N.H.L. Playoffs: All the Right Moves

Sure, some predictable things happened in the first round of the N.H.L. playoffs — like the Toronto Maple Leafs again failing to advance. They have not won a postseason series since 2004, and their Stanley Cup drought has reached 51 seasons. With the three Canadian playoff teams eliminated, the Cup will go to an American franchise for the 26th straight year.

But the opening round will be remembered for surprises. The Tampa Bay Lightning, who had one of the best regular-season records in league history, were swept by the Columbus Blue Jackets, who had not won a playoff series in their 18 years of existence. The No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, Calgary, was dispatched in five games by Colorado, one of the last teams to clinch a playoff berth.

[N.H.L. playoffs: Schedule | Scoreboard]

None of the four division winners got out of the first round, the first time in league history that has happened. Last year’s finalists, Washington and Vegas, are gone. Instead, all four wild-card teams advanced to the second round, which begins Thursday.

Here are some of the off-season moves and trade deadline strategies that spurred the first-round results.

New York Islanders

Barry Trotz Changes Addresses

Last season, the Islanders allowed a league-high 293 goals and finished 17 points out of the final wild-card spot in the East. A year later, they gave up a league-low 191 goals while chasing the Metropolitan Division title, ultimately finishing second and then sweeping the Pittsburgh Penguins in the first round.

The difference? It was not the departure of the superstar forward John Tavares, who signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs as a free agent. It was the arrival of Coach Barry Trotz, who joined the Islanders two weeks after he led the Capitals to the Stanley Cup. Trotz brought the signature structure and intensity that made him a small-market success in Nashville and a champion in Washington.

The Islanders also jettisoned their longtime general manager, Garth Snow, and hired Lou Lamoriello as their president of hockey operations. Lamoriello had revived a once-hapless Toronto organization and built three championship teams with the Devils.

Along with Trotz came the goalie coach Mitch Korn, who has helped convert two unheralded prospects — Nashville’s Pekka Rinne and Washington’s Braden Holtby — into Vezina Trophy winners. Islanders goalie Robin Lehner, coming back from the league’s substance abuse recovery program and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and his backup, Thomas Greiss, saw their numbers improved dramatically under Trotz and Korn. Their names will be etched onto the William M. Jennings Trophy, awarded to the goaltenders whose team posts the stingiest goals-against-average each season, and Lehner is a finalist for the Vezina Trophy.

Columbus Blue Jackets

A Trade Deadline Frenzy

Columbus was the most active team at the trade deadline in late February. With wing Artemi Panarin and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky determined to test free agency after the season, the Blue Jackets could have dealt them as rentals to other contending teams. Instead Columbus, which was wobbling on the playoff bubble, held on to them and made a flurry of trades to bring in forwards Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel, defenseman Adam McQuaid and goalie Keith Kinkaid.

The deals most likely left the Blue Jackets without a draft pick in the first two rounds for the next three years while still facing the possible departures of Panarin, their leading scorer, and Bobrovsky, a Vezina Trophy winner. The moves did not pay immediate dividends; Columbus slumped and did not clinch a playoff berth until after its 81st game — a shootout win against the Rangers.

Despite falling behind, 3-0, in Game 1 against the Lightning, the Blue Jackets rallied and swept to a stunning first-round upset. Duchene led the way with seven points, and Panarin contributed five. Bobrovsky earned all four wins in net against the league’s highest-scoring team.

The Blue Jackets’ next challenge? Beating the second-best team in the East, the Boston Bruins.

Carolina Hurricanes

Tom Dundon Buys the Team

Tom Dundon bought the Hurricanes in January 2018, and his first full season as the struggling franchise’s majority owner has involved organizational restructuring and cultural change. The team president, Don Waddell, also took over as general manager. Rod Brind’Amour, a hard-nosed center who was Carolina’s captain in 2006 when it won the Stanley Cup, became the head coach. The Hurricanes also overhauled their roster and gained key contributions from rookies like Warren Foegele and Andrei Svechnikov.

