlamov's save percentage is .929 and .943 at even strength.

"He won nine games in a row for me when I went over to Russia," Gardner said of his stint coaching Varlamov's KHL team in 2007, when the goalie was 18. "They thought I could walk on water. He was a big part of it, trust me."

Minus Varlamov, this entire Islanders core was around for Doug Weight's firing and Trotz's hiring in 2018 following a season in which New York conceded the most goals in the league and missed the playoffs by 17 points. The reversal of fortunes was immediate. The Islanders recorded 103 points and finished second in the Metropolitan Division last season. They were on track for 96 points had the full schedule been played this year.

Including those squads, Trotz's clubs have finished inside the top 10 in the NHL in goals against in nine of 15 seasons since the 2004-05 lockout. It's no coincidence that Trotz has won the Jack Adams Award twice and sits a hot streak back of Ken Hitchcock in career regular-season victories.

* denotes current NHL head coach. Stats source: Hockey Reference.

To Peterson, Trotz brings to the table "the whole spectrum of everything you need as a head coach." He delegates to his assistants, motivates a locker room, and communicates instructions and feedback frankly without berating players. He treats people well - Peterson remembers Trotz buying gifts for his players' newborns and never failing to acknowledge a birthday - and has demonstrated he can get the most out of any kind of skater, from grinders to the likes of Shea Weber, Ovechkin, and the dynamic Barzal.

Players have commended Trotz for imparting expectations and his game plans clearly and consistently. "There's predictability in our game, which makes it a lot easier for us out there," Pelech told reporters during the Flyers series.

Beyond his fondness for team play, Trotz is a stickler for individual effort and attention to detail, Peterson said, down to where a player positions his stick when he defends an oncoming puck carrier.

"You should have your body in one lane and your stick in another lane and then you can block a (pass or) shot," Peterson said. "He teaches you little things that nobody sees."

The playoffs were Trotz's kryptonite for the longest time, the 1994 Calder Cup triumph notwithstanding. His teams' points percentage has eclipsed .600 in 10 of 15 seasons since the '05 lockout, but that track record didn't translate to a series victory until 2011 - his 12th year in Nashville and Peterson's last alongside him on the bench - nor lead him past the second round until 2018. One more win would make him a conference finalist again, a gratifying prospect for the coaches who witnessed his rise from the beginning.

If the Flyers can be quelled, the task ahead would be onerous: facing a Tampa Bay team in the midst of atoning for getting swept in the first round by the Columbus Blue Jackets last year. The Lightning's control of the proceedings has been authoritative: They bounced Columbus and the Boston Bruins in five games apiece and have lost a mere three times in the bubble. No player has tallied more points at even strength than Brayden Point (16), and Andrei Vasilevskiy's .931 save percentage is tops among all starting goalies.

The 2018-19 Blue Jackets, of course, showed that stingy clubs can slow Tampa's roll, and the Islanders seem capable of scoring with anyone right now - especially in third periods, during which their playoff goal differential is 21-6. Another demarcation point has proved telling: Across the whole postseason, the Isles have invariably won when they've allowed two goals or fewer and have lost each time they've surrendered three or more.

It's fitting, really. How could a Trotz team thrive if it doesn't neutralize the opponent?

"That's been his key. We're going to play aggressive in the offensive zone when we get the chance, but if you don't play defense, you don't play," Gardner said. "It's easier with his reputation now. If you go to the Islanders, you know you've got to play defense. Barry doesn't have to walk up to you and say that."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

About 24 hours after the Milwaukee Bucks didn't take the court in the NBA playoff bubble, Kenneth Shropshire got to thinking about the sports world's mass boycott of apartheid South Africa, the biggest mobilization of activist athletes in history. The segregated nation was barred for decades from international competition, including the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, where U.S. sprint medalists John Carlos and Tommie Smith each raised a fist in support of human rights.

Shropshire, a distinguished professor of global sport at Arizona State University, brought up 1968 to make a point: even that worldwide action didn't cascade quite like the Bucks' refusal to play Wednesday.

The players were protesting the latest exhibition of American police violence against Black people: the shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last weekend, which followed the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others. The NBA's entire active playing corps soon sat out in turn. So did the WNBA's whole bubble, MLB and MLS clubs, and tennis star Naomi Osaka, scrubbing multiple days' worth of matchups across the sporting spectrum.

"It's going to be at the top of the list of athlete activism in the history of man," Shropshire said of the sit-outs. "The Olympic protest in 1968, and Muhammad Ali, and Colin Kaepernick - all those individually were something. This (was momentous) in terms of the snowball effect."

As several NFL teams canceled practice and NHL players forced their league to postpone playoff games Thursday, theScore spoke with four race and sports scholars about the significance of the sit-outs, the power this form of protest confers, and the rich legacy of Black athletes taking stands against racism. The scholars are:

• Akilah Carter-Francique, professor of African American history at San Jose State University and the executive director of the school's Institute for the Study of Sport, Society, and Social Change.

• Louis Moore, associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University and the author of the 2017 book "We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality."

• Theresa Runstedtler, professor of African American history at American University and the author of a forthcoming book on how Black players transformed pro basketball on and off the court in the 1970s.

• Shropshire, who wrote the 1996 book "In Black and White: Race and Sports in America."

Their thoughts, shared in separate phone conversations, have been condensed and edited for clarity.

How will Aug. 26, 2020, be remembered? When you think about sports and what athletes have done to oppose anti-Black racism, how momentous a day was it?

Carter-Francique: I think it will be a day that we remember as a day of solidarity. We have the collective efforts of these professional athletes, men and women, using their platform to speak for the voiceless. They've come together to speak out for social justice, for the lives lost due to police violence and police brutality.

Moore: It's huge because we were all watching. Everybody was tuned in and everybody was talking about it. It's not the first (athlete) strike, or however you want to say it. Unfortunately, we've forgotten a lot of those, outside of maybe the Olympic Project for Human Rights in 1967-68.

The way memory works now, people are going to remember not necessarily that it was Aug. 26, but that time the Bucks had a strike or a boycott. And then what followed next: MLB, WNBA, tennis, even the NHL.

