Autumn Equinox

 

Some thoughts about autumn on this, its first day:

I love stepping outside on that first morning that fall’s nip is in the air.

I love how changing leaves turn Appalachian mountainsides into fiery palettes of orange, red, and gold.

I love driving winding roads through those mountains, catching glimpse after glimpse of falling leaves as they twirl their way to the ground.

I love cold nights marked by the scent of campfire and the sound of wind in the trees.

I love watching my kids skip through the pumpkin patch looking for the perfect one to bring home.

I love walking behind them as they trick-or-treat on Halloween night.

I love pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving Day, and how it sets the ideal tone to start the Christmas season.

I love watching flocks of birds land in Florida at the end of their migration, while others keep flying to points further south.

And last but not least, I love football, especially college games at which the fans are loud and the bands are blaring...and most of all, college games in which Auburn is winning and the song you keep hearing begins with the line: War Eagle, fly down the field / ever to conquer, never to yield!

Third one won and done

With this mucky, greasy goal by Anthony Cirelli in overtime of Game Six -- which was partly a reward from the hockey gods for his persistent hard work -- my Tampa Bay Lightning dispatched the New York Islanders to win the NHL's Eastern Conference Championship and earn a trip to the Stanley Cup Finals.

It feels so good to type that sentence after they came so close in 2016 and 2018, dropping Game Seven of the conference finals each time, and of course after their shocking first-round exit in 2019.

This marks the franchise's second trip to the SCF in the last five calendar years and third in the last sixteen. The Lightning won the Cup in 2004 by defeating Calgary in seven, but came up short in 2015 when they fell to Chicago in six. My blog did not exist in 2004 but did in 2015, and if you're interested you can go here and here to read what I had to say after that year's run ended.

The Bolts have now made six trips to the Eastern Conference Finals in their 27-year history, and five of those trips have been in the past decade. Interestingly, this year's ECF was the first one for the Bolts that did not go the full seven games.

Obviously they've won half of the ECF's in which they have appeared. As of this moment they have also won half of their SCF's -- but with this season's SCF set to begin this evening, here's hoping they find a way to up their percentage from .500 to .667!

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I really want to spend a lot of time writing about the Lightning's win over the Islanders, and how they have performed overall through the first three rounds. But I also want to publish this today, and I have a life to live, so time doesn't really allow me to write "a lot" (and I'm sure you're not disappointed about that, seeing as how I tend to drone on and on).

I am very pleased by how this team has shown the character to march this far through through the post-season gauntlet in the face of serious challenges and injuries. Steven Stamkos has not played a single contest, and Jan Rutta has played just one. Ryan McDonagh and Brayden Point have both missed games and so has Erik Cernak. Nikita Kucherov missed the final two-thirds of the decisive gave against Boston in the second round. And in a league where goaltender platooning has for several years been the modus du jour for playoff success, Tampa Bay is the only club that has not given its starter a single second off throughout this entire unprecedented post-season in the bubble(s).

The gauntlet through which the Lightning has fought consists of three opponents who play absolutely stellar defense, namely the Columbus Blue Jackets, Boston Bruins, and of course the New York Isladers. The Bruins had the best record in the NHL during the regular season, and made it all the way to Game Seven of the SCF last season, and were picked by many to win it all this year. But the Lightning defeated them in five games, after also defeating Columbus in five and before taking care of business against the Isles.

The Lightning have played six overtime games during this run, and won five of them.

In each series, they have been the noticeably better team at even strength and have managed to prevail despite being shockingly unproductive on the power play.

Their penalty kill has been damn good, especially in the clutchest of situations.

They are getting key contributions from all four forward lines and from every single defenseman.

Victor Hedman has been near-perfect and has scored nine goals, putting him within reach of the all-time record for most goals by a defenseman in one post-season. That record is twelve, set by Paul Coffey in 1985, while Brain Leetch holds second place with eleven playoff goals in 1994; Hedman's tally of nine ties him for third place with none other than Bobby Friggin' Orr (1969).

Hedman, Point, and Andrei Vasilevskiy (.931 save percentage, 1.82 goals-against average) have played well enough to take home the Conn Smythe. 

Nikita Kucherov Himself has rung up a gaudy stat line with 26 points in the team's 19 post-season contests (including the play-in round) and yet nobody is even talking about it! How insane is that?

