Sunday evening will be exciting. An incredible comeback follows on Friday night with a Toronto-Columbus game 5. But Saturday brings us a few round robin games to determine who will be the top seed, and Sunday will add two more games from the round robin that will help set matchups in the first round .
While the intensity of the round robin was not the same as the playoffs, there is something obvious to play for now: a preferred opponent in the first round.
Here are some of the issues at stake in the round robin games this weekend:
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WHAT’S ON THE LINE?
Each of the round robin teams have played two of their three games so we have a clearer picture of what this weekend’s games mean. We know this:
• The best regular season teams in both conferences, St. Louis and Boston, will not go into the first round as either first or second seed. St. Louis plays Dallas on Sunday, which will determine who will finish third and fourth in the west. Boston plays Washington on Sunday to see who will finish third and fourth in the east.
• Each conference consists of two 2-0-0 teams: Colorado and Vegas to the west, Tampa Bay and Philadelphia to the east. They will play against each other and both games will take place on Saturday. The winners will finish in first place with home advantage at least in the conference finals, while the losers will finish in second place.
• The teams are seeded again in the next round so that the top team plays against the one ranked as the lowest from the qualifying series. A couple of # 12 seeds created a stir so the teams with first place in each conference in Round 1 will face a team that had no hope of trying playoff hockey in March.
• With the Bruins and Blues not yet winning, the top qualifying round seeds will have to go to the next round against one of last year’s finalists if both lose their Sunday game.
SERIES POSSIBILITIES
• As number 12 in the east, Montreal will play against anyone who wins Saturday’s game between Tampa Bay and Philadelphia. No. 12 in west Chicago will play the winner between Colorado and Vegas. The round robin was comparatively tame to the best of fives, but that’s something worth playing for. The loser between Tampa and Philadelphia will play against either Toronto or Columbus. The loser between Colorado and Vegas will play against Arizona.
• And there is also a useful series for Sunday’s round robin games for the third and fourth seed. The loser between Washington and Boston faces Carolina while the winner of that game takes on the NY Islanders. In the west, the loser will face Vancouver between St. Louis and Dallas, while the winner of that game will face Calgary.
BEST PLAYER OF THE ROUND ROBIN
Mark Stone: Only three players from the round robin teams have four points in two games. Stone is one and he is supported by flyers Scott Laughton and Kevin Hayes. But numerically, no line was more dominant than the Stone-William Karlsson-Chandler Stephenson line, a new look for the Golden Knights. Stone himself has a CF% of 71.43 so far, the fifth among all strikers.
Brayden Point: Tampa’s top-line center scored the first goal of the game against Boston and assisted in the first game against Washington. The Lightning’s overall return on sales was really rolling, with expected targets for a percentage of over 64 percent.
Ryan O’Reilly: Although his team hasn’t won a game yet, O’Reilly picks up where he left off as last year’s Conn Smythe Trophy winner. He has three assists in the two games, but beyond that the Blues controlled his chances to score with him on the ice. O’Reilly’s xGF% of 56.45 leads all the blues forward and St. Louis took 75 percent of the dangerous chances with O’Reilly. The defensive specialist also averaged the third most minutes of all strikers in the league.
Pavel Francouz / Philipp Grubauer: Colorado’s two goalkeepers have each made a start so far and both have been great. Grubauer, the suspected game 1 starter in the next round, stopped 31 of 32 shots against St. Louis while Francouz knocked out the Dallas Stars. The Avalanche have great star power elsewhere, but that only leaves their goalkeeping duo underestimated.
TOP QUESTIONS
Will Vegas start Robin Lehner or Marc-Andre Fleury?
When the Golden Knights bought Lehner at the close of trading, coach Pete DeBoer played both and switched back and forth in the few remaining games. He did the same in the first two round robin games – Lehner against Dallas for a 5-3 win and Fleury against St. Louis for a 6-4 win. The swap is unlikely to continue the next round. So who will be the point of contact? Fleury has the story with the franchise and played extraordinarily well in three rounds when Vegas reached the Cup Final two years ago. But Lehner was a Vezina finalist last year and was the better of the two this season, despite spending much of it behind Chicago’s leaky defense.
Can Dallas score enough?
The Stars are one of the best, if not one of the best defensive teams in the league, but despite some notable players, it was difficult to get an attack. They scored three goals in two games – and they all came against Vegas in less than five minutes. Colorado ruled them out. They averaged just 27 shots per game, while conceding an unusually 36.5 against – and no team had a lower percentage of scoring opportunities in five-on-five than Dallas with 41.11 percent. The stakes will change, but that brings us to the next question …
Will round robin teams be able to step up the intensity if necessary?
The round robin games felt a lot closer to the regular season in mid-February than the playoff intensity, and now each of them is facing a team emerging from a high-stakes best-of-three. Boston, St. Louis, Washington – Teams you may have chosen to go a long way in a normal year all started slowly with no victory. Can you flip that switch? All round robin teams are faced with this question.
“The play-in series are very intense. You are very, very physical. They face each other and it’s every shift, “said Stars coach Rick Bowness. “And we’ll see when we get to the playoffs. We’re trying to prepare our players for this to happen. We have to prepare now. We can’t just flip a switch when the first play-off game comes up and say, “OK, now we’re intense.” ”
“We can’t just flip a switch when the first play-off game comes up and say, ‘OK, now we’re intense, now we’re ready to go.’ That’s not good enough. “
Coach Bowness on the increase in intensity in the last qualifier against St. Louis on Sunday: pic.twitter.com/aLgPAE5EG0
– Dallas Stars (@DallasStars) August 7, 2020
