NHL Conference Final Preview, Wild Tamed, Ducks Shot, Sabres Speared (Show 7)

Sean is here to break down the latest news from the NHL Playoffs second round. What were the Wild thinking? How did the Ducks go down? Will the city of Buffalo ever experience joy? Sean is trying to be more vivid and humorous with the Top Goals of the Week review. What are your thoughts? Lastly, he shares some head to head stats about the four teams that will play in the conference final matchups and gives his prediction on who he thinks will advance to the Stanley Cup Final. It's Biscuit Breakdown! Consider yourself served!

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Transcript

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It's time for biscuit breakdown, where hockey is the only thing on the menu. And welcome back, hacky fans, whoever you root for, wherever you live, whenever it is, it's time for biscuit breakdown. Thank you for tuning in. I'm your host, Sean, and I'm excited to have you here again today. If you would like to follow me on Instagram, I am biscuit breakdown, Twitter, Biscuit Breakdown without the O, or Biscuit Breakdown Pod at gmail.com. Feel free to reach out and start a conversation about anything hockey related, and I will be happy to talk about it here on the show as well as respond to you on the socials. Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And if you could rate five stars and leave a review, I would really, really appreciate it. Currently on Apple we have four five star ratings, and one person left a review, PowerPlay 90. Thank you, PowerPlay 90. They said insightful, succinct, and entertaining. The various topic segments are interesting and fun. Looking forward to more episodes of Biscuit Breakdown. Why thank you, PowerPlay 90, whoever you root for, wherever you live, whenever it is, I appreciate it. And over on Spotify, there are two five star ratings. So if you've rated me on Apple or Spotify, thank you very much. And if you feel like helping me out, go ahead and give me a rating, and I would really appreciate it. Alright, it's time to move into our fresh out the oven segment. Um I have to apologize kind of for some bad podcasting. Pretty much right after I released the latest episode prior to this one, the Minnesota Wild were bounced from the playoffs. I selected them to advance past the Avalanche in six games. That didn't happen. That was far from happening. I was way off on that one, although the series was a bit closer than four to one avalanche, but we'll get into that a little bit in a second. Basically, I somewhat called it that the Wild had a three goal lead, and that is the most dangerous lead in hockey because teams will start to sit back, they'll start to get defensive, they'll start to think that they have this game in the bag, they'll stop their attack, and the other team keeps fighting, keeps fighting, gets a goal, they start having a little bit of belief, they get another goal, they start really believing, and what do you know, Nathan McKinnon with almost no time left in the third period, ties the game, and at that point I knew the wild were done. Toast kaput finished Gonzo They were trying to sit on their three goal lead on the road at altitude, less oxygen to the brain, idiot thinking, they stopped skating, and it all bit them in the ass. They got buried, pun intended, by the Avalanche when Brett Kulak smacked home the winner in overtime on a nice pass from Marty Natius, who made Chris Middleton, the defenseman for the wild, look like a rodeo clown chasing him around, circling the net with no rhyme or reason. And he dishes it off to Kulak. Kulak basically has an open net, he smacks it in, and the Avalanche go on to win that game four to three in overtime, sending the Wild home packing. The Wild are rudely evicted from the playoffs like animals dealing with habitat loss due to a new condominium complex going in. Meanwhile, the Avalanche keep rolling downhill towards their next most likely victim, the Vegas Golden Knights. Now you might be saying to yourself, Sean, why the hell have you skipped over Nathan McKinnon's ridiculous snipe to tie the game up at three? Well, that is going to be in our top biscuits segment. So I'll talk about that more in a little bit. But yeah, it was a bit disappointing to see the Wild get out in six games. Or what am I saying? Five games. They lost in five fucking games. It was four to one Avalanche. Um they didn't even get to a sixth game. So overall, Avalanche, they outworked him, they outplayed him. And the Wild, you know, a couple key injuries, but everyone's hurt at this time of year. There's rumors that Kale McCar is hurt for the Avalanche. So everyone's dealing with something, and the Wild are no longer dealing with the playoffs. Um