Can anyone beat the Lightning in the playoffs?
The Tampa Bay Lightning already clinched a playoff berth as they keep rolling over the league and remain on pace to challenge the all-time records for wins and points in a season. It’s probably fair to start asking: Can anyone beat these guys? Or should we just save everyone the trouble and hand them the Stanley Cup right now?
It’s tempting to consider a Tampa championship inevitable. But that’s no fun, so today let’s run through some of the teams that could find themselves facing the Lightning in the playoffs and come up with a reason that they could actually pull off the upset.
Toronto Maple Leafs – Would only play the Lightning after getting past the Bruins, which would mean the league had already changed the rules so that giving up more goals than you score means you win.
Columbus Blue Jackets – Weirdly haven’t turned into some sort of unbeatable juggernaut after executing on their strategy of “be really average and then load up on players from the worst team in the league” but there’s still time.
New York Islanders – If you squint a little bit then Lightning bedsheets look a lot like Maple Leaf bedsheets and those basically turn the Islanders into the 1979 Canadiens.
Carolina Hurricanes – The Hurricanes are far more dangerous, hit more frequently and are more likely to sustain an attack for a full 60 minutes than the Lightning according to this scouting report I found, although now that I look a bit closer it actually appears to a meteorology report.
Pittsburgh Penguins – Could throw out a blueline pairing of Jack Johnson and Erik Gudbransson, which could give the Lightning all sorts of trouble because they’d feel sorry for them.
A Western Conference team – While the Lighting might seem like an overwhelming favorite in any Stanley Cup final matchup, the analytics guys will tell you that from a purely mathematical standpoint it’s actually not inconceivable that the other team will show up anyway.
Washington Capitals – Actually beat the Lightning in a seven-game classic last year and could probably learn from that once they sobered up enough to remember anything that happened last spring.
Boston Bruins – May have lost meekly in five games in their matchup last season, but that was a year ago and this time the Lightning are way better and healthy and you know what I forget where I was going with this.