SI:AM | NHL Playoffs Preview: Sudden-death OT, Beards and Handshakes

Plus, the fastest pitch in college baseball history.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. The sports calendar is about to get a lot more crowded.

In today’s SI:AM:

🦌 The Bucks look strong

🏀 Draymond gets tossed

🦅 Inside the Eagles’ draft

What to watch for in the NHL playoffs

After ceding the spotlight to the NBA for a few weeks, it’s finally time for the NHL playoffs to begin. (The Stanley Cup Playoffs usually begin before the NBA’s, but the NHL’s regular season began two weeks later than usual, hence the delayed start to the postseason.)

The first four games are tonight, beginning with the Bruins and Hurricanes at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.

Here are the first-round matchups:

Eastern Conference

Panthers vs. Capitals

Hurricanes vs. Bruins

Maple Leafs vs. Lightning

Rangers vs. Penguins

Western Conference

Avalanche vs. Predators

Wild vs. Blues

Flames vs. Stars

Oilers vs. Kings

I’ll admit that I don’t follow the NHL as closely as other sports, but I always get sucked into the playoffs. Nothing in sports can match the intensity of postseason hockey (as the famous Jon Bois tweet attests). I’m looking forward to spending the next two months on the edge of my couch getting way too invested in teams I never cared about before.

Watch NHL games online all season long with fuboTV: Start with a 7-day free trial!

If you followed the NHL regular season from afar, here’s what you should be looking out for:

• The NHL’s new TV home: This will be the first postseason since the 2004–05 lockout that will not be broadcast by NBC. Games will air on ESPN, ESPN2, TNT and TBS in the United States. Kenny Albert, who took over as the lead voice of NBC’s coverage after Mike Emrick’s retirement, is TNT’s top play-by-play announcer. Sean McDonough is the lead guy for ESPN. The Stanley Cup Final will air on ABC.
• Packed houses: For the first time since 2019, all arenas will be operating at full capacity for the playoffs.
• Canada’s drought: Until some team from north of the border lifts the Stanley Cup, every postseason will be dominated by talk of how the 1993 Canadiens were the last Canadian team to win the championship. The Maple Leafs, led by 60-goal scorer Auston Matthews, are probably the country’s best hope, but their history of playoff failures is well documented. The Flames, who had the third-best record in the West, are also a possible candidate. The Oilers are the only other Canadian team in the field.
• Another Southern Stanley Cup? Canadians might have to suffer the indignity of watching another Florida team lift the Cup next month. After the Lightning won the last two titles, the Panthers were the best team in the NHL this year, winning the Presidents’ Trophy with a record of 58-18-6. They’re led by Jonathan Huberdeau, whose 85 assists were the most in the league. Florida’s top defenseman is Aaron Ekblad, who has missed the last 21 games with a knee injury. But he was a full participant in yesterday’s practice and may play in Game 1. Florida also pulled off a big trade at the deadline to acquire Claude Giroux from the Flyers. Oh, and if the Panthers can’t pull it off, there’s another Southern team that is among the favorites: the Hurricanes had the second-best record in the East.
• Rocky Mountain high scorers: The Avalanche are the best team in the West, and the deepest team in the field. They scored the fourth-most goals in the league this season (308, 3.76 per game) but don’t have a single player among the league’s top 20 goal scorers. Mikko Rantanen led Colorado with 36 goals, one of seven Avalanche players with over 20 goals. And Colorado is among the top defensive teams in the NHL, ranking in the top ten with 2.83 goals allowed per game.
• The playoff beards: If you don’t care about the games, just watch to see who can and can’t grow a beard for superstition’s sake. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing how Rangers winger Chris Kreider deals with his goatee. I was talking with a Hurricanes fan yesterday who couldn’t remember Kreider’s name and called him “the guy who looks like he’d play the devil in a movie.” He’ll look even more evil if the Rangers make a deep run and he lets the goatee flourish.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Albert Breer’s MMQB is today’s Daily Cover, featuring an inside look at how the Eagles traded for A.J. Brown.

The Bucks did what the Nets couldn’t do and bullied the Celtics’ staunch defense on their way to a Game 1 win, Chris Mannix writes. … Mannix was in New York a day earlier for the big Katie Taylor–Amanda Serrano fight. … SI’s NBA staff recaps the weekend, including the Splash Brothers’ overcoming Draymond Green’s ejection. … Conor Orr grades how every team did in the NFL draft.