Kuch has rung that number up while playing sound defense and bringing the salt and vinegar. He has mixed it up physically and refused to take crap from opposing players who take cheap shots and dole out gratuitous slashes intended to injure his hands (yes, I'm taking about you Jean-Gabriel Pageau). 

This is all very good.

As far as the specific ECF win over the Isles is concerned, I won't recap it all here but I will say how awesome it was to see the Bolts win in so many ways when the pressure was boiling: They won big (8-2 in Game One)... and they won by making it look big when the game was actually played about even (4-1 in Game Four)... and they won with the timeliest of scoring (Kuch netting the winner with less that nine seconds remaining in Game Two)... and they won with the second-and-third-most-timely scoring (Blake Coleman tied Game Four just 15 seconds after the Isles got the opening goal, then Ondrej Palat scored to put the Bolts ahead a mere 12 seconds after Coleman's marker)... and they won in overtime in an elimination game (see the opening paragraph of this post)... and they won games that were heavy on defense, as well as games that were heavy on offense, as well as games in which the goaltending seemed impregnable... and they prevailed in the series despite scoring the first goal in only one of the six tilts.

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But of course, not everything is sunshine and puppy dogs. That just ain't possible in hockey, or in sports in general, or in life itself. There are always warning signs and things to be concerned about, no matter who you are.

After each of the first two rounds I inveighed about how bad the Bolts have been at face-offs, and unfortunately it did not get any better in the ECF. Part of the reason they went 0-for-5 on the power play in Game Six was that they couldn't win a draw, so they kept having to start off going in the wrong direction before they could even gain possession of the puck. Obviously, you need to have possession before you can even think about entering the neutral zone, much less the offensive zone, so losing power play face-offs means precious time drains off the clock and gets wasted.

Of the eleven Lightning players to have taken draws this post-season, only two are above 50 percent while one (Coleman) is at exactly 50. Meanwhile, three are below 34 percent while the other five are hovering between 43 and 49. The team has gotten this far with these poor numbers, but I have a hard time believing it can climb the final peak without improving in this metric -- not because face-offs are always important, but because their importance elevates in the kind of situations that tend to make all the difference in the world when the grail is in sight (i.e., on special teams, in your defensize zone with the game tied, late in games, etc.)

Also, although the Bolts' penalty kill has been very effective, they still find themselves having to kill far too many penalties. More to the point, they commit penalties at the worst possible times, and there has been one insanely stupid one (see Killorn, Alex) which resulted in an ejection and forced the team to play an entire game down to just nine forwards when somebody else got injured. This must stop or it will be their undoing.

And lastly, we must pray that Andrei Vasilevskiy does not get injured. Because if he does, it means that 37-year-old Curtis McElhinney will take over in net after having played not one second of hockey these playoffs and after having been exceedingly average (.906, 2.89) during the regular season that got corona-stopped more than six months ago.

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And last but not least, there are the Dallas Stars. They have been unbelievably impressive this post-season and I am hard-pressed to think of too many reasons they don't deserve to win it all.

From their outstanding team D, to their daunting top line, to their newfound depth in scoring, to the blueline wizardry of Miro Heiskanen, to their mix of veterans and youth, to the feel-good story of Anton Khudobin performing like he's on the same level as Patrick Roy... they are exactly where they belong right now.

To say nothing of the fact that their head coach, Rick Bowness, was an assistant for the Lightning from 2013 through 2018 -- which means he knows an awful lot about many of the Lightning players' tendencies, and just how to counteract them and get under their skin. This gives the Stars something of an edge; I simply don't know how much of an edge it is.

But both teams are capable of winning in this first-ever Stanley Cup Final to feature two teams from the geographical Deep South.

Here's hoping that the team that winds up triumphant is the Tampa Bay Lightning. Go Bolts!

Halfway There

In the second round of this year's ensconced-in-the-bubble NHL playoffs, all four series stood at 3-1 entering Game Five. Had you told me then that three of those four series would go all the way to Game Seven, I wouldn't have believed you, but go the distance they did. Now that the conference finals are upon us, here are some thoughts about what has happened.

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First I have to tip my hat to the person or persons, apparently from the Dallas Stars' fan base, who crashed Wikipedia on Friday and provided me with comic relief when I really needed some.

