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Down Goes Brown's Weekend Review: NHL Teams Have to Be Lucky to Win

In the playoffs, with two roughly even teams facing off in a short series, random chance plays a major role in determining the winner. The best team doesn't always win.
Photo by Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

(Editor's note: Sean McIndoe looks back at recent play in the NHL and the league's biggest storylines in his weekend review. You can follow him on Twitter.)

Faceoff: You've got to be lucky to be good

Before we get to the power rankings, let's talk about the only four-letter word you're not allowed to say at a hockey rink: Luck. Everyone stay cool, we can do this.

In a Friday blog post titled "If you get emotionally invested in a playoff hockey team, you're a masochist," Washington Post columnist Dan Steinberg railed against the playoffs. Not this year's playoffs, or a particular series, but the entire concept as it exists in the modern NHL. It's all become a crapshoot, Steinberg argues, one where the actual performance of the teams involved has little to do with the outcomes. We're just watching two teams skate around for 60 minutes (or more) and waiting for a handful of lucky bounces to determine the winner, at which point we all get to work filling in narratives about grit and heart to convince ourselves that the right team won.

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Steinberg's argument is controversial, one that suggests that maybe we're all just wasting our time here. It's also absolutely and indisputably correct.

READ MORE: Why Hockey Needs Alexander Ovechkin to Lift the Cup

It might be tempting to accuse Steinberg of sour grapes here. After all, he's a Capitals writer, and they're down 3-2 in their series with the Penguins. But he shows his work, and the numbers are hard to argue with. By almost any reasonable measure, the Caps outplayed the Penguins for most of Games 3 and 4. But they lost anyway. And this happens all the time in the NHL. It's not, as Steinberg makes clear, a case of a good team having a bad night, or failing to execute a game plan, or being outworked by an opponent who just wants it more. It's about one side going out and being the better team and then losing, anyway.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the NHL's era of unprecedented parity. In that post, I ended up hitting on the same metaphor that Steinberg did: It's starting to feel like we're just flipping coins here. Maybe not during the regular season, when bigger sample sizes and a wider disparity between teams result in a standings page that feels like at least a rough approximation of overall quality. But in the playoffs, with two roughly even teams facing off in a short series of low-scoring games, well… heads or tails?

A random bounce could be the difference between advancing and going home. –Photo by Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

Let's be clear: Hockey fans, in general, hate this sort of argument. Many have a visceral reaction to the entire concept of results being anything other than earned. We've spent years being conditioned to believe that hockey is a morality play where the best man always wins, and that if a team like the Capitals keeps failing when it seems like the odds should be in their favor, it must be because they're suffering from some sort of fatal flaw. Luck? Good teams make their own luck, as the old saying goes. Of course, that old saying makes zero sense if you think about it for even a moment. So we don't.

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And this isn't just something that fans tell themselves—everyone from team owners to GMs to coaches buy in, and spend the offseason trying desperately to find the right mix of character and leadership that will finally make them a deserving team in the eyes of the hockey gods. The players themselves aren't even allowed to acknowledge the luck factor. And the media beat the character drum constantly, because we have to. It's our job to tell you why a team won, and these days, as often as not, we really don't have a good answer for you. So we either talk about heart and compete level, or we're left with this.

It's not even a homer thing. Two years ago, while covering the Kings/Rangers final, I wrote that the Rangers were trailing the series 3-0 largely due to bad luck. That seemed like an obvious point to make—the Kings had won the first two games without holding the lead for a single second of playing time, and the Rangers had suffered a series of bad bounces that cost them critical goals. But as soon as I mentioned the L-word, the pushback from fans was immediate. And not just Kings fans—you'd expect that—but Rangers fans, too, who refused to believe their team was losing because of random chance. It was something more. It had to be.

But most of the time, it just isn't. And as Steinberg writes, that leaves a hockey fan with a handful of unpalatable choices. You could stop caring, which seems logical but, let's face it, isn't going to happen. You can sit back and enjoy the show, accepting it for great entertainment even if it's all largely random; that might make you, as Steinberg concludes, a "masochist" but at least you'd occasionally be a happy one. Or you can decide that it's easier to just keep up the act, focusing on the small handful of lucky moments that seem to swing each series and convincing yourself that they really are the meaningful result of… something.

