Latest / Backchecking the Bolts / Lightning Eliminated in Game 7 | Tampa Bay Falls 2-1 to Montreal + NHL Second Round Predictions

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Lightning Eliminated in Game 7 | Tampa Bay Falls 2-1 to Montreal + NHL Second Round Predictions · Backchecking the Bolts

• Jason Linkes: Coming up, I'm back checking the bolts. We're, um, we're walking back to where we had parked and it it's in a neighborhood. Then there's a couple out walking their dog. The lady goes, Hey, I just want to ask you a question. I was like, yeah, what's up? She goes, do you trade Kuturov after this? And I'm like, I get it, man. I get this knee jerk reaction that you want to blow it all up. It's four years in a row. But I go, no, I was like, you don't trade the best. arguably the best player in the league. And then, uh, the man she was with, like, go, unless it's a Godfather offer, unless it's a deal you absolutely cannot refuse, like five first round picks and two grade eight prospect. Well, what if it's McDavid? I was like, the funny thing is I bet you there are fans in Edmonton that would take this deal in a heartbeat. to back checking the bolts. Back checking the bolts is your cup of coffee to get you the latest on the Tampa Bay lightning. Join hosts, Jason Linkus and the managing editor of raw charge. Justin Godfrey, as they break down the Lightning's most recent games and go beyond the highlights, telling you what the box scores didn't. It's time to drop the puck. It's your back checking the bolts instant reaction to the two to one lost to Montreal in game seven. Montreal advances winning the series four games to three. They will go and face the Buffalo Sabres for the lighting. It's the fourth straight postseason where they have been eliminated in the first round in 2023. It was Toronto 2024 and 25. It was Florida. This time it's Montreal. I bring in my cohost. The managing editor of raw charge. He's Justin Godfrey. can read them each and every day at www.rawcharge.com. Justin, you were there. It's a disappointing game. was a good effort. game that Montreal had only nine shots and they won. That was the fewest shots by any team in NHL playoff history where they won a game. were your initial thoughts? And you just sit there and you're like, If they had played like this for seven games, that, you know, if they played like this in the first five games, six games, I don't think the series goes six. You know, I think where I should say, you know, it ends in six games. I thought they played fantastic. I thought they did everything they had to do. ⁓ you know, we talked about in game six, they played with a little bit of risk, but they were a little loose defensively. I thought they tightened that up. I thought they played a great defensive game today. And it's not just that they only, you Montreal had only nine shots on goal. It wasn't like one of these where Montreal was spending it. a ton of time and they were missing the net or shots were getting blocked or anything like that. And they just didn't have the puck in the offensive zone. I mean, the lightning shut them down in the initial zone. They pushed everything out to the side. ⁓ there was maybe two flurries that the Canadians had where they had some sustained zone time, ⁓ one in the first one on the third or CQS, but yeah, one in the third rank before the goal. But I the light needed. Great. I thought they did enough offensively. ⁓ and we'll talk about this a little bit, you know, Montreal is a tough defensive team, but I thought the Lightning as far as getting chances, getting looks probably had their best game doing that as well. Yes, they didn't have the high danger chances, but I thought they had a lot more of those kinds of secondary mid range danger chances that they hadn't been getting. and the puck just didn't go in the net for him. ⁓ if you look at both of Montreal's goals and the first one is a nice deflection by Suzuki, but it's going four feet wide till it hits JJ Moser. And then the second one. Didn't like what Vaslowski was trying to do, you know, where he tried to punch it out of the air instead of just getting back to the post ⁓ and covering that up. that gave, you know, that gave Alex New the room to kind of tuck it in. So, but again, you know, the bounces went Montreal's way. To give them credit, they created those bounces. Before the Suzuki goal, they won like two board battles to keep the puck in the zone, keep possession of the puck. ⁓ New Hook was the first on the puck behind the net, you know. So they won those little battles and it turned into goals for them. Lightning did what they could and you know, they just couldn't get that extra bounce. So it's just a really disappointing loss. thought ⁓ for them to play that way and not pick out a way to just, it just kind of stings. Yeah. It's that old gut punch. Jacob Dobish again played really well. He's a rookie. Not many rookies win game sevens in the playoffs, especially Against a team as formidable as the lighting but give it to Dobish. He was really good Even though he faced 20 more shots