At long last the fun begins.

After a season that saw us lose NHL Olympic participation to COVID-19 with schedule thrown into disarray, pushing the start of the NHL playoffs back a month, it is finally time for the greatest show in sport, the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Storylines? Oh my, yes, there are storylines.

What are the defining playoff narratives to watch? Let’s get to them.

1. How will games be called – and will the scoring explosion continue?

The NHL turned back the clock offensively this season with average goals per game at 6.3 heading into the final week, a mark last seen in 1995-96 and even higher than the first season after the 2004-05 lockout. Now, no one expects or should expect that to continue into the playoffs. The lousy clubs that help bolster that scoring surge are nowhere to be seen, thankfully. Teams play a different, closer style because the stakes are higher. The attention to detail is heightened. When you play the same opponent night after night, the coaching becomes even more critical (see below). So, the game is different. Everyone knows that.

But the league’s greatest challenge in terms of its integrity over the years has been the fact that not only does the style of game change, but the manner in which it is officiated changes once the calendar shifts to the playoffs. It does and everyone knows it even if no one actually acknowledges it at a league level. Remember when Connor McDavid, the world’s most dynamic player, didn’t draw a single penalty in the Oilers’ opening-round sweep at the hands of Winnipeg last year? Or the year before against Chicago in the play-in round? It’s the great elephant in the room and we have spoken to NHL owners and executives over the years who bemoan that the interpretation of the rulebook in the playoffs bears little resemblance to the interpretation in the middle of the season. The deeply flawed notion of, “Let the players decide the outcome” is even more pronounced at critical situations in the playoffs. It seems so simple: call the rules in the rulebook the same way in Game 1 in October as you would in double-overtime in Game 7 in June. Maybe this spring it will be different. But probably not. And that’s a shame.

2. Over/Under on the length of Nazem Kadri’s annual playoff suspension?

OK Avs fans, settle down. Yes, it’s a bit of a cheap shot for cheap laughs. But you know the thing about history is that it keeps biting you in the butt when you don’t learn from your mistakes. Last June, Kadri was suspended for eight games for a dangerous hit on Justin Faulk. Guess what? It’s a pattern. Twice he was suspended in the playoffs while with Toronto, in 2018 and 2019. He’s been suspended for a total of 27 games in his career, 16 when it matters most, in the post-season. So it’s not just a gratuitous shot at Kadri, whom we had been touting as a dark horse Hart Trophy candidate until a late-season injury. He is that important to the Avs, and the bigger picture for Kadri and the entire Avalanche team is: how well can they control their emotions at this critical time? Kadri has to stay on the ice and in the lineup. It’s that simple. If he can, that means he’s playing within the boundaries and that sets an example for everyone in that lineup. When he goes off the grid, he upsets not just the on-ice equilibrium but he also forces the team to answer for his behavior. That’s not how you win a championship.

3. Will Mitch Marner score a playoff goal this century?

Now it’s your turn to settle down, Leaf fans. You thought it funny when we asked the Kadri suspension question, didn’t you? Well, you knew this was coming. A little history lesson: Mitch Marner failed to score a goal in all seven first-round games last playoff year against Montreal. He failed to register a goal in five playoff games the summer before against Columbus. Then, after scoring twice in the opening game of the 2019 playoff season against Boston, he went dry in the next six games. So, that brings us to 18 straight playoff games without a goal for one of the most talented players in the game and a player whose annual cap hit is a shade under $11 million. Marner is coming off a fabulous regular season that saw him score 35 times and collect 97 points, both career highs. But that only matters if he can carry it over into the playoffs. More history: this is a team that hasn’t won a playoff round since before the 2004-05 lockout when Marner was six years old. Six. Could the Leafs win a series this spring without Marner scoring? Sure. He collected 62 assists and is an elite playmaker. But the problem is that, if the Leafs get behind and Marner’s goose egg continues, it will be a story that could swallow the entire team whole. Bottom line for us: no goals from Marner and the Leafs will be one and done once again.

4. Who wins the starting goalie gig in Boston, Washington and more?

What a crazy playoff year this is shaping up to be vis a vis goaltending, and we haven’t even seen the first puck drop. As many as 10 teams have unanswered questions about who will be the goaltender of record to start the playoffs and, more importantly, how long that goaltender will actually stay in the net. Minnesota has it easy. It picked up future Hall of Famer Marc-Andre Fleury at the trade deadline and he and Cam Talbot have both been great. We’d start Fleury but Talbot has been off the charts good, so either way the Wild should be in good shape. The Wild will play St. Louis and we’re guessing Ville Husso gets the nod with his superior numbers. But Binnington, the catalyst to the Blues’ first-ever Cup run in 2019, is slowly getting back to form and had won five in a row before a late-season loss to Colorado.

