Hockey thoughts: Bruins coach lights into players, Red Wings, Caps, Ovechkin, Lemieux, Gretzky, McDavid, MacKinnon, pulling the goalie in OT, men's tournament brackets

Tuesday 3/26/24

Boston Bruins coach Jim Montgomery laid into his team, saying they don't look like they're ready for the playoffs, citing their last game against the Flyers and the way they started practice yesterday. Nice to see we're not just doing hugs and cuddles here.

The Red Wings and Capitals play tonight in a big game in terms of qualifying for the playoffs. I'm surprised the Capitals are where they are. Alexander Ovechkin has come alive after looking like he was going to total somewhere around 12 goals--he'll probably get 30 now. The Red Wings shouldn't be in this spot, you feel--like they've let something slip away. I know someone who is a Red Wings fan and I think it'd make them happy to see the Wings in the playoffs, so I hope they get in for that reason, but all things being equal, I think you want someone such as Ovechkin in the playoffs. The same goes with Sidney Crosby. They're that kind of player with that kind of career where you want to fall the narrative and never not see them out there when so many other teams are playing.

I feel like Crosby's legacy is being hurt somewhat by Connor McDavid coming along when he did. This is a "down" year for McDavid. Nate MacKinnon is probably going to win the Hart, but should he? Does he really deserve it over McDavid? I expect there will be some McDavid voter fatigue, though, and this seems like MacKinnon's year. You kind of figured he'd have one where he copped the Hart, and this is it, I believe.

Looked at the scoring leader board this morning and saw that McDavid was only six points back of Nikita Kucherov. McDavid can make up the gap of six points in a single big game or two pretty good ones. There have been times this year where I've thought, "Okay, he won't win the Art Ross this season, took too long to get it going," but I should stop with that. He's virtually never out of the race in the rare instances when he's not leading it. The goal scoring is down--I feel like he adapts to what is best/most useful at the time--but he will get 100 assists. Only three players have ever done that: Bobby Orr and Mario Lemieux each did it once; Wayne Gretzky did it eleven times. To give you another one of those crazy Gretzky-related stats: Mario Lemieux had ten 100 point seasons in his career, and there's Gretzky topping 100 assists eleven times.

I was watching a game a few Sundays ago between Minnesota and Nashville in which the Wild pulled their goalie in OT, a move termed bold and brilliant by commenters. It wasn't--it was foolish and counterintuitive. Here's how it works in the NHL regular season: the game is tied at the end of regulation, and each team gets a point. The game then goes to a five-minute, three-on-three overtime. If one team scores, they get an extra point, giving them two points, the same as they would have gotten if they won in regulation. If the game is tied at the end of the five-on-five, the teams go to a shootout, and whoever wins that gets the extra point. If you pull your goalie in the three-on-three OT, making it a four-on-three situation, and the other team scores an empty-net goal against you, you forfeit the point you had in the bag.

Minnesota pulled their goalie and they won, but why would you do this? The chances of it not working out are greater, you risk losing the point, and you have both the OT and the shootout left to you as places to pick up that second point. What is the thinking here? The other team is so much better than you that you have little chance against them three-on-three? Your team is horrid at the shootout and there's no way you could prevail if it comes to that? Honestly, I can't think of a good reason to do this. People--including the studio analysts--were like, "They needed the extra point for the playoffs," etc. How does pulling the goalie make it more likely you get that point? It doesn't. It actually shortens your chances, if that makes sense, to get the point. And losing the point seems disastrous to me in a playoff push.

Looked at the NCAA men's hockey bracket. BC and BU could meet up in the National Championship game. That's what I want to happen. First, I want BC to win. Second, I'd like to see them play against BU to get that win. Both teams met for the national title in 1978. That was quite a time period--you had the blizzard, then these two Boston hockey powers playing for it all. BU had a great squad and the better team definitely won. I think BC is better this year, though--they have more talent on that team than any BC team I've ever watched, and some of them have been loaded. But hey, you can get knocked out in the first game. It's hockey, it's single-game advance or go home, and it's hard to win it all.