First off, I wanted to say that my article yesterday on "What's wrong with the Hawks?" was not a knock on the Predators. There is no doubt that Nashville has a hell of a lot to do with this series being 2-0 right now. The Predators defense is as deep and skilled as any in the NHL and Pekka Rinne has played out of his mind to be certain. And the Predators are getting clutch scoring as well as great coaching...
But remember this is a 1 vs. 8 matchup in the West...and the Hawks haven't scored a goal...
Speaking of 1 vs 8 matchups...
The Leafs could just as easily be up 2-0 in the other 1 vs. 8 matchup...and the distance between the Caps and Leafs would appear to be even larger than the Hawks and Preds.
And yet the Leafs have gotten to the Caps and they are doing so with speed and youth...The Caps are up against it in this series and almost everyone out there believes they should be handling this team with relative ease...
And it is easy to see why some Leaf fans are afraid of putting too high expectations on this team....after all it's only two games and the Caps could still win this in five...but really...it doesn't appear that way. The Leafs have been ahead or tied in most of games one and two...and they are playing a team whose one main issue may be keeping up with speedy teams...Pittsburgh made that weakness very apparent last season...
This is not to say the Leafs weaknesses are obvious. All year, and in this series as well, they have had a tough time holding leads and they are obviously outmatched on the defensive end of things...But the sudden rise of Kapanen...to go along with Marner and Matthews is really astonishing and makes their offense perhaps better suited to knock off the Caps than any of us realized...It has made them "Can't miss TV" all over the league.
And you can sit back and say, "It's only two games and they keep giving up leads" but they are playing the BEST team in the NHL almost dead even. A team with EVERYTHING to lose against a team with NOTHING to lose makes this not a fun time for Caps fans...
All this begs the question...
"Are the Leafs ahead of schedule and we just don't know it yet?"
more to come...
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— Michael Augello (@MikeInBuffalo) December 12, 2016