Playing with great poise, young Braden Holtby has a chance to write another chapter in goaltending lore. (Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images)

This memorable first round moves on Wednesday night to the first of three Game 7s in the Eastern Conference when a pair of marquee clubs square off in Boston: the Stanley Cup champion Bruins and the newly-minted defensive strong boys/former offensive dynamo Washington Capitals.

Had it not been for the five straight overtime games between the Coyotes and Blackhawks, this would be hailed as clearly the opening round’s tightest series. Three matches have gone to extra time and of the total 387 minutes 31 seconds played in the six games, the teams have been tied for 268: 54 of them. Washington has led for 74:14; Boston for 44:23. The only two-goal lead, which the Caps had in Game 5, lasted all of 2:54. In a postseason that has seen many see-saw lead changes, this series has had none.

Additionally, each team has scored 14 goals. But most notably, this is the first playoff matchup in Stanley Cup history ever to have its first six games all decided by one-goal margins.

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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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Of concern: Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist showed signs of wearing down as the regular season wore on. (Scott Levy/NHLI via 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 Eastern Conference. You can find the keys to the Western Conference here.

NEW YORK RANGERS (1) vs. OTTAWA SENATORS (8)

Rangers - Who they are and how they win:  This team is all about character and sacrifice, starting with captain Ryan Callahan. The Rangers play with unmatched passion, and their shot-blocking and energy are exceptional. They don’t lose a lot of races for the puck and they take hits to make plays. They roll four lines and have better team speed than some think, especially up front, which gives them a dangerous quick-strike offense. Some  people believe New York is a one-line team, but it had decent secondary scoring this season and, because coach John Tortorella has juggled lines all year, he can probably correct any imbalance. Solid defensively, the Rangers keep opponents to the outside and have world-class goaltending with Henrik Lundqvist.

What could go wrong: . The Rangers’ shot-blocking and physical sacrifice could lead to injuries and a depleted lineup. Lundqvist was not at his best in the late going and that would be problematic if it continues in the postseason. They also don’t have a great power play and taking advantage of those opportunities in the postseason is crucial. The Rangers could get frustrated if their power play falters. The worst thing they could do is be overconfident or take Ottawa too lightly. The Senators are just as fast a team and they have played well against New York all season.

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A shaky second half by Tim Thomas and backup Tuukka Rask's injury are causes for concern in Boston. (Andre Ringuette/NHLI via Getty Images)

It’s the oldest adage in the game: You win in the playoffs with great goaltending. But sometimes you win with only good or even average goaltending (as we pointed out a year ago when we looked at how the postseason clubs were fixed at the position on the eve of the annual tournament), but no one can deny how much Tim Thomas meant to the Bruins in their march to the Stanley Cup last season. His winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP marked the 15th time that a goalie has been so honored since the trophy was first presented in 1965.

Suffice to say, it’s hard to go anywhere in the spring if you have a leaky guy standing — or falling — in the crease, so with the playoffs only nine days away, here’s how each Eastern Conference club’s goaltending shapes up. Click here for out Western breakdown Read More…

Tim Thomas's decision to not attend the White House ceremony honoring his team violated a principle. (Graig Abel/NHLI via Getty Images)

By now you probably know that the Boston Bruins visited the White House on Monday, as the champions of all major sports do, and that their star goalie elected not to attend. Tim Thomas stated his reasons on his Facebook page and he’s been hailed by some as a hero for standing on principle. But, in a very important way, he was wrong — and hockey fans who applaud him for his principles are wrong to support him.

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Goalies can be like Mama Gump's box of chocolates -- you never know what you're gonna get -- and that's been very true for the St. Louis Blues with Brian Elliott (left) this season. (Minas Panagiotakis/Icon SMI)

The news from St. Louis that the Blues have rewarded Brian Elliott with a two-year contract extension sparked a few thoughts about goaltending in general and the Blues in particular.

There is no official NHL award for comeback player of the year, and even if there was, Elliott might not actually be a good choice because his earlier incarnation as a goalie for the Ottawa Senators produced only one good season (29-18-4, 2.57 goals-againt average and .909 save percentage with five shutouts in 2009-10) and a few not so good ones. But his work so far this season (15-5-1, 1.68 and .937) has him swimming with the big fish of NHL netminders, namely The Bruins’ Tim Thomas, the Predators’ Pekka Rinne and the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist. (SI.com’s Michael Farber looked at Elliott’s emergence in a recent column.)

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The Bruins' traditional post-Thanksgiving Day game, this year against the Red Wings, will launch NBC's national coverage of the NHL five weeks earlier than usual. (Damian Strohmeyer/Sports Illustrated)

On Nov. 29, 1991, the Bruins hosted the Canadiens in an afternoon game. It was the day after Thanksgiving and Boston defeated its fierce Montreal rivals 5-4 in overtime. Whether it was superstition, a strong fan response or smart marketing, the B’s repeated the post-Turkey Day match the following season, this time against the Hartford Whalers (again an OT victory for the home side) and this Friday afternoon game has been a fixture on Boston’s calendar ever since.

Now, 20 years later, the NHL and NBC are turning this tradition into a special event, one that is emblematic of an innovative new era for a league historically considered second-rate in the areas of marketing and promotion.
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Canadiens forward Max Pacioretty will surely have an emotional investment in meeting the Bruins again. (Michael Ivins/US PRESSWIRE)

Fasten your seatbelts: The NHL’s greatest, most passionate rivalry resumes tonight when the Canadiens visit the Bruins for their first encounter this season (NHL Network in the U.S., 7 pm) and they play again on Saturday in Montreal. The six regular-season and seven playoff games these two played were some of the most exciting — and nasty — of the 2010-11 campaign and there’s no reason to believe they won’t continue in that vein.
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Time to go to work: Are Milan Lucic and the Bruins hungry for a Stanley Cup encore? (Elise Amendola/AP)

Every NHL season starts with expectations and conjures up predictions on where teams might finish. Longtime readers know we eschew such forecasts here at Red Light, taking cues from our patron saint Hector (Toe) Blake who famously said (seen in this video), “Predictions are for gypsies.” In fact, we were going to call this blog “Toe Blake’s Tavern,” but that’s a story for another day.

Anyway, instead, here’s one of our favorite preseason habits. Rather than exhaustively breaking down each team’s offense, defense, goaltending, special teams, coaching, intangibles and so forth (we’ll let Adrian Dater and Darren Eliot do that), let’s try to boil down each team’s success or failure to one or a few essential themes. Each club has them and the answers to these questions, theoretically at least, should go a long way to determining if teams plays up to their expectations and potential.

Anaheim – Can goalie Jonas Hiller, who missed a large chunk of last season with a mysterious case of vertigo, avoid a reoccurrence and bounce back to his excellent first-half form that had him close to Tim Thomas as the best goalie in the NHL?

Boston — Assuming Tim Thomas plays somewhere in the neighborhood of his remarkable performance last season, can the Bruins survive the short offseason? Can they continue to have the good fortune and good health every champion requires and beat back the diminished hunger that almost always accompanies winning it all? Can they become the first team to repeat as Stanley Cup champions since the Red Wings in 1998?
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Though it contains some glaring omissions, the "Boston Bruins Stanley Cup 2011 Champions" video is will please devoted fans with its account of the team's historic run to the title. (Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated)

The ice has melted, the scruffy beards are gone and now, in the radiating heat of mid-