Running NHL 2023-24 regular season thread

Elliotte called it.

Unbelievable character by this team in these final three games. To beat Tampa, Boston and Philly all in a row in essentially what were elimination games, major fucking cajones there, boys.

Playing with house money against the Rangers. Just happy to care about playoff hockey again. That said, the Caps played unreal, button-down defensive hockey in these three games, and Lindgren is smoking hot. So let's play the damn games.

EDIT: To add to go along with all of those 3-goal losses, the Caps finished the regular-season with 20 one-goal victories. Insanity.

 

Also, East is now set.

Florida vs. Tampa Bay
Boston vs. Toronto
N.Y. Rangers vs. Washington
N.Y. Islanders vs. Carolina

Still plenty to decide in the West, including the Pacific champ, Pacific 3, order of the wild cards, and the West top seed. The eight teams are set, though. One matchup is set, Winnipeg vs. home ice vs. Colorado.

EDIT, with last night's results in. West bracket is:
Dallas vs. WC2 (either L.A. or Vegas)
Winnipeg vs. Colorado
Vancouver vs. Nashville (Preds would win tiebreaker against either Vegas or L.A. due to more ROW)
Edmonton vs. P3 (either L.A. or Vegas)

 

This has been a week for the Red Wings. I'm trying to put a bright spin on things but there's a few things that stick in my craw.

I wish Ovechkin could have gotten an earlier start to go back to Russia and lick Putin's boots. I don't want him to get the record or really anything. Sorry if that offends some of y'all. I just think he's a sumbitch, and there are just a whole bunch of people on that roster who I'm just tired of generally. I would have rather seen Crosby get in. But they keep getting it done, so fair play to them. As I think I vented on here or somewhere, that game Detroit lost at home where Lindgren made 40-some saves was probably one of the most frustrating games of this entire run-in. Cosmo brought up some of the other stats. Some might read that as coming through in the clutch, some might view it as luck. I hope the Rangers wipe them out.

Detroit had a really good opportunity to officially end this horrible rebuild and get back into the playoffs and the whole thing fell apart when they put a garbage company ad on the jerseys, Larkin got hurt and they lost like eight in a row and slipped into this mire, where they lost what seemed like a dozen "must-win" games down the stretch until what happened last week. Other than sentimentality, I'm not sure what the difference in value is between what the Wings got this year and going home four or five games into the playoffs, because that's all the were going to get. Alex Lyon and James Reimer do not constitute a serious option in goal and there were some other really glaring holes.

As for the whole thing tonight, I find the fact that Torts had to pull his goalie in a tied game logical but annoying. Maybe this is some sort of innate sense of symmetry or something, but seeing a Game 82 played for a different object than Games 1-81 grates on me. That's not to say what he did was illogical or wrong. Unlike the kind of two-legged series that you see in something like the Champions League, a game where the final outcome is not the be-all-and-end-all still seems weird. And yet, the Wings won the seventh-fewest number of games in regulation (27) in the NHL this year, though thanks to a league-leading 11 wins in 3-on-3 overtime this year, they would have made the playoffs easily were it not for the infamous "loser point."

 

Two other thoughts from last night...
* Philly absolutely got screwed by that whistle in the first period. However, the right call was made on waving off the goal, because it's clear the two Caps' defenders in position to clear the puck out quit on the play the second the whistle blew. Terrible mistake by the official on the premature whistle and a gigantic break for Washington.
* There were still three minutes left when Oshie potted the ENG. Everyone will talk about that decision, but who's to say the Caps don't score in the final three minutes or in OT? We can get into plenty of hypotheticals there.

 

I suspect the Caps will nip one of the home games, but if the series gets to a Game 6, I'd be pretty surprised. Washington is really banged up on the blue line, and Carlson is going to run out of gas at some point. Lindgren can't play like this forever. But good on Carberry for a nice late-season run. Ovechkin might have two more seasons in him, and it sucks to waste the postseasons with him sitting at home.

And I 100 percent get the Wilson hate. I'd hate his guts if he wasn't on my team.

 

Can the Penguins start the rebuild now or are we gonna' run back Grumpy Old Men one last time?

 

Caps were in a similar position as Pittsburgh and finally started to rebuild around the edges. You're not getting rid of Ovechkin, but the team absolutely had to get younger. The only players left from the Cup team are Ovechkin, Carlson, Oshie and Wilson. Ovechkin will stick around until he breaks the record but I see him retiring at the end of whatever season that happens. He's not a Jagr type who is going to play until he's in his mid-40s. There are rumblings that Oshie might retire at the end of this season, just because of the pileup of injuries. So Wilson is the only real long-term piece left from that core. The only players signed past the 2025-26 season (last year of Ovechkin's contract) are Wilson, Strome, Protas, Sandin and Kuemper (who will be in his last year). I assume Backstrom officially retires in the offseason, and Kuemper can probably be had via trade considering Lindgren's breakout this season.

This is all to say it's exciting to see this iteration of the team in the postseason because there is a lot of youth that needs that playoff experience. A lot of the guys were on the Hershey team that won the AHL title last year. I was worried that Washington was going to be in limbo, but McLellan has done a nice job of retooling on the fly while staying mindful of Ovechkin's goal chase.

 

Exactly. That's why these three seasons have been such disasters. They should have beaten the Rangers in the playoffs two years ago, but they couldn't respond when New York's head hunting took out Crosby for a game and a half. They spent the two seasons since finding ways to blow close games. They couldn't get their act together until the final 12 or 15 games this year. Even if they did, they weren't beating anybody in the playoffs with that dogshit defense.