A quick mix of the things we gleaned from the week of hockey, serious and less so, and rolling four lines deep. The schedule-makers begged me to move Quick Shifts to Sunday to appease an American audience, but I held firm.
1. Pressure is privilege. Pressure is a burden.
Pressure creates diamonds. Pressure bursts pipes.
In the 2022-23 regular season, the Boston Bruins enjoyed more wins at home (34) than any other hockey team. The Toronto Maple Leafs won the third most in their own barn (27).
Meanwhile, the middling Florida Panthers ranked 18th in road wins (19). Hardly an unwanted house guest.
Then the slate got wiped clean and the Cats got feral.
In the Year of the Road Team, none has sent more home fans to their cars sour than Florida, now 5-1 away from FLA Live Arena. No home side has lost more than Toronto (four times). Boston is next (three).
“Playoffs are a different beast,” posits Panthers coach Paul Maurice.
“We’re playing two teams that are under a whole lot of pressure to be good at home, to be dynamic at home. Sometimes being on the road is a nice, safe place.
“But I’m really glad to be going home, for sure.”
Really?
The Maple Leafs are undefeated in games following a southbound flight this postseason, and they could use a change of scenery. A flip in mojo.
They’re not playing awful hockey in Round 2.
In fact, the Maple Leafs have generated 36 high-danger scoring chances over the first 120 minutes to the Panthers’ 19.
They have run into the hottest goalie on the planet. They’ve lost track of the scoreboard and committed impatient and inexcusable errors, feeding a quick-strike offence. And they’ve certainly been bullied a bit by a group that’s running around with nothing to lose.
“The pressure isn’t really there for us,” Florida’s Sam Reinhart says. “We’re just showing up and playing.”
When we relay Reinhart’s mindset to Maurice, the coach is happy his players feel that way.
Up 2-0, to hear Maurice play the underdog card for the 2022 Presidents’ Trophy winners is to hear Joe Satriani play the guitar, Buddy Rich play the drums, Ron Burgundy play the jazz flute. The man goes off.
“At no point in the last nine games have we felt we’ve dominated the game, where if we play our game, we should win. The teams we’re playing are way too powerful. So, even with the win, we don’t walk away from the rink [Thursday] night and say, ‘Man, we really handed it to those guys.’ We were gassed,” Maurice says.
“These days are huge for us to get rest. But we’re not walking out of the rink feeling rich or royal. We just scratch and crawl. We don’t feel particularly prosperous this morning. Just tired.”
The Maple Leafs, too, should be tired.
Tired of skating long stretches from behind, trying to catch up. Tired of allowing their opponent dictate pace and style of play. Tired of missing on Grade-A looks and dressing the second-best goalie.
Time to reverse the pressure. Time to assert themselves.
In the immortal words of Ilya Samsonov, time to stop giving a bleep.
2. There is some parallel with Tampa forward Alex Killorn’s pending free agency and that of former Maple Leaf Zach Hyman’s a couple years back.
Both left wings. Both draped in blue and white. Both beloved by their teammates, coaches, and fan bases. Both college grads. Both versatile, hardworking defensive players with excellent offensive skills.
Killorn, 33, is older and has rings and is more apt to ride Jet Skis than author children’s books. But, like Hyman’s last days as a Maple Leaf, there might not be enough cap space to give him the raise he needs.
This is Killorn’s last shot at a hefty deal. The suitors will be lining up around the block.
And the Lightning have already handed out raises to Anthony Cirelli, Mikhail Sergachev, Erik Cernak, Nick Perbix, and Michal Eyssimont for 2023-24.
Tampa needs to sign a backup goalie and sort out the futures of RFAs Ross Colton and Tanner Jeannot — both with arbitration rights and deserving of a pay bump.
Where does that leave Killorn, hot off a career-best 27-goal, 64-point performance?
Does he accept less than market value to play 1,000-plus games in Tampa and possibly get his sweater in the rafters?
