HAWT TAEK: People on the internet are going to have opinions, and opinions about your opinions. Now, if it’s something simple like screwing up a 23 year-old Dale Hunter hit, you’re going to get caught on that within 5 or 6 comments. But take someone’s sports team in vain?

So, in the interest of lazi fairness,  I reached out to some members of the Commentist Party for their opinions on all this hot playoff action. Because who am I to damn a team or series without having seen it or them? (Answer: A white male on the internet, that’s who.) I’ve added some photos where appropriate.

Not every team is represented by a Commentist, but that’s the nature of the beast. People say there is a “Houston Texans”, and that they have fans, but I’ve never seen them. The same holds true for the Tampa Bay Lightning; they could exist, but could merely be Bucs fans who just hate the Glazers and invented another team just to spite them. Legend has it they both have the same number of championships.

The Washington Capitals – theeWeeBabySeamus

With all due respect BeerGuyRob….Don’t like to be touched? Who are we…George Bluth?

OK, so I don’t mean to bring the rest of you hockey boys down, but come on…it’s the Caps’ trophy to lose. Ovechkin-Holtby? OVECHKIN-HOLTBY?!?!?!?!?!?

I know you all love to hate on Ovie, I get it. If I wasn’t a Caps fan I’d hate him too. But even after him there’s Oshie, Williams, Chimera, Kuznetsov and Backstrom….all 20+ goal scorers on the season. Those last two are also 50+ assist guys.

And then, after a 2nd place slot in goals scored, the Caps are also 2nd in goals against. Balance = Lord Stanley’s Cup comes home to DC. (OK, so maybe you have a point about that whole Ovechkin-Holtby thing).

But…..Are you NOT entertained?????

Fear the Eagle.

Just please God, let BeerGuyRob be right about dispatching Philly in six games. The Caps no so goodly in game 7’s (4-10) historically.

The Philadelphia Flyers Ice Eagles – The Maestro

As much we all think of the Santa Claus snowball incident and J.D. Drew & the D-cell batteries (not to mention the on-premise jail at the old Vet), I’d argue that it’s the Flyers that remain the best symbol of Philadelphia sports fandom to this day. It’s been over 40 years since the days of the original Broad Street Bullies lineups of Clarke, Schultz, Leach, Parent, and the gang, and yet all these names still spark reverence throughout the city, since the team has done exactly sweet fuck all to improve upon the two Stanley Cup wins of ’74 and ’75. And despite a remarkable turnaround season from first-year GM and coach Ron Hextall and Dave Hakstol (you can’t tell me one isn’t just an alter ego for the other – seriously, the fuck is going on with the names here, guys?), that unfortunately probably won’t change this year either.

The Flyers are a much, much better team than they were even just 12 months ago. With noted stars Claude Giroux & Jakub Voracek having down years in their personal point production, Wayne Simmonds & Brayden Schenn stepped up to fill the void, while goalie Steve Mason, despite not matching his personal statistics of last season, improved upon his win total thanks to stronger team play as a whole.

The most notable development of this season, however, is the emergence of Calder Trophy candidate defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere. The Ghost Bear, a 3^rd-round pick in 2012 for the Flyers, burst onto the scene after a 4-year career at Union College, and finished 5^th on the team in scoring, with 46 points in just 64 games. As a smooth-skating blueliner with excellent breakout ability and great vision in the offensive zone, Gostisbehere is gonna be a fun player to watch for quite a while, and will be a huge part of the Flyers’ defense for years to come.

That said, they’re playing the Caps in their opening series. To put it scientifically: they’re fucked. Despite splitting the season series 2 games each against Washington, top to bottom, they simply don’t have the overall depth to contend with the best Capitals team I’ve watched in a long time. Caps in five.

Florida Panthers – Covalent Blonde

Ah, the swamp hockey cats. Because you know what Florida needs? Two teams in the playoffs. Dammit, Canada. You could have stopped this from happening.