than Vasileski I'm not sure if he really had to stand on his head all game He had to make some good saves don't get me wrong But I still felt like a lot of Tampa's pressure with the exception of a couple Moments in the first period most of their pressure came from the outside. They never had those in tight chances that really would test Dobish. Is that accurate? ⁓ To a point I would say, mean, like if you look back at game six, like you can say Vasilevsky stole that game, right? ⁓ He made a ton of great saves in a close game. Would you say Dobish stole this game? I don't know if I'd go that far. He played real well, like I am not going to take anything away from him. The lightning, you know. You kind of thought going into the series that the edge was in the net, you know, you got this rookie netminder. He hasn't been in these high pressure games really, but he did what he had to do. You know, he made the saves he had to do. I think his best period in the entire game was the first period. ⁓ he made that really nice save on gauge, comes always who had walked around in defense with us right in the net. He's got dovish moving dovish is a big dude. And when you get those big dudes moving, you know, holes open up. And if you watch on the replay, that five hole is open. And Gonzales makes the right decision. He tries to backhand it through, but just couldn't find, find the daylight. And then there was a flurry from that same line, you know, the Bjork Strand, Gonzales James line, where Bjork Strand had a couple of beautiful looks. And I think he made a glove save on Bjork Strand. ⁓ yeah, there was a shot on Braden Point. That was a tough one that he made. then for athletic dive across the ice, kind of saves. He just, you know, he. took what the lightning gave him and made the stops, you know, and credit to the players in front of him for limiting those, those high danger chances. ⁓ the lightning didn't have a lot of second chance opportunities. didn't have a lot of rebound and that's the guys in front of them. So yeah, like I would say he played really well and he deserved the win. don't know if he was, I'm assuming he was a star of the game, but, ⁓ yeah, he, and the whole series, that's exactly what he did. He made the saves they needed him to make when he, when they needed him to make a save. So kudos to him. Good luck against Buffalo Montreal hardly ever had the puck offensively in this game. was a ton of pressure on that defense because they were always pinned back in their own zone. I was amazed at how well they were able to keep Tampa away from the net over time. You would think that when you're constantly playing in your own end at some point, there's going to be a point blank chance or two. They just never let the lightning have that in this game. But Justin, I do want to mention the Dominic James line. Dominic James, their line was tremendous. I thought tonight, I thought if Tampa was going to get a second goal, it was going to come from him. Bjork strand, one of those guys, tell us about that line. know, there's kind of good and bad out of the fact that that was the best line of the tour, the lightning. And I think it was honestly the best line in the last two games for them. It's great that your third fourth line, whatever you want to call them played that well, right? It's you need depth scoring in the playoffs. You know, that's what much propelled Montreal to a couple of wins here. But at the same time in a do or die game is your third line being the best line of good thing. When you have hall of famers on your top two lines and they don't come through. It's kind of tough and Kuturov is Kuturov, right? He, he's a great player. He makes mistakes. turns the puck over. Aubrey players do. mean, if you ever look at the top, you know, five players and giveaways any given year, it's going to be probably your top five offensive player. know, Connor McDavid is going to be up there. Nathan McKinnon is going to be up there just because they always have the puck. at some point, yeah, at some point they had to make an impact and credit again to Montreal for shutting him down. You know, as much as the light knee shut down, you know, the call the Nick Suzuki line. You know, Montreal did that to the, whatever line Kuturov was on, whatever line Braden point was on. And one of the things that was nice about seeing that James line performed is they played with speed. I Dominic James, think is your next Gianni Gourdesque player, right? He plays with an edge. He plays fast and he has some offensive skill. mean, that was a hell of a deflection he made on the power play goal. So it was great watching them play cause. You can kind of see a future line for the lightning there. mean, that line should be together next year. Well, maybe not with George strand. You'll talk about that later as well. you, James and Gonsalves played really well together and you could see them as a third or fourth line next year, depending on how this roster shakes out. So it gives me a little hope as a lightning fan, you know, but they played with speed and I think