Around the Sports World

Kelsie Whitmore became the first woman in the starting lineup for an Atlantic League game. ... Draymond Green recorded a podcast episode immediately after the Warriors Game 1 win to defend himself after he was ejected. … Memphis’s Brandon Clarke, the man on the receiving end of the foul that got Green ejected, said it was “not shocking.” … The Falcons signed an interesting undrafted free agent: former lacrosse player and Division II national championship-winning quarterback Jared Bernhardt, who they plan to deploy as a receiver. … No Texas Longhorns were selected in the NFL draft for just the second time since 1938.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Francisco Lindor wearing a microphone on Sunday Night Baseball

4. Giannis Antetokounmpo throwing the ball off the backboard to himself for a sick dunk

3. Jrue Holiday joking about being able to replicate Giannis’s dunk “on an eight-foot hoop”

2. Tennessee’s Ben Joyce throwing a 105.5 mph fastball, the fastest pitch ever recorded in college baseball

1. Oregon centerfielder Colby Shade’s home run robbery

SIQ

On this day in 1988, Reds manager Pete Rose was suspended 30 days for doing what?

Friday’s SIQ: Before this year, when was the last time two defensive players were taken with the top two picks in the NFL draft?

Answer: In 2000, when the Browns took defensive end Courtney Brown first and Washington picked linebacker LaVar Arrington second. Both players went to Penn State, the first time since Nebraska’s Irving Fryar and Dean Steinkuhler in 1984 that the top two picks in the draft were from the same school.

The 2000 draft was a crucial one for the Browns. They had the No. 1 pick for the second year in a row after returning to Cleveland in 1999 and were long rumored to be deciding between Brown and Arrington. Speaking before the draft, Browns director of football operations Dwight Clark said of Arrington, “He’s Lawrence Taylor.” But Clark also liked Brown, because at 271 pounds, he had run a 4.52 40-yard dash at Penn State’s pro day.

Washington also had a big opportunity in the 2000 draft, holding both the No. 2 and No. 3 picks after acquiring the Saints’ first-rounder in a draft day trade in 1999 (New Orleans picked Ricky Williams) and trading four picks (including Nos. 12 and 24) to the 49ers two months before the draft. Washington nailed both selections, choosing Arrington and offensive lineman Chris Samuels. Arrington was a three-time Pro Bowler before leaving in free agency after an ugly contract dispute (and retired after tearing his Achilles tendon midway through his first season with the Giants), while Samuels was named to six Pro Bowls before a spinal issue ended his career.

Brown’s career in Cleveland wasn’t as impressive. He played five injury-plagued seasons before finishing his career with one year in Denver.

From the Vault: May 2, 1988

Jerry Wachter/Sports Illustrated

The Orioles are one of the worst teams in baseball this year, but at least they aren’t as bad as they were in 1988.

That year, Baltimore opened the season with a whopping 21-game losing streak. It remains the longest skid to open a season in MLB history and the longest streak at any point in the season for an American League team. The 1961 Phillies own the record for the longest losing streak in modern MLB history at 23 games. (If you include pre-1900 teams, the 1889 Louisville Colonels are the biggest losers, having dropped 26 games in a row during a 27–111 season.)

The May 2, 1988, issue of SI went to print before the Orioles’ streak was over, so the cover featuring a downtrodden Billy Ripken only had their record at 0–18. They would be swept by the Twins before beating the White Sox 9–0 in Chicago on April 29 to break the streak.

After losing the first six games, the Orioles fired manager Cal Ripken Sr. His dismissal came on the same day that he pleaded guilty to drunk driving charges. That opened the door for Frank Robinson to become the first Black manager in franchise history. Robinson took his situation in stride. After dropping another six after taking over the team, SI’s Franz Lidz described Robinson as having “a fairly jolly disposition.” He was cracking jokes, too, telling Lidz before loss No. 13 that he expected his team to score plenty of runs that night. “Fifty, to be exact,” he said. “We’ll win 50–49.” They managed a season-high five but allowed nine.

Things didn’t get much easier for the Orioles after they snapped the streak. They finished the season at 54–107, the worst record in the majors.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

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