Quote:
Originally Posted by direwolf
True, but one Dallas player came to within an inch of stealing an entire series, and McDingus single-handedly took his team to round 2. So it does happen occasionally. However, I take a lot of comfort in the fact that those instances are extremely rare in hockey.
In McDavid's case, he was playing against a young, inexperienced, rebuilding team missing two of their best players. The Flames are deeper, faster, and more skilled than the Kings. And they currently have the best goalie still in the playoffs. I like their chances. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the only wildcard is injures. If Tanev is out long term, that could be costly. Good news is that the Flames did pretty good without him last night, so we know they can probably push through it.
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Goalies are the only position that can win a series almost on their own like that imo, and even guys like Giguere, Kipper, Hasek, and Vanbiesbrouk ultimately couldn't win it all based on their play alone.
There's little doubt the Flames are a much tougher opponent than LA was. Can the Oilers superstars further elevate their games enough to compensate for that? Can they suddenly start to play a complete team game? We'll see.