that was their biggest asset is they were constantly pushing back those defenders, um, creating space for themselves. And maybe they made a couple of bad reads here and there, but for the most part, they played really well. It was fun to watch them when they were on the ice. Kuturov had one goal in this series. He has one goal in his last 20 playoff games for a guy who is a 130 points score. You just can't have that. You need your big guys to step up in big games. What is the problem with Kuturov in the playoffs? Does he just not want to get the dirty goals? Is it bad luck? One goal in 20, that's a pretty decent sample size. Yeah. mean, like he's out there trying, like he's out there doing Kuturov's things. If you watch him, he's trying to get the inside. He's trying to set plays up. He just gets so much attention and so little space to operate. I think he almost tries a little too hard. think he need, if he simplified his game a little bit, maybe just took the puck to the net a little bit more and shot. Shoot. Things would eventually start going in for him, but he just has zero space out there. I, the last four teams they played the playoffs, their number one goal has been we are not going to let Kuturov beat us. ⁓ Yeah, he may set up a few game, a few goals here and there, but he's not going to be the guy who scores. Now, how do you go about giving him space to operate? It's tough. You know, in today's NHL, everyone's scouted. Everybody knows what every team's doing. I, you know, to flip them to the other side. Do you have to play on the left side a little bit? Do you have him play down low? mean, like, especially on the power play was playing up a lot higher than he had for most of the season. I think that was an effort to get him some space, but you know, every time he had a look at the net, there were three players in front of him. So it's just hard. with Montreal shutting off those, those, ⁓ diagonal passes through the crease, through the slot, that's his bread and butter game. So with that shut off, ⁓ it kind of takes him out. That's. If you can answer that question, you'd probably get to the second round if you're the Lightning. I'm going to ask you the turning point of the series for the Lightning and for the Canadians. First for the Lightning. Well, obviously was it the Max Frosier hit, right? that story line. exactly. For me, I think it's game five. Again, we were talking about this before the cameras went on. I think if there's any game that the Lightning want back in this series, It's game five. thought it was their worst game. think coach Cooper caught it. Their worst game of the series. You know, they had a chance. They're coming back to Tampa all tied up. You win that one. You eat all the pressures on Montreal and game six, right? You know, going back home, needing to stay alive. And the light need just came out so flat in that game and they struggled through most of it. Yes, they got it to overtime, but they just didn't look good for most of the game. So I think they want that one back. ⁓ and then as far as Montreal, I think it's game one. I mean, they came in. They beat the lightning on their home ice and they said, Hey, and the way they did it, you know, they stood up to the lightning trying to bully them a little bit. ⁓ the power play came through for them. So yeah, I think they, that gave them a lot of confidence going into it. You're the, you're the underdog and you win one game on the road to start things off. You're playing with house money the second game, and then you go back home. If you split again, you're still good. So I thought that. gave them kind of a little bit of confidence, gave them the momentum going into that first half of the series. So for me, that's kind of the turning point for them. And Justin, when you and I were doing the podcast after the Olympic break, this team was comfortably in first place. Did they not value winning the division enough because playing Boston Or even Ottawa would have been a much better matchup than having to play Montreal or possibly Buffalo. We didn't know at the time as the season was evolving, did they let off the gas a little bit after the Olympics and that cost them a better first round matchup? don't think so. think see the, honestly, even with the long break and the fact that, you know, the majority of their players did have off, especially their two best players and, Kuturov and Vasilevsky. I think the season just kind of caught up with them. Um, all of the injuries fighting through all the injuries. Even that long winning streak, you know, there are a lot of road games and then March was such a heavy schedule. I just think they got exhausted and got out of their rhythm a little bit. You know, there's a thousand reasons we can pick apart why they kind of struggled. you know, the funny thing is with the way this series went, you know, they may have been better off being the three seed. mean, home teams only won two games in this series, right? So maybe they wanted to play game seven in Montreal, you know, maybe they should have lost one of them. Maybe