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We swept our Game 3 picks to move to 4-1 in the conference finals, and we'd like another sweep over the weekend.
Let's get after it.
Vegas Golden Knights (-160) @ Dallas Stars (+140)
Timely scoring is massive in the playoffs and the Stars have excelled in that area throughout the postseason. They've converted their chances at a high clip, with their top forward lines producing on a consistent basis. But it's the excellent play of Dallas' blue-liners that has really helped drive offense, simultaneously limiting the quality of offense the Golden Knights have managed to generate.
Vegas may have dominated the shot count in Game 3, but the Stars were able to match their opponents in terms of offensive quality. The Golden Knights held only slight edges in expected goals for and high-danger chances, once again failing to capitalize on those advantages. Stars goaltender Anton Khudobin was excellent, but Vegas' inability to finish has plagued the team throughout the playoffs. With Khudobin in a groove and the Stars finding remarkable consistency on offense, Dallas is too attractive to pass up at this price.
Pick: Stars (+140)
Tampa Bay Lightning (-145) @ New York Islanders (+125)
As is to be expected at this stage of the playoffs, nothing is coming easy for the Islanders. In their best game of the series Friday - which we predicted - they still needed a late goal to put the Lightning away and halve the series deficit. They also managed to stay out of the box, keeping Tampa's scorching hot power play at bay.
But this Lightning team has heaps of firepower, and the Islanders will find it extremely difficult to maintain that same intensity and consistency through another 60 minutes. The Lightning still held the edge in high-danger chances and expected goals at five-on-five in Game 3, with an off night from Andrei Vasilevskiy undoing another typically strong effort from the team in front of him. With a bounce-back performance from the Vezina Trophy finalist, the Lightning should move to within one win of the Stanley Cup Final.
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.
There are hockey geeks. And then there are lifetime obsessives like Mark Stone.
Long before Stone arrived in Vegas to star for the Golden Knights, he was a hockey-mad kid from the Canadian Prairies who would pour over camcorder-recorded game film of him and his minor hockey teammates. Later, he would pop in a new disc to dissect footage of his older brother and his teammates.
In the early 2000s, the Stone family DVD player was seemingly always filled with youth hockey material. "I thought that was the coolest thing in the world," Stone, now a veteran of 500 NHL games, said last year of reviewing the footage at his leisure. "I literally watched them all the time."
Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
You can see the hockey nerd persona in Stone's body of work these playoffs.
Heading into Game 4 of the Western Conference final, which goes Saturday night in Edmonton, the crafty right-winger has racked up 17 points in 18 games by consistently outsmarting the opposition. "He's not the fastest skater, but he plays fast because he's always thinking ahead of the other players," is how Darren Ritchie, one of Stone's junior hockey coaches, put it.
Ritchie, general manager for the Brandon Wheat Kings, was an assistant coach with the WHL club during Stone's four years there. He knows the Winnipeg native well as a player and a person, and on Friday afternoon helped theScore analyze a handful of Stone-related clips. Consider the following a lesson in why and how Stone has been one of the restart's premier two-way forwards:
The stick work
Stone is probably best described as organized chaos on skates.
His long brown hair bulges out of his helmet, his abnormally long Warrior stick is always up to something, and his skating stride won't ever be described as majestic. Yet, good luck finding an NHL winger who is better at defending in the neutral zone, a place where nifty and responsible stick work can shine.
The clip below, pulled from Game 7 of Vegas' second-round series against the Vancouver Canucks, perfectly demonstrates this uniquely Stone quirk:
Notice how Stone practically begs Vancouver's Tanner Pearson to move the puck to the middle of the ice. His body language is focused but standoffish right up until the moment he lunges downward, and his timing is impeccable.
"He forces Pearson to make that pass. It's almost like Mark goads him into it, right?" Ritchie said. "He gets opponents to feel like they're comfortable. But, at the same time, he knows if they try to get a puck through there, he's going to get a stick on it. He gets a lot of stick on it in this case."
Despite appearing in only 65 games, Stone finished tied for second in takeaways in the 2019-20 regular season, with 78. He possesses an uncanny ability to force turnovers and not miss a beat while transitioning to attack mode. Thus far in the playoffs, he's accumulated 16 takeaways, and it feels like almost half of them have blossomed into a scoring chance the other way.