This all started not with the NBA, but in the NBA, with Bucks players opting not to play Wednesday after the Raptors and Celtics discussed doing that for Thursday's game. What does that say about these players and the NBA's workforce generally - that they took the initiative to sit out?

Runstedtler: The league has to actually listen to them. The NBA having this image as being a "woke" league, it's a consequence of the players having a certain degree of power in order to make it woke. It's not just the benevolence of the team owners and NBA administrators. The players are driving it.

Shropshire: (In the NFL in recent years), there were real and believed banishments of players because of their involvement in social activism. That hasn't, in this recent time, happened with players in the NBA. They've been able to speak freely without even the shrouded version of, "How did this person end up not in the league anymore?"

Part of that is the superstar status that led the way: LeBron James, in an unprecedented way, being by many calculations the best player in the league, speaking out in the way that he has.

Moore: You think of (Fred) VanVleet. He's known, because he's a hustler, but he's not a super-duper star. I think that's big. (He's) very good, by the way, for Canadian folks, but an average player in the NBA was able to say something that gets the ball rolling. And then, boom, the Bucks did what they had to do.

Outside of the NBA, WNBA players, from Maya Moore on down the line, have long been at the forefront of social activism. MLB and MLS players and Naomi Osaka followed the Bucks' lead by sitting out in solidarity. What message is sent when athletes across sports decline to compete?

Shropshire: That's the part that's truly unique. It resonates with the old adage: There's strength in numbers.

Wherever there is some fragility - "Is my job in danger if I do this?" - the idea of initially an entire team and then an entire league joining in makes it much more powerful and provides greater leverage for changes that they seek. That it catapulted into other leagues, that's the amazing thing of the day: how rapidly it spread.

Carter-Francique: Black bodies have been used as labor and entertainment for so long. Sport, much like movies, often provides a space of escapism. The push to get those players to play and to participate (in the resumption of sports) was part of that urge. But in that same vein, as Black entertainers, this is the platform they have to present themselves and share their voice.

(What they're voicing now) is something very special. It's not just one voice or one athlete or two athletes, as we think of Tommie Smith and John Carlos having that historical 1968 stand. Today we have this collective voice to support the voices of others who are also doing the work: legislators, educators, those who are promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Moore: You can talk and talk and talk, but now, it's like, "We're going to withdraw our labor," at a time when (the leagues) are banking on it to make back the money that they lost. Moving forward, anytime something like this comes up, the owners are going to have to listen. The next step is not just, "Oh, we want to wear T-shirts." It's, "Oh, we might not play tonight."

If play resumes in each sport after a couple of days, what impact do you think the players' actions will have? Who needs to step up and what needs to happen from here for their sit-out to set in motion the change they desire?

Runstedtler: That's the million-dollar question. It's symbolic, in some ways: they're withholding their labor to make a point that, "We are not going to be entertaining America and pretending that everything is OK while, literally, people are being shot in the streets."

What is the connection between that and the kind of policy change that we need? I'm not entirely sure. But I do think that athletes have a certain level of cultural and social capital. If they are willing to take a stand very visibly in the media, it adds emphasis to whatever is happening out in the street. It adds to this sense of urgency - that things need to start changing.

Carter-Francique: The opportunity to have this pause is really good. It's an opportunity for athletes to sit and be at the table with the owners and the GMs. That's a rarity. They can work together - (with) the NBA and WNBA already promoting some of these social justice initiatives and symbolism - to begin to move forward with actionable items.

I have to commend the WNBA and their statement: talking about voting, pushing the agenda of voting in 2020, or calling your legislators and making your voice heard in the census report. Athletes, coaches, sponsors, all those that are involved, (need) to find ways they can contribute to push the needle forward when we talk about social justice and social change.

In the wake of George Floyd's death and again this week, a lot of NBA players wrestled with the decision to resume the season during this reckoning over racism and police brutality. On Wednesday, of course, they were in the bubble when they made the call to halt play. What leverage or power does that setting - the platform of this bubbled postseason - give them?

Shropshire: It's like a convention. They're all in one place. They're all right there and have the opportunity to work together.

Runstedtler: If there's any situation that's going to facilitate action on the part of all of the players in the league, it's that. Having them all together in that one space and seeing more Black trauma and Black death, and they're all there together in isolation, only compounds the sense of urgency to do something and the ability to organize and get everybody on the same page.

Moore: It's a lot easier to speak about these things than to text about these things. The communication for them is clear.

They're a unified force. That's a significant chunk of players who are still there willing to put their reputations on the line to fight for justice. Being there gives them some power still.

Louis, you spotlighted on Twitter on Wednesday the history of police brutalizing Black athletes, from Jack Johnson and Jackie Robinson all the way to the Bucks' Sterling Brown by Milwaukee police in 2018. How do you think that history, both distant and recent - personal, even - shaped what players have done this week?

Moore: I'm not sure if they know that history. They knew Sterling Brown and what some players have been through. But one thing I guarantee they know is people in their communities. Policing, for a lot of these guys, is always present in their lives. I think what they realize, especially with someone like Sterling Brown, is that you can never escape it.

It doesn't matter how famous you are. If we look at police protests in America, it always starts over just some guy. The way these things work is it doesn't really matter who that guy is. It's the realization among Black folks that that could be them at any time.

There's a rich history of Black athletes taking initiative to sit out of competitions or to protest racial injustice in other forms. When you were processing Wednesday's events, did you get to thinking about any particular retired athlete who took such a stand? What does their story say about what's happening now?

Moore: Specifically for the NBA, it's Bill Russell. He was part of the boycott in 1961 among Black basketball players for the Celtics and the Hawks. It's the last time you saw this in the NBA.

In general, you have somebody like Jackie Robinson, who spoke out against police brutality a number of times. The first time you see it publicly is in front of Congress in 1949.

Jackie's Mount Rushmore, and Bill's up there, too. These are major athletes who have been involved in a boycott and/or (opposing) police brutality. My job, (on Twitter), I always try to quickly give that context: here's the history of this that we should know. Jackie and Bill always come up.