they should have lost to Detroit and then had that lower seed. you know, you never know. I want to you real quick right there. Do you think for Montreal having game seven in Tampa was a little bit easier than having it in Montreal? The reason is you're playing game seven at home there. You're in your home ice. It's great. You get the last change, but there is more pressure for a younger hockey team. Did they benefit by being on the road? I think so. I mean, we saw what game six was like, right? The atmosphere for that one, when they had a chance to win it, you know, that's a lot of pressure for, for a young team and they played really well. As well as you have been played in game six, I thought Montreal did exactly what they needed to do. They just got Vasileski did a little bit. That's the way you can look at it. And again, you know, starting, think it was more important that they started on the road to tell you the truth. Cause you get a little bit of time down in the city, you get to acclimate in Tampa a little bit. You get to stay in the hotel. You don't have that. That pressure of game one at home where the fans are going to be excited and you're going to want to do it. You know, you're to want to go out there and score a billion goals on your first shift. Cause you know, you're all amped up by the crowd. So again, you get back to that game one, you know, they win that on the road. The pressure is off of them basically for the next three or four games, right? Okay. You lost game two, you get a split, but then you get a two day break, you know, I thought that was really interesting. The lightning one, the, their first two wins. came right before two day breaks. I felt like they didn't get a chance to really capitalize on any momentum they built in the wins of game two and game four. Cause you had that extra day off, you know, it kind of allowed Montreal to reset a little bit and be like, okay, we lost. We can shake it off and get a good day of practice in and then get right back out to what we need to do. So I think it kind of all adds up. Of course we don't know what would have happened if Montreal was in game seven. Maybe they feed off the crowd and blow the lightning out six to one or something like that. You know, it's. You just never know. thought they played a great series. I don't want to take anything away from Montreal. I mean, I thought they played fantastic and we knew it coming into the, into the, into the match. If this was going to be a close one. And I think we both were kind of surprised that the Lightning were such heavy betting favorites prior to the series. Right. ⁓ but we talked about that on air and off the air. Exactly. And you know, you watch how these two teams played and just the NHL in general is so close now. And then these two teams that. finished with the same amount of points. ⁓ Yeah. So I'm not surprised that this one seven series. I'm not surprised that, you know, there was what one two goal lead the entire time. So it's just the lightning just ended up on the wrong side of it. And I feel like if they played nine games, maybe the lightning win the series. If they play eight games, cause I thought the lightning were getting better as the series went on with the exception of game five. ⁓ So maybe it's on them for not starting the series. with the intensity that they needed, but at the same time, it's like, man, one bounce here, one extra shot there, one scape blade here. And this is a different story, this story, right? You know, JJ Moser gets out of the way of that deflected puck, or if it hits him on the other side of the shin pad, you know, it goes just wide. It's just, there's a thousand things, little bounces here and there that, you know, it was so close. Such a good, such a great series. think. As time heals all wounds, we'll look back on as we man. What a great series this was for our first round series. ⁓ it was tremendous. It was great hockey. The one thing I was still surprised about with Montreal was if you would have told me that Slavkowski, Caulfield and Suzuki really after game one would, I don't want to say they were non-factors because in game six, I thought they played a really good game. They just didn't score, but Tampa was able to keep them off of the score sheet. And I thought in order for Montreal to win this series, that top line had to be awesome. And they weren't and Montreal still won the series. That's a credit to Montreal. And I think, Hey, maybe they were deeper than I gave them credit for. And also I think Martin St. Louis got, he pushed the right buttons. You have to give him credit for a guy who does not have a ton of playoff experience as a head coach. He pushed the right buttons with the youngest team in the NHL playoffs and he got them to win. Justin, we have to ask this one question. This is four consecutive first round losses for the lightning. Does something need to change with the roster? Does something need to change with the organization in order to move forward? know, it's funny where, ⁓ we're walking back to where we had parked and it's in a