The first round of the NHL playoffs had an incredible ending in Boston and an anticlimactic one in Washington, as a pair of Game 7s trimmed the field to eight teams. Today we’ll briefly recap yesterday’s games and then dive into previews of the four conference semi-final matchups , two of which begin tonight.
The second round of the NHL playoffs is three-quarters full, with Pittsburgh and Detroit moving forward this weekend, and the final two spots will be settled tonight with Game 7s in the Eastern Conference. Boston-Toronto & Washington-NY Rangers are coming down to their final battles, and it’s there that we’ll begin the overview of the first-round series that were still ongoing over the weekend.
All four playoff teams from the NHL’s Northeast Division are playing each other in the first round of the playoffs and both series are now on the brink of ending. The Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators each got Game 4 wins that gave them 3-1 series leads. TheSportsNotebook’s review of each NHL playoff series will begin with these two matchups
Every first-round series in the NHL playoffs has completed three games and two of them are four deep, but only might end in elimination over the course of the next two nights. That’s San Jose-Vancouver, where the Canucks stand on the verge of yet another playoff flameout. The self-induced failure of Vancouver will lead our overview of all eight first-round matchups and an assessment of where they stand.
The St. Louis-Los Angeles series, along with Anaheim-Detroit—the only other first-round pairing to have already played two games—will lead our discussion, and we’ll then sweep through the other six matchups.
The NHL playoffs begin Tuesday night. Today’s NHL analysis will preview the four first-round matchups in the Eastern Conference, starting with one point that summarizes each series in a nutshell and then moving into fuller analysis.