Game Seven of the Dallas-Colorado series started in the afternoon while I was still working. I did not watch any of the game but kept glancing at the updates on my phone as the goals kept coming and the score kept changing. Eventually it went to overtime before the Stars came out victorious by a score of 5-4.

As soon as I saw the final I clicked on the game summary, mostly to see who potted the winning goal but also to see who else scored. That's when I saw that somebody I had never heard of, Joel Kiviranta, recorded a hat trick that included the game-winner in overtime. In addition to his name being unfamiliar, it struck me as unusual because "Kiviranta" sounded positively Finnish while "Joel," despite its Hebrew origins, is a run-of-the-mill North American moniker rarely associated with Europe.

But I digress. Wondering who this Joel Kiviranta dude might be, I typed his name into the search window of my iPhone, which shimmied me over to Wikipedia... and at that moment, this is what the opening sentence to his brief Wikipedia page read: Joel Kiviranta (born March 23, 1996) is a Finnish professional ice hockey player and is widely considered to be the best NHL player of all-time.

Some 10 or 15 minutes later, the "best ever" statement was gone but the following sentence had been added to close out the introductory paragraph: Owner of the Colorado Avalanche and the GOAT of the year.

Not long after seeing that update I returned to the Wikipedia page yet again, just see if there were any further revisions. This time the entire introductory paragraph was gone, but underneath Kiviranta's photograph was the following caption: Joel Kiviranta, daddy of the Avalanche.

As you probably know by now, Kiviranta was never drafted by any NHL team despite being draft-eligible for the last six years. However, former Stars player Jere Lehtinen -- who played his entire career with the organization, won three Selkes, assisted on the Stanley Cup-winning goal in 1999, and had his jersey number retired in 2017 -- is now the GM of Finalnd's national team, and he gave the Stars a call and told them that Kiviranta would be worth taking a flyer on. So they inked him to a piddling two-way contract in June 2019 and assigned him to their AHL affiliate on the outskirts of Austin.

As is often the case with AHL'ers, Kiviranta received a few call-ups to the big club for quick look-sees, or when roster players got hurt and needed a short break. But prior to Friday he had appeared in only 11 NHL games and scored just one goal, and he was inserted into the lineup for Game Seven solely because of an injury sustained by Andrew Cogliano in Game Six. It was his first-ever NHL playoff game, and boy did he deliver as he scored thrice, forced overtime with this, and then won the series with this wicked one-timer.

What a great story, and what great Wikipedia entries as well!

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Joel Kiviranta wasn't the only newish 24-year-old to make a mark in the Western Conference during the second round.

The Vancouver Canucks trailed the Las Vegas Golden Knights three games to one when when they learned that Jacob Markstrom, their starting goaltender and best player this season, was unable to play due to injury. So up stepped San Diego native Thatcher Demko, with only 37 NHL appearances to his name and a salary less than one-third that of Markstrom's. 

And how did Demko respond? Although the Knights dominated the Canucks and outshot them 43-17, he valiantly denied them time and again by stopping 42 of those 43 shots and allowing Vancouver to escape with a 2-1 win thanks to opportunistic goals by Brock Boeser and Elias Pettersson.

Next came Game Six, in which Vegas dominated again and bombarded Demko with 48 shots on goal. And this time he denied every single one of 'em, pitching a shutout and allowing Vancouver to skate away with a victory and force a seventh game despite getting more than doubled up on the shot clock.

Game Seven didn't get any easier, as he was forced to fend off 34 Vegas bullets while his teammates managed to put only 14 shots on net at the other end. Nevertheless, Demko kept the Knights off the scoreboard all the way through the first and second periods and for almost three-quarters of the third, up until Shea Theodore managed to thread the puck through a screen of bodies that was so thick no goalie on Earth could have seen it. That was the only one that got by Demko, but it was all that was needed since he had no run support.

Across those starts his save percentage was .984 against what looks like the best team in the NHL, and he carried the Canucks all the way to Game Seven of a series they should have lost in five. That certainly makes things interesting for their front office because the 30-year-old Markstrom, coming off a career year, is heading into unrestricted free agency where his value is assumed to be north of $5 million per annum on a contract of 5+ years -- compared to the $3.67 million he made this year. Demko, on the other hand, is six years younger and has a year remaining at just $1.05 million; and because Demko will only be a restricted free agent after next season, he can almost certainly be re-signed then for less than Markstrom may command several weeks from now.