Runstedtler: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He was a Buck for many years, but even before that, one thing he decided when it was time for Team USA to be put together for the '68 Olympics - he chose not to be part of that at all. He went back home and did some community work. When they interviewed him after the fact, he basically said, "I can't compete for a country that's not mine. There's too much injustice in the U.S. for me to participate."

The fact the players were able to (sit out this week) so quickly and so forcefully, and in large part have been supported by the teams, owners, and also their fans, is a testament to the shifting terrain of professional sports and how much more power Black players actually do have in this moment to go off script - to not just, quote-unquote, shut up and play.

Shropshire: The four people I always think of are John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Peter Norman, and Muhammad Ali, all in that one space and what they had to suffer after the fact to allow these athletes today to do what they do. Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion, and Joe Louis were transitional figures.

The one I think is undercovered as having taken courageous steps, when he delivered a letter (about) the plight of Black Americans when the Chicago Bulls went to the White House after winning a championship: Craig Hodges, who was a great 3-point shooter and who many say as a result of his political activism, before Kaepernick, was not able to get a job in the NBA after he took his political stance.

It's people like that. It is Hodges. It is certainly Kaepernick. It's those people who came before those who are doing the heavy lifting today.

Carter-Francique: Here at San Jose State, we think immediately of (SJSU alumni) Tommie Smith and John Carlos, but even those during the '68 time period who chose not to go to the Olympic Games.

There are multiple ways to address such a complex issue, just as there's multiple ways to address social change. Whether it be through demonstration and boycott, whether it be through education, whether it be through legislation, or using your social media platform, we've got to really embrace that and understand that all actions, all efforts to be on the right side of history, are important.

We have to use all of our energies, efforts, and resources to combat this issue of racism.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Brendan Burke, the television voice of the New York Islanders, turned to Twitter last week to enlighten the hockey-watching public about the pitfalls of narrating playoff action remotely.

No team broadcaster is inside either NHL hub city; a central feed transmitted from Toronto to MSG Networks' Manhattan studio is Burke's view to all live goings-on at Scotiabank Arena. That's how he saw Islanders winger Jordan Eberle rush the center line in overtime of Game 3 against the Washington Capitals - the setup for what he thought was just a garden-variety dump-in.

Burke is used to hailing the presence and proficiency of Mathew Barzal, the 23-year-old center whom we now know was standing at the blue line to accept Eberle's pass and score the game-winner. The same can't always be said for his opponents. For a noted speed demon (not even Connor McDavid could edge him during the All-Star Weekend's fastest-skater event), Barzal is slippery, too: he eludes the notice of a distracted defender and is quick to prey on their preoccupation.

It's an invaluable tool at this advanced stage of the postseason, as Barzal headlines a roster that's unexpectedly reached the second round in consecutive seasons. That's nothing to sneeze at, given the legends whose title aspirations the Islanders have snuffed en route - Sidney Crosby in 2019 and Alex Ovechkin this month - and the depths to which they slumped before Barry Trotz's hiring as head coach.

The Isles were the NHL's shoddiest defensive team when Barzal was a rookie. Now they're firmly among its most stout, and in a workmanlike lineup that has smothered rival offense all playoffs, Barzal is a rare dynamo, the kind of element that, if needed, could swing a series against the comparatively stingy Philadelphia Flyers.

Barzal's verve has helped complete New York's transformation into the turnaround team of the Eastern Conference bubble. It's easy to forget the Islanders endured a terrible end to the regular season; they lost seven games in a row and 11 of their last 13 when the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic paused the season in March.

The NHL's reset was a reprieve. No one has touched the Islanders in Toronto, a trend that continued with Monday's 4-0 Game 1 win. Through 10 playoff contests, the Isles have outscored the Flyers, Capitals, and Florida Panthers 34-15 overall and 21-6 at five-on-five, aided tremendously by the return of No. 1 defenseman Adam Pelech from his Achilles injury and Semyon Varlamov's .965 even-strength save percentage.

Philadelphia's Carter Hart is the active starter with the closest mark (.955) to Varlamov's at even strength, portending the likely dearth of goals in this series. With Anthony Beauvillier, Jean-Gabriel Pageau, and captain Anders Lee contributing a combined 15 playoff tallies, Barzal is hardly New York's only answer, too. But he's led the Isles in scoring his whole career, starting with the 85-point campaign that won him the Calder Trophy in 2017-18.

"Just like it does for any other team that has a dynamic young man up front, (Barzal's offense) gives you more balance. It makes you more dangerous. It makes you a deeper hockey club," Trotz said ahead of the Flyers series. "If he's having success or if he's not having success, that dictates your level of anxiety on the bench for your team."

"When (Barzal and his linemates) move up the ice, special things happen," Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield said. "He's one of my favorite players to watch out there."

Barzal has always been a scorer. When he was 15, he racked up 103 points (three per game) at the Under-18 AAA level in Vancouver, according to his Elite Prospects profile. By nightly average, his 79 points in 41 games (1.93 PPG) for the 2016-17 Seattle Thunderbirds is a top-10 mark this century in the Western Hockey League. That Thunderbirds squad won the WHL championship, a fine coda to his junior career that segued into his Calder Trophy campaign.

New York's philosophical reset under Trotz has curtailed Barzal's numbers, but even airtight defensive units still need to score, and his bountiful offensive arsenal - the capacity to stickhandle, pass, rip shots, and fly around the ice - is undeniably an asset. When a blocked shot, forced turnover, or successful puck battle secures the Isles possession, they rely on Barzal to make things happen from there, as these regular-season stats attest:

• Barzal averaged 20:03 in overall ice time and 17:24 at even strength, most among Islanders forwards.

• His 20 primary assists at five-on-five tied for fifth in the NHL among forwards, according to Natural Stat Trick.

• At five-on-five, Barzal tied for 15th among forwards in high-danger shot attempts (71), tied for 21st in penalties drawn (17), and was second to only Auston Matthews in takeaways (66), further exemplifying his ability to track down the puck and wreak havoc with it.

• However, he also led all forwards in five-on-five giveaways by a wide margin, conceding 80 to Mathew Tkachuk's second-place 67. Such is the burden the habitual puck-handler bears.

