Is it Golden Knights or bust for Boston this summer?

Author Ty Anderson

June 17th, 2021 5:13 PM

I’ve forever been jealous of people with hobbies.

Like, I desperately wish I had the makeup to just bounce out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs when the Bruins are done. I can’t do it. The closest I came was in 2012 with the Devils and Kings, and even then, I was checking the score every 30 minutes. But I refuse to watch baseball unless it’s by accident and I’m not known to go golfing unless it involves a large windmill and an arcade within 25 feet of the final hole.

So here I am, watching the final four of the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and it didn’t take long for me to legitimately wonder if there’s any other rooting choice than the Vegas Golden Knights. At least for those of us in Boston.

The results, while not exactly scientific, didn’t steer me away from this thinking.

Let me make it clear: I have no problem rooting for the Golden Knights. In fact, that’s been my pick every time I’ve been ‘forced’ to broaden my horizons. I actually love watching this team play. They’re everything you want out of a contender. They can make high-end plays and deliver big hits at the same rate, they can win games 2-1 or 5-4, and their roster construct is one of the more fascinating ones in the NHL. Boston fans can certainly appreciate a Ryan Reaves as much as a Mark Stone.

The Golden Knights have also made their share of substantial upgrades through free agency or trade — Stone, Max Pacioretty, Alex Pietrangelo, and Robin Lehner are just some of the players they’ve acquired over the last two calendar years and change — but they still have some of that inaugural ‘Golden Misfit’ shine on their roster.

A Golden Knights championship is also the least ‘offensive’ to your Boston sensibilities, really, as the Bruins and Golden Knights play just two times a year. It’s not like you’re going to have to deal with that being rubbed in your face at every turn, so perhaps it’s not surprise that they earned almost 70 percent of the vote.

Also: Can’t help but wonder what kind of Cup championship shenanigans would be cooked up in Vegas. Oh, and quick shoutout to Dave Goucher, Shane Hnidy, and former Bruins PR do-it-all Eric Tosi. All great people who deserve nothing but success, so yeah, that is without a doubt who I wanna see raise the Cup when the dust settles on the 2021 season.

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  A bit of a surprise? Seeing the Islanders rack up over 19 percent of the vote.
  
  Perhaps this is the old "if you're going to get beat, get beat by the champion" adage coming through. But after living that in 2019 and 2020, I wouldn't mind a break from that. Or maybe the Islanders earned 19 percent of the vote because we simply respect the way they play the game. For all the frustration they can cause you in a seven-game series, the Islanders play a hard-nosed game based around their defensive clampdowns and capitalizing on the mistakes they force you to make. It's a blue-collar effort all the way through.
  
  But I gotta be honest, my preference is skip the Islander bandwagon if given the choice.
  
  Barry Trotz pulling a Mike Babcock and insinuating Patrice Bergeron of cheating on faceoffs the same day Bergeron is nominated for the Selke Trophy? Not my favorite! I could also do without the never-ending praise of Nassau Coliseum as this legendary arena. Now, it's definitely the last 'old barn' in a league full of state of the art facilities and scoreboards the size of Rhode Island, and I do find that charming in some respects. (I miss the old, grimy Madison Square Garden.) But the Coliseum is where you went for $15 tickets because the Garden was too expensive. And before these most recent upgrades, it honestly looked like the world's largest above ground pool.
  
  I just can't pretend that there's any sort of real aura or mystique with a building that's hung Billy Joel and Grateful Dead banners more recently than a Stanley Cup banner. It just goes against everything I stand for as a human being.

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  And we've now hit the sunken place.
  
  The Canadiens? With almost nine percent of the vote? What is possibly happening here? Are we that interested in hearing '25 Cups!' from our friends from Quebec? Do we merely want the schadenfreude of the Canadiens wrecking everyone's bracket? I'm not sure. But this one... this one is hard to wrap my head around.
  
  Let's get beyond the obvious of this being the Montreal Canadiens for a moment.
  
  The only reason this team made the playoffs is because of a closed border and a global pandemic. In a normal season, the Canadiens would've finished the year as the 10th-best team in the Eastern Conference. Better teams were told to stay home so that the Canadiens could get their shot at the Stanley Cup, and in the worst division in hockey. Oh, and you're already seeing the idea that the North Division wasn't outright horrible (it was) because of the Canadiens' success being peddled about by Pierre 'Holy Mama' LeBrun, who is calling their victory a win for the entire division. Gross.

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  But the votes for the Canadiens proved one of two things: Canadien fans infiltrated the voting process or the Lightning have truly become the First Order of the hockey world. I think the latter is more believable, and understandably so. 
  
  The reigning Stanley Cup champions, the Lightning avoided what would've been certain cap jail and a sell-off of some notable pieces this offseason by way of Nikita Kucherov's offseason hip surgery, which was announced just before the start of the season and cleared significant cap space for the Bolts as Kucherov and his $9.5 million cap hit were moved to the long-term injured reserve. The Lightning later added Steven Stamkos to the long-term injured reserve (they also added countless injured players via trade in the offseason and stashed them on their LTIR for maximum cap space benefits), and added deadline prize David Savard to their books from the Blue Jackets. And magically, everyone was ready to go just in time for the postseason. 
  
  Huh. Funny!
  
  The maneuvering was simply smart general manager'ing (the Hawks did the same thing in 2015), of course, but it wasn't hard for it to seem like blatant circumvention. Especially when you see how Kucherov has looked and performed this postseason, with 22 points in 13 games this playoffs. It's enough to make you think that this guy was ready long before the start of the postseason. Such a return would've messed with the Bolts' cap plans, however, so that was never on the table.  
  
  The Lightning and NHL will say what they did is totally within the rules. And they’re not wrong. Again, this is using loopholes and legal circumvention to your absolute best benefit, and it’s something that every GM has a hand in by not offer-sheeting some of Tampa’s bright young stars over the years. But it's obvious to everyone else. 
  
  "We lost to a team that's $18 million over the cap or whatever they are," Canes defenseman Dougie Hamilton said after the Lightning eliminated Carolina in the second round. "I wasn’t knocking the rules. You realize how many weapons they have, and if you think about how many more players you could have with the money, you realize how much deeper you’d be."
  
  It's simply impossible to root for this Lightning team. 
  
  That's before we even mention the fact that this Bolts team has eliminated the Bruins in two of the last three postseasons (probably would've been three in four had the B's advanced out of the second round this year), and have stood in the way as the biggest threat to the Bruins' championship aspirations for over half a decade now. 
  
  So, while the results are split across the field, from where I sit, it's 100 percent Go Knights Go. 

Ty Anderson is a writer and columnist for 985TheSportsHub.com. Any opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of 98.5 The Sports Hub, Beasley Media Group, or any subsidiaries. Yell at him on Twitter: @_TyAnderson.

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Author Ty Anderson

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Tags:

2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs,boston bruins,montreal canadiens,new york islanders,Tampa Bay Lightning,vegas golden knights