we are going to move quickly into the Buffalo Sabres and the Montreal series. Um that game six was completely bonkers. Just when you think you have this series figured out, it just flips itself on its head. In game six, Montreal takes a three to one lead at home in Montreal. The fans are going wild. They are starting to get full of themselves, thinking that they're going to move on past the Sabres, but the Sabres had other ideas. They pulled their goalie. They changed it up from Alex Lyon to Uko Pekalukinen, the guy that let in the completely ridiculous goal from center ice in the Boston Bruins series. Yeah, they go to him because the Sabres MO is basically flip-flopping goalies back and forth, pulling a guy mid-game, letting the other guy come in and do cleanup duty and get hot, and that seemed to be their formula. Um, but that's not a really a winning formula. However, in game six of that series, it worked out because the Sabres then went on to score seven, you heard that right, seven unanswered goals. They won the game eight to three in Montreal to force a game seven. I would have never believed that if you told me that was happening on my bingo card. So game seven rolls around on Monday night in Buffalo, and it's basically like a pick'em. Nobody knows exactly who's gonna win. You can make a case for either team. Buffalo's home. They've been the better team slightly all year. Montreal seems maybe like a team of destiny because they are young and hungry and they already won a game seven on the road, so maybe they can pull it off again. We didn't really know what was gonna happen in game seven. Turns out that Montreal came out ready to play a little bit more than Buffalo, and they got an early lead on a goal off of a skate deflection. Then they score on the power play to make it 2-0 on a just an absolutely atrocious defensive mishap by the Sabres. Three Sabres start to skate towards the guy below the goal line, leaving Zach Bulduke wide open in front of the net. More wide open than a salad bar at a wing joint in Buffalo. Absolutely no one interested. And Bullduke hammers a one timer into the top corner of the net faster than you can say blue cheese. And Montreal's got a two-goal lead heading into the first intermission. Later on in the game, second period, Buffalo is able to get one to pull the lead to just one for Montreal, and the teams head into the locker room at the second intermission with a score of two to one Montreal. Then in the third period, their captain, Rasmus Dalin, ties it up, and everything in the game tightens. The teams are going back and forth, the crowd is into it, the crowd is believing. Will the Sabres fans finally get to rejoice? We don't know yet. We are heading to overtime. The teams traded chances back and forth in overtime, nothing too crazy. And then Alex Newhook of the Montreal Canadiens, the unsung hero, shoots a shot from the left wing about the top of the circle. He aims far side just above Uko Pekalukin's pad, and he tucks it home, and the Canadians all jump onto the ice. UPL skates off, he chucks his helmet down the tunnel, he's staring back up at the Jumbotron in disbelief that that shot actually got past him. The whole Buffalo bench is devastated. The crowd is pretty silent, except for the Canadians fans that are making a little bit of noise. And on the replay you can see that he was screened, but he might have been able to make the save. Kind of a tough one. Usually you can't stop what you can't see. And so now Alex Newhook, who will never need to buy a beer, a movie ticket, a car, a home ever again in the province of Quebec, sends them onward to play the Carolina Hurricanes after Newhook scores his second straight Game 7, game-winning goal for the Montreal Canadians. Just amazing stuff. That guy is certainly on a hot streak. He's got seven goals in the playoffs currently, and they're moving on to the Eastern Conference Final. Alright, one last thing for our fresh out the oven segment. Something cool that I saw this week. A Fighting Sioux Jersey. So the North Dakota Fighting Sioux, which their name is not that anymore. Their name is actually escaping me right now. I should look it up. But basically they used to be the call the Fighting Sioux, and then they thought that was a bit uh insensitive to the Native American community that used to live in the area, so they switched their name. But basically, this was a Fighting Sioux jersey, Zach Perize, number 11, because he went there. One of my favorite New Jersey devils of all time. And someone was selling it on Facebook for only fifty dollars plus ten dollars to ship it. Should I have bought that jersey? I don't know. I mean I can kind of make the case for yes, I can kind of make the case for no. Seems like pretty rare. Also, when am I