To review Barzal's playoff production, meanwhile, is to find that he's driving the offense within the Isles' trusty system. All eight of his points have come at even strength - a team high and saving grace for New York's scuffling power play - and most were the product of counterattacks he took the initiative to create.

In Game 4 of the play-in round against the Panthers, Barzal (No. 13 below) lurked at the far blue line - similar to the way he did against Washington in OT - to spur a quick breakout, take a stretch pass, and spring Beauvillier with a pretty saucer feed.

Later that game, Barzal punished Keith Yandle's ill-timed and fruitless pinch by outracing Mike Hoffman - a speedster himself - for the puck and inside position as he bore down on Sergei Bobrovsky.

In Game 4 against Washington, Barzal spearheaded a rush during an Isles line change and outmaneuvered several defenders and Braden Holtby in another display of his transcendent handiness and footwork. (Nice return pass from Nick Leddy, too.)

In Game 1 against the Flyers, Barzal hit his opponents in transition, hustling to stretch the Philadelphia defense and deliver a perfect pass on the move to an open Lee.

"We've been following his goals and his assists pretty closely to show to our guys the way that he uses the open ice to be able to attack the opposition blue line with speed," Thunderbirds head coach Matt O'Dette, an assistant on the Seattle staff throughout Barzal's time there, said in a recent phone interview.

"It's very difficult for the defense to handle that type of speed he has," he added. "Combined with his vision and playmaking abilities, that's a tough assignment for any pair of defensemen."

Shortly before New York bumped his team from the bubble last round, Capitals blue-liner Nick Jensen explained during Zoom media availability what has to be done to keep Barzal in check: defenders have to respect his skills but remain ready to exploit his tendency to turn the puck over. If he can be thwarted long enough and is inclined to force the issue, that might beget offense the other way.

"But it's a double-edged sword," Jensen said. "You've got to make sure you keep him from getting those scoring chances and make sure you're playing very defensive against him to get him frustrated first."

Lee's goal notwithstanding, the Flyers' top pair of Ivan Provorov and Matt Niskanen played well against Barzal's line in Game 1, pitching in to limit them to a 31.03% Corsi For figure at five-on-five. As an add-on to Jensen's point, meanwhile, Washington had fleeting success capitalizing on Barzal's occasional carelessness. The Islanders led 2-0 in Game 4 of that series when he took holding minors 2:17 apart; Evgeny Kuznetsov and Ovechkin scored soon after each of them, which keyed the Capitals' lone win.

Of course, the Caps had trouble beating or corraling New York's whole roster, the same problem the Flyers faced Monday. Varlamov and his defense are riding a 136-minute shutout streak, and the addition of Pageau at the trade deadline has gifted Trotz an impact third-line center to supplement Barzal and Brock Nelson. With the exception of Cal Clutterbuck, who's barely under the 50% threshold, every Islanders regular owns a positive expected-goals figure during the postseason.

Basically, the Isles haven't yet needed Barzal to swing or steal any matchup. It's telling, though, that his capabilities characterize much of what they're doing right offensively. O'Dette saw that dynamic with Seattle's title-winning team, and, from a distance, he considers New York a sweet situation for his former charge. Trotz is there to exhort Barzal to mind details and round out his game, and he still has leeway to remind everyone of the risk that overlooking him entails.

"The competitive fire that he has is contagious," O'Dette said. "For a lot of those highly talented players, to have that competitiveness, that's a dangerous combination. Those guys that have that, they live for these moments - the big moments, the big stage. You can see that Mat's in that zone right now."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Tim Horvat was downstairs in his basement in Rodney, Ontario, well after midnight a couple of weekends ago when his older son - the captain of the Vancouver Canucks - glided into frame on the big screen, tracking the puck on the forecheck in the Minnesota Wild's end.

Six minutes remained in Game 4 of Vancouver's playoff qualifier series, a matchup slated to wrap that night if the Canucks could overcome a late one-goal deficit. Not since 2011, smack in the middle of the Sedin brothers' heyday, had the Canucks won a round of any kind, a long wait for a titleless franchise and the mission of the center counted on to fill the twins' vacated leadership role.

With a little help from friend and foe - Tanner Pearson battling behind the net; Minnesota's Kevin Fiala watching the puck a little too closely - Bo Horvat took it upon himself to end the holdup. Fiala was none the wiser as Horvat coasted behind him to the crease, and Wild goalie Alex Stalock couldn't keep him from potting Pearson's pass.

"That one got the ball rolling," Tim Horvat said by phone the other day. "It was that comeback, that tie, the overtime goal by (Chris) Tanev. I think that was when the team really started to gel."

Vancouver's still rolling, deposing the champion St. Louis Blues to move into the second round proper, and the fan base has plenty of names to salute. Tender-aged Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes magnetize the attention of defenders, whose targeted physicality hasn't stopped them from scoring at point-per-game rates. Pearson, J.T. Miller, and Brock Boeser have driven offense, too. At 30 years old, Jacob Markstrom had never appeared in the postseason; he now rocks a .929 save percentage and seven wins in 10 starts. Tanev eliminated the Wild with his first career playoff goal, and Tyler Motte has four of his own in the past two games.

The puck drops Sunday night on Vancouver's next best-of-seven, against a new challenge entirely in the Vegas Golden Knights. Vegas is a powerhouse, seemingly destined to meet the Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Final. Yet like the scrappy Dallas Stars, the Canucks can't be discounted from the outset - nor, in their particular case, written off as content to wait for the bright future that's in store for their core.

The Canucks have the air of a dark horse on the rise, unfazed by their last opponent's resume or by the magnitude of the stage. For that, a fair share of the credit goes to Horvat, already a seasoned veteran at age 25 and the first folk hero to emerge during this run.

Horvat's six goals in the bubble tied him for the NHL lead entering this round. He's scored in all situations, in spectacular fashion, and in the clutch, from the equalizer that set about Minnesota's downfall to the OT winner he cashed on the rush in Game 2 against St. Louis. That he's gone without a point since then doesn't detract from the legend he fashioned across those several days in Edmonton. The former ninth overall pick, which was acquired from New Jersey at the 2013 draft for Cory Schneider, has become the franchise's rock in pressurized times.

