All hail the Kings: Jeff Carter (77), Drew Doughty (8), Mike Richards (10), Rob Scuderi (7), Dustin Penner and company are winning with confidence and uncommon authority. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

It’s still a good month before the captain of an NHL team hoists the Stanley Cup over his head and a lot can happen between now and then. But on the basis of the first three games in the Conference Championship round, there is no more impressive team at this moment than the Los Angeles Kings.

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The Coyotes must do a better job of protecting goaltender Mike Smith through all three periods as the games will be close and the Kings have the firepower to strike late. ( Norm Hall/NHLI via Getty Images)

We move to the playoffs’ third round on Sunday, and anyone who tells you they predicted before the postseason began that the Coyotes and Kings would meet for a chance to advance to the Stanley Cup Final should not be trusted. But here they are, two unlikely foes that have both peaked at the right time, knocked off favored opponents, gotten timely scoring, and thrived on defense and stellar goaltending. Any team that combines those elements belongs in a conference championship series.

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After less than a thousand showed up at a “Save the Coyotes” rally in 2009, fans are now flocking to Jobing.com Arena to witness the team’s stirring but unlikely playoff run. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

It was a day of big possibilities in Glendale, and unless the Coyotes go on to win the Stanley Cup, May 7 could go down as the biggest date in the franchise’s NHL history, both in Arizona and Manitoba. Not only is it the day that this team reached the conference championship round for the first time, but there were some strong signs that, after years of ownership uncertainty — three of those years under the caretaker stewardship of the league itself — some stability might be ahead.

Just like the Coyotes’ chances of going all the way, the team’s sale to Greg Jamison’s group is no sure thing. Regardless, it was momentous evening for hockey in Arizona.

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The Predators are mum, but Andrei Kostitsyn and Alexander Radulov will be sitting out Game 3 vs. the Coyotes for allegedly violating their team's curfew before Game 2 in Arizona. (Danny Murphy/Icon SMI)

As we sit here on Tuesday, few could have guessed that the Nashville Predators would be trailing in their second round series 0-2 and facing the danger of early elimination at the hands of the Phoenix Coyotes. The Preds are, after all, a team known for stellar defense and attention to detail, attributes that invariably lead to postseason success.

But that requires everyone adhering to a team concept, and when word came down late Tuesday morning that the Preds were suspending both Alexander Radulov and Andrei Kostitsyn — probably their two most skilled forwards — for Game 3 for violating team rules, one draws the unmistakable conclusion that not everyone is buying in.

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During the winning goal in Sunday's Game 1, Devils goalie Martin Brodeur had his stick moved by Flyers winger James van Riemsdyk's skate, hindering his ability to make the save. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

After watching these unpredictable and bizarre Stanley Cup playoffs unfold through the weekend, one thing is certain: the numerous incidents involving the question of goaltender interference demands that the NHL rethink adding it to the league’s list of goal/no-goal calls that are reviewable via video.

UPDATE: On TSN Monday night, Darren Dreger reported the NHL GMs will discuss adding goaltender interference to the video review situations at their next meeting and predicted it would pass (video).

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The Coyotes will have to be resourceful and determined to beat Nashville's stout defense that has been fortified at key moments by the monster goaltending of Pekka Rinne. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

We quickly move to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, what they call the conference semi-finals. Upsets galore, tight games, lots of overtime and fierce play marked the first round and that shouldn’t change too much now. With some strong teams knocked out, every survivor must figure that it has a chance to keep its playoff run alive. All it has to do is continue playing to its strengths, shore up its weaknesses and have a good game plan against its opponent. Easy, right?

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Long a lightning rod for the Sharks' ongoing postseason disappointment, Patrick Marleau may have cost his team its series against the Blues by taking a boneheaded penalty at a particularly important time. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

We’ve heard, read and written a lot this week about discipline — or lack of it — in the Stanley Cup playoffs, almost all of it due to the unprecedented manner in which the opening round has unfolded. There has been an elevated number of suspensions for illegal dangerous play and fights. “This was the time of year when you saw the best players playing the best hockey,” Pat Hickey of The Montreal Gazette wrote earlier this week, reflecting on the unusual course most series took in the early going as compared to the norm. “The emphasis was on skill. There was defence and hard hitting but clean hits were the order of the day because nobody wanted to leave his team vulnerable by taking a dumb penalty.”