"That's because he's always got really good angles," Ritchie said of the 6-foot-3, 202-pound Stone. "He's always in the proper position when he approaches the player, so he doesn't have to hook the guy's hands. He doesn't take many penalties, and he's always on the right side of the puck."
Stone was a menace all night Thursday in Game 3 of the West final, a 3-2 overtime win for the Dallas Stars. He factored into both Vegas markers in the loss, contributing a primary assist and a goal. The off-balance neutral-zone poke check showcased in the clip below is from a shift that didn't lead to a red light flashing, though it was a beautiful display of angling nonetheless:
Stone quickly converts a clean steal into a blue-line give-and-go with teammate Chandler Stephenson and then pings the crossbar with a long-range shot. His proud ex-coach enjoyed a laugh upon realizing how familiar both examples of Stone's fine stick work looked after a few loops of each.
"We've seen this a thousand times," Ritchie said, referencing Stone's time in Brandon. "We'd have players on our bench turn back and look at us coaches and say, 'Don't these guys know he can do this?!' It got to the point where our players would just laugh. It was completely routine of him to strip guys of pucks in the neutral zone and go the other way on a breakaway or 2-on-1s."
The goal scoring
Ritchie remembers checking in on Stone the season before the youngster joined the Wheat Kings and was blown away by one particular shootout goal. Stone, at the time dominating Manitoba's Midget AAA loop, pulled off a deke affectionately known as The Forsberg. It was something extraordinary, a rare dash of wow from an otherwise nuanced star player.
"He's not polished, he's nothing fancy, he's a hockey player," Ritchie said of Stone then and now. He made the remark after rewatching his former player's power-play goal in Game 3 of the second round. It wasn't an insult. Ritchie was instead emphasizing the understated nature of Stone's full toolbox:
Sure, that's a quality top-corner snipe, but there isn't anything particularly flashy about how Stone released the shot. As per usual, he was in the right place at the right time, and he used pinpoint accuracy to nail an opening.
Stone's calling card is his hockey I.Q. - or hockey sense, whatever you want to call it - which Ritchie estimates is "top five in the NHL." The 2010 sixth-round pick of the Ottawa Senators anticipates on-ice developments so well that he's rarely caught off guard by the run of play, which can often turn on a dime.
Case in point, in the sequence below from the first round against the Chicago Blackhawks, Stone scoops up the puck at the blue line, calmly finds a streaking teammate, glides through the hash marks, and then deflects a pass to the back of the net. Each task is completed at a pretty slow speed:
"He just finishes the play. He goes to the net with his stick on the ice," Ritchie said of the 28-year-old. "Basic stuff, but you also can't really teach it. That's probably the biggest thing that people don't understand about hockey sense. You either have it or you don't.
"Another thing about Mark," he continued, "is that he never lets the opponent have his stick. His stick is always free. They may have his body, but if you ever watch closely, notice his stick is always free. He's never tangled up. They may think they have him in some way or another, but he's still free because his stick is."
Ritchie, like many others in the hockey world, sees a little Pavel Datsyuk in Stone. The Detroit Red Wings legend was a prolific skater while Stone is not, but there's a comparison to be made based on the stick work, puck stripping, and, overall, game-to-game consistency. Two two-way giants.
The dependability and versatility in Stone's game allow Golden Knights coach Peter DeBoer to lean heavily on him in all situations. Stone has logged an average of 18:28 a night in the playoffs, four minutes of which are spent on special teams - three on the power play and one on the penalty kill.
The celebrations
Theory: Maybe Stone has such good hand-eye coordination because his stick is essentially an extension of his body. Based on the length, giant knob at the handle, and how he deploys the blade like a fire poker, Stone's stick may be closer to an instrument or a tool than anything else.
"It's like he's holding a candle," Ritchie said when asked about Stone's habit of skating with his stick upright. "A five-foot candle."
