The night before, a column about the things that went down the night before in the NHL and NBA playoffs. Let’s take a look back at the night before.
NHL
Florida Panthers Tampa Bay Lightning Game 5: The Panthers wrap up the series. The Lightning did their best in game five but two goals called back off of goaltender interference, both suspect, kept the Bolts from advancing to round 2.
Andrei Vasilevskiy played an unreal series in net for the Lightning but ultimately the Bolts could not put pucks past the best goalie in these playoffs thus far, Sergei Bobrovsky. In total, the Panthers gave up just 11 goals over five games. The team’s defense paired with the tremendous fire power of the Florida offense carried them through this series and make the Panthers a formidable opponent for whoever they face next.
A potential Bruins series rematch awaits in the wings, another team with a tremendous defense, the question will become can a team like the Bruins survive the offensive onslaught and depth the Panthers bring?
Vegas Golden Knights Dallas Stars game 4: The Stars even the series. Wyatt Johnston, now with three goals in the series, has emerged as the driving star of this young Dallas Star’s core. He’s been fantastic through the last two games and they’ve evened the series at 2 games a piece.
Also standing on his head, is one Jake Oettinger making 32 saves in a valiant Stars win. This series has the juice to go the distance, it’s hard to separate these teams at this point. Both boast incredible depth and incredible goaltending. The West is a gauntlet though, the Avs lurk for the winner of this series and on the Pacific side a Vancouver squad that has silenced the haters at every term and the best player in the world, Connor McDavid, and the Edmonton Oilers look to have the most complete squad of his tenure. The playoffs are about to get extremely real.
NBA Quick Hits
- The LeBron yes man didn’t work out? No shit? That’s crazy.
- Nikola Jokic is a joke, legitimately hilarious to see defenders play lock down defense on him for 23 seconds and then see the circus shots he hits.
- T Wolve Nuggets, yes please.
- Team I am thoroughly unimpressed by: The Boston Celtics
- I have a sizeable Thunder future, I feel pretty good about it.
- Knicks and Pacers close out series tonight.
- Can we get a competitive Cavs Magic game? Probably not, onto round 2 please, this is boring.