ever gonna wear it? Um so I was torn, I didn't end up buying it. But yeah, I think it's a really cool jersey and a cool logo, um, but it is no longer. Their name nowadays is the North Dakota Fighting Hawks. Now what does the hawk population of the area think of that? I don't think we'll ever know. Alright, it's time to change it up and we are gonna get into our top goals of the week. Our buttery biscuits, our top cheddar biscuits, the ones that we just can't fathom how they went in the net. The goals that we are just in awe of, the goals that we will keep thinking about at night, the goals that will not only haunt the dreams of their opponents who they took down, but will inspire an entire generation of young hockey players and make us older hockey players envious, wishing we could pull off such amazing feats of power and strength and finesse. Alright, we have two honorable mentions this week before we get into our top three. In the honorable mentions portion, we have Shea Theodore of the Vegas Golden Knights, who scored a power play goal right under the crossbar from distance in game six of that series to help the Vegas Golden Knights go on to win five to one against the Ducks in that game and put them into migration season, going somewhere south or north or wherever they go in the summer because they are no longer playing hockey. Our other honorable mention is Ivan Demedov, the rookie from the Montreal Canadiens, who has a cannon, and he also scored a one-timer power play goal that went top cheddar in game six of the Montreal Canadiens and the Buffalo Sabres series. It was an absolute thing of beauty. He really laid into it. He even dropped down to one knee to really put all his power behind that shot, and you love to see a top cheddar biscuit. And as a reminder, if you are interested in finding these goals and watching them and studying them and just really letting your jaw drop to the floor, you can always head to the NHL app or NHL.com or the NHL's Instagram or the NHL's Twitter. I'm sure the NHL is a TikTok as well. It's all over the place. So you can find these goals and you can see what I'm talking about and really give a give yourself visual to my descriptions. And this week I'm going to try to make the top three goals a little bit more vivid for you and hopefully a little bit more comedic and entertaining. So in the number three spot we have Jack Quinn of the Buffalo Sabres who scored an unbelievable sharp angle power play goal, top cheddar. So if you combine that, it was a sharp cheddar, the sharpest cheddar I have ever tasted. He put that on a cracker and fired it into the top corner of the net. I don't even know how he saw the net. He was almost on the goal line when he fired that slap shot, but he was just standing there mesmerized by that sharp cheddar, like an old man at the grocery store with a gastrointestinal issue who's ignoring it, and he just wanted all of that cheese. In the number two spot we have Nathan McKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche, who in game five the other night scored the game time goal at three with about a minute left in the game. Totally clutch goal. He gets the puck. He's staring down Jesper Vallstatt, the goalie for the Minnesota Wild. Like a mountain lion stares down a rabbit in the Rockies. And Nathan stick handles a few times. Yesper is shitting in his pants, hoping, praying he can make this save in crunch time, and for some stupid reason, Jesper dips his right shoulder just a little bit, just enough for an elite shooter like Nathan McKinnon to rip the puck into the top left corner of the net over Yesper's right shoulder to tie the game at three, and the wild were officially known as the Minnesota Tamed. They were fully controlled and contained, and though Avalanche knew that they had absolutely nowhere to run and hide. And they proved it by winning the game shortly into overtime. And in the number one spot we have Mitch Marner of the Vegas Golden Knights, who may have scored the goal of the playoffs the other night in game six against the Anaheim Ducks. It was only about a minute into the game, and Mitch basically ended the game right then and there with a disrespectful, disgusting, filthy, unbelievably juicy goal. Basically, his line mate, William Carlson, makes an unreal pass up to him almost through two zones, and he catches the pass. He's basically neck and neck with the defenseman Jackson Lacomb, and basically Mitch Marner makes a couple deks and realizes that the goalie for the Anaheim Ducks, Lucas de Stal, is on the other side of the net. So what does Mitch do? He pulls his stick and puck through his own legs and then shoots it into the near open net at that point, making Lucas de Stall and Jackson Lacomb look like the awkward kids in gym class