Prior to the week that just ended, it was universally believed that the Canucks would make a significant offer to Markstrom before the NHL's off-season officially begins; i.e., that they would keep him in the fold with a hefty raise without him ever having to go to market. But now the wheels have to be turning in their heads, seeing as how the salary cap is going to be flat (and might even go down a year from now) due to revenue losses brought on by Coronavirus -- and seeing as how they have a slew of other big names who will also be needing new contracts next year and the year after that.

Maybe three games is a small sample size to go on where Thatcher Demko is concerned, but maybe it's not. Those three games were in a four-night span, under pressure, against an elite opponent who was playing at its peak and was not taking anything for granted. And as a youth, he did backstop Team USA to the silver medal at the 2012 Under-17 World Championships. And at Boston College, he did win the 2016 Mike Richter Award as the NCAA's top goaltender. And Vancouver did, after all, draft him in the second round.

In other words, it's not as if the Canucks would be taking a shot in the dark if they decide to go with Demko instead of Markstrom.

Markstrom has been on record saying he wants to remain in Vancouver, and I can't help but think that while he certainly didn't want the team to lose when he got injured a week ago, he must be sitting there today wondering what the hell to expect now. He is not the only well-known goalie heading into free agency this off-season -- Braden Holtby, Robin Lehner, Corey Crawford, Anton Khudobin, and Cam Talbot are all in that same boat -- so this figures to be a buyer's market rather than a seller's market, especially when you consider that the pool of restricted free agens includes the likes of Matt Murray, Tristan Jarry, and Alexander Georgiev. Things sure have become interesting, if not comfortable, in British Columbia.

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Since we are now halfway through the post-season, it's time to talk about which players are making a case for the Conn Smythe. In my unassailable opinion, of course, and limited to one player for each team still standing!

Dallas Stars: Miro Heiskanen. Including the play-in bouts, Heiskanen has 21 points in 16 games, tops on his team and tied for second-most of anybody in the league this post-season. And did I mention that he's a defenseman, and that he has pulled off this insane stat line without shortchanging any of his defensive responsibilities? This one is easy to pick.

Las Vegas Golden Knights: Shea Theodore. Yes, 'twas Theodore who finally solved the Riddle of Thatcher Demko and sent Vegas to the Western Conference Final. And that was far from the first time he's made a difference in the offensive zone since the NHL resumed play, for he has put the puck in the back of the net six times and also dished out ten assists. This puts him in the team lead for points, and, like Heiskanen, he is doing this as a defenseman.

New York Islanders: Jean-Gabriel Pageau. It is true that Mathew Barzal is skating silky smooth at sonic speed and making things happen, and it is true that Anthony Beauvillier leads the Isles in playoff points. But for my money, Pageau deserves their nod for playoff MVP because of his impeccable two-way play. The 27-year-old centerman routinely gets sent out against the opposition's top offensive threats, and he routinely neutralizes them. And he has remained an offensive threat himself with a 20.0 shooting percentage and 9 points contributed (7 goals, 2 assists).

Tampa Bay Lightning: Victor Hedman. I'll just cut-and-past what I wrote in my previous post and repeat it here: "...if I had to pick the top Conn Smythe candidate for this team it would be defenseman extraordinaire Victor Hedman. The 29-year-old from Ornskoldsvik, Sweden has eaten monster minutes and performed near-perfectly in all three zones, on both sides of the puck, in both series."

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Now how about two dream scenarios, one per conference, that would make for a great storybook ending to this weird season?

Western Conference: Dallas hangs with heavily favored Las Vegas, and forces the WCF to a seventh game after chasing Robin Lehner from the net in Games Five and Six by scoring a half-dozen times in each... Peter DeBoer benches Lehner for Game Seven and sends out Marc-Andre Fleury, who avenges himself for his agent's tweet by stopping all 38 Dallas shots in regulation; however, it goes to overtime tied at zero and then Joel Kiviranta (who else?) scores top-shelf to send Dallas to the SCF for the first time in 20 years... Then the SCF also goes to a 0-0 Game Seven overtime, and this time Jamie Benn, the captain, scores the decider to finally win that elusive Cup after all these years... After taking his spin around the rink with the Cup, Benn hands it off to 34-year-old Anton Khudobin in recognition of his outstanding work after assuming the starting goaltender role when Ben Bishop got injured. Khudobin then hands the Cup off to fellow 34-year-old Alexander Radulov... Khudobin becomes the first person from Kazakhstan to get his name engraved on the silver pedestal, and Raduolv lives out the dream of many who came before him by sending a mocking text to Marc Bergevin after indulging in multiple shots of post-game vodka.