The stick is one eccentricity. Another is his animated goal celebrations, which have become legendary over the years. Perhaps nobody, it's been said a thousand times over, gets as hyped about a goal. Exhibit A from last round:
Ritchie loved the second clip: "Knowing that they need to win that game, that they can't go down 2-0, you see the emotion that says, 'Hey, we're back in it!' It's a great feeling. Some guys don't show it like him, but he lets it out."
That expressive side of Stone - the part of him that celebrates every achievement like it's his last on Earth - is undeniably infectious. You can tell it's genuine and rooted in competitiveness. Mind you, this is nothing new from the Prairie kid. "He's been like this since he was 16 years old," Ritchie said.
Pulling for Vegas in the restart hasn't been difficult for Ritchie since forward Ryan Reaves, black ace Reid Duke, assistant coach Ryan Craig, director of player personnel Vaughn Karpan, assistant director of player personnel Bob Lowes, and GM Kelly McCrimmon also have ties to the Wheat Kings.
It makes you wonder what Stone's reaction might be if they win the Cup. "Oh God, no kidding," Ritchie said. "I hope we get to see it. It'd be pretty cool."
The blue-liner was asked postgame whether he thought a rivalry was brewing between the two clubs.
"I don't know if it's a rivalry, but they don't like us and we don't like them," he told NHL.com's Bryan Burns.
The tilt, in which the Islanders prevailed 5-3 to cut Tampa's series lead to 2-1, was filled with physicality, chippiness, and hatred. Things got particularly heated toward the end of the game, as the two teams engaged in a little brouhaha after Jean-Gabriel Pageau's empty-netter.
Nikita Kucherov doesn't want Jean-Gabriel Pageau to get his empty-netter. Pageau takes exception after scoring pic.twitter.com/Uq1T1ZJY3k
The Pens are retaining 50% of Bjugstad's $4.1-million cap hit, which is set to expire after the 2020-21 season, reports TSN's Frank Seravalli.
Bjugstad was limited to 13 games due to injury during the 2019-20 campaign and tallied just two points. He recently underwent back surgery but is expected to be ready for next season, according to The Athletic's Michael Russo.
The 28-year-old averaged 16 goals, 34 points, and 69 games per season from 2013-14 to 2018-19. Bjugstad is capable of playing both center and wing and brings considerable size at 6-foot-6, 215 pounds. He's also a right-handed shot, which the Wild have very few of up front.
Bjugstad was included in the February 2019 trade that sent him and Jared McCann from the Florida Panthers to Pittsburgh in exchange for Derick Brassard, Riley Sheahan, a 2019 second-round pick, and two 2019 fourth-round picks.
This trade represents a homecoming for Bjugstad. Not only is he from Minneapolis, Minnesota, but he also played his college hockey with the Golden Gophers.
The award is "given annually to the NHL player who best combines sportsmanship, gentlemanly conduct, and ability." It's voted on by the Professional Hockey Writers Association.
The 25-year-old is the third Avalanche player in franchise history to take home the award, joining Joe Sakic and O'Reilly.
MacKinnon finished the season fifth in league scoring with 95 points, and collected just 12 penalty minutes. He is the third player in the last 20 years to register over 90 points with 12 or fewer penalty minutes, joining Aleksander Barkov and Martin St. Louis.
The Nova Scotia native is also a finalist for this season's Hart Trophy.
Point was hurt during the second period of Game 2 and wasn't able to finish the contest.
Tampa Bay leads the series 2-0, but will be without three of its top-six forwards on Friday. Alex Killorn will miss the game due to a suspension he received for a boarding hit in Game 2, while Steven Stamkos remains out and hasn't played yet this postseason.
Point leads Tampa Bay with 23 points over 15 playoff games.
The Los Angeles Kings signed restricted free-agent defenseman Sean Walker to a four-year contract carrying an average annual value of $2.65 million, the team announced Friday.
Walker finished second among Kings blue-liners with 24 points in 70 games last season, trailing only Drew Doughty. The 25-year-old averaged 18:50 per game in his first full NHL campaign.
Among defensemen who played at least 500 minutes at five-on-five during the regular season, Walker's 55% Corsi For percentage ranked 13th in the league, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Los Angeles signed the Keswick, Ontario native as an undrafted free agent out of Bowling Green in 2018 - the same university Kings GM Rob Blake attended.
