We can spot a phony faster than Sidney Crosby can wrap the puck inside the far post. Even quicker than Garth Snow can come to his own defense.

When somebody says they don’t watch much regular season, but “love playoff hockey” it means they are much more into the drama than they are the actual sport. The true fans like 82 games and find the post-season even better. At midnight on a Saturday, they would rather watch the Canucks than “Lockup San Quentin,” because, after all, who is doing harder time? They can tell you who Artur Kayumov is. And they know in their hearts that every year the draft lottery is fixed.

They are in for all 82, or until Harri Sateri gets his next start in his goal or whatever comes first. So we’ve always been for giving the regular season as much meaning as possible, just like Mike Gartner when he suddenly would stop scoring in April. Long have we believed that in the first round the division winner should get five home games, not just four. When, inevitably, the playoffs are expanded, the lowest qualifiers should be put in the most jeopardy with play-in, best-of three, series.

So, yeah, we think it is an outrage that, because the NHL wants to build up divisional rivalries, the two best teams in the east and the west this spring happen to be matched up in second-round series. In fact, we were particularly offended on Sunday that, having watched a third Washington-Pittsburgh series in three years get more personal than ever to the angry teams, being unable to go to bed after almost seven hours of watching consummately skilled and ultra-competitive talents because the second Jets-Predators overtime promised to be as spectacular as the first.

There was a puck loose in the crease seemingly every 15 seconds, a paddle save out of mid air every 20. We saw more good players be forced into giveaways by the speed of the forecheckers than even Gilles Marotte was on his worst day.

These great quarterfinal matchups that everybody knows should have been semifinal matchups were more premature than even Luca Sbisa being put on the Flyers at age 18, or Sergei Samsonov being declared a star after he won the Calder. So in protest of a terrible playoff seeding system, I wanted to turn the set off and wait for Minnesota, the fourth seed in the west on a points basis, play Anaheim, the fifth seed, for no better reason than that it would have been the fairest matchup in the first round and we never got to see it.

But as Mike Keenan once told Mike Hartman after explaining he would have no use for him on the Rangers, “Life isn’t fair.” Seems still worth living, though, since, we have four compelling series this round. So let’s eat, drink and be merry these two weeks and not worry about the worst thing that can happen for the next two. That would be San Jose vs. Winnipeg. Doesn’t seem so bad at all.

The worst 22 teams have gone home. The eight best are left. There is not one of the eight about which we will be saying in 10 days, “What are those guys doing in the conference final?” So the Golden Knights could be playing the Kansas City Scouts and we still would still be wondering, “Migawd, how far can Vegas go?” The Jets could be having this coming-out party against the ’92 Senators and we would still be saying, “Whoa, didn’t realize just how much skill this Winnipeg team has.”

So because the teams are not reseeded, as reason would suggest they should be, 114-point Winnipeg gets the 117 point President’s Trophy winning Predators. Shucks.

What a shame it is that we are awfully close to finding out whether the Caps, who choked miserably in Game Seven against the Penguins last year, will do it again. Can’t stand the idea that either Boston or Tampa Bay have got to go home this round, even though both teams look so good and so deep, it’s hard to picture either losing, what makes any matchup, in any sport, most compelling.

Frankly, my dear, after the first round, when excellent regular seasons should be protected by more than just one additional home stinking home game, we don’t really give a damn who plays who and when. Not in a league with this much parity and so many plots that can carry over from this year’s playoff series to the next season’s regular season to next year’s playoffs again.

After all the excitement shoots itself out prematurely in this round, in the next we are going to have either Pittsburgh one step closer to something we never thought we would see in the Cap era–a three peat–or Washington eight wins from its first Stanley Cup, going against loaded Boston or loaded Tampa.

If San Jose comes back to spoil the party in Vegas then a handful of old Sharks who fervently have been chasing a Cup for almost ten years will be eight, seven six or five wins away from finally winning. Who would want to watch that?

• • • •


After scoring 42 goals and 78 points in the regular season, William Karlsson now has four goals and seven points in seven games in the playoffs, including Monday night’s overtime winner. If nobody could ever have predicted the Golden Knights as a division champion, let alone getting into the second round on a sweep, Karlsson has arrived at stardom straight from the Federal Witness Protection Program. The name the CIA gave him was Kris Beech. And the deal that brought Karlsson, plus first-and- second-round picks, from the Columbus on the twist-my-arm promise not to take Josh Anderson has to rank among the most lopsided in NHL history.

Someday, we will get to ranking the trades. As the Golden Knights continue to astound—they lost their first playoff game the other night; told you they can’t be any good!–we have wondered: Who were the best expansion picks ever?

We reviewed all the drafts in making the below selections. Excluded were end-of their career Hall of Famers—like Jacques Plante, Glenn Hall and Terry Sawchuk– who provided good service for a short time. We based our choices on lasting value, not just to the new team but how long they remained in the league. We also are disregarding the shenanigans of the 1979 draft, when because established teams chose first from the incoming WHA clubs, Wayne Gretzky technically had to be selected from the Oilers by the Oilers.

Nope, these are the cleaned up, fixed up, guys from the expansion trash can, who established teams either couldn’t protect or chose not to, and went on to prolonged–and in some cases superlative–careers.

When we honor these players at our banquet, they will be wearing hand-me-down tuxedos, be given previously engraved bowling trophies and will be served leftovers. Proudly, though.

FIRST TEAM

Goaltender: Billy Smith, Islanders, 1972––Four consecutive Stanley Cups.

Defensemen: Joe Watson and Ed Van Impe, Philadelphia, 1967¬¬––Seven and eight years after being chosen, they were stalwarts on consecutive Cup winners.

Center: Karlsson, Vegas, 2017––Off one season, we are taking a leap of faith that he is for real. Sure seems like it. Couldn’t find another expansion pick at any forward position even close for initial success.

Left Wing: Keith McCreary, Pittsburgh, 1967–Scored 131 goals in nine seasons for the Penguins and Flames. Had the rare honor of being selected twice and was productive both times.

Right Wing: Bill Goldsworthy, Minnesota 1967–Scored 277 NHL goals, all but the first six after being claimed by the North Stars from the Rangers.

SECOND TEAM

Goaltender: Bernie Parent, Flyers, 1967––Two Stanley Cups, both culminating in shutouts following the two most astounding statistical seasons of any goalie in the expansion era.

Defensemen: Gordie Murphy, Florida, 1993 and Filip Kuba, Minnesota, 2000–Murphy was a bedrock of the highly competitive early Panthers–they were in the final in year three–and played nine seasons after his selection. Kuba anchored a semifinal run in the Wild’s Season Three, played in an All Star Game, and lasted 14 years after the Wild selected him.

Left wing: Dave Lowry, Florida, 1993–A key on the Panthers’ finals team in their third year and an ultra-reliable two-way guy who played 12 more years in the league.

Center: Ron Schock, St. Louis, 1967–Had the double overtime goal in Game Seven in Year One that put the Blues on the map and was a reliable Penguin for eight seasons, winding up with 147 post-expansion goals and 340 assists.

Right wing: Gary Dornhoefer, 1967, Philadelphia—Another character player of the Cup teams had 202 post-expansion goals before retiring as a Flyer That’s four players from the 1967 draft who remained Flyers for the Cup run, making that easily the best expansion draft by a team ever.

If the Golden Knights win the Stanley Cup, we might have to get back to you, though.

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