Carolina ended its league-high, nine-season playoff drought with a camaraderie and spirit of fun that started at the top with Justin Williams, who was named captain in September. Williams, a member of Carolina’s 2006 championship team, returned to Raleigh last season after winning two more Stanley Cups in Los Angeles and a stint in Washington.

Williams spearheaded the Hurricanes’ “storm surge” celebrations that followed almost every home victory, with players taking the ice to entertain fans with choreographed bits that included a March Madness edition during the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament and a sparring session with the former heavyweight champion boxer Evander Holyfield. The demonstrations excited fans but not the CBC commentator Don Cherry, who called the Hurricanes a “bunch of jerks” in his “Coach’s Corner” segment. Their response? “Bunch of jerks” T-shirts that the players and their fans wore for the rest of the season.

In the first round, Carolina toppled the defending champion Capitals, who had more than three times as much playoff experience as the Hurricanes players did. It lost the first two games of the series and then overcame deficits of 2-0 and 3-1 in Game 7, which it won in two overtimes. Williams, known as Mr. Game 7 for his 8-1 record and N.H.L.-record 15 points in deciding games, won a face-off, canceled out a defender, recovered a puck and then set up Jordan McGinn’s series-winning goal.

Carolina now faces the Islanders, who have been at home resting since their April 16 victory over the Penguins.

St. Louis Blues

Calling Up Goalie Jordan Binnington

The St. Louis Blues reconfigured plenty during the off-season, particularly among their forwards. That included the acquisitions of Ryan O’Reilly, who became their leading scorer and top defensive forward, and David Perron, now in his third stint with the team.

But by Jan. 2, the Blues owned the worst record in the N.H.L., 15-18-4. They had already replaced Coach Mike Yeo with Craig Berube. From then on, the Blues reeled off a 30-10-5 record to finish third in the Central Division. In the second round, they meet the Dallas Stars, who also have new coach, Jim Montgomery.

The call-up of the rookie goalie Jordan Binnington was a turning point for St. Louis. He began this season as the Blues’ fourth-string goalie and was nearly sent to the ECHL, two levels below the N.H.L.

Binnington made his first career start for the Blues on Jan. 7, shutting out the Flyers. He then put up numbers that would likely have won him both the Calder Trophy, as rookie of the year, and the Vezina Trophy, as goalie of the year, had he posted them over a full season. He won 24 of 30 decisions. His 1.89 goals-against average was first among goalies who appeared in at least 30 games, and his .927 save percentage was third.

Binnington, 25, kept it rolling in the postseason with four wins in six games against the Winnipeg Jets, one of the highest-scoring teams in the league.

San Jose Sharks

Erik Karlsson Goes West

If this item had been written before the third period of Game 7 between San Jose and Vegas on Tuesday night, it would have been about Golden Knights General Manager George McPhee’s boldly adding center Paul Stastny and left wing Max Pacioretty in the off-season and then nabbing right wing Mark Stone at the deadline. They helped Vegas build a three-games-to-one series lead and were the most potent line in the playoffs, by far, accumulating 31 points.

But with 10 minutes 47 seconds left in Game 7 and San Jose trailing by 3-0, Vegas’s Cody Eakin was called for a controversial five-minute major penalty for crosschecking Sharks captain Joe Pavelski, who was left bloodied on the ice and knocked out of the game. The Sharks scored four goals in just over four minutes on that power play, then won in overtime to stun the defending conference champions.

Not surprisingly, defenseman Erik Karlsson, a two-time Norris Trophy winner and the biggest trade acquisition of the off-season, was in the middle of it all. He helped lead the Ottawa Senators to the Eastern Conference finals in 2017, playing with two hairline fractures in his left foot. Karlsson has been hampered by injuries this season — this time to his groin — but that did not stop him from logging more than 70 minutes of ice time in the double-overtime Game 6 and the overtime Game 7.

He figured heavily into the Sharks’ Game 7 rally. He earned a primary assist on one power-play goal and was on the ice for two more. Late in regulation, he saved a near-certain goal with an alert flick of his stick. Then, as the frenetic overtime period sputtered toward its end, he set up Barclay Goodrow’s series-winning goal.

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