The Danger Zone of the NHL Playoffs

Both the Rangers and the Islanders could present problems for the higher seeds in the East. (Credits: Corey Sipkin/NY Daily News)

With a rink in my backyard graced by a high-school team that I figured to be the New York Rangers, I spent more time in hockey’s giant freezer as a kid than any warm-blooded mammal should. Over those years, I was introduced to two things: hard-hitting hockey and hard-hitting music. A few songs in particular will always stand out in my mind, and on the eve of the NHL playoffs, where unwary juggernauts are routinely toppled by impudent upstarts, Kenny Loggins is bouncing around my brain like a puck that won’t sit still…

Out along the edges
Always where I burn to be
The further on the edge
The hotter the intensity

Highway to the danger zone
Gonna take you
Right into the danger zone

Chances are, Kenny Loggins was not singing about the NHL playoffs in his 1986-hit Danger Zone. But his lyrics certainly elucidate the dynamic of the postseason, where one thing reigns supreme: volatility. No one team stands on firmer ground than any other, and that little number attached to each team entering the tournament – a number that presupposes the presence of order, sequence and probability – comes to mean nothing once the chaos begins. It’s like tying a fancy red bow around your dog’s collar, and then letting the beast outside to romp in the mud.

Last year, “out along the edges” was certainly where teams “burned to be.” The 8-seeded Kings won the Stanley Cup by beating the 6-seeded Devils in the finals. In the first round alone, the 7-seeded Capitals dispatched the lofty Boston Bruins while the 8-seeded Senators took the mighty Rangers the distance. In total, four of last year’s eight first-round series were won by the lower-seed, giving birth to a second round populated by a 5-seed, a 6-seed, a 7-seed and an 8-seed.

The NHL playoffs are a highway to the danger zone.

With Kenny Loggins now properly saluted, let’s look at four low-seeded teams that spell danger for their playoff opposition.

1. New York Rangers (6^th seed in East)

The Rangers streaked to the 6^th seed with a 10-3-1 run to close out the season. They have scored more goals in April than any NHL team, while staying loyal to their defensive philosophy. On that note, they have allowed the fourth fewest goals of any playoff team. Trade deadline fortifications have beefed up the team’s torso and provided a shot in the arm that is still surging through their bloodlines. Erase all of that – all of that – and the Rangers are still right here as one of the most dangerous teams to face this spring.

Why, you ask?

Henrik Lundqvist, we answer. And therein lies the transcendent truth of the NHL playoffs: in an endlessly team-oriented sport, one player can win a series.

In this regard, the Rangers are lucky – no, privileged – no, blessed – to have Lundqvist. Simply by default of his position, Lundqvist is in a prime position to alter the outcome of a best-of-seven series. But it his tendency to transform into this possessed, almost maniacal stopper of pucks that propels him into that category of players who can single-handedly push his team onward. Lundqvist loves nothing more than the pressure of the playoffs, and the stiffening of competition that comes with it, and his confident demeanor can calm a team from the backend out.

Not that the Rangers need it. Having now made the playoffs in eight of the last nine years – not to mention drawing a team in the first round they are extremely familiar with – this group will not suffer stage fright under the bright lights of the playoffs. They are led, after Lundqvist, by their steely captain Ryan Callahan, and buttressed by a hardened cast of been-there-before guys like Brad Richards, Dan Girardi, Derek Stepan, Ryan Clowe, Ryan McDonagh and the soon-returning Marc Staal.

The Rangers will have their hands full with a surging Capitals team, but between their discovery of form and their elite goaltender, the pieces are in place for a long playoff run.

2.  New York Islanders (8^th seed in East)

The Islanders, by mere virtue of writing this season’s best story, are not a rosy first-round date for any high-seeded Goliath. Anytime a team rises from the depths and makes the kind of mystic run the Islanders have – necessarily becoming everyone’s second-favorite team in the process – they are immediately wrapped in yellow caution tape, demarcated with a flashing red light, and acknowledged with a sign that reads Explosives – Stay Back.  

In their first trip to the playoffs since 2007, the Islanders will be playing with house money: they have already succeeded by getting here, and they are not expected to advance. While their rivals on the other side of the Throgs Neck Bridge are under more pressure to succeed than any 6-seed ever, the Islanders can approach the playoffs with the same why not us? mentality with which they approached the regular season.

But the Isles aren’t just a dangerous team because of the charms and mojo feeding their Cinderella run. They are a dangerous team, first and foremost, because they can score. They finished seventh in the league with 2.81 goals per game, and did some serious damage on the power play, converting at just about a 20% rate. And they can score, first and foremost, because they can skate. Advance metrics haven’t yet found a way to quantify team speed, but guys like Michael Grabner and Travis Hamonic – who aren’t slowing down for the mathematicians anytime soon – supply all the evidence we need by churning their legs.