Other teams have more pressing issues. Frederik Andersen has been out for a couple of weeks, which would have meant Antti Raanta steeping in for Carolina, and yet Pyotr Kochetkov arrived on an emergency basis when Raanta suffered a minor injury and won three straight starts and now looks like he may get the nod. Wow. And how about Boston? Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman are in a pitched battle to own the Bruins’ net as well, although we’re guessing it’s Ullmark who gets the first shot at being ‘The Guy’ as he has returned from injury and won critical games for the Bruins. Washington is like Boston except neither of its two goaltenders, Vitek Vanecek and Ilya Samsonov, have been consistent enough to earn the starter’s job in the playoffs and one of them had better get it right if the Caps are to emerge from a playoff malaise that has extended from their Cup win in 2018. And finally, it wouldn’t be the playoffs if it weren’t for some goalie drama in Pittsburgh. Sure enough, Tristan Jarry is out after turning in a stellar regular season which followed his grisly performance in the playoffs last spring. Casey DeSmith looks to be the guy for the Pens, who have one playoff series victory since winning the Cup in ’17.

5. Can the Florida Panthers hack it as a favorite?

Heady times for Florida Panthers GM Bill Zito as the Panthers secured their first Presidents’ Trophy win as the NHL top regular season team and hit the playoffs as the team most feared across the league (or at least in a most-feared tie with Colorado, although the Avs did swoon ever so slightly in the final days of the regular season). We felt last year’s first-round matchup with Tampa might have been the most entertaining series of the entire playoff tournament. Feisty, edgy, skill galore, it had it all, and when we spoke to Zito early in the season it was clear many in the Panthers organization believed that was a litmus test for where they were at in their evolution. They have built on that to become a high-octane team rolling four dangerous forward units with tons of size, speed and grit.

Do they give up more than they’d like on the defensive side? Maybe. But they were tied for 11^th in goals-allowed per game since the trade deadline and their penalty kill was middle of the pack during that stretch. This is the best Florida team ever – better by far than the team that went on an improbable run to the 1996 Stanley Cup final – and yet the expectations have never been higher for this franchise. Sometimes it’s harder to play when you’re the big dog. The key for us will be the return to defenseman Aaron Ekblad who has not played since he was injured early in a game on March 18. If he’s back, he’s an important stabilizing force on both sides of the puck and the Panthers may be one of those rare teams that wins a Presidents’ Trophy and a Cup in the same campaign.

6. Can the Tampa Bay Lightning strike thrice?

Keeping with a Florida theme, don’t look now, but the Tampa Bay Lightning apparently looked at the calendar and decided to start to get into form. It’s the kind of stuff we’ve seen in the past from Chicago and the Los Angeles Kings back in their days of dominance in the Western Conference. There are a few teams for whom the regular season is a giant tuneup. When you’ve won two straight Cups as the Lightning have, you’re afforded all kinds of leeway to play with a certain laissez-faire attitude, and we have seen plenty of that from the Bolts over the past month. But with the end of the regular season in sight, the team went into playoff mode and that’s not great news for the Eastern Conference competition. Andrei Vasilevskiy isn’t in the Vezina Trophy discussion. Victor Hedman is on the edge of the Norris Trophy talk and Nikita Kucherov is once again working his way back into form after missing almost half the season to injury. Guess what? Doesn’t matter. We spoke to longtime player and coach Rick Tocchet about the stretch run and he separated Tampa from the rest of the pack, saying that they were the one team with the experience to throw that playoff switch. At some point the fatigue and the sheer odds of winning four straight playoff rounds again will catch up to the Bolts. Just not sure it’s going to be this year.

7. Can Johnny Gaudreau rewrite his narrative?

It wasn’t that long ago we were wondering if Calgary GM Brad Treliving would be moving on from Johnny Gaudreau, who is in the final year of his current deal. Okay, it actually seems like a million years ago because, more recently, head coach Darryl Sutter has called Gaudreau his best checking forward and he is in the thick of the Hart Trophy race and tied for second in league scoring with 115 points. But the playoffs – not to overstate the obvious – are a different beast, and it’s a beast that’s gotten the better of Gaudreau and the Flames over the years. The Flames have not advanced beyond the second round since a trip to the 2004 Stanley Cup final. A few years ago they were the top team in the Western Conference and were bounced in five games by eighth-seeded Colorado. Gaudreau was, to put it charitably, invisible. The expectations for this Flames team are as high as they’ve been since ’04 and Gaudreau, fair or not, is going to be front and center in determining if those expectations are met or not.

