The 2025 NHL Playoffs: First Round: An Off-Balance Round-Up.
Provincial pride, double OT theatrics and revenge for the ages.
With the first round of the NHL playoffs now in the rearview mirror, here is a quick snapshot of the past few weeks that were: that being, a look back on three series’ that stood out, before the second round kicks off on Monday.
As always, thanks for reading Off-Balance!
Until next time,
Ryan.
Western Conference, Quarterfinals
Winnipeg Jets vs St. Louis Blues
Winnipeg wins 4-3
Well, nobody can ever reasonably say the Winnipeg Jets don’t have a flair for the dramatic.
Even after the original incarnation of the team relocated to Colorado in 1996, the revived Jets, born from the ashes of the oh-so-forgotten Atlanta Thrashers have proudly carved out their own place in an NHL that often seems, openly, as though it isn’t quite sure what to do with the team.
Of the seven Canadian outfits in the League, they are, frankly, perhaps the least recognizable on the larger stage.
Sporting the smallest rink, players who are stars but not superstars, per se, to the casual eye, inherently lacking the history that one might find in Alberta or further East.
But the Jets, their fans, they are deeply resilient.
And on Sunday night, in a double-overtime classic for the ages, that faith was rewarded (on home ice, no less) as the team advanced to the second round for the first time since 2020/2021 - this, ensuring their League-best, President Trophy-winning season did not end, just yet, in heartbreak.
It seemed however, right up until the final moments of regulation, that it was not to be.
With under three minutes to go in the third, the St. Louis Blues, they, who battled back from a 2-0 series deficit to even arrive here, saw their 3-1 lead evaporate, the clock, on literal life support, as Jets winger, 23-year old Cole Perfetti buried his second of the game, with 1.6 seconds left, to tie it.
And to their credit, Winnipeg just wouldn’t relent once the momentum was back in their favour: ultimately outshooting St. Louis by twenty-one shots come the close of that frantic double OT, which was, per TSN, the third-longest Game 7 in NHL history, at just a shade over 96 minutes.
Jets captain Adam Lowry, deflecting a point shot, with just under four minutes to go in the frame, a desperate, mad scramble perfectly suited to playoff hockey in May.
The win, small as it is in the big picture, vindication, not just for the team, again, often at the receiving ends of jeers and doubts in their operating space but for their star player, goaltender Connor Hellebuyck as well. Relatively quiet though he was with 26 saves, coming to out-duel 4 Nations Rival Jordan Binnington when the Jets needed him most,
Putting a pause (albeit, temporarily) on the clutch-lacking reputation that has followed him for years now.
But even with a surefire Vezina winner and Hart finalist in the crease, there are no guarantees for Winnipeg, still, going forward.
Offensive lynchpin Mark Scheifele was out for a second straight game and the team was forced to run short on the blue line after Josh Morrissey left the game following, as of this writing, an undisclosed injury in the first period.
The battle is relentless and truly, just beginning.
How the Jets respond to Dallas then, a team riding a high all their own, will be easily one of their biggest tests of the season, as that series begins, in the Manitoba capital, on Wednesday.
Western Conference, Quarterfinals
Dallas Stars vs Colorado Avalanche
Dallas wins 4-3
Though speaking of Dallas, serendipitously enough.
Perhaps it was because such dramatics simply aren’t commonplace in the NHL, especially when compared to most of their direct sporting peers, where true superstars are rarely moved in-season, if ever.
But when Mikko Rantanen was traded from Colorado to Carolina this past January, despite Rantanen being a Cup champion and two-time 100-point man, a key part of the Colorado core, it served as a talking point on at least two fronts.
For one, a reminder that the business waits for no man, prior success be dammed and even if the Avs (as certain as any team could possibly be in their decision) were supposedly unwilling, per reporting, to exceed any dollar amount for Rantanen that surpassed Nathan MacKinnon’s $12.6-million average, it was still a gamble.
A big one.
Yes, while it is indisputable that Rantanen isn’t MacKinnon because only a select few are higher than him on the sport’s ladder, equally so, the Hockey Gods often pride themselves on course corrections.
Because of course, after just thirteen games in Carolina, Rantanen was unable to reach terms there as well, prompting a sign-and-trade deal to Dallas.
Because of course, Dallas and Colorado then finished second and third in the Central, locking in what became their second consecutive playoff showdown.
Because of course, in Game 7, with his team’s season on the line, Rantanen put up four points in third period alone, punctuated with a hat trick, to send his recently twice-former teammates home.
Becoming the first player, ever, to score at hat trick in the third period of a Game 7 and again the first, per NHL.com, to record multiple four-point periods in a single postseason - where, after logging just a single assist through the first four games, he had eleven points, total, the rest of the series.
How ‘bout that.
While the aftershocks of the Luka Dončić trade will probably reverberate throughout North Texas until the sun envelopes the planet in cosmic fire, no doubt Dallas can see in Rantanen, something of a superstar balm, however far the team will go this spring: with both Miro Heiskanen and Jason Robertson set to return in Round 2, per coach Pete DeBoer (himself, now 9-0 in career Game 7s).
The Jets will carry expectation, Dallas, determination of a different sort but either way, that pressure to succeed is universal, on whatever side of the rink it falls.
Well, most of the time.
Eastern Conference, Quarterfinals
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Ottawa Senators
Toronto wins, 4-2
To exist on both sides of the margin, sporting both perpetual optimism and despair is to be the Toronto Maple Leafs.
For on one hand, yes, it has been fifty eight years, almost to the day, since the team not just won the Stanley Cup but simply competed in the Finals - every decade of mismanagement, every choke and competitive lapse, that one particular missed high stick.
Each, a well-worn battle scar that seems to dig its teeth in with increased strength every spring, the oft-ridiculed hopes of those in the Square and the GTA at large, the repeated victims.
And yet, conversely, there is always belief.
Consider: though he may still carry himself with the disinterested cool of a TA coasting until the end of the semester, William Nylander, going as he has, from prospect to pariah to superstar, has emerged as the team’s most consistent playoff performer in recent seasons (despite what the worst corners of the always-online echo chamber might falsely claim).
Not shying away from the pressure cooker that is the Toronto sports bubble, in establishing himself as a three-time 40 goal player and an under-the-radar leader but quietly disregarding it too.
That, “whatever bro, let’s do it” energy that saw him bag two goals and an assist against the Senators last Thursday, in a series-clinching win on what was, fittingly, his 29th birthday.
Veteran Max Pacioretty and captain Auston Matthews each added one, as the Leafs, after allowing Ottawa to crawl back into the series with two straight wins, firmly put the Sens away.
A spirted close to another chapter in the Battle of Ontario logbook absolutely but with it, the hope Toronto can do something more, as they line up to face down the defending champs in Florida in the second round once more.
After losing in five to the Panthers in 2023 (ironic, to finally dispose of one Tkachuk, only to be greeted with another), the Leafs enter this series with a more visible maturity, one they always claimed to have close at hand but this time, seems genuinely hard won, after a near-decade of playoff presence but very little to show for it.
But as the saying goes ‘round Toronto-way, maybe this year, it is indeed, the year.
We’ll know soon enough, just how true that might prove, when that series begins on Monday night.