The first thing you notice about the right side of the Stanley Cup playoff map is the almost complete absence of continuity—that is, if you’re the sort of person who nerds out on that sort of thing, in which case you’ve got deeper personality flaws than we are equipped to tackle. But it does have that weird strangers-on-a-train feel that the NHL tends to brag about a bit more than it should.
The two teams with the best-looking recent history are located in Tampa and Raleigh, which took you at least five years to get used to, but the rest of this year’s field is very much the island of misfit toys. For starters, the four worst teams in the Eastern Conference last year are in the playoffs this time. There are no New York City–ish teams for the first since the Colorado Rockies moved to New Jersey 44 years ago. The two-time champion Panthers had everybody get hurt in unison and were out of contention by Valentine’s Day. The never-not-smug Toronto Maple Leafs are in an abyss that the management thinks can be escaped through the use of ChatGPT instead of draft choices, and the Washington Ovechkinii are off this spring for only the third time in 18 years.
There are Cup droughts to contend with, like Philadelphia (51 years), Montreal (33), Carolina (20), Boston (15), and, sure, what the hell, Pittsburgh (9). But if you want to boil the East down (an appealing idea), it’s about two teams who not only have never won a Cup, but were considered roadside carcasses four short months ago: the Buffalo Sabres and Ottawa Senators.
The Sabres are especially charming, given that they achieved their sudden renaissance after a wait of only 15 postseason-less years and are one of the rare examples of a team getting a new general manager’s bounce. By firing Kevyn Adams, who assembled this team but also malmanaged it, they suddenly became the hottest team in hockey, and nobody to this day is quite sure why, or whether Adams was a help or a hindrance in the process.
But since that day, they are 37-9-5, and while a lot of that is due to smart draft choices—Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, and Jason Zucker are their only impact players over age 26—and surprising goaltending—Alex Lyon and more amusingly Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, whose name is as fun to say as it is to write on a clacky keyboard—this has all been done with the wise old head of Lindy Ruff doing old-dog/old-tricks/new-audience magic since December. Anyone free of skin in the game is rooting desperately for the Sabres to win the works, to the point where any analysis of the team reflexively includes a deep and abiding love for their fans, and not just because a year ago they were showing the admirable taste of not coming out at all.
The other slice of warm-and-fuzzies is being aimed at Ottawa, which has always been the odd-kid-in-the-corner-of-the-classroom among the seven Canadian teams, in part because Ottawa is a government town and even Canadians hate their government, although not nearly enough as we hate ours. Like the Sabres, the Sens have never won a Cup and only played for it once, and the town’s last title was in 1923 when the league had only four teams and those were within a six-hour drive of each other. These Sens are Canada’s Sabres, only they waited slightly longer to properly assemble their shit (mid-January) and have gone 24-8-6 since, allowing only 98 goals in that time and becoming as tough an out in their way as Buffalo has in its. If there is a less material difference, it is that they didn’t fire head coach Travis Green or general manager Steve Staios when the team was flatlining, their more traditional state.
The Senators are materially poorer, clearly, but they check devotedly and their top players, Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson, Dylan Cozens, and (when healthy) Brady Tkachuk are currently their best selves. In addition, goalie Linus Ullmark, who had been the target of a pissing contest that involved Tkachuk and his family podcast (his dad, former player Keith Tkachuk, obliquely ripped Ullmark for missing games due to panic attacks he has incurred intermittently since being traded to Ottawa two Junes ago) has been among the better goalies in the league since his return to play.
But never mind that. You root for Ottawa for the same reason and in the same way you root for Buffalo—because they have no reason to wave their history or even their roster in anyone’s face. It’s a lot like a Hornets-Hawks conference final in the NBA, and given everything else going in our pre-apocalyptic dumpsite, that is exactly what we all deserve, as many times as it is served. In basketball the regular season is typically a helpful guide to the playoffs. In the NHL, the meek can occasionally inherit a nice piece of property because the team with the best regular-season record rarely wins, and Anton Forsberg and Victor Wembanyama can have the same effect on a playoff series, as bizarre as that seems. This is Buffalo’s moment, unless it’s Ottawa’s. The choice is yours, unless it’s actually Carolina’s.
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