In this edition of the hotstove, we share our thoughts on the biggest surprises from the playoffs thus far.
Todd Cordell
I definitely didn't see sweeps coming but I picked Nashville and Anaheim to win their series' so the results aren't completely shocking.
The biggest surprise to me is not just the Blues won in five, but how they won.
At 5v5, the Wild outshot the Blues by 50 and out-chanced them by 40 while controlling better than 60% of the attempts and chances. They dominated territorial play in the series so to lose, let alone in five games, is crazy. If the series played out as it did 10 times, the Blues probably lose nine of them.
The biggest reason for their success was Jake Allen, which is also surprising. Allen had a lesser save percentage than Peter Budaj, for example, during the regular season but posted just under a .960 save percentage in the series and was near unbeatable until the 3rd period of Game 5.
Nothing about the Blues v Wild series made any sense.
Peter Tessier Biggest surprise might be simply that there have been so many oddities or I guess surprising things that have happened and what is the result. Nashville sweeping Chicago, Edmonton pushing past San Jose and St. Louis dismantling Minnesota are all series that seemed to be closer or perhaps even a projected different outcome.
What these results have done is create a surprising scenario, the Western Conference is wide open. With St. Louis, Nashville, Anaheim and Edmonton left, is there a clear favourite to take the west? If you're a Ducks fan maybe you believe it's your year again but there's reason to be optimistic if you're one of the three other teams too. The west just became a lot more fun and interesting and who saw that happening two weeks ago?
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