Powerful Penguins lead way as questions linger throughout Eastern Conference

The Toronto Maple Leafs are in the playoffs, and that’s just the start. The Montreal Canadiens, 15th in the East a season ago and engulfed in flames? Second in the conference. The New York Islanders, who hadn’t made the playoffs since 2007? In. The three worst teams in the East last year, rambling and shambling, and this year they will play in May.

A 48-game regular season was always going to make for a weird little cocktail, and here we are. The Rangers and Islanders will appear in the playoffs at the same time for the second time since 1994. The Philadelphia Flyers and New Jersey Devils are both out for the first time since there were New Jersey Devils at all, back in 1982, and the Devils became the first Stanley Cup finalist to miss the playoffs the following season since 2007. The Original Six all made the playoffs for the first time since 1996, but that seems like more of a coincidence than anything.

So as new seasons go, this is a new one. Where we’re going, though, is a different question. Pittsburgh is clearly the favourite in the East, even if their best player has just started practicing with a plastic bucket protecting his face; Sidney Crosby has not played in a month, and unlike his returns from concussions, is working to a deadline this time.

But the Penguins have played through injuries all season, and still went 22-3 against playoff teams. They will play the Islanders, who were one of three Eastern playoff teams to beat the Penguins; it happened all the way back on Jan. 29, though. Pittsburgh is 20-1 against playoff teams since then. It could be fun — Islanders centre John Tavares, once touted as an heir to Canada’s best player bloodline, is now simply a marvelous player — but the Islanders franchise hasn’t won a playoff series since 1993, when they toppled the two-time defending champs and Mario Lemieux.

But even if the Penguins have their question marks, the rest of the conference is far less certain. Montreal went slack after clinching a spot — 10 days ago defenceman Josh Gorges, who knows full well the weight of controversial words in Montreal, called his team “soft” — and only tightened up a little at the end, after Carey Price’s sudden bouts of crumbling had thrown a good dose of panic into the populace.

The Habs did manage to beat the Leafs in what was likely their last chance to do so this season, and so will play the Ottawa Senators for the first time since 1917. The Senators have defenceman Erik Karlsson back from his Achilles injury, and in two games he has looked every bit as dominant for Ottawa as P.K. Subban has been for Montreal. Ottawa didn’t exactly roar down the stretch, either, but that just means they belong in the picture. This will be the series of two solitudes, crashing together.

Washington and the Rangers can talk about failing to fulfill grand expectations in the breaks in the action, and Alexander Ovechkin had 23 goals in his final 23 games, and is back to being the kind of player who could tip a series.

So is Henrik Lundqvist, though, who is quietly — somehow, quietly — the most reliable goaltender working at the moment, and who could really use an Ovechkin playing on his team. Instead, he has rick Nash, who has played four more playoff games than the Toronto Maple Leafs since 2004.

And of course, there is Boston and Toronto. The Bruins have owned the Leafs, and the overwhelming feeling is that Toronto has no chance here. A proviso, though: two days after Gorges called him team soft, Bruins coach Claude Julien did the same with his. The Bruins started 17-3-3, and finished 11-11-3. Toronto was respectable in their meetings this season. This isn’t david and Goliath, unless Goliath has been feeling sluggish for several weeks, and is not sure he wants to get out of bed.

But the Leafs are david, and the best possible example of the power of this truncated season. Toronto was 26-17-5 this season; last season, doomed, they were 24-19-5 after 48 games. The Leafs have been out-shot by 10 per game over the last month, and shots allowed and attempted are an excellent indication of how a team will do over the long term.

The playoffs are not the long term, though, for most of the people involved. They are collections of small sample sizes, windows into how a team can play, a place for greatness and bounces and all kinds of pain. In an ordinary season, there would be two months left to get right. Instead, in the east, it’s time to go — for Crosby, for Ovechkin, for Price, for Karlsson, for the slumbering Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Playoffs, baby. Here we go.

BruCe arthur