With one last look back at those eliminated in Round 2, we look at one important off-season question facing Vancouver, Colorado, Boston and Carolina.
After Matt Duchene scored in double overtime to push the Dallas Stars past the Colorado Avalanche in the second round, he gave a great interview where he talked about how he felt the game going long played to the Starsā advantage.
He said of guys like Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar: āAs much as those guys are superhuman, theyāre still human. And so the longer that went, I looked over at the monitor between the bench and looked at the ice time, and it was a pretty big difference between their high-ends and our high-ends ā¦ so, weāve talked about our depth all yearā¦ā
The implication was that the heavy usage of Coloradoās top guys would wear them down more than the other players, take away the advantage of having the best offensive players in the series, and that would favour the deeper Stars.
And over the course of a single night, thatās a valid observation. The worldās fastest cars canāt go anywhere without fuel in the tank.
But the opposite is true over the grind of a months-long playoff run, where the workload accumulates for everyone, and weāre reminded that itās a massive advantage to have the hares rather than a group of committed tortoises.
Depth is of course crucial to playoff success, but itās at this time of year that āhigh-endsā drive the bus more than ever, and they benefit from the more average players slowing down.
In Game 1 against the Edmonton Oilers, the Stars looked borderline slow. They didnāt seem to have pop anywhere in their lineup, they werenāt overly physical, and none of their āhigh-endsā stood out (aside from a couple pucks popping free to Tyler Seguin, who had 52 points this season). It may have gone to double OT, but in the end the Oilers eked out a win on goals from the three best offensive forwards in the series, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Zach Hyman. (McDavid played north of 27 minutes, Hyman and Draisaitl were over 25, while only Wyatt Johnston got over 25 for Dallas.)
Iām of the belief that the first round of playoffs is the least meritocratic, and itās certainly where we find the most absurd upsets, which happens for a few reasons.
With everyone at their healthiest, the speed of the game is insane. Players are running into one another, rattling the glass, firing pucks from everywhere, and itās chaotic. Tensions run high, and some team is always āsetting the tone.ā Thereās real randomness in that.
That early, average players have the legs and drive to work on a guy like McDavid, to cut him off and hold him in secret and chase him as far as their legs will take them. Theyāve got the fresh commitment to pack it in and block shots and unite as a team. We often see elite players slowed by this in the early rounds, as fans of some other Canadian teams may have noticed. Itās hard out there for the scorers, to begin with.
But I do think that as the playoffs go on, those average players become barnacles on a speedboat. They start to sustain some of their own bumps and bruises, and get the heavy legs that come with the accumulation of game after game after game of chasing around the big dogs.