When the Canucks talk about their first-year captain in media availabilities, they tend to repeat certain compliments. Horvat plays smart, they say. He keeps it simple. They appreciate that he's strong on the puck down low, that he attends to all 200 feet of the ice. To put it broadly, he does a lot right. And inarguably, he shows up when needed.

"A couple of us younger guys, younger than Bo, are watching that and taking notes," Boeser said.

"There's that stereotype where you say guys are built for the playoffs. That's bang on with Bo," Pearson told reporters after Horvat's second multi-goal game early in the Blues series. "He's leading the way for us, and we're just following right now. Which we'll all do in a heartbeat."

Through two rounds, Horvat leads Vancouver forwards in ice time (21:13 per game) and defensive zone starts (43, fourth among forwards in the playoffs, according to Natural Stat Trick). While Pettersson and Hughes have been electric on the power play, Horvat's six points at even strength and shorthanded pace the team, an invaluable lift for a lineup that St. Louis outchanced heavily at five-on-five.

As for the aesthetics of how he's scored: as distant a memory as they may seem given the relentlessness of the schedule, most of his goals on Jordan Binnington are sure to feature in any postseason highlight reel.

Those goals showcased the breadth of his capabilities. Eyes popped when Horvat dangled Vince Dunn in Game 1 and walked Brayden Schenn and Jaden Schwartz on a shorthanded breakout two nights later. Scoring on those plays required speed, the awareness to attack Dunn or two backchecking forwards in space, the puck-handling dexterity to reset to his forehand off the deke, and a sweet release to beat Binnington.

Widening the playoff lens, he's also scored on a tip, a slot shot on the power play, and the one-timer that punished Fiala's inattentiveness. The winning sequence that squashed the Blues in Game 2 started with a wonderful banked stretch pass from Hughes; Horvat finished with composure on the ensuing partial breakaway.

"When Bo's on top of his game, he just does a little bit of everything," head coach Travis Green said during the Blues series. Another day, he issued this endorsement: "If anyone's made for playoff hockey, it's Bo Horvat."

Back in junior, Horvat proved as much in the months that preceded his 2013 draft day. He scored 16 goals in 21 playoff games to guide the London Knights to the Ontario Hockey League title, earning postseason MVP honors. He reserved his best for the latest possible instant: in Game 7 of the final against the Barrie Colts, Horvat broke a 2-2 tie with a netfront flick that crossed the line with 0.1 seconds left.

The goal was Nazem Kadri-esque, mirroring the buzzer-beater the Avalanche center netted to stun the Blues in the Western seeding round. No championship was on the line when Kadri struck, though. To London assistant coach Dylan Hunter, it crystallized much of what made Horvat dangerous: the faceoff he won to start the play, the impulse to get inside position at the crease, the readiness to capitalize before the horn sounded.

"It was just one of those things with that leadership capability of his: to understand the compete level (needed) at the end of the game, to want to score and want to not have to go to OT," Hunter said in an interview. He added: "And having the confidence to be the guy."

In Vancouver as in London, where his teammates in 2013 alone included future NHLers Max Domi, Josh Anderson, Chris Tierney, Olli Maatta, Nikita Zadorov, and Scott Harrington, Horvat's managed to distinguish himself on a roster replete with talent. Hunter and Canucks defenseman Troy Stecher credited him with performing the same feat years apart: bridging the generational gap inherent to any locker room - between 16- and 20-year-olds in junior, and between the likes of Pettersson and Hughes and remaining guys who played with the Sedins - and setting a tone on the ice others are keen to follow.

Horvat, admittedly, was overrun throughout the Blues series by Ryan O'Reilly; Vancouver owned a mere 26.77% of scoring chances during his extensive matchups with St. Louis' top center at five-on-five. But that disparity wasn't ultimately meaningful. The overall scoreline on those shifts was 1-1.

Taken in isolation, meanwhile, the end of the Wild series and Games 1 and 2 against St. Louis were the best Green said he's seen his captain play. To apply Stecher's preferred metaphor, Horvat seized the bull by the horns, keying those crucial first victories that backfooted the defending champs.

"Everybody's followed suit and hopped on his back," Stecher said. "That's what a leader does."

Regardless of how the Vegas matchup turns out, questions will abound once these playoffs end about the Canucks' trajectory. How much better can Pettersson and Hughes get? What pay will they command in restricted free agency next summer? What is general manager Jim Benning to do under salary-cap duress about the glut of decisions he faces this offseason, with Markstrom, Stecher, Tanev, Tyler Toffoli, and Jake Virtanen all soon to be up for new deals?

For now, those are secondary concerns in Vancouver and in Rodney, where bedtime at the Horvat house will stretch into the wee hours a while longer. After he takes in each Canucks playoff game with his wife, Cindy, and their younger son Cal, Tim Horvat's made a habit of chatting with Bo on the phone, analyzing the night's events as calm descends on the bubble and Tim waits till 3 a.m. to get to sleep.

Rodney is a 45-minute drive from London, where Tim played 12 games at forward for the Knights - Brendan Shanahan was a teammate - in the mid-1980s. He sells insulation now, but retains a player and hockey parent's insight into the forces that have gotten his son to where he is.

Self-confidence, mental toughness, and an even keel helped him shoulder the weight of the captaincy this season, Tim said. His teammates have always liked him, and those he has in Vancouver were quick studies in navigating the playoff grind. With every matchup comes new lessons in how to rise to the occasion.

"That's the best thing," Tim said. "The farther they can go, the more they learn."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Several games into what's usually the opening round of the playoffs, we have an atypically advanced sense of which positional units - a club's forwards, defensemen, and goaltenders, as well its special-teams contingents - have moved the needle in this expanded postseason.

Five groups have really impressed the past few weeks, stretching back to the start of the play-in stage and each conference's round robin. Here's a rundown of who they are and what they've done so far to thrive in the bubble.

Vancouver's power play

One fruitless night against St. Louis doesn't undermine the success this group has enjoyed on the whole. If anything, the Canucks' quiet Game 4 accentuated how good their power play has been.

This is the roster segment that's, well, powered the Canucks to five playoff wins, and that has them as close as the defending champs to moving ahead. Vancouver's 10 goals with the man advantage lead the postseason.

