Stories skating toward a Cup

Oh, nothing much going on in the NHL playoffs.

Just a 26-hour stretch where the defending champions, the 2020 and 2021 champions, and the team with the most regularseason points in history all got cast out.

Random Thoughts

blackwell

Phil

That would be Colorado, Tampa Bay and Boston, for the uninitiated. Also the Rangers are out, blanked in Game 7 by New Jersey, a fate almost worse than last place.

That sound you heard on those particular evenings were ESPN and Turner Sports cringing at the notion that their ratings cash cows in Beantown and the Big Apple were gone, and possibly a few million viewers with them.

Well, if they go, they’ll miss something special.

Of the eight teams that started the second round, three have never hoisted the Stanley Cup, and four of the other five haven’t won it in the salary cap era. Only Carolina has done so….in 2006, the first year of the cap after the lockout.

In other words, we’ve got hungry teams here, some full of youth, some full of experience, but each of them with a compelling narrative and one guaranteed to find nirvana sometime in June.

Carolina and Dallas have the most standard cases – good teams for years, maybe it’s their turn. The Hurricanes have gained plenty of playoff reps in recent years and have an underrated and passionate fan base. Oh, and those post-game celebrations they cooked up made Don Cherry mad. An extra bonus.

When they needed a COVID bubble in 2020, the Stars got all the way to the finals. Thus, there’s some points for getting real close and returning with a good chance to add to the title won in 1999 when….okay, as a Sabres fan I probably shouldn’t

Reporter: Jason Klaiber, jklaiber@eaglenewsonline.com

Sports Editor: Phil blackwell, ext. 348, pblackwell@eaglenewsonline.com Display Ads EB: linda Jabbour, ext. 304, ljabbour@eaglenewsonline.com

Ads CR: lori lewis, ext. 316, llewis@eaglenewsonline.com Classified Advertising: Patti Puzzo, ext. 321, ppuzzo@eaglenewsonline.com Billing questions: Alyssa dearborn, ext. 305, adearborn@eaglenewsonline.com

Legal Advertising: luba demkiv, ext. 303, ldemkiv@eaglenewsonline.com

Publisher: david Tyler, ext. 302, dtyler@eaglenewsonline.com

Creative Director: Gordon bigelow, ext. 331, art@eaglenewsonline.com mention it except for “No Goal”.

Then there’s the expansion duo. Vegas almost cut in front of the line their very first season in 2018, ruining whatever charm may have come from paying some dues. Now? Oh, it’s always a spectacle in Sin City, and that’s cool, but again, as a Sabres fan, seeing Jack Eichel happy……

Far more charming is Seattle. First, the cool name – Kraken! Then there’s the passion always displayed by Seattle fans whatever the sport – why, dear Lord, did they lose the Sonics?

Sure, it’s early in the Kraken’s existence, but for now their continued presence remains novel and quirky enough.

Florida earns some sympathy from having suffered through Tampa Bay’s dynastic era up close while it went 25 years without winning a series – and when it did, the Bolts swept them in 2022. But the Panthers’ comeback to shock Boston was something to behold. So would another showering of rats circa 1996. New Jersey suffers many ways – mocked for their location and for their name, then blamed for ushering in a so-called “Dead Puck” era and winning it all three times during it. Mostly they just suffer from proximity to Rangers fans and will be glad to reclaim their arena in Newark for the rest of their playoff run.

Then we turn to Canada. In Edmonton, the wait for Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and friends to start replicating the Gretzky-area greatness has proven excruciating, but all might be lining up for the Oilers, who can just plain outscore teams if necessary and are easily the most attractive team in the West.

Finally, there’s Toronto. Oh, there’’s Toronto.

Go 19 years without winning a series and 56 years without a Cup and, yeah, you’ll have a fan base that comes to expect the absolute worst and puts epic levels of pressure on the Maple

Cup l Page 5