neighborhood. ⁓ then there's a. a couple out, walked in their dog and we're walking back and you know, got my light New Jersey on and, um, the lady goes, Hey, I just want to ask you a question. I was like, yeah, what's up? She goes, do you trade Kuturov after this? And I'm like, I get it, man. I get this knee jerk reaction that you want to blow it all up, right? It's four years in a row. But I go, no, I was like, you don't trade the best, arguably the best player in the And then, uh, the man she was with, like, I go, unless it's a Godfather offer, unless it's a deal you absolutely cannot refuse, like five first round picks and a three grade eight prospects, right? He goes, well, what if it's McDavid? I was like, the funny thing is, I bet you there are fans in Edmonton that would take this deal in a heartbeat, right? You know, they'd be like, ah, we're never going to win with Connor McDavid. So we need to trade him. Right. It's been an hour or many years since, you know, it's been a decade and we can't win. So think there's that knee jerk reaction to blow things up. think there's some serious tinkering that has to be done. I don't think any of your top players are going to go out. I think maybe you move somebody like Nick Paul or Eric Chernat because I think there is room where you have to get faster. I think this team was built to beat the Florida Panthers of the world. It was built to be more physical. It was a reaction to them getting bullied kind of the last two years in the playoffs. But I think the league is moving to a faster, faster. league, you know, if you look at the teams that are in the second round, you know, it's the Buffaloes, it's Montreal, it's, ⁓ Minnesota, teams that play with, but even at Anaheim to a certain extent, you know, it's young players that, that play the puck fast, that put pressure on you. And I think the light, need to kind of ticker that fine, find some of these players that they can do it. So I think you kind of clear out some of your older players. If you can move Cherneck, I think you have enough depth on the right-hand side, depending on what you do with radish. that you can have Max Kroger step in, know, you can have Emil Lilleberger, this dude play on the right side and you're going to be okay. But I don't think you need to blow it up. I don't think you need to trade Vasileski. You don't need to trade Kutroff. You don't need to trade point. Now am I going to publish an article sometime in the next two weeks where we talk about trading those guys and just blow it up just for fun as a thought exercise? Probably. I love doing that. You know, I love everybody loves fixed, you know, trade armchair GM trades. if you do Justin. Yeah. Instead of McDavid, have it be Dry Cytl. I think if Edmonton makes a move, I think if Edmonton makes a move, I think it's going to be Dry Cytl. Vasilevsky for Dry Cytl, who says no? I wouldn't be surprised to see that either. Yeah, I think it's hard to trade McDavid out of Edmonton. I think the guy wants to win there. We can always go back and make jokes of the look on his face when they drafted him, you know, in 2015 or whatever. As we come to learn, think that's just Connor McDavid's natural resting face is to look disappointed. He's not exactly the most, you know, the motive guy in the world, um, yeah, don't think you blow it up. Yeah. I don't think you blow it up. think this is a really good team. Let's make no mistake. This is a good team that, you know, struggled at times, but all teams do. mean, every team in this league struggled at some point in the season. That under six points, don't. blow up 106 point team and they did it the right way. mean, this wasn't a fluke 116 point team. They beat a lot of the teams along the way. I think they had matched up against one of the worst teams they could match up against. ⁓ it would be either them or Buffalo, think would have been their worst two, ⁓ teams had beaten the first round, but that's six other teams or five other teams in the East that they could have played and beat. I think they beat Ottawa. I they beat Boston. ⁓ I think they play well against Carolina. I don't know if they beat him, but, ⁓ You know, some of these other teams in the East and I, you know, in the West who's better than Minnesota, maybe Colorado. mean, they'll give both those teams a run for money if they could have gotten out of, you know, the first two rounds, if they could have gotten to the cup final. But it's the beauty of this league, man. It's such a close league that it's, it's tough. So yeah, I think, I think they seriously think about getting faster, getting younger, you know, how they go about doing that. I'm going to have some open spots on the roster. Do you call up a, you know, Jacob Bellatier, do you call up, do you say, Connor Deke, you're going to be our third line center. That's it. No matter what you do, we're going to play you 15 minutes a day. We're going give you some play out, you know, some power play time. Just be better. I think you found a gem in, you found a gem in Dominic James and Charles Edward, Charles Edward, I