Aesthetically, the Canucks' primary unit - Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller, Brock Boeser, Bo Horvat, and Quinn Hughes - has looked dynamite much of the time it's skated together. It was fluid, cohesive, and ruthless in Game 1 against the Blues, when Miller and Boeser toyed with St. Louis by trading cross-ice passes ahead of a goal; in Game 2, when Pettersson's pinpoint saucer pass set up occasional contributor Tanner Pearson in the slot; and in Game 3, when Pettersson's pinpoint stretch pass sprung Miller to beat Jake Allen top-shelf. The list goes on.

Save for Horvat, every Vancouver star has done most of his feasting on the power play. The situation has produced seven of Pettersson's nine points, six of Hughes' nine, six of Miller's eight, and five of Boeser's seven. Overall, the Canucks are scoring at a 27% clip - higher than their 24.2% mark from the regular season, which ranked fourth in the NHL, but well within the realm of sustainability the rest of the way against St. Louis.

Realistically, the power play probably needs to keep clicking for the Canucks to advance. They've scored a mere five goals and managed 39.9% of shot attempts at even strength, per Natural Stat Trick, in the series. Less heralded players have helped Vancouver compensate: Antoine Roussel and Troy Stecher have each drawn a team-high three penalties.

Calgary's penalty kill

Among fans who believe the hockey gods exist, the heater Tobias Rieder's been on lately might be proof enough that these deities have a sense of humor.

Whether or not a higher power's responsible for meting out poetic justice in the Edmonton bubble, it's clear Rieder deserves full credit for anchoring the Flames' influential penalty kill - and, effectively, for showing up his previous employer. As a fourth-line winger on the lackluster 2018-19 Oilers, Rieder incurred the wrath of franchise CEO Bob Nicholson for failing to score all season, and specifically for blowing "so many breakaways."

Naturally, two of Rieder's three goals this month at Rogers Place have come on breakaways, and they've all come shorthanded, matching the NHL postseason record. For a player who's scored five shorties across 434 career regular-season games, this constitutes a timely and gratifying uptick.

Through Tuesday's games, only Vancouver, Washington, and St. Louis have been penalized more frequently than Calgary, but the Flames' scoring differential while shorthanded is a sparkling minus-one, thanks to their 86.1% kill rate (31-36) and a fourth goal from Mikael Backlund. That Calgary's nine goals on the power play are second only to Vancouver - on five fewer opportunities - is a special-teams bonus.

Vegas' forwards

Vegas' offensive profile contrasts that of the Canucks. Both teams have scored in bunches, but while the Golden Knights' power play hasn't sizzled yet - the unit is 4-21 (19.1%) through eight games - they've run rampant at evens, bringing to the playoffs the puck-possession dominance their stacked lineup exerted all season.

The 22 goals the Golden Knights have netted at five-on-five are most in the postseason. If you think they've simply benefited from getting to roll over the Blackhawks, 10 of those goals came during the round robin against the Western Conference's other high seeds.

Not all the credit should be reserved for the guys up front; No. 1 defenseman Shea Theodore's four tallies, including three at evens, tie for the team lead. But the characteristic Vegas scoring play starts with monopolizing control in the offensive zone, where all four forward lines are capable of ragging the puck and creating chances.

According to Natural Stat Trick, six Golden Knights - William Karlsson, Max Pacioretty, Mark Stone, Jonathan Marchessault, William Carrier, and Patrick Brown - rank among the top 30 forwards league-wide in individual expected goals percentage. Reilly Smith and Ryan Reaves aren't far behind. Vegas generated more than 70% of shot attempts, meanwhile, when third-liners Nick Cousins, Nicolas Roy, and Alex Tuch took shifts against Chicago at five-on-five.

Coach Peter DeBoer has depth at his disposal and stars and grinders alike are validating his use of it.

Islanders' defensemen

Entering Game 4 on Tuesday, Isles coach Barry Trotz's charges had limited the Capitals to five measly goals on 24.7 shots per game, seven fewer shots than Washington's average this season.

Where Vegas rides roughshod on many nights by hogging possession, Trotz teams frustrate and squeeze the will out of opponents over 60 minutes. Alex Ovechkin has four goals in the series, but curtailing the Caps' attack - just as the Islanders did to the Penguins in last year's first-round sweep - paced New York to three straight wins before a slim Game 4 defeat.

In front of Semyon Varlamov, whose save percentage at even strength these playoffs is .955 (and .927 overall), the Islanders' defense corps has been a steadying force. The six regulars have pitched in to drive exceedingly positive expected-goal differentials at five-on-five, and they've done so without any one guy being overly taxed. Sixth man Andy Greene plays only four fewer minutes a game than top-pair partners Ryan Pulock and Adam Pelech. Even in Sunday's Game 3 overtime win, Pelech's team-high ice time maxed out at 22:10.

Balanced efforts still require leaders, and Pulock and Pelech fit the bill. Chicago's Olli Maatta and Dallas' John Klingberg and Miro Heiskanen are the only defensemen outscoring Pulock (five assists) at even strength. Pelech, meantime, looks like his usual impassable self now that the Achilles injury that would have sidelined him for the duration of a regularly scheduled postseason has healed.

Columbus' goalies

Elvis Merzlikins mostly shone in spot duty against the Leafs in the qualifying round, compiling a .946 save percentage across his 120 minutes in net. That he and his defense wilted during Toronto's furious three-goal comeback late in Game 4 wasn't ideal. But Columbus rectified the lapse in Game 5, and the Latvian rookie's impact was positive, in general.

Enough about Merzlikins, though. His best days in the NHL are ahead, but the Blue Jackets feature here because of Joonas Korpisalo, their MVP in the bubble and the netminding revelation of the playoffs.

The Jackets may be out by the time you read this, but Korpisalo won't be to blame should the Lightning finalize their five-game ouster Wednesday afternoon. His save percentage through eight appearances - against two of the league's fieriest offenses - stands at .953. Korpisalo made 33 saves in the shutout that eliminated Toronto and 36 on 37 shots in the Jackets' lone win against Tampa so far.

