Morning Skate: Onward

Another day of wallowing in self-pity, another Morning Skate.

Hopefully you’re feeling a little better as we move further away from Sunday’s flame-out, though if you’re an all-Boston sports fan, the Celtics did you no favors.

The NHL world moved on without the Boston Bruins, with the first round concluding last night — the New Jersey Devils shut out the New York Rangers to move on.

(I’m not looking to start a Hot Take-Off, but saw on the broadcast last night that Erik Haula leads the Devils in playoff goals with four — good for him.)

Your second-round match-ups are now set:

• Maple Leafs vs. Panthers
• Hurricanes vs. Devils
• Golden Knights vs. Oilers
• Stars vs. Kraken

On the Bruins front, today is the team’s end-of-season media availability at Warrior Arena, also known as “break-up day.”

We’ll get some forlorn quotes, some injury revelations, and will hear from some guys for the last time as members of the Bruins.

Other than that...world keeps spinnin’.

Today’s discussion topic

Curious what people think about this, or if I’m noticing a trend that doesn’t exist: we often hear how a hot goalie can win a championship, but have also seen teams with average (or even bad) goalies win the Cup recently.

In the East, the four best goalies in that conference’s playoffs (Linus Ullmark, Igor Shesterkin, Ilya Sorokin, Andrei Vasilevskiy) were all eliminated in the first round.

Of those four, I guess you could say that only Ullmark was truly an upset, though the Rangers and Lightning’s series were kind of toss-ups.

Just interesting that maybe a truly “elite” goalie isn’t necessarily the difference-maker it has been at times in the past.