The one area in which the Islanders faltered this season was the penalty kill, a weakness they shrewdly offset by taking the third fewest penalties in the League. Embedded in their one glaring flaw, then, is glowing evidence of a playoff team: the recognition of a chink in their armor, and the on-ice awareness to conceal it.

In the playoffs, where special teams double and triple in importance, where speed becomes a lifeline, and where a little stardust can go a long way, the cast-off Islanders look to have it all.

3. Los Angeles Kings (5^th seed in West)

Let’s say this outright: despite languishing at the start of this season, no one will be taking the Kings lightly in the playoffs. Last year’s torrid run to the Stanley Cup championship erased any sleeper potential this team had left.

Still, the Kings start the playoffs on the road, having won just eight games away from the Staples Center this season. Their goalie and last-year’s Conn Smythe winner Jonathan Quick has been stellar at home, but Scott Clemmensen-like everywhere else. In road games, he is checking in with a GAA of 3.11 and a SV% of .891, and this Kings team will have to win games in unfriendly buildings if they are to defend their title. It’s hard to say whether it’s the hostile crowds, the unfamiliar sight lines, or a classic case of homesickness that is troubling Quick on the road, but if he can’t shake off the traveling doldrums this Kings team is doomed.

And suddenly they feel like underdogs again.

But assuming Quick doesn’t forget his game in the overhead – or backup Jonathan Bernier proves a dependable alternative – the Kings will not be an easy out. They still boast a formidable scoring core, led by Anze Kopitar and his puck-handling wizardry and Jeff Carter and his Basset-Houndian nose for the net. Their defensive corps is as impressive as any – defensively responsible as it is offensively inclined – headlined by Drew Doughty, Slava Voynov and the mid-season revelation Jake Muzzin.

Muzzin, an imposing young defenseman, was given a second shot in LA this season after failing to impress in his first NHL stint in 2010. His season is a microcosm of his team’s season; a hesitation at the start, a gathering of the bearings in February, an acceleration in March, and a calm cruise to the finish. After registering just three points through February 25, Muzzin finished the year with 16 points – good for ninth on the team. The Kings meanwhile, were loafing around the bottom eight of the West for the first month of the season, before catching fire in late February and finishing the year on a 20-10-3 run.  

Last year, the Kings wrote a 5-2-3 record over their final ten games before streaking to their first Stanley Cup championship. This year, their closing record was 5-3-2. If they can pull off a similar reproduction of last year’s playoff exploits, they will become the first repeat champions since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997-98.

4. Detroit Red Wings (7^th seed in West)

Speaking of those Red Wings…

When are they not a dangerous team in the playoffs? They might be aging and they might be slowing down, but with their backs against the wall with four games remaining this season, the Wings of Old showed up and got the points they needed to get. It was a professional bit of execution from a professional team, propelled by a group of seasoned stars that knew all along their glorious playoff streak was never really in danger.

That’s the thing about this Wings team: there is this pervading sense of equanimity about them, this steadiness in their gaze that looks adversity in the eye and says game on. They are never undone by the snags and hitches and hurdles of an NHL season, yet they are never too brash to think they won’t come. As the fourth-oldest team in the League, the Wings understand what it takes to win and possess the quiet confidence that things will get done.     

The face of the team’s unruffled demeanor is Pavel Datsyuk, a man who has scored 255 NHL goals and celebrated approximately 20 of them. Datsyuk, who was said to be on the decline entering this season, racked up 49 points in 47 games, his best point-per-game pace since 2008-09. He was aided by another star supposedly in the twilight of his career, the unflappable Henrik Zetterberg, who tallied 48 points in 46 games. It was his best point-per-game pace since 2007-08.

Still, the Red Wings earned their keep this season through their defense. They surrendered the second-fewest goals per game in the West, led as always by the untiring Jimmy Howard. Howard played 42 games – the second-most in the League – and racked up a league-leading five shutouts. 

That’s the luxury of a shortened season: teams that rely heavily on certain players do not have to give them breaks or breathers. The three-month long lockout took care of it for them. For an aging team like the Red Wings, the lockout could end up being the key to a long playoff run. Datsyuk, Zetterberg and the rest of those soon-to-be grey-bearded Wings have surely never felt so fresh entering the playoffs.

With the legs of their youth and the aplomb of their age, the Red Wings are in a position to make Hockeytown rock like the ‘90s.