who are about as coordinated as baby giraffes. And all of a sudden the Vegas Golden Knights are up one nothing and have all the momentum and all the mojo in order to carry that through the rest of the game and advance past the ducks onto the Western Conference Final. Alright, let's change it up and move into our doggy bag prediction segment. It's time to do a conference final preview. In the east, we have the Carolina Hurricanes who will host the Montreal Canadiens. The Hurricanes are 8-0. They've swept the Ottawa Senators and the Philadelphia Flyers. And they are now facing the upstart Montreal Canadiens, who are Road Warriors and seem to be a bit of a team of destiny. So this will be an interesting matchup. Should be a fun one. And there are some interesting stats that I wanted to bring up real quick before I give you my prediction on who I think will win this series. So these teams have played three games this year head to head. Make a prediction right now about what you think the results of those three games were, who you think won more. I guarantee you're going to be surprised. So in actuality, the Montreal Canadiens won all three of those games this year in the regular season against the Hurricanes. That stat did shock me. Both of these teams have a pretty high goals for rate. The Hurricanes average three 3.55 goals per game, and the Canadians average 3.4 goals per game. The Hurricanes give up 2.88 goals per game, and the Canadians give up 3.06 goals per game. Their power play percentages are nearly identical. The Hurricanes are running at a rate of 24.9% success on the power play. Canadians are 23.1% success. Hurricanes penalty kill is 80.6, and the Montreal Canadians penalty kill is 78.2. So the special teams is close, the goals for is close. Carolina is slightly better on defense, but like I said, the Canadians have won all three of their head-to-head games in the regular season. Needless to say, I'm rolling with Carolina. They seem to be legit this year. They have home ice advantage, which I've talked about on previous shows, how that is a major deal for them. And I think the Hurricanes will advance past the Canadians in six games. Now the reason I'm comfortable saying that is because the Canadians, for some reason, have not played that well at home. So I think Carolina can go into the Bell Center in game six and punch their ticket to the Stanley Cup final. Now moving into the west side of the bracket, we have the Colorado Avalanche who will host the Vegas Golden Knights. They have played three games head to head this year. Take a guess in your head right now what you think the record is. And the record is Colorado won two of those games, one in regulation, one in overtime, and Vegas won one game in regulation. Now, the Avalanche are first in the NHL. in goals for per game at 3.63 per game. Vegas is 3.22 goals scored per game. The Avalanche are also first in goals against per game, only allowing 2.4 goals against, whereas Vegas allows 2.95 goals against per game. This is the weird head scratcher part. The Avalanche power play is absolute dog shit. They are firing at a rate of only 17 point one percent on the power play. Where Vegas has a very good power play. They are at 24.6%. Colorado has the best penalty kill though at 84.6% and the Knights are at 81.4% on their penalty kill. So interesting stats there Colorado is the favorite and I am going to be boring and lame in this conference final and I'm going to choose once again the favorite so I am going to choose the Colorado Avalanche to get past the Vegas Golden Knights in six games. A couple other fun predictions that I'm going to make for this conference final right now in the doggy bag segment is that during the conference final I think the Colorado Avalanche will score seven goals in one game. Not sure which one but I think they're going to score seven in one game. And then I'm also going to go out on a limb and I'm going to say that the Montreal Canadiens are going to lead the conference final in the most penalty minutes which is not going to be a good situation. Obviously you don't want to spend time in the box. So those are my two bonus predictions give me Carolina Hurricanes in six Colorado Avalanche in six Avalanche scores seven goals and the Canadians lead the conference finals with the most penalty minutes. If you would like to comment on any of my predictions or anything else I talked about today you can follow me on Instagram Biscuit Breakdown or Twitter Biscuit Breakdown without the O or Gmail Biscuit Breakdown Pod at gmail dot com. Be sure to follow wherever you get your podcasts if you could rate five stars and leave a review I would greatly appreciate that. And this has been another episode of Biscuit Breakdown consider yourself served in the