Dumb penalties come in many varieties. Besides the sucker punches and hair pulling, we’ve also seen selfishly brandished sticks to faces, elbows to skulls, helmets grabbed and a head smashed into the glass, and leaping late head shots. So it was almost refreshing on Thursday night to see a plain old stupid interference penalty at a critical moment that cost a team the game. Almost refreshing…but not really.

Patrick Marleau, come on down.

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If fan whipping boy Roberto Luongo plays poorly against the offensively-challenged Kings, calls for backup netminder Cory Schneider will ring from the rafters in Vancouver. (Photo by Derek Leung/Getty Images)

If you’re looking for Stanley Cup predictions, you’ve come to the wrong place. As we’ve previously written, predictions are a waste of time. However, we’re willing to take some stabs at what is each playoff team about. What do they have to do to win? What must they avoid to prevent things from going south?

So here are the keys to the first round match-ups in the Western Conference.  You can find the Eastern Conference here.

VANCOUVER CANUCKS (1) vs. LOS ANGELES KINGS (8)

Canucks – Who they are and how they win: They shook off a late season malaise to finish 8-1-1 in their last 10 — much of the time without Daniel Sedin – while playing dominant hockey down the stretch and capturing the Presidents’ Trophy. A superskilled team with a some bite, Vancouver has the best offense in the conference and, potentially, a strong power play. The Canucks have  refined their roster this season a bit, adding depth with a solid offensive performer in David Booth, a proven shutdown center in Sami Pahlsson, and some menace in Zack Kassian. The defense corps excels at moving the puck forward, and the only question in goal is which guy, Roberto Luongo or Cory Schneider, will finish the series.

What could go wrong: If Luongo plays poorly, Schneider remains an unknown when it comes to carrying a team in the playoffs. The power play struggled in the second half and if Daniel Sedin’s concussion symptoms keep him sidelined for an extended period (he was ruled out for Game 1), that probably won’t help its improvement.  Even if Sedin returns, the Canucks, who haven’t always gotten secondary scoring,  will need it if the defensively proficient Kings can shut down their top line. And superior physicality could allow the Kings to win more battles along the boards, in the corners and in the slot. L.A.’s stiffling defense has the potential to frustrate the Canucks into taking penalties. If things go wrong and the Vancouver fan base turns on the team, that could be a significant negative. And Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick is good enough to steal this series.

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Mike Smith has given Coyotes fans something to cheer about down to the regular season's final days. (Chris Pondy/Icon SMI)

Most of the stories that the world outside of Arizona has read about the Phoenix Coyotes during the past few years have been about the viability of the franchise in Glendale, a location that was doomed from the start. It’s a sad tale about an orphaned hockey club, and it’s been made even sadder by the fact that the franchise’s tenuous situation has obscured what the team has done on the ice.

That was, to some extent, the reasoning that motivated the NHL Broadcasters Association to select Coyotes coach Dave Tippett as the winner of the 2010 Jack Adams Award as NHL Coach of the Year, a deserved honor considering how he kept his players focused and competitive amidst the constant distraction and uncertainty of the club’s off-ice business. For that, Tippett deserves the award every year.

Tippett has done another good job this season, and the Coyotes — who look more in danger of departing Arizona than ever — clinched a playoff berth Thursday when the Dallas Stars dropped their game in Nashville.  The coach is not the only reason the Coyotes once again found their way to the postseason. GM Don Maloney has done great work with a limited budget. Ray Whitney, who is a mere 39 years old (he’ll be 40 in a month), has had a truly remarkable campaign, his 51 assists ranking sixth in the league. His 75 points rank 14th in the scoring race.

But even Whitney’s fine play can’t overshadow what Mike Smith has done in goal.

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The Sharks-Kings season-ending home-and-home could have a big impact on the West's playoff field. (Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at how the Eastern and Western Conference playoff races were shaping up for the top and bottom qualifiers. Not surprisingly, the races for postseason positioning appear as though they may not be settled until Saturday, the final day of the regular schedule, setting up the possibility of some real drama before the even bigger drama of the postseason gets underway next Wednesday.

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