It's not even that I think Ruff will fail as a hire for Buffalo. He might succeed! I don't think he's an awful coach, and they have lots of talent there.

But man, the lack of hiring creativity in the NHL never ceases to astound me. This is the epitome of 'of course they did.'

It's our first true offseason show! (At our new offseason start time of 1 PM.)

Breaking down Tortorella's regrets on the season, prospects to keep an eye on, and then a look at the first round NHL playoff matchups:
youtube.com/live/wYD4XEvHI…

Catch Charlie O'Connor & Bill Matz LIVE all week, presented by MortgageCS!

💻: youtube.com/@PHLY_Sports
🎧: link.chtbl.com/PHLYFlyers

#LetsGoFlyers

I do hope this VAN-NSH playoff series alerts people to Luke Evangelista. He's legit. I just barely left him off my Calder ballot, but as a rookie, he both drove play & scored well at 5v5. Low-key super impressive rookie year.

Saros, you have to stop that one, yikes

That game owned, hopefully the series goes 7

I mean:

The Jets as a team at 5v5: :+99 shots on goal
The Jets with Connor on the ice: -44 shots on goal

He basically lives off his shooting/scoring ability. And it works! Somehow.

It's truly funny that when you watch power plays of other teams that are really good, it's not like you're watching brilliant tactical X's & O's. It's mostly just that Mikko Rantanen wins every puck battle, and MacKinnon backs off PKers, and Makar's shot is amazing.

Kyle Connor is probably my least favorite objectively really good player in the NHL right now.

He is the epitome of a one-dimensional sniper who is just so good at offense that nothing else matters

Truly have no idea how the puck essentially curved along the goal line there

I'm not saying that Matthews and Kucherov aren't amazing players. They are. But the ability of McDavid and MacKinnon to singlehandedly create incredibly dangerous scoring chances is wild and unique & they can't match it. It's like you're watching someone play a video game.

This Colorado-Winnipeg series looks like it's going to rule

I will be spending the next 2-3 weeks analyzing stats and watching tape of draft prospects! so give me a bit of time

My read is that the dividing line for this draft is around the 13/14 mark.

So if the Flyers draft at 12 (their most likely spot) it's a pretty good spot.

My early read on the draft is that Tier 1 is Macklin Celebrini and Tier 2 goes until 13/14. So PHI isn't in a terrible spot.

twitter.com/charlieo_conn/…

I would love to be covering Flyers playoff hockey, to be clear.

But it is so nice to be able to watch and enjoy playoff hockey just as a hockey fan and not have to worry about writing about it.

Connor Hellebuyck, you're just justifying right there why I had MacKinnon over you in my Hart top-5 order just saying...

As much as upsets are fun, it would be cool if all the hyper-talented teams win in Round 1 so that the second round is absolutely bonkers.

(Only exceptions are Dallas-Vegas and VAN-NSH. The former because both teams are loaded & the latter because of my bracket.)

the idea that I have the time to run a serious parody account in addition to my articles and coverage and normal tweets is wild

but keep pretending evil gritty

I guess I should go to Buffalo Billiards more -- they're playing Boxcar by Jawbreaker.