Quoting: hanson493
ONE, im quoting back to march... where the lightning were absolutely lost as a team. they didnt really start slow after the layoff. Maybe during the regular season but thats what happens when youve got some vets. regardless. vasy had been giving up between 3 and 4 goals a game in the 7-8 starts before the season ended. they were losing games to bad teams, had no chemistry anywhere in the lineup. Injuries everywhere, guys were pretty obviously playing through some stuff during the march stretch as they were trying to catch boston for the 1 seed.
Comparing march to now is like comparing an apple to a gorilla. There is no similarity between August 1st and march 10th. Dallas stars were one of the worst teams in hockey based on the last 10 games as well as tampa when the season was cancelled. the 5 month layoff is longer than most playoff teams get to begin with. nevermind the fact that they literally disregard the ENTIRE seasons worth of games and decided seeding based on some BS 3 preseason roundrobin style games lol. Khudobin got hot during the summer, lightning scorers got hot in the summer and decided to play defense. Am i slighting tampa in any way saying they arent a good team? no. What i am saying is this "playoff" bears little to no resemblance of the regular season that took place because if it did tampa and dallas likely arent where they are today. Colorado philly st.louis vegas and boston were the 5 hottest teams going into the break. Lightning, stars, islanders, bluejackets, were 4 of the worst at the time.
OK, I get all of that. But what says the hottest teams in March are the same teams that make it far? Remember TB last year? They cruised the whole year, got to the playoffs, and got swept. It's not about who is hot in March, it's about who gets hottest when the playoffs start. Isnt' that exactly what Dallas and TB did? Everyone has the same things going on around them, every team had the same situation that any other team did. Just as it is every year in the playoffs, whoever gets hot at the right time, whatever goalie gets hot at the right time, etc etc. What's the difference if the right time was the second week of April like normal or August 1st like this year?
TB also was the 2nd hottest team in 2020 so I don't know TBL team you were watching, they actually had an 11 game winning streak in February and a 10 game winning streak from late December into January. They're combined record in 2020 was 22-8-2, which is a 117 point pace over a full season. Are you sure about that?
And Vasy over his last 17 games had only 3 games where he let in more than 3 goals. he also had a .948 sv% in January and a .917 sv% in Feb and March. Idk what you're looking at man.
But one last thing, since when does any playoff resemble what happens in the RS??? When was the last presidents trophy team to win a SC? That's why hockey is great, you never know who's gonna win, it's all about getting hot at the right time. What does anything have to do with who was hot in march and who wasn't?? It's all about who gets hot at the right time, and they did!