The Western Conference has been the NHL’s stronger half from the beginning of the season on, sometimes by a wide margin.
However, some late stretch-run stumbles and the new NHL playoff format could mean that as many as half of the West’s top teams will be out of action by the end of the first round.
These are the matchups:
Anaheim (P1) vs Dallas (WC2)
Colorado (C1) vs Minnesota (WC1)
St. Louis (C2) vs Chicago (C3)
San Jose (P2) vs Los Angeles (P3)
The West featured a smaller field than the East, where just 14 clubs competed for eight playoff berths. However, the smaller field bred tougher competition, where many of the West’s playoff teams have cut their teeth against one another all season long.
Before the second round has even begun, a number of good teams are going to be out of the running.
So who has the inside track on the second round?
Boudreau’s Boys
Anaheim head coach Bruce Boudreau has a knack for compiling regular season champions. His Washington clubs were regular runaways in the now-defunct Southeast Division, and he has now directed the Anaheim Ducks to consecutive postseasons following a run of uneven play under former head coach Randy Carlyle.
After capturing the top seed in the highly-competitive Western Conference and Pacific Division, Boudreau’s Ducks will have to overcome the upstart Dallas Stars to prove that his clubs aren’t just regular season contenders.
Ryan Getzlaf is the favorite to finish as runner-up to Sidney Crosby’s runaway Hart Trophy season, and his Ducks are back in the postseason in favorable position.
Overall, the team has a good combination of Cup-winning experience (they last won the title in 2007) and energetic youth, but their greatest strength lay in goal, where Jonas Hiller and rookies Frederik Anderson and John Gibson create what is by far the best goaltending depth in the NHL.
While the Ducks have the inside track on the second round, Dallas is not a pushover by any means.
The Stars’ renaissance season has been led by Tyler Seguin, a former second-overall pick who had fallen out of favor in Boston. The change of scenery did Seguin well, as he jumped to the top-five in NHL scoring this season while helping Jamie Benn, head coach Lindy Ruff and the rest of Dallas back into the dance after half a decade on the outside.
While Seguin and Benn have contributed the scoring up front, goaltender Kari Lehtonen has solidified the team’s crease, and will get his first taste of postseason action against Anaheim.
While the Stars may be mostly new to the postseason experience, Ruff and Seguin should provide the rest of the club with enough postseason experience to at least give the Ducks a run for their money.
All About Momentum?
The Colorado Avalanche don’t have the fancy stats to back up their resurgent season, but they’ve got the only one that counts — a first place finish in their division.
Patrick Roy has kept the other shoe from dropping all season long, as the talented but inexperienced Avalanche seemed to be playing above their heads while keeping pace with the heavy St. Louis Blues and reigning-champion Blackhawks.
However, a late-season push that coincided with poor play and a rash of injuries for both St. Louis and Chicago helped Colorado claim the top spot in the Central, which may well have been the NHL’s top division if not for the three powers at the top of the Pacific.
The Avalanche are now in their first postseason since 2009.
For Minnesota, it’s two straight seasons in the playoffs after owner Craig Leipold opened his wallet in 2012 and brought in franchise players Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. The Wild have also acquired a number of other big names since that time, including Jason Pominville, Matt Moulson and Ilya Bryzgalov.
Now, head coach Mike Yeo has his squad on the postseason track once again.
Minnesota was able to claim the top Wild Card spot with a week left in the season, playing catch-up to the rest of the Central Division’s entrenched powers.
However, it will be facing a team against which it struggled this season in Colorado. The Avalanche went 4-0-1 against the Wild this season, scoring their lone loss in the shootout.
Roy’s Avalanche are a speedy bunch with the ability to score off the rush, while goaltenders Semyon Varlamov and Jean-Sebastien Giguere have the talent and experience to match any goaltending duo in the postseason, save perhaps Anaheim.
The Avalanche aren’t the best all-around team entering this postseason, but they are perhaps the hottest, and will get back into the swing of playoff life with a favorable first-round opponent in the Wild.
Center of Hostilities
The St. Louis Blues looked like the team to beat entering the postseason.
Now, they’ll be happy just to have a healthy roster ahead of their meeting with the defending champs.
St. Louis lost half of its top-nine forwards en route to losing its final six regular season games, a sharp departure from the club that acquired Ryan Miller and Steve Ott at the trade deadline and looked like a Cup favorite for much of the time to follow.
However, injuries to key forwards stunted their final two weeks.
In Chicago, injuries have done a number on the team’s center depth, as Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane both missed more than two weeks of regular season play, though both figure to be ready for Game 1 against St. Louis.
The Blackhawks may be the defending champs, but will have to have their top centers at full speed to contend with Ken Hitchcock’s stifling squad.
St. Louis is one of the biggest teams in the NHL — Chicago, one of the speediest.
Who will emerge from this series is likely to come down to goaltending and special teams, as both clubs have their distinct ways of asserting themselves during five-on-five play.
Ryan Miller is the new guy in St. Louis and got off to a fine start, but the team’s late struggles coincided with his own, as he posted a sub-.900 save percentage over the final weeks of the regular season.
Chicago has the goods to kill any team on the power play, where Toews, Kane, Patrick Sharp, Brandon Saad and Duncan Keith can all rotate in and out of the top power play unit.
Neither club enters the postseason at full strength, but the one that is able to move on to the second round will have to stand as one of the favorites to emerge from the West.
Monster Puck Rally
Sorry.
Not to belabor the pun, but the San Jose Sharks and Los Angeles Kings are two of the biggest, fastest and most skilled teams in hockey. Their forwards are built like football players, their defensemen are among the game’s best and these teams have seen enough of each other to enter the first round without so much as a shift needed to complete the feeling-out process.
San Jose is in search of its first Stanley Cup, and it seems the Sharks have enjoyed a Championship window that’s been open longer than it has any right to be.
The club’s mainstay names are still there, as Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and Dan Boyle still figure prominently on this squad, but its the new guys in Logan Couture, Joe Pavelski and Marc-Edouard Vlasic who are beginning to take the reigns.
Rookie standout Tomas Hertl, who has missed much of this campaign with injuries following a promising start to the season, will also be ready to go for this series.
In Los Angeles, all the pieces are in place. No team allowed fewer goals than the Kings this season, and perhaps no team but the Sharks is built quite as heavily as the Kings.
The big question mark in Los Angeles will be defenseman Drew Doughty, who has missed some time following a late-season injury, but who insists he will be ready to face the Sharks in the opening round.
These teams met in last year’s playoffs, and they’ve faced off a number of times as divisional foes this regular season.
If ever there was a coin-flip series, this is it. It’s also a shame that one of the most entertaining series’ of the postseason will take place in the first round, and that only one of these contenders will be moving on to the second round.