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Let's stick with that last option. On to the week's five best and worst, all of whom earned their way on to the list based on sheer force of will.

Top Five

Celebrating those who've had the best week.

5. Bruce Boudreau—Speaking of playoff narratives…

Boudreau was fired last week after yet another Game 7 loss, but his reputation for losing the big one didn't seem to dissuade teams from lining up to hire him. The Wild and Senators both interviewed him, with Ottawa flying him into town late in the week. Boudreau has family in Ottawa and was giving odd media interviews that all but screamed "Hire me." Even with a somewhat unexpected vacancy in Calgary opening up, by the time the weekend arrived this sure looked like the Senators' contest to lose.

Welcome back, Bruce. –Photo by Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

And then, on Saturday, they did. Boudreau chose the Wild, agreeing to a four-year contract that will pay him nearly $3 million a season. The Senators responded by hiring Guy Boucher on Sunday, which is a reasonably decent Plan B. That leaves Calgary to pick through the next tier of candidates, one that features names like Marc Crawford, Mike Yeo and even, believe it or not, Randy Carlyle. Those are (almost) all solid candidates, but none are in Boudreau's class.

As for the Wild, they've still got a steep road ahead—the core is old, expensive and locked up on very long deals that may be unmovable. But with Boudreau behind the bench, they'll at least have a puncher's chance in a very tough Central.

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4. Gustav Nyquist—Hey look, a Red Wing finally won something during the second round.

3. Ben Bishop—With the Lightning advancing to the conference final, we could mention yet another one of their contributors up front, like Nikita Kucherov or Jonathan Drouin. But we've already featured those two in previous weeks. We could also go with Victor Hedman, who was dominant against the Islanders. But we're saving him for down the line—the Lightning are in this for the long haul, and we need to pace ourselves.

READ MORE: The Lightning Might Be Better off without Superstar Steven Stamkos

So instead, let's switch things up and recognize Bishop, who recorded the shutout in Sunday's Game 5 clincher, and who's following up last year's strong playoff run with an even better one. It was the fourth time he's closed out a series with a shutout, one off the all-time mark, and boosted his save percentage up to an impressive .926.

It's still hard to figure out just what to make of this Lightning team. They came into the year as a Stanley Cup favorite, then had a largely disappointing regular season. They're division champions, but only had to beat the league's 10th and 15th best teams to get there. They'll be an underdog to whoever emerges from the Metro, but they're also still missing Anton Stralman and Steven Stamkos. If those two guys can get back into the lineup—and Stralman at least sounds like he's close—then the Lightning have a shot at another conference title. And, if Bishop keeps this up, maybe more.

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2. Brian Elliott—Unlike Bishop, Elliott hasn't punched a ticket to the second round yet—he'll get that chance Monday night. But he's been an underrated story in this postseason, giving the Blues the kind of reliable playoff goaltending they haven't always had in recent years. Elliott has been a part of that history, although to varying degrees—last year, he only saw one game's worth of relief duty, and the year before that he watched the newly (and expensively) acquired Ryan Miller carry the load. For whatever reason, Ken Hitchcock and the Blues have never fully seemed to trust Elliott to be the guy come playoff time.

Maybe they should have. He's been excellent, posting a .932 save percentage while playing more minutes than any other goaltender. The Blues still have Jake Allen waiting in the wings, and history tells us we'll see him as soon as Elliott falters. But it hasn't happened yet, and that's a big part of the reason why the Blues are on the verge of their first conference final since 2001.

1. Alexander Ovechkin—Consider this a preemptive strike.

Ovechkin has been very good during this postseason. He hasn't been unstoppable, or the best player in the league, or someone who single-handedly wins games all by himself every few nights. But he's been good, with five goals and ten points. And at times, like for much of Saturday's must-win Game 5, he's been downright dominant.

Let's take a step back with the Ovechkin criticism. –Photo by Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

All of which is to say that if the Penguins close this series out with a win Tuesday night, it won't be Ovechkin's fault. But you can bet that some will try to spin that story, anyway, because he's Alexander Ovechkin. Heck, it's already started.

