Defenses step up as NHL changes gears to playoffs
Jon Cooper doesn’t get much sleep from September through June, even less when the NHL playoffs begin.
After coaching the Tampa Bay Lightning to the league’s best regularseason record in 2019, getting swept in the first round in stunning fashion and then winning the Stanley Cup back to back, he knows all too well how hockey changes when the playoffs start.
“You know when you’re in a deep sleep and your alarm goes off at 6 in the morning? That’s what it’s like,” Cooper said.
“That’s the difference.”
The shift from Game 82 of the regular season to Game 1 of the first round in the NHL playoffs is perhaps the most dramatic shift in sports given the level and style of play, how goals are scored and prevented, and often how postseason games are officiated.
That explains the unpredictability and upsets, the reliance on goaltending and why those hoisting the Cup sometimes are so banged up they can’t hold it over their heads.
“It’s just changes everything,” Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said.
“Usually at the end of the day defensive hockey wins in the playoffs,” said St. Louis general manager Doug Armstrong, whose Blues bruised their way to the Cup three years ago and won’t try that this time around. “But I think there’s so many highscoring, good-scoring teams that this could be maybe the start of something different where you can score your way through the playoffs.”
There were 6.28 goals scored per game this season, the highest average since the salary cap era began in 2005 in what could be the start of an offensive renaissance and bleak times for goalies. Games are faster than before with more young talent entering the league, so a six-goal average could become the new standard.
But the playoffs? That’s usually where high-scoring hockey goes to die.
Last year, coming off leading the league in scoring with 105 points in 56 games, Edmonton’s
Connor McDavid was limited to four points in a first-round sweep by Winnipeg. After drawing 29 penalties in the regular season, he drew zero in the playoffs.
One major difference is how much ice is available in the playoffs, when players are more willing to put their bodies in front of pucks shot 90-plus mph in the name of winning. Scoring goes down, and bruising goes up.
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Red Wings: Detroit fired Jeff Blashill, moving on from the coach tabbed to guide the storied NHL franchise through a long rebuilding
Aprocess. Blashill spent the past seven seasons behind the bench for the Red Wings, who have missed the playoffs the past six seasons while transitioning into a youth movement. They last qualified for the postseason in 2015-16 when they lost in the first round.
Coyotes: Arizona played its final game at Gila River Arena on Friday night, ending a 19-year, drama-filled partnership with the city of Glendale. The Coyotes will play at Arizona State’s new hockey arena starting next season as the franchise waits word on a proposed new arena across the Valley of the Sun in Tempe.
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