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The Good Guys Won- Carolina Beats Washington
Could this playoff series begin a trend in the NHL? Let’s hope so!
Upsets make playoffs compelling, but I’m not sure seeing all four division champs fall in the first round of the National Hockey League playoffs make the next three rounds as compelling as they could be.
We won’t be asking if the Tampa Bay Lightning are the NHL’s greatest team ever. We won’t be compelled by a quasi-local team, the Nashville Predators, trying to bring a title to Tennessee. There’s only one 100-point scorer left in the playoffs, Boston’s Brad Marchand, so we won’t have as much star power with Sidney Crosby, Nikita Kucherov, and Alexander Ovechkin out.
But maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing Brock McGinn sent Ovechkin’s defending Stanley Cup champions home last night with a goal halfway in to the second overtime period to give the Carolina Hurricanes a 4–3 victory and spot in the second round of the playoffs.
Because we now have an image of the series that is something different than Ovechkin knocking out Andrei Svechnikov in the second game.
We have, instead, the image of McGinn diving to block a shot in front of the net behind the goalie as regulation came to a close to send the game to OT. Then he scores the game-winner after scoring only 10 goals all year long.