Hailing from Sunrise, Florida—a city I had to look up—these lads are making only their second playoff go in the past fifteen years with Round 1 being a faceoff against the NY Islanders. Being first in the Atlantic conference, unfortunately, this team has to be taken rather seriously as a contender, especially since many of us hadn’t really even noticed them creeping up in the standings until the beginning of December. That is, they need to be taken seriously at least until the Caps knock out whatever Florida team it is that emerges victorious from the second round. And why is that?

With a combined collection of years on the ice, Jagr and Luongo have been in the NHL since the invasion of Normandy. But, smartly, Head Coach Gallant has developed a bimodal age distribution wherein he keeps a stable of young, fit, and adroit Turks in Ekblad, Barkov, and Huberdeau available for the vampiric regeneration required for the aged and prominent icemen in Mitchell, Thornton, and the aforementioned doyens. Luckily age ain’t nothing but a number for the Panthers since they have been able to rack up a pretty impressive regular season under their belt.

Sure, Bailey, Okposo, and Tavares make one hell of an intimidating first line coming at Florida from the Isles, but it is likely to fall short. The calm of some seasoned veterans should make for an impressive balance paired with the young and zealous skill set that should brew a petty potent potpourri for puck proficiency! And given that the Panthers are finally not facing off against the Devils for the first round of playoffs (unlike the last two times they got shutdown by New Jersey making a bid for the Cup) they probably stand an excellent chance at seeing the second round!

The New York Rangers Ice Giants – The Maestro

Henrik Lundqvist is one handsome motherfucker. He’s also a Vezina winner, an Olympic gold medallist, a solid lead guitarist, and I heard a rumour that his sweat can actually heal the sick and make the blind see again.

While I can’t confirm the last bit, I do know for certain that as King Henrik goes, so do the New York Rangers. The Blueshirts are a puzzling enigma – this is a team loaded with star power, in players like Rick Nash, Ryan McDonagh, Derek Stepan, Derick Brassard, and Mats Zuccarello, with a coach with a proven track record of success in Alain Vigneault. However, despite finishing third in the Metropolitan Division with a 46-27-9 record and 101 points, the Rangers were still supposed to do more this year. They’ve had some issues with injuries this year – captain Ryan McDonagh and fellow defencemen Marc Staal and Dan Girardi have all missed time throughout this year and are not perfectly healthy currently.

More importantly, however, the Rangers haven’t been playing a style of hockey conducive to long-term, repeatable success – the Rangers rank 26th out of 30 teams in even-strength puck possession, as measured by CorsiFor percentage (shot attempts generated for versus against), at 47.36% – by far the lowest number of any team currently competing in the playoffs. What this means, essentially, for those not familiar with hockey’s tracking metrics, is that the Rangers have the puck less than half the time they’re out on the ice. The team with the best even-strength CF%, the LA Kings, fall in at 56.38% (anything over 50% is good, and anything over 55% is elite, in the world of the NHL – anything lower than 50% is bad and lower than 45% is historically awful – think the Toronto Maple Leafs under Randy Carlyle). It’s hard to win games if you don’t have the puck.

As such, the Rangers have gotten really lucky this year, with fantastic goaltending and highly opportunistic scoring to keep them in the thick of things, but they’re going to be in very tough against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Not only are the Pens heating up at the right exact time, but they rank second overall in the league in even-strength CF% at 52.72%. Not to mention the Rangers having to contend with Sidney Crosby, Phil Kessel, Kris Letang, and, if he gets healthy again, Evgeni Malkin.

King Henrik may be able to steal a game for the Rangers – maybe even two – but Pittsburgh is still winning this series.

Pens in six.

