Not gonna lie...I'm not a fan of this first round match up.
We were actually hoping to face the Wings, who we went 3-0 against this season.
Flyers beat the Devils in our first two meetings, but we've lost the last 3 in a row to them.
We've been heavily out shot in 4 of those 5 games too.
This is going to be a tough battle.
Where do we start with a priority list?
We need to try to contain their triple threat, which has their 3 top scorers spread out over the top 3 lines.
Horvat centers the top line and leads the team in points, flanked by Rakell and Hossa.
Then you have Kucherov, the teams 2nd highest scorer, on the 2nd line with Zucker and Stastny.
But hold on....don't think it gets any better as you go down the list though.
Stamkos sits on the 3rd line. That's easy, you'd think, especially since he's only with Perron and...Jay Beagle?
But no...Stamkos sits 6th in RW scoring even though he's missed 20 games this year. Add in the fact that he's 7th in the league for shot % with 13.71% (but 14.22 since joining the Devils), and you have a dangerous situation to walk into for the 1st series of the post season.
NJ is the 3rd highest scoring team in the league while we sit at 13th.
They have enough fire power that the GM was ballsy enough to ship out a 73 rated winger just prior to the post season.
We're currently 13th in goals against, while the Devils sit at 22nd.
Hopefully the late addition of Rinne will help improve that stat even more.
Our only clear advantage is net, where both goalies have a better rating than Helle. We're going to need to throw as many shots on net as possible so his CON goes down and the Devils are forced to use Mccollum in a game or two.
The Devils have one of the best special teams in the league, so we're going to have to play a very disciplined series.
Both teams have Calder Trophy candidates, with Laine and Werenski sitting in the top 3 for rookie scoring.
(For the record, if I were voting, I'd take the guy who's tied at 6th for CPHL Dman every single time.
We're mixing things up for this series and anticipate our starting line-up to look something like this:
Schenn - Backstrom - Laine
Benn - Duchene - Frolik
Schwartz - Anisimov - Jagr
Domi - Glendening - Pirri
Petry-Lindholm
Niskanen-Savard
Ekholm-Dumba
Rinne
Vasilevskiy
Not 100% sure on that, but we are certain that the lines need to be mixed up so our guys can find a way past the Devils.
3thirty is a seasoned vet in the CPHL, so we know the road to Lord Stanley will have a tough start.
Frick...I love playoff hockey!!
Good luck, Chris!
Series Preview - Flyers (3) vs Devils (6)