There's also the matter of his record 85 denials in the five-OT epic that opened this series. I'll make an executive call here: no further argument in his favor is needed.

Korpisalo, 26, is two weeks younger than his platoon partner Merzlikins, but he has four more NHL seasons to his name - those he spent in Columbus from 2015-19 as Sergey Bobrovsky's mediocre backup. Merzlikins was the better goalie in similar time this season, and as late as Game 5 against the Leafs, the No. 1 role remained up for grabs. Korpisalo settled John Tortorella's dilemma by summoning the run of his life.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

On Saturday, before the Chicago Blackhawks avoided getting swept, Mark Stone pickpocketed Duncan Keith at the Vegas Golden Knights' blue line and peeked over his right shoulder as he headed a counterattack. Breezing into the middle of the ice was William Karlsson, Stone's fellow penalty killer and the jewel acquisition - one of a few, anyway - of the 2017 expansion draft.

Two backhanded flips of the puck followed: Stone's pass to his teammate, and Karlsson's shot beating Corey Crawford top shelf, nimbly executed on the rush as Keith and Kirby Dach trailed in helpless pursuit.

It was among the sweeter goals of the 26 the Golden Knights have scored in the playoff bubble. The composition of the play was fitting, given what Karlsson and Stone represent regarding the process for Vegas to build a powerhouse.

Like Karlsson, several core Knights have prospered since now-inferior teams cast them aside. Stone arrived in a shakedown of a trade, which is also why he gets to play with Max Pacioretty and Robin Lehner. Talent abounds on this buzzsaw of a Stanley Cup favorite, a team with a record going back to mid-February - 17 wins in 20 games, including six of seven in Edmonton - that's the franchise's finest run in three years of existence.

After surging to the final as expansion darlings in 2018, the Golden Knights no longer surprise anyone. Stone and Karlsson's Game 3 linkup on the penalty kill showed the squad is capable of bullying also-rans and overshadowing Western Conference heavyweights as it edges closer to the next stage of this unprecedented NHL postseason.

Vegas was the last team to lose in either hub city, with the 3-1 Blackhawks victory to snap the Knights' six-game winning streak coming Sunday in Game 4. But the Golden Knights nearly tripled Chicago in scoring chances, and based on the history of NHL clubs winning the first three games in a best-of-seven series, it remains 97.9% likely they'll progress past this round.

"This is what we live for as coaches. It's the best time of year," head coach Peter DeBoer told reporters after Game 3. "If you have a good team at this time of year in the middle of the fight, you have a real chance. That's what every coach at this level is looking for."

Even this early in the playoffs, no observer could be faulted for pegging Vegas as a potential conference champ.

Chicago survived on Sunday, but combined with a spotless round robin - and, pre-pandemic, the .727 points percentage Vegas posted under DeBoer after he replaced Gerard Gallant - the Golden Knights' stranglehold on the series sure suggests they're legit. Moreover, they're substantiating the savviness that's come to characterize George McPhee and Kelly McCrimmon's front office, which assembled a contender in record time.

That contender became good enough to quickly learn the torment playoff hockey can cause. The five-game loss to Alex Ovechkin's Washington Capitals in the 2018 final was a letdown, as was the 3-1 series lead Vegas blew to the San Jose Sharks (with DeBoer on the opposing bench) in last year's first round. No fan will soon forget Sharks goalie Martin Jones stopping 58 shots in Game 6 - nor, obviously, the dubious Cody Eakin cross-checking major that triggered the nightmare end to Game 7.

After subpar netminding from Marc-Andre Fleury and Malcolm Subban hindered Vegas' start to 2019-20, first-year general manager McCrimmon swung a deadline deal with Chicago, acquiring Lehner - the NHL's seventh-best goalie by Goals Saved Above Average this season - for Subban, college defenseman Slava Demin, and second- and fifth-round picks. Lehner's old side beating him in Game 4 doesn't devalue the trade, as his save percentage (regular season and playoffs) since arriving in Vegas is strong at .921.

Outside the crease, Vegas' well of influential players runs deep.

Stone has logged 18 months of meshing with Pacioretty and Paul Stastny. Sensible tinkering this season brought to town top-pair defenseman Alec Martinez and top-nine forwards Chandler Stephenson and Nick Cousins. Then there are the mainstays from the expansion draft, six of whom - Karlsson, Reilly Smith, Jonathan Marchessault, Alex Tuch, Shea Theodore, and Nate Schmidt - are among Vegas' top 10 scorers in the bubble.

The sum of these parts leads to a roster that's sound defensively, good at forcing turnovers, and perpetually dangerous in the offensive zone. The Golden Knights' 54.8% shot-attempt rate led the league this season. Upping that mark to 59.8% in the playoffs means Vegas is driving possession and hounding netminders like Crawford as adeptly as ever.

"The way that we want to play, that grind-you-down type of mentality - we play fast, we play direct, we try to play in your face - I think that type of game benefits us," Schmidt said.

"You've got guys up and down our forward lineup that can hurt you in a lot of ways," he added.

That much happened in the Western round robin, when the Golden Knights racked up 15 goals across consecutive wins over the Dallas Stars, St. Louis Blues, and Colorado Avalanche. Their production has slowed over the last two games against Chicago - on a rare down note, Vegas is 0-9 on the power play this series - but not for lack of trying or analytical might. Since Game 1, the Golden Knights have generated 63.89% of scoring chances in the matchup at five-on-five.

The imbalance in Game 4 was especially stark. The Golden Knights engulfed Chicago, creating 36 chances to the Blackhawks' 10 and amassing a 74-29 edge in shot attempts at five-on-five. The Vegas skater with the lowest individual Corsi For figure surpassed the highest-performing Blackhawk by a wide margin. Crawford's mastery was the difference, with his 48 saves the most he's notched in a playoff game since Chicago's 2015 championship postseason.

"That's the irony of playoff hockey, right? You play your best game and you lose, and you win other games that you're not playing at that level," DeBoer said. "Let's come up with the same effort again (in Game 5). If we can keep throwing that game at them, eventually we'll get a break."