think those are great finds. think they're going to play next year. They're going to have big roles, but what else do you do to make this a better, faster team? lightning have been in win now mode for quite some time. And when you're in win now mode, you don't have high first round picks or first round picks at all. Unfortunately, they don't have that next budding superstar waiting to come in because they're constantly in the top half of the NHL. They've always thought they've had a chance to win, even though they've had numerous first round exits, they're playing to win. in order to get that impact player, Justin. I think they might have to make some trades in order to get that roster younger, faster and quicker. But I mean, who are you going to trade with? That's going to give you a player like that, right? ⁓ you might have to trade either a, I mean, some high draft picks where you might have to trade a player you don't want to. Yeah. But I mean, if you're training somebody at Braden point, who are you going to, who's going to make that deal that gets you a grade a prospect? Like who out there literally can you make a deal with? it. Pittsburgh. mean, do they give up, um, you know, one of their young guys that had a really good year, but, or even then, or, you know, Buffalo, do they give up one of their players as Minnesota give up a player for like an Anthony, Anthony Sorelli? I mean, I, that's something I could see. was like, do you trade Anthony Sorelli? think teams would be coveting a player like him, but that's, you know, that's what Jamie B gets paid the big bucks for. So he's got to figure this out. Like you said, with them trading all the assets, you can't draft these young game-changing players at the fifth round and the fourth round. And especially at the end of the fourth round or the end of the third round, know, everybody you pick up is going to have flaws and 90 % of the time it's speed, right? It's skating. If you look at the lightning's list of draft picks, would say 75 % of them, the biggest flaw is average to below average NHL skating. You have a couple in there, you know, you got the ⁓ the finished kids, ⁓ that, that have a little bit more speed, but again, now you're talking about undersized players. Now you want to set your line in, you know, he's a good player. He's a good playmaker, but is he big enough to play in the NHL? So we'll see. We'll see how, you know, JBB goes about it. I do think he's probably going to do something that we're not expecting, ⁓ either before the draft, during the draft or for free agency. mean, I'm not excited about the free agent class. ⁓ most of, most of the big time players have already resigned. Now there's going to be two players that I can think of off the top of my head. Alex Tuck from Buffalo and Darren Radish of the bolts. Now, Justin, we're going to do rapid fire. I'm going to give you five lightning free agents. All I need you to do is tell me they resign them or they go. First of all, Oliver Bjork strand. Let him go. Corey Perry. Let him go. know, I'll pay for him at the deadline. I'd like, I'd like to see him sign Chafee. I think that you can bring him back from relatively inexpensive deal. So he's good depth forward. Bring him back. Scott Sabrin. Let him go. I signed him to an HL deal on July 2nd. Darren Radish. I that's, that's your $9 million a year question, right? What do you do with Radish? Um, I've gone, even in the last week, I've gone back and forth with the radish question. Again, to me, it's not a dollar amount. It's going to be your term. You know, if, if you side into six or seven years, that better be around 6 million or less. I think that's an affordable deal for him. You know, he'll be 35, 36 at the end of it. Uh, but I think you can take that. But if you're talking seven years, $9 million, uh, I would. I would run from that. I think there's other ways you can spend that money. Yeah. I, I'm going to say, I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say six years, $8.7 million. Finally, final question. Victor Headman, does he play next year? Yes. think he does. Okay. I think, I think there was a chance he could have played tonight, but they didn't want to upset the chemistry. ⁓ I, we saw Mila Dobson come back for Montreal. I don't think he was a factor whatsoever. ⁓ I don't remember him on the ice that much. Yeah. I didn't notice him. ⁓ I think I saw him towards the end. think he blocked a shot and kind of limped off. I think if the Lightning had won tonight, I think the headman starts game one on Wednesday in Buffalo. thought, I think he was very close to coming back. And like I said, I, I just don't think they wanted to throw him in game seven, having not played in. two months or whatever. So I think he's back. I think he's back to being kind of closer to the Victor Headman we're used to next year as well. Justin real quick. We have four series going on in the Eastern Conference. Carolina is taking on the Philadelphia Flyers. We alluded to our predictions earlier. I had Carolina in five. I think it's going to be a pretty easy series for