8. Is this Sid and Ovi’s playoff swan song?

Some wondered at the start of the season if this might be the first time since 2006 when both of the two great icons of the post 2004-05 lockout generation, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, would miss the playoffs. Nope. Washington and Pittsburgh are back in the fray, the Penguins for the 16^th straight season. But playoff success has been hard to come by for Crosby and Ovechkin in recent years. Crosby, of course, won back-to-back Cups in 2016 and 2017 and Ovechkin won his lone Cup the following year in ’18. Since 2018-19, neither player has advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs. The questions of closing windows are even more pronounced in Pittsburgh were future Hall of Famer Evgeni Malkin and foundational Pittsburgh defenseman Kris Letang are both in contract years. The fact of the matter is that both the Pens and Caps will be decided underdogs in their first-round series.

9. Can the rookie coaches measure up to the coaches with rings?

Of the 16 teams in this year’s tournament, only Jay Woodcroft in Edmonton and Andrew Brunette in Florida are getting a taste of being an NHL head coach in the playoffs for the first time. Will it show? We’ve spoken to a number of Cup-winning coaches in the past about the adjustments to coaching in the playoffs and they are many. This collection of coaches, though, isn’t just experienced, they’re battle-tested and have the goods to prove it, starting with one of the most interesting coaching figures in this playoff year, Darryl Sutter. He returns to the playoffs for the first time with Calgary but owns two rings from his time as bench boss in Los Angeles. Other coaches in the tournament who have won championships include: Jon Cooper in Tampa who is riding a two-Cup run with the Lightning; Peter Laviolette in Washington (he won in Carolina in 2006 plus had a trip to the ’17 final with Nashville); Mike Sullivan in Pittsburgh, who went back to back in 2016 and 2017; Craig Berube and his St. Louis Blues, who won in 2019, and Todd McLellan, who won a Cup in Detroit in 2008 as part of Mike Babcock’s staff.

There are others who have been close to the grail as well. Dallas head coach Rick Bowness went to a final two years ago and was in Vancouver on Alain Vigneault’s staff during their run to the final in 2011. Bruce Cassidy’s Boston Bruins were in the 2019 final, while Gerard Gallant, now the Ranger bench boss, took Vegas to the final in their first year of existence in 2018. Defending Jack Adams Award winner Rod Brind’Amour captained Carolina to its only Cup win under Laviolette as a player and took the Hurricanes to a conference final in his first year as head coach in 2019. In short, while the game will always be won on the ice, the machinations behind the bench from the word “go” in this tournament will be at an exceptionally high level.

10. The Pressure Cooker: Who Melts? Who is Teflon?

Not all playoff pressure is built the same. Think there’s pressure on Tampa in ’22 like there was coming off getting swept in the first round by Columbus in ’19? Nope. The Bolts met that pressure head on and have two Cup wins in a row to show for their intestinal fortitude. How about pressure on the Oilers, who have two of the greatest players in the world in Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl and have one playoff round win in their tenure? Off the charts. And then there’s Toronto, where the team hasn’t won a playoff round since before the 2004-05 lockout. Every miscue, every penalty, every goal allowed or chance missed, certainly every loss, will send the pressure into orbit in that Leaf locker room.

How about Colorado? Remember when it swept St. Louis last spring and people started talking final and the Cup? The Avs collapsed after taking a 2-0 series lead against Vegas. They’ve been the best team in the league for most of this campaign but nothing but a trip to a final should be acceptable for that franchise. And speaking of Florida, this is the best team the Panthers have ever iced and yet they have not won a series since 1996. No excuses now for one of the most exciting teams in the league. And then there’s the other end of the dealing with pressure spectrum. The Rangers are ahead of schedule and have been dynamite down the stretch. The Kings weren’t supposed to be here. Do these teams play a little looser? Are they a little more immune to the natural playoff pressures? Sure, and if they get a leg up on teams they aren’t supposed to beat, you can believe the pressure valve will continue to go down and down just as it inevitably rises across the ice.

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