Pittsburgh – WCS

Another year, and another chance for the intrepid Ice Stillers to let down the Yinzers of Western Pennsyltucky in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Granted, the Pens were barely on the fringes of playoff contention just three months ago. Mike Johnston seems like a nice guy, but, his coaching methodology clearly wasn’t working. Sidney Crosby had something wrong with him. The team overall was scuffling. General manager Jim Rutherford made the decision to dump Johnston, promote Mike Sullivan from the AHL as the new coach, and then proceed with a litany of roster moves. Chief among these were dealing Rob Scuderi, whose best years were way behind him, for defenseman Joe Daley, and somehow acquiring career Penguins-Terminator Carl Hagelin for David freakin’ Perron. Crosby turned into a demon, and blitzed his way into Art Ross Trophy talk. Add a balls-load of young guys, fresh up from the minors, who have performed consistently well, and the Pens tore through February and March, and secured second place in the Metro Division. That’s some serious sorcery. 

The team seems to be peaking at just the right time. After going an insane 12-2-2 in March, there doesn’t seem to be anything to slow that momentum. And then both Marc-Andre Fluery, and back-up goalie, Matt Murray were hurt in the last week of the regular season. This is my biggest personal concern; Fleury was the team’s MVP for the first-half of the season, and really the only reason the Pens weren’t five games under .500 by Thanksgiving. Murray, a rookie, went 11-3 in his starts. While it appears Fluery will be back by tomorrow night, his back-up will be Jeff Zatkoff. Zatkoff lost his job as the back-up to rookie Murray, and before the season finale, hadn’t played since December. 

Speaking of injuries, it’s a sign of a great, deep team, that Evgeni Malkin has been out for six weeks, and the team actually played better without him. Same can be said for defenseman Olli Maata. Both of these guys are still on the shelf, but, rumor is Malkin is poised to return. That is, unless Vladimir Putin doesn’t have him “repatriotised” first.

Finally, the Pens’ first-round opponent: the Ice Giants. These teams have met in three straight playoff, with the Blue Shirts victorious in each. Smoothie King (and banger of Swedish princesses) Henrik Lundqvist has given Yinzers plenty of reason to chug shitty Iron City beers over the past few years. The only reason I have any optimism this time around, is the Pens have a three straight regular season winning streak over the Smoothie Bar, even getting him pulled in two. The Rangers themselves have been plenty limp-dicky over the last two months, as well. But, again, this is Lundqvist in the playoffs. We’ll see.

Tampa Bay – Horatio Cornblower

UPDATED!

Your 2016 Tampa Bay Lightning Play-Off outlook.

The Lightning finished 3rd in the Atlantic division with 97 points. Every team in the Metropolitan division except Philadelphia outscored them. The only team with less points than the Lightning and Flyers to still make the play-offs are the Red Wings.

The Lightning are hurt and the Red Wings can’t score goals.

The Lightning are without their captain, Steve Stamkos, due to a blood clot, although I suspect it’s really MRSA, and also are both missing key players due to injuries or playing guys who are very banged up. They still, however, have 6’7” monster Ben Bishop I goal and they were fifth in GAA during the season. Bishop had a .926 save percentage this year, second in the league.

The Red Wings only scored 2.38 GPG during the season, which is less than the Lightning gave up. They’ve got young players who are probably a season or two away from really coming into their own but if, IF, they can run the Lightning around until their injuries catch up with them and they get exhausted then they still have to find a way to get the puck past Bishop, which is kind of like trying to find a way to get cake past a fat kid. It might happen, but probably not.

The call here is the Lightning do just enough to win in 6 in a low scoring and extremely boring series. There’s a good chance for at least one 3 OT game that ends 2-1. The Lightning then get annihilated by the Panthers or Islanders next round, hopefully the Islanders, because fuck Florida hockey.

New York Islanders – submitted by a friend of mine still bitter about the Canucks 1982 loss.

Don’t know why – that was the best of the three teams that have beaten the Canucks. No shame in losing to Mike Bossy; plenty in losing to Brad Marchand.

Detroit Red Wings – this was the first image under “Detroit garbage fire”.

And there are your in-depth, Eastern Conference previews. Enjoy the ice wars!