Carolina. Who do you have? I think it's Carolina. I think they dominated that game yesterday. I don't think the final score is indicative of how much, how much better they were than, than Philadelphia. Philly's really only chance is if they can, know, Vlodar can steal a game or if they can maybe muck it up a little bit, get into one these high penalty games where, you know, everybody's off for roughing, everybody's, you know, there's line scrums and it's slowed down. Other than that, I think Carolina wins this pretty easily. Like I wouldn't be surprised. Then we have. Montreal taking on Buffalo. think Buffalo in six. ⁓ yes. We're right on, on that one. think, I think this took a lot out of Montreal. ⁓ I think the series, I think it's a good learning experience for him. think it really taught them what they need to do to win in the playoffs. But I think they took a beating from the lightning to get there and does Domish play as well against a team that is more inclined to shoot, ⁓ than the lightning are. And they're going to create more traffic. They're going to create more traffic. mean, you got big old Tage Thompson, just doing Tage Thompson things in front. You know, you mentioned Alex Tuke. I think he's a better version of Oliver Bjorkstrand. So when we talk about free agency, I wonder if the Lightning maker run for him. Cause I think he does everything Oliver Bjorkstrand does, better. And we'll talk about this in another episode, but I think then you got the offensive depth, you know, with Owen Bauer and Rasmus Dali and the guys on the blue line for. ⁓ Buffalo. So yeah, I like Buffalo and six in that one as well. one interesting fact about that series is if Carolina would sweep and Buffalo and Montreal goes the distance in seven games. Carolina will have almost two weeks off in between series because they started that series before the remainder of the first round series ended. Justin real quick. Let's go out West Colorado, Minnesota, who are playing right now. Last time. It's 1130 Eastern time. Last time you said it was five to five in the second period. is now, it is seven to five with nine minutes to go. Colorado's up. Wow. They have a combined 68 shots on the goal. I'm pretty sure 12 goals is roughly five games worth of offense between the Lightning and the Canadians. So I wonder what it's like to watch a team that actually scores and an opponent that actually scores. So I think this is just one of those crazy games. I don't think the rest of, I don't think the entire series is going to be like this to tell you the truth. I think the both goaltenders will kind of settle down. ⁓ That being said, I think this is the best matchup in the, in the second round. I mean, this is basically a Western conference file in my book. I think whichever team wins this series probably goes to the Stanley Cup. who do you have? Really feels like Billy Garren's year, doesn't it? So let's go. I'm still going Colorado and six. know. It has not been through the wars yet. I'm going to go with Minnesota in seven, man. Let's head to the final series. Vegas, the golden Knights, when the Pacific division, they are going to host Anaheim in games one and two Anaheim upset Edmonton in the first round. Vegas knocked off a very, very live Utah team that really pushed them to the limit. A number of overtime games. I think this is a pretty easy victory for Vegas. think Vegas in five. All right. I'm going to one up you. I'm going to say Vegas and six. think these, uh, your man counted out ducks of Anaheim kind of pull one, pull one or two out. Again, there's one of these teams that's probably too young to know that they're supposed to get their asses kicked, but, uh, I think they pull one or two games out. And, uh, but I think Vegas in the end is the better team. A lot of it's going to come down to Carter Hart, right? You know, yeah, he hasn't been fantastic. So. He hasn't been healthy either. You know, he, he gets hurt again. Where do you go from there? you're Vegas, if they can get some pucks on heart, make him work. Maybe they can steal a game or two here. So, but that being said, Colorado, we're sorry, Vegas in six for me. are going to be back. We're going to drop a podcast on Saturday. We're going to talk a little bit more about the other NHL playoff series. And we're also going to talk about the Syracuse crunch. We're going to get into their playoff drive as well. For the managing editor of Raw Charge, he is Justin Godfrey. can read them each and every day at www.rawcharge.com. I'm Jason Linkes. Thank you very much for joining us today and for all the podcasts that we've given you since we started in February, please hit that like and subscribe button and go bolts. Go bolts. See you next year. Thank you for listening to back checking the bolts. We are free and available on all platforms, including Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Amazon, YouTube, and Deezer. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe and leave a review. You can follow Justin on bluesky at rawcharge.com. 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