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The big stars get the big spotlight and the big expectations, which is fine. But Ovechkin isn't the problem in Washington, no matter how much you may hear that over the coming days if the Penguins end this.

Bottom Five

A look at the week's underachievers.

5. Eugene Melnyk—The Senators' owner has always been a divisive figure. He probably saved the franchise when he bought the Senators out of bankruptcy in 2003, keeping them in Ottawa until the league's financial landscape stabilized. He's a passionate guy who isn't shy around a microphone, which gets him into trouble sometimes. Most importantly, as far as Senators fans are concerned, he's been reluctant to spend as much as they'd like on icing the best team possible.

So this week's hiring of Boucher feels like a mixed bag. On the one hand, the Senators got a good coach. On the other, the perception is that they wound up with their second choice, and that Boudreau slipped away because Melnyk was outbid. That may not be fair, but it's not hard to get a sense of what Ottawa fans are thinking. Check out this Melnyk tweet, and the scathing replies from Senators fans. Even for social media, that's ugly. And it suggests the Senators may want to invest in a PR consultant. Here's hoping they're willing to pay for a good one.

4. Tyler Seguin—The Stars center doesn't make the list for anything he's done on the ice, because he's barely been there, at least once the games start. And that's a problem, since he's one of the Stars' best players and they're now facing elimination heading into Monday's Game 6 in St. Louis.

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The Stars could use this guy right about now. –Photo by Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Seguin suffered an Achilles injury in mid-March, and returned in time for Game 2 of the opening round. That was right around the original 3-4 week timeline, so all seemed well. But it was the last we've seen of him. Seguin aggravated the injury, or suffered a separate but related problem, or maybe some brand new injury altogether—it's the playoffs, so nobody knows for sure—and hasn't played since, although he's been skating lately and has been rumored to be on the verge of a return for the last few games.

All of which is worth keeping in mind if the West's top seed ends up checking out tonight. The postmortem will be all about the goaltending, and the failure of a run-and-gun system to work in the playoffs. But let's not forget that the Stars were missing a point-per-game player, too. In a series that's featured some tight games, that could have been the difference.

3. Matt Murray—Things move fast in the playoffs. It was just a few days ago that Murray was the modern day Ken Dryden. Now, after one loss in which he didn't even play especially poorly, there's talk of the Penguins making a switch. Granted, this isn't your usual goaltending controversy, with Marc-Andre Fleury healthy enough to reclaim the starter's job that's been his for the better part of a decade. Still… you have to keep riding Murray, right? That seems to be the direction that Mike Sullivan is leaning. But if the kid gets off to a rough start in Game 6, all bets are off.

2. Evgeny Kuznetsov—The 23-year-old center is coming off a breakthrough 77-point season, but he's been quiet in the playoffs, posting just two points through 11 games. Barry Trotz shuffled his lines Saturday, putting Kuznetsov back with Ovechkin and T.J. Oshie; Kuznetsov was held pointless and the line didn't click on even-strength, although both Ovechkin and Oshie scored on the powerplay.

A subpar playoff performance could hang over Kuznetsov's head for a long time. –Photo by Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

In a sense, a slumping Kuznetsov could be viewed as good news for the Capitals. After all, all great players hit slumps and they all come out of them eventually, and if Kuznetsov can get back to his usual production then a good team becomes even better. Then again, time is running out. And that could be bad news for both the Capitals and Kuznetsov—ask Joe Thornton how one bad playoff run early in a career can affect his reputation for years to come.

1. Mike Ribeiro—A lack of offense isn't the reason the Predators are facing elimination—prior to Saturday's 5-1 loss, they'd scored four goals in back-to-back games. But with the Sharks looking more and more like a legitimate Cup contender, Nashville will need everyone contributing to win Games 6 and 7. And that includes Ribeiro, a guy who theoretically is a top-six center, but one who's virtually disappeared so far during the playoff run.

Ribeiro has been pointless in the series after recording just one assist in the opening round. He's been so ineffective that he was scratched for Games 3 and 4 against the Sharks. He returned for Game 5, but his only impact on the scoresheet was a misconduct from an end-of-game scrum. Even at 35, he's coming off a decent year, one in which he hit the 50-point mark. But for a guy whose game doesn't contribute much beyond offense, one point in ten games isn't cutting it.