“It’s going to be a challenge,” Lightning GM Julien BriseBois said. “What helps us is that I know Alex loves it here. He wants to stay here. We’d love to have him here. He’s coming off a career season and means so much to our organization, both on the ice and off the ice.”
With his future uncertain, Killorn admitted on locker cleanout day that the loss to Toronto “hit a little harder.”
What now?
“All season, it’s something I thought about,” Killorn said. “Going forward, I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”
3. Just a thought: Mark Scheifele — whose boyhood idol was Steve Yzerman — to the Detroit Red Wings makes too much sense.
It’s time for the Wings to take a step forward and time for the Jets to take a step back.
4. From the LBC to the CTC…
Thoroughly enjoyed Ian Mendes’ interview with prospective Ottawa Senators owner Snoop Dogg, particularly his commentary on the lack of spotlight being directed at the best players in the game.
“They don’t know how to market. Like McDavid, he’s the No. 1 hockey player in the world. Why doesn’t he have commercials everywhere?” Snoop asks.
“When Snoop comes into an organization, he knows how to take that player, take their star power and make him go.”
Take ’em to church, Snoop.
5. ’Tis the season for performance overages.
All player performance bonuses get tallied up, and if those bonuses exceed the 2022-23 salary cap ($82.5 million), that charge gets carried over to 2023-24 as a penalty.
Fifteen teams — nearly half the league — will incur a bonus overage next season.
Some are minimal (San Jose, St. Louis and Washington have an overage of $25,000 or less).
But far and away the biggest blow is coming to the Boston Bruins, who will be dinged $4.5 million off their 2023-24 cap before we know what the ceiling will be.
That’s a good player. Or two or three serviceable ones.
This is the bill for the team-friendly, performance-loaded David Krecji and Patrice Bergeron contracts coming due.
6. Reeling from their opening-round collapse to the Panthers, the Bruins must face the fact they spent a Dunkin’ Donuts full of draft picks to improve an already-stacked team for a playoff run cut short.
Boston spent a first-, second-, third-, and a fifth-round pick to rent defenceman Dmitry Orlov and forward Garnet Hathaway. Rental winger Tyler Bertuzzi cost a first and a fourth.
The Bruins have whittled themselves down to a single pick over the first three rounds of the 2023 and 2024 drafts (a third in ’23).
With Boston tight to the ceiling and free agents Jake DeBrusk and Jeremy Swayman in need of raises, there’s no guarantee any of the rentals stick around.
Hathaway: “I’ll give more light to the situation as I go through those meetings, call my agent in the coming week. There’s no rush right now. I think we were all caught off guard, so that decision hasn’t really been put in front of everyone.”
Bertuzzi: “We honestly had such a blast. We were in the north end. Ate pasta every day, went for walks, we had a lot of fun, and we enjoyed it here. So, yeah, we could definitely see it.”
Orlov: “Right now, it’s dark. What I’m going to do, I don’t know. I still don’t know what my plan is. If I fly back to Washington or stay here. It’s a lot of things. Obviously, I’m going to have to make a decision [about]where I’m going to be, and I need to talk to my family and figure it out.”
7. In the Boston-Florida round, Bruins forward Brad Marchand called out the broadcasters for allowing some of Matthew Tkachuk’s spicy chirps air live to fans, due to a hot mic near the benches.
Leafs defenceman Luke Schenn offers some thoughtful comments on the culture and concerns around microphones catching audio from the heat of the battle:
“There’s probably some things [not fit for air]. That’s probably what you have producers for. Some stuff shouldn’t be getting leaked, ever. When a guy’s mic’d up, you typically let [teammates]know, or it’ll be written on the board: ‘Hey, I’m mic’d up tonight.’
“I don’t know if guys necessarily love wearing it. It’s one of those things, you do it for the fans, for the TV. From an outside perspective, when I’m watching a game, it’s interesting to see what’s going on for sure. But if you’re actually the guy wearing it, you gotta be a little careful.
