Chaos is usually the name of the game in the first round of the NHL playoffs, with eight series rolling and plenty of upsets. This year was no different.
The Presidents’ Trophy-winning Boston Bruins who set records for the best regular season in hockey history? Gone.
The defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche? Also gone.
The Tampa Bay Lightning who had gone to the final each of the past three years? You guessed it, gone.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are now the favorites to win the team’s first championship since 1967, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, fresh off winning their first playoff series in nearly two decades.
Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers are also favored to come out of the West in another bid to end Canada’s 30-year Cup drought.
With the exception of the 2020 bubble and 2021 season with only in-division play, the league has bracketed its playoffs and not reseeded after the first round since 2014. That system had led to plenty of griping about top teams in the same division meeting earlier, but upsets this year have changed the entire face of the playoffs.
More upheaval could be ahead in the second round, which starts Tuesday and features three first-time playoff matchups — just the sixth time that has happened at this stage of the postseason since 1944 and the first time since 2003.
“I think the second round in some ways is almost the prime time, because you still have the interest of the entire hockey world,” said veteran coach Paul Maurice, whose Florida Panthers knocked off the Bruins in seven games and next face the Maple Leafs. “Sometimes two months later, people fall off when it comes down to two cities, right? But now, everybody’s still watching.”
PANTHERS vs. MAPLE LEAFS (Game 1: Tuesday, 7 p.m. EDT (ESPN)
Fans in Toronto chanted, “We want Florida!” after the Leafs beat the Lightning in Game 6. That was wishful thinking at the time — until the Panthers upset the Bruins.
“They got their wish,” said Carter Verhaeghe, who scored Florida’s Game 7-winning goal in overtime.
Toronto now has home-ice advantage in the second round and plenty of confidence following an emotional series win against Tampa Bay. The Leafs core of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly had lost its opening series six consecutive years.
Matthews called it “a monkey off the back for a lot of us that have been here for quite a long time” and acknowledged, “It only gets harder from here.”
DEVILS or RANGERS vs. HURRICANES (Game 1: Wednesday, TBD)