Eastern Conference: The Lightning and Islanders engage in a seven-game defensive slugfest to see which team gets to represent the East in the SCF. Trailing three games to two, the Bolts find themselves facing elimination for the first time all post-season and Andrei Vasilevskiy delivers for them by shutting the Isles out in Game Six... Game Seven enters the final 30 seconds tied at one with the Bolts in the offensive zone. Nikita Kucherov has the puck on his stick high in the right circle, looks to Brayden Point curling into the slot, and starts to slip one of his patented assists to him -- but just as the NY defense along with G Semyon Varlomov follow Kuch's body language and shift their gaze to Point, Kuch fools everyone by rifling a no-look, fast-as-Lightning wrister inside the near post to win the series... Then the SCF begins with Steven Stamkos returning Lazarus-like from injury and playing like he hasn't missed a beat. Tampa Bay battles Las Vegas to see which team will make history, and that team turns out to be the Bolts. Hedman and Stamkos score the goals in a 2-1 Game Seven triumph, with the latter's being the Cup-winner... One week into the off-season, Stamkos makes like Mike Bossy and retires young because he does not want his injury problems to rob him of his long-term health. His salary thus comes off the books, opening up precious cap space which the team uses to re-sign several core players, and then he takes a front office role with the organization and cements his legacy as the undisputed Best Bolt Ever.

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Hey, a man can dream, can't he? With that, I'd better stop writing now.

Enjoy the next two rounds everyone!

Second one won and done

How good it feels to say these words: The Tampa Bay Lightning have eliminated the Boston Bruins from the Stanley Cup Playoffs and are advancing to the Eastern Conference Final. 

This marks the fourth time in the past six seasons -- and fifth in the past ten -- that the Lightning have made it this deep into the most arduous post-season in all of sports.

And for the second time in the past three seasons, they have made it this far by eliminating Boston 4-1 in the second round.

I honestly don't know what feels better, the fact that they advanced or the fact that they did so at the expense of those dastardly Bruins from Beantown. Probably the latter, since the Bruins are the defending conference champs, and had the NHL's best record this corona-abbreviated regular season, and, let's face it, everybody not from New England enjoys watching any championship-aspiring Boston franchise get denied.

Anyhoo, now it's time for a few looks both back and forward.

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Tampa Bay dropped Game One by a single goal, then ran the table the next four games to eliminate the Bruins while outscoring them 19-10 for the series. Sounds like a pretty good drubbing, doesn't it?

In some ways, it actually was. The Lightning surrendered just one five-on-five goal across the final three contests, and they consistently looked like the better and deeper team through most of the series. They turned Boston's second through fourth lines pretty much into non-factors, forcing the Bruins to rely too heavily on their top line of Bergeron-Pastrnak-Marchand. 

But this is the Stanley Cup Playoffs, so of course it wasn't as easy as it might look on paper. Two of the games went to overtime before the Bolts pulled them out, including a pivotal Game Two -- had the result gone the other way that night, the Bolts would have been down 2-0 in the series entering Game Three rather than tied 1-1. And that, moi druz'ya, is a big deal.

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Brayden Point was the most visible offensive hero in the first round, scoring overtime goals against Columbus in Games One and Five to secure Tampa Bay's trip to the second round.  Once in the second round, however, Ondrej Palat took over that role by tallying five goals against the Bruins; among those five were the OT winner in Game Two and a splendid redirect to open the scoring in Game Five.

Still, if I had to pick the top Conn Smythe candidate for this team it would be defenseman extraordinaire Victor Hedman. The 29-year-old from Ornskoldsvik, Sweden has eaten monster minutes and performed near-perfectly in all three zones, on both sides of the puck, in both series. It's only fitting that it was he who scored the series-winning goal against the Bruins, on a laser 14:10 into the second overtime Monday night.

Nikita Kucherov is right up there too, with 16 points (4,12) in the 13 games Tampa Bay has played in the bubble since the NHL returned from hiatus. He is doing it while playing sound defense as well.

Meanwhile, trade deadline acquisition Blake Coleman, born and raised in that hockey hotbed of Plano, Texas, scored a pair of goals in the pivotal Game Two victory nine days ago.

