Haggerty: East is wide open for everyone, except Devils

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BRIGHTON, Mass – It might feel counterintuitive to say this with the reigning two-time Stanley Cup champion placed near the top of the Eastern Conference seeding for the playoffs, but the East should be wide open this spring.

Sure, the Penguins still have Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel and Mike Sullivan holding it all together on the Pens bench and this postseason’s road to the Cup will undoubtedly go through Pittsburgh. But it would be a Herculean feat for the Penguins to have another long run in them this spring after Cup runs each of the past two seasons and that should make them vulnerable in the Eastern Conference bracket.

Let’s not even get into the choking dogs in Washington, where the mere mention of playoffs makes a little pee dribble down the collective legs of the Washington Capitals. Much as they’ve done every season since Alex Ovechkin came to Washington more than a decade ago, the Caps will again be done before the end of the second round. The latest development with Philipp Grubauer getting the nod in net is just the latest example of everything coming apart in Washington around playoff time.  

Looking strictly at won-loss records one would call the Tampa Bay Lightning, Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs the three best teams in the East. Clearly, it makes the Atlantic Division bracket a formidable one. This spring’s first rounds of the playoffs could set up a rivalry between the Bruins, Bolts and Leafs that could be sustained by the team’s talented youth for the next decade in the NHL.

The Bruins were the NHL’s best team for a four-month stretch from mid-November until mid-March and it wouldn’t surprise anybody if that team shows up again in the postseason now that their final 21-games-in-39-days gauntlet has passed.

Either way, the first two rounds of the playoffs should be pretty epic.  

“They are division rivals and they will be for years,” said Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy. “I look at a young Toronto team and I look at a young Tampa team and a young Boston team, and I believe we’ll be going at each other for a long time.

“Now things can change quickly. Just look at Ottawa from last year [where they went to the conference finals], so it can happen both ways. Those [games] can take on more meaning because I think we’re slowly developing rivalries with these teams.”

Where the real rivalries are made, of course, is in the playoffs when divisional rivals end each other’s playoff lives, and where hard feelings develop over the course of a heated, hard-fought best-of-seven series. The bottom line this season is that two very good Atlantic Division teams aren’t going to make it out of that playoff bracket after the second round, and that’s where the long-lasting hard feelings get created.

Conventional wisdom and Vegas oddsmakers would tell you that it will be a Tampa Bay Lightning team with offensive firepower in Steve Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov, elite defenseman play from Victor Hedman and top goaltending from Andrei Vasilevskiy along with solid role players like Ryan Callahan, JT Miller, Chris Kunitz and strong rookie Yanni Gourde.

The breathless Canadian media would tell you that it could be the center of the hockey universe, the Maple Leafs, powered by Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander among others, and perhaps Mike Babcock can squeeze a surprise run out of a Toronto team that might still be a couple of years away.  

Whichever team gets out of the Atlantic Division bracket will certainly be battle-hardened and ready for whatever awaits them in the Eastern Conference Final. The Penguins would be the heavy favorite to be that team, of course, but one can’t discount the Columbus Blue Jackets, a blue-collar team with elite goaltending. The Blue Jackets would be the kind of team that could step into the gap if both the Penguins and Capitals falter, or if the Philadelphia Flyers have a first round upset up their sleeve in the Battle of Pennsylvania.

We’d mention the New Jersey Devils as well, but let’s be honest...it’s not going to be a Devils team going back and forth between Keith Kinkaid and Cory Schneider between the pipes. They do have Taylor Hall playing the best hockey of his NHL career and talented young guys Nico Hischier and Will Butcher, but one gets the sense that the Devils really should just be happy to be there.

The bottom line: The Eastern Conference is wide open for just about anybody over the next couple of months except for New Jersey. Let’s be honest, it won’t be the Devils. So, drop the puck for the playoffs already and may the best hockey club advance. 

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