Caps-Pens meet early once again
It is the playoff format everyone loves to hate, but say this for the NHL’s divisional setup: It is serving up a tasty feast of rivalries in the second round.
For the second consecutive year, Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins will face Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals after they hadn’t met in the playoffs since 2009. Washington and Pittsburgh were the league’s top two teams in the regular season and are the two top Stanley Cup contenders left playing in the final eight. They get under way on Thursday instead of in early June.
“We’re ready,” Capitals forward Marcus Johansson said of facing the defending Cup champions who knocked them out a year ago. “We can’t wait to get going. We’ve worked hard for it. We’ve worked all year and all summer to get back into this position, and now we’re here.”
The Edmonton Oilers have waited 11 years to get back the postseason and they now face the Pacific Division rival Ducks, with Game 1 set for tomorrow in Anaheim. In the other West semifinal, the St. Louis Blues have home-ice advantage against the Nashville Predators after those teams pulled off first-round upsets.
St. Louis general manager Doug Armstrong expects it to be far more physical series than anyone expects. That could also be the case for the Ottawa Senators against the New York Rangers, too, with two teams that don’t lack for big guys and a thirst for tension.
“When the NHL decided to go with division playoffs ... you do get divisional hatred really quick, and that is exciting,” Armstrong said. “This is the benefit of having divisional playoffs is that you play teams right off the bat that you have a history with and you play them consistently in rounds 1 and 2. There are downsides to it, but this is the upside.”
Elsewhere in the NHL — San Jose Sharks forward Joe Thornton underwent surgery on a torn ACL and MCL in his left knee yesterday to repair an injury that sidelined him less than two weeks before he returned to play the final four games of a first-round series loss to the Edmonton Oilers.
The 37-year-old Thornton, who has played 12 seasons with the Sharks, downplayed the injury before the team announced the severity of what he played through and the surgery, calling it simply “the normal stuff that hockey players deal with” at this time of the season. . . .
The Chicago Blackhawks fired assistant coach Mike Kitchen. Kitchen joined coach Joel Quenneville’s staff in July 2010. He helped the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup in 2013 and 2015.