The National Hockey League made sure to schedule only one game for Tuesday night because their designated daily centerpiece was intended to be the draft lottery, which by most definitions of entertainment lands somewhere around high-tech old-folks-home bingo night. And what playoff hockey game could compare with the spectacle of ping pong balls get shoved through pneumatic tubes while Gary Bettman, looking like a faulty AI-generated version of Ken Jennings, blurts out nonsensical commands to some functionary or other? The idea is to inject drama into what is mostly a night that commemorates a season of disappointment for the league's losers before rewarding one with a bit of lousy luck. The result is just what it is.
And then the Toronto Maple Leafs won the first pick as a reward for their embarrassing season, decisions, and people. This made the whole production almost worthwhile for the joy, annoyance, and anguished cries of "FIX! FRAUD! CHICANERY!" that followed. It was cheap and yet somehow fulfilling in that half-hour-I-can't-get-back kind of way; as a lottery show, it was at the very least miles better than the NBA version.
So the scheduled game, already relegated to a bare simmer at the back of the stove, would have to be another doozy to steal back the stage. Minnesota at Colorado was the designated show pony, a much anticipated second-round battle between titans which had already produced a Cirque du Soleil of goals in the first game, a 9-6 Avs win. The playoffs have already been a festival of weirdness, so a 15-goal night was all in keeping with the general theme.
Game 2, then, was sure to be a bit of a disappointment adrenaline-wise, and was. Oh, it tried hard enough—there were two goals within six seconds within the first three minutes, and then a third not even nine minutes in—to stake Colorado a 2-1 lead. The Wild had changed goalies after Game 1 from Jesper "The St. Paul Wall" Wallstedt to Filip "The Gus Bus" Gustavsson; the Avs had not, staying with Scott "Wedgie" Wedgewood. Both decisions initially appeared to be colossal mistakes. This would be the 10-7 final you thought you'd never see, a repudiation of all known defensive principles in favor of beer-league shinny of the kind normally found on a rink in a Manitoba mall that's usually reserved for family skate night.
But then word came down from the league office: "Hey, you're blowing Lottery Night, straighten up down there." And like that, a regulation game was imposed upon us from on high. The Avs slowly but surely wrapped themselves around the pace and direction of the game and went on to win very clinically, 5-2, to seize the initiative and established themselves as the team most likely to bulldoze the entire playoffs.
There is still charm to be had here, if not necessarily in this series. Montreal and Buffalo start their Series Of The Blessed tonight, and the vibes for either team could not be more commodious. Vegas then plays Anaheim, which is even more blessed than either the Canadiens or Sabres given its recent resume and elimination of the cursed Edmonton Oilers.
But the Avs are giving off the aura of the irresistible force ravaging a series of movable objects. Colorado was outshot in Game 2, 31-23, but never seemed to be in a moment's danger after Gabriel Landeskog took a nifty pass from Nathan MacKinnon and put the Avs ahead for good, 2-1. The Wild are good and have legitimately attractive players, but the Avs may be that rarest of hockey teams—the one that enters the postseason with the best record and just keeps on proving it.
Just the names make you believe it—Landeskog, a superb player whose career was interrupted by a horrendous injury in 2020, which led to a surgery in 2023 that cost him three seasons in total, takes a sweet pass from MacKinnon, the most likely counterpoint to the Connor McDavid-is-the-best-player-in-the-world argument, and they combine to end the game, maybe even the series. Add to that the other elite players, like Cale Makar, Martin Necas, Brock Nelson, Brent Burns, Artturi Lehkonen, and the glorious Wedgie—hockey wins all nickname wars—and the possibility of Colorado boatracing the field becomes only more pronounced with every additional game. They won't go 16-0, but they're starting to make you think hard about 16-3.
In other words, the other series are going to have to do some serious work to keep us diverted, if only because the lottery card has already been played. Played, to be sure, and played to the fullest. If the Avs delivered the expected, the lottery did the rest. Most striking was watching Vancouver's head of hockey ops Jim Rutherford watch his team, which had assembled the worst record in the league by a considerable margin and had legitimate hopes of getting the first pick on merit or lack of same, lose one last time. The Canucks tumbled from the top of the draft odds, past second, down to third. They're behind San Jose, which has won the top pick, the second pick, and the second pick again in the last three lotteries. In response, Rutherford announced he was stepping down, maybe because he saw that his team is cursed by powers—tampered ping pong balls or the occult, your choice—greater than his own. Now that's a lottery show.
