Dose: Not Enough Disney Magic

When it comes to championship rounds, the NHL has had an almost ludicrous run of good fortune as far as “big markets” go.

Just looking over the past few years, there have been multiple appearances from the Chicago Blackhawks, Los Angeles Kings and Boston Bruins. The New York Rangers are hoping to make it twice in a row. The Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings faced off in back-to-back marquee matchups and, yes, the Philadelphia Flyers even made it once. (Kind of hard to believe in a way, huh?)

The league hasn’t seen a matchup lacking in big-market buzz since, well, the last time the Anaheim Ducks made it all the way.

Personally, I don’t really care who makes it. The things I seek out really are a) great stories and b) entertaining teams. The fabulous thing about this year’s conference finals matchups is that every situation features great stars and teams that at least possess the ability to play entertaining hockey. Naturally, it all comes down to the coaches and situations.

Style of play wise, a hockey fan without a horse in this race would be a little nuts to complain about a possible Tampa Bay - Anaheim series. I’d go further and argue that it would have the potential to be the kind of series to create new fans (as plenty of other scenarios would, mind you). To state the hopefully obvious, getting a fourth win against the Rangers and Blackhawks is far from a given for the Lightning and Ducks respectively - those teams may be the toughest to eliminate from their given conferences, with the possible exception here or there - so don’t claim that I’m counting any chickens. I’m merely imagining what those chickens may look like, if you will.

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DUCKS 5, BLACKHAWKS 4 (OT)

-- Remember when P.K. Subban spoke about Ben Bishop having a well-placed horseshoe (a funny comment in hindsight considering the fact that Bishop took a puck below the belt during warm-ups of Tampa Bay's eventual Game 5 win)? I think Chicago has collectively owned a horseshoe at times in these playoffs.

That's not to say that they don't deserve their wins, but sheesh, they already set an NHL record by winning four multiple-overtime contests in a single postseason.

They wasted all of their Wacky Pixie Dust to get to OT in this one, as Jonathan Toews scored two goals with an empty Chicago net to improbably tie things up.

-- Frederik Andersen may have been the happiest person in the building after Matt Beleskey scored just 45 seconds into OT. The 4-4 goal would be one that would haunt the young netminder for some time if the Ducks lost Game 5 and the series. Instead, it just gave some beat writers heart attacks as they frantically deleted (and then re-entered slightly altered versions) of their copy.

-- Beleskey fired eight SOG in Game 4 to get a single goal. He only fired one in Game 5, and it won the game. Seven of his eight playoff points are goals, making his 22 goals and 10 assists from the regular season look positively balanced.

-- This is a weird game to judge. The Ducks charged out to a 3-0 lead in the first period, including two goals within the first six minutes. I chastise teams for sitting on leads - especially against a team with the sort of firepower that Chicago boasts - but it's tougher to slam sitting on a 3-0 lead than it is a one or two-goal margin.

-- Still, it seemed like Anaheim had quite a bit of success when it pushed on the gas. Despite the OT period being just 45 seconds long, the Ducks had four SOG to zero for Chicago. That's a super-super small sample size, but if I were Bruce Boudreau, I'd maybe lean toward being aggressive under most circumstances.

-- Nice numbers for Ryan Kesler: one goal, one assist, four SOG and seven hits. He's a pretty big proponent of checking Chicago players a lot, don't know if you've heard.

-- Man, Sami Vatanen's assist on Patrick Maroon's 4-2 tally was sweet. Ryan Getzlaf got his 17th assist on that one, which is pretty absurd.

-- Quite a contract postseason for Jakob Silfverberg, who generated his 12th helper on the OT GWG. He looks pretty dangerous for the Ducks.

-- I stated my confusion over Teuvo Teravainen being benched before, but the perplexing nature of that decision only seemed more glaring after he generated his first two-point playoff performance. The Blackhawks are playing well enough, but they could use a creative player with fresh legs, and No. 86 fits both bills.

-- For whatever reason, Corey Crawford often looks mediocre to the naked eye, even if his stats are fine-to-good. Hard to argue with career save percentages of .917 (regular season) and .921 (playoffs), after all.

-- Boudreau pondered playing James Wisniewski last night, but he remained one of the more perplexing healthy scratches - at least to a depth deprived team like Chicago - in a trade deadline year in which many acquisitions warmed the bench or munched snacks in the press box. Speaking of which, Tomas Fleischmann did crack the lineup, though he might go back to being a scratch after doing little in 10:14 TOI.

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