Lighting the Lamp: Stanley Cup playoffs get Wild, Lightning strikes

Welcome to Lighting the Lamp, a year-round NHL column. We’re well underway in the quarterfinals of the 2017-18 Stanley Cup playoffs, and it’s been a wild ride already.

The NHL playoffs have only been underway for four days, but it feels like four weeks — in the best way.

From the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosby’s natural hat trick in his team’s first game against the crosstown rival Philadelphia Flyers to the Vegas Golden Knights improbably continuing their dominance into the postseason to the Boston Bruins flexing all over the Toronto Maple Leafs, these playoffs have given us so many gifts already. And we’ve barely just begun.

As of Monday morning, series are approaching “sweep” territory: The Bruins lead the Maple Leafs 2-0 and the San Jose Sharks lead the Anaheim Ducks 2-0. The Nashville Predators have a two-to-nothing lead on the Colorado Avalanche, and the Tampa Bay Lightning have been simply exposing the New Jersey Devils to take a 2-0 lead in their series, one that feels very close to being over for New Jersey.

Other series are proving harder to figure out. The Minnesota Wild have been giving the Winnipeg Jets trouble through three games and finally pulled out a rather decisive 6-2 win in Game 3. The Wild have played spectacularly at home all year, going 27-6-8 there in the regular season, so it’s no surprise the Xcel Energy Center helped them get back on their feet in this series.

Then there are the Columbus Blue Jackets. They’ve defeated the Washington Capitals in overtime twice now to take a 2-0 lead in the series. Cue the collective panic…right about as scheduled, actually.

Let’s get into it.

NHL power rankings

Current playoff team mascots

16. The Philadelphia Flyers have no mascot. Way to kill the fun.

15. Stinger (Columbus Blue Jackets) — Gross and also not intimidating.

14. Thunderbug (Tampa Bay Lightning) — See above.

13. N.J. Devil (New Jersey Devils) — Too anthropomorphic, and the pencil ‘stache is creepy.

12. Carlton (Toronto Maple Leafs) — Soft and adorable. Just like this Leafs team. (Hey-o!)

11. Iceburgh (Pittsburgh Penguins) — Should take a page out of the Fred Bird playbook re: eye placement.

10. Nordy (Minnesota Wild) — Solid flow, but what is he? Even the team doesn’t know! “While no one truly knew what sort of Wild animal he is, it was clear that Nordy encompassed the true spirit of the Wild.”

9. Bernie (Colorado Avalanche) — He’s a Very Good Boy, but not exactly intimidating.

8. Chance (Vegas Golden Knights) — A newcomer and kind of ugly, but a Gila monster is a solid choice for Vegas.

7. Bailey (Los Angeles Kings) — On-brand, good balance of cute and ferocious.

6. Gnash (Nashville Predators) — See above. Preds could have gone with many types of apex hunters, but big cats are always the right choice.

5. Mick E. Moose (Winnipeg Jets) — Kind of deranged-looking, but also a perfect Canadian mascot.

4. Wild Wing (Anaheim Ducks) — Ducks fly together.

3. Slapshot (Washington Capitals) — Hockey-inspired name. Bald eagle. Straight ‘Merica.

2. Blades (Boston Bruins) — Pretty much everything you want from a mascot. Ferocious but not scary, on-brand, beloved.

1. Sharkie (San Jose Sharks) — A shark who can walk on two legs is both the coolest and scariest thing ever, period.

Lamp Lighters: The week’s best goals

This, by the Predators’ Filip Forsberg, is the goal of the playoffs so far, and it’s hardly close:

BUT. This one by the Blue Jackets’ Artemi Panarin, off an individual effort in overtime to seal the deal, does actually come kind of close:

Everyone loves a good between-the-legs goal, and the Bruins’ David Pastrnak added one to his tally of three on Saturday night against Toronto, breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record as the youngest player in NHL history to record 6-plus points in a playoff game. Pasta with extra sauce:

If you could pick a time to score your first NHL goal, you’d probably choose a first-round playoff matchup. That’s exactly what Minnesota’s Jordan Greenway did Sunday night, and it was a pretty one, indeed:

And, finally, the goal so nice they scored it twice: the Penguins tied the NHL record for the fastest back-to-back goals scored in the playoffs, with these five seconds apart:

Coast to Coast: What you might have missed around the league

• Ken Hitchcock is calling it a career. The Dallas Stars head coach announced his retirement from coaching on April 13, and will remain with the Stars as a consultant. And Dallas goes on the hunt again, something the organization has grown used to in recent years — the Stars will look to bring in their fifth coach in eight years. We hear Alain Vigneault is available….
• Days into the postseason, we already have two suspensions in the books: Kings defenseman Drew Doughty missed Game 2 of the series against the Golden Knights and Maple Leafs center Nazem Kadri got hit with a whopping three games for boarding on defenseless Bruin Tommy Wingels. Fans have complained about the perceived lack of transparency in the NHL Department of Player Safety, but both hits were objectively unnecessary.

5-on-5

1. Brace yourselves, Capitals fans — this could be another ugly postseason. Washington hit an inauspicious franchise milestone, if you can call it that, on Sunday night. ESPN Stats & Info dropped this truth bomb on Twitter Sunday — with a sneaky little aside at the end that has got to be sending Caps fans into a full-blown meltdown:

2. Speaking of the Capitals, it’s time Braden Holtby gets the start. Coach Barry Trotz wanted to ride the hot hand with Philipp Grubauer in Game 1, and that went…not well. He posted a .852 save percentage (woof). Trotz went with Grubauer yet again in Game 2, leaving a Vezina Trophy winner on the bench, and Grubauer once again posted a sub-.900 save percentage. Holtby finally replaced Grubauer in the third period of Sunday night’s game, but maybe he should have been in the crease all along. Hindsight is 20/20, but, yeesh.

3. NHL playoffs scheduling is an abomination. At least Sunday’s slate of four games were (somewhat) spaced out, though Blue Jackets vs. Capitals starting a mere half hour after Jets vs. Wild isn’t doing anyone any favors. But on Saturday, the league broadcast Preds vs. Avs and Bolts vs. Devils concurrently. At the same exact time. For a league that says it wants to grow its reach, that seems…counterproductive.

4. The playoffs are always wild, but this year, they’re especially Wild. Minnesota set a franchise postseason record for goals in a home game against Winnipeg, with six. It’s also not fair to the performance Minnesota put on Sunday to chalk it all up to the Jets being thrown off after bad weather in the region forced the team to return to Winnipeg for the night and arrive only eight hours before faceoff Sunday. This Wild team has been deadly at home all season, and it’s looking more than likely Minnesota will even this one up on Tuesday.

5. Lightning struck this weekend in Tampa Bay. The Devils have fought bravely, but Tampa Bay has been putting on a clinic so far in this series. Atlantic Division-winning Tampa Bay scored three times in 2:47 in the second period on Saturday, and Alex Killhorn scored twice on the day. Goaltending is everything in the postseason, and New Jersey netminder Keith Kinkaid has been struggling at exactly the wrong time, giving up five goals on 15 shots.

Tweet of the week

It’s rare that a non-hockey related tweet makes it into the vaunted tweet of the week section, but trivia game HQ is something that the FanSided office holds near and dear to its heart, and this simply could not be more representative of our squad:

Have a great week, and enjoy the playoffs! Your team out of the race? Adopt a new one!

Next: Which Game of Thrones characters would make the best hockey players?

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