“You get caught in the heat of the moment. You forget you’re wearing it half the time. You’re conscious of it, then you’re not. You go back and forth. That’s something, I don’t disagree with [Marchand]. Stuff should be filtered through.”
“You don’t want to get the guy in trouble. The player is doing a favour to everyone watching, to see what’s going on. It’s not meant to be used as fire or taken the wrong way.
“He’s not loving the fact he’s wearing the mic. He’s doing it for the fans, and we all understand that. We all have a certain role to carry. It’s great for TV, but I don’t think anything should be leaked when it’s not filtered through.”
8. Toronto’s Mitch Marner may be a long shot to prohibitive favourite Patrice Bergeron in the Selke Trophy race, but he has a shot of becoming the first winger to hoist the award in 20 years (Jere Lehtinen).
This is his fifth consecutive year appearing on Selke ballots and, regardless how the vote shakes out, his highest finish.
Here are Marner’s teammates discussing his work in the D-zone.
Auston Matthews: “The penalty kill is the big piece for him. He’s just so good with his stick, anticipating plays and breaking out passes, just getting little tips on pucks and disrupting the opposition. I think it’s very fitting. He’s such an amazing player offensively, but defensively he’s really come into his own, especially the past couple years.”
Mark Giordano: “He’s pretty much in a class of his own. Offensively, I’d say he’s got the vision of Johnny Gaudreau. He just sees things other guys don’t see, and it always feels like he’s two, three steps [ahead]. But defensively, to be good on both ends like he is, he reads the play so well. That’s what it comes down to. You’ll see so many times in a game where it’s like, ‘What’s Mitchy doing over there?’ But he’s picking off a pass that he’s reading ahead of two or three of us. He’s been great all year, and he continues to do it defensively. I mean, he kills penalties. As a top guy, not too many of those guys getting 100 points and killing penalties. So, it’s pretty impressive.”
Morgan Rielly: “He’s been in that conversation for a while now, at least in my opinion…. For any young player who likes watching hockey, I would watch him. How he plays the game is outstanding, how much he cares about the outcome of the game rather than just his personal stats, how he moves the puck and what he sees is impressive.”
9. Not sure I can get behind the Maple Leafs’ troll fans, who wear a variety of visiting teams’ sweaters, as savvy as they may be.
Instead, give me this guy.
He turns his Philadelphia Flyers Shayne Gostisbehere sweater into a homemade Hurricanes getup. And then he gets rewarded with some fresh threads for his efforts.
10. A moment of appreciation for the four-goal performances of Joe Pavelski and Leon Draisaitl, which unfortunately ended with muted celebrations due to a loss.
All Pavelski, 38, did was hang four on the Kraken in a comeback game from a concussion while being the oldest forward in the league.
Draisaitl’s 11 goals are the most scored by a single player in the first seven games of a postseason since Newsy Lalonde (1919).
Only vintage Mario Lemieux (1988-89) has scored more power-play goals (regular season and playoffs combined) in a single season than Draisaitl (37). Two more on the man-advantage, and the record is Draisaitl’s.
Let’s soak in this magic once more:
11. Naturally the focus remains on the ice with the Vegas Golden Knights, immersed in a doozy of series against the Oilers.
But the franchise made good on some tidy business off the ice, making a multi-year agreement with Scripps Sports to provide local broadcasts of Knights games free of charge to residents of Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming.
“This deal is a significant win for our fans because they will be able to see our games on television and for free, if they wish,” team president and CEO Kerry Bubolz said in a statement. “That was our goal in finding a new TV partner. We wanted to serve our fanbase in the best way possible.”
In a world so competitive for eyeballs, and with so many NHL broadcasts providing complicated financial and channel hurdles for local residents, this is a smart play.
How you grow fans is by letting them see the product.
Then they go buy tickets and merchandise. Simple.
12. So… you say you want Florida, eh?