And the 30-year-old recent castoff from Buffalo, Zach Bogosian, continued to play like a man possessed in the second round after surprising everyone with his stellar performance in the opening round. His late-season signing by GM Julien BriesBois could prove to be the best under-the-radar move ever made by this franchise.

And inevitably in this sport, there is the all-important man between the pipes. Andrei Vasilevskiy was dialed in big-time against the Bruins, turning in a series-long .936 save percentage overall and .960 at even-strength. Before the series was over he had become the all-time franchise leader in playoff wins -- which is saying something when you consider that three netminders who spent major portions of their careers playing for the Lightning (Daren Puppa, Nikolai Khabibulin, and Ben Bishop) were named to the Top 100 NHL Goalies of All-Time list by The Hockey News two years ago. 

You gotta love all of the above.

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There are reasons to believe this Lightning club has what it takes to win it all this spring summer/fall. One of those reasons is their depth both up front and on the blue line.

Bogosian wasn't even on the roster until near the end of the season, and he was thought to be depleted and over the hill, yet he is playing alongside the mighty Hedman and not even missing a beat. He even made the offensive highlight reels with his sprint and assist on Coleman's opening goal in Game Two.

Ryan McDonagh went down for three games, so Braydon Coburn and Luke Schenn stepped right up and got things done when Coach Cooper responded by switching to an 11-7 lineup.

After becoming the talk of the league against Columbus, the Lightning's third line of Coleman, Yanni Gourde, and Barclay Goodrow kept it up against Boston by bringing energy, spunk, defensive acumen, and timely scoring.

It says something that the Bolts have made it so deep into the playoffs despite Steven Stamkos being sidelined the whole time, and despite McDonagh missing three games versus Boston, and despite having to play most of the final game against Boston without Kucherov (they were actually down to 10 forwards after Kuch took a high stick to the head).

It certainly helps when you have two-way pivot Anthony Cirelli, who is able to play productive hockey no matter who you put him up against... and smart, tough, redirect maestro Alex Killorn, who always delivers in the post-season... and big man Pat Maroon, bringing his Cup experience to the top of the crease on the fourth line... and feisty Cedric Pacquette, ever eager to get under an opponent's skin... and Kucherov, playing hard-nosed and belying the rap that he is only a "skills guy"... and Mikhail Sergachev, playing spot-on playoff hockey and growing by leaps and bounds... and Kevin Shattenkirk, distributing pucks and getting shots on net from the point like nobody's business.

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But there are also reasons to doubt that the Lightning has what it takes to win it all.

Right now, Kucherov's injury status is unknown. He has skated since that high stick to the head, but his availability to play is up in the air. If the Bolts have to play without him and Stamkos it could be very damaging to their Cup chances.

Speaking of which, they need Stammer back. He is one of the premier players on Planet Earth, and while they have advanced without him thus far in this tournament, his production and leadership are simply too much to be without over the long haul.

Oh, and another reason they need Stammer is that they continue to be deficient at face-offs. Yes, Point is good at the dot and Goodrow played really well there against the Bruins, winning 63.3 percent of the time overall and 64.3 percent while short-handed. But Goodrow is below 50 percent for the playoffs as a whole, as is every other Bolt not named Point or Coleman. And Coleman very rarely takes face-offs, so the fact that his percentage is above water almost shouldn't count.

Sometimes it is easy to forget about face-offs, but they are crucial in key situations and late in games. If a team is bad at them, it will usually catch up to them at the worst of times. The Lightning need The Captain back for face-offs just as much as they would love to have him back for his one-timer.

Also, it has been years since a team won the Stanley Cup without getting several clutch performances by their back-up goalie during the playoff run. So far these playoffs, the Lightning have not let Curtis McElhinney even sniff the ice. Yes, they haven't needed to because Vasy has not been injured, but other teams have given their back-ups important reps, including on back-to-backs.

Are the Lightning keeping McElhinney on the pine because they don't need him on the ice, or are they keeping him there because they don't think he has what it takes? I don't know, and I hope I don't have to find out the hard way.

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On that note, I guess I have written long enough. Bring on the ECF, regardless of whether the opponent is the Flyers or Islanders!

I will soon write more about these playoffs in general as opposed to writing just about my team, but be that as it may: Go Bolts!