As the top seed in the West, the Golden Knights' possible opponents in the next round if they move on include the Calgary Flames, who've split four games with Dallas, and the Vancouver Canucks, who still lead St. Louis despite losing Game 3 in overtime on Sunday night. The second-seeded Avalanche have generally controlled their matchup with the Arizona Coyotes, legitimizing Colorado's hope to go deep with a loaded roster that's finally healthy.

The Avs encountering Vegas would make for one heck of a conference final. No doubt it'll be enthralling until then to see if the Golden Knights can continue to uphold their own towering standard. Before Sunday, they hadn't lost a game since March 6, a staggering fact regardless of how long the season was paused.

"I love our group. I love the commitment of our group. Every day, we're getting a little bit better," DeBoer said after Vegas won Game 3. "There's a lot of tough obstacles and tough games left to play. But we're doing the right things to keep advancing here."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

If upsets are in the offing in the Western Conference’s round of 16, don't expect them to come courtesy of the Blackhawks or Coyotes.

Spunky efforts kept those teams within a goal in Game 2 losses, but they won't ward off the inevitable. Chicago's defense is leaky - fodder for the Golden Knights' relentless attack. Darcy Kuemper's a tremendous goalie, but the Avalanche profit from mismatches everywhere else on the ice.

Surprise play-in round victories were already more than Chicago and Arizona would have gotten out of a typical postseason. Soon their presence in the Edmonton bubble will be a bizarro memory.

So the onus falls to the Canucks and Flames to try to prosper as underdogs out west. They've looked considerably more complete - defending tenaciously and scoring in droves most nights - than Edmonton and Nashville, higher seeds that the 'Hawks and 'Yotes vanquished in the qualifiers. And several days into the first round, they each have inside track on authoring momentous upsets of their own.

These Canadian clubs' paths to the Stanley Cup quarterfinals run through the offensive end. The Stars and Blues tend to lock it down defensively. Dallas netminders Ben Bishop and Anton Khudobin form an elite tandem; St. Louis' Jordan Binnington ascended to that form at times during last year's Cup run. Yet the Flames and Canucks have gotten to them, helping deface save percentages that in Bishop and Binnington's cases now sit at .862 in this small playoff sample.

They've employed different approaches to achieve this objective, a vital development against squads that are built to thwart and frustrate opposing playmakers and snipers. Friday's results - Calgary's 2-0 shutout of Dallas and Vancouver's 4-3 defeat of St. Louis in overtime - delivered them to within two wins of a common prize.

Offensive opportunism is Vancouver's secret sauce. That the Canucks didn't put a shot on target over a 12-minute stretch of Game 2 conformed with the control the Blues exerted overall. That they won anyway was a testament to the speed with which their go-to players can strike.

We saw it when Elias Pettersson went to work on the power play - first as his saucer pass set up Tanner Pearson for a one-timer in the slot, then as he batted an airborne rebound past Binnington. We saw it on two of the prettiest rushes Bo Horvat has ever converted: his undressing of Brayden Schenn and Jaden Schwartz to open the scoring and his five-hole finish in overtime off Quinn Hughes' great breakout feed.

Indeed, this brand of clinical play characterized all four Canucks goals - as it also did J.T. Miller's disallowed breakaway marker, the veteran straying a step offside in his haste to deke Binnington moments after he exited the penalty box.

Already the Canucks have cashed five power-play goals in this series. Their best unit - Pettersson, Horvat, Miller, Brock Boeser, and Hughes - moves on a string, rotating rhythmically and passing with precision, waiting for gaps to open in danger areas. Accounting for all phases of the game, five Canucks have scored multiple goals this postseason, led by Horvat's six and Pettersson and Pearson's three apiece, with Hughes (one goal and seven assists) playing the part of expert orchestrator.

Vancouver's quick-hit nature contrasts with the physicality and collectedness that St. Louis has used to generate way more shot attempts at even strength (107-72 overall, per Natural Stat Trick). The Blues don't waste chances to test Jacob Markstrom - or to body Pettersson and Hughes near the boards. Here, the Canucks' young stars have been opportunistic, too. Witness Pettersson drawing the interference penalty on David Perron that led to his goal, or Hughes accepting that this Tyler Bozak check was a reasonable trade-off to create Horvat's winner.

While Vancouver's big guns have led the charge, the story of Calgary's start to the playoffs has been that of any and all sources scoring however they can.

Thirteen Flames have tickled twine over seven games. In the city where Tobias Rieder infamously went scoreless in 2018-19 - becoming Oilers CEO Bob Nicholson's scapegoat of choice for a lost season - the German winger's potted two shorthanded breakaway goals. His second came in Game 2 against Dallas, the same night defensive rearguard Derek Forbort - who last scored in March 2019 - stunned the bubble by netting a knuckler from the point.

Those depth contributions, a vastly different modus operandi from Vancouver's top-heaviness, have done a lot to compensate for the silence of Calgary's top two forward lines, whose six usual members still have yet to score on the Stars at even strength. Who would have guessed that that group's Game 3 breakthrough would come via a workmanlike shorthanded goal from Mikael Backlund? Or that T.J. Brodie's insurance tally would arise from - of all situations - a fourth-line faceoff win in the offensive zone?

Calgary would be down in this series if those sequences didn't bear fruit - and, pertinently, if Cam Talbot wasn't spotless in net with 35 saves. Dallas absolutely slammed the Flames at five-on-five, doubling their shot attempts (56-27) and tripling their scoring chances (27-8), according to Natural Stat Trick. Astoundingly, those margins were 33-5 and 18-0 in the second period.

Aside from his Game 2 stinker, Talbot's steadiness in the bubble has unquestionably been huge for Calgary. The Flames still needed someone to score to win, of course, and should their goalie falter, they've proven they have the manpower to MacGyver a solution.

Similarly, the Canucks' defensive structure warrants mention before we move onto Game 3. By collapsing into a shell, jamming lanes, and blocking plenty of shots, the skaters in front of Markstrom have lessened the burden he'd otherwise face during the Blues' sustained O-zone time.

But it's the offense that has them two games up on St. Louis, a defending champion on a five-game playoff skid. Against heavy pressure, Vancouver's performance suggests opportunism can be a lethal countermeasure - so long as the counter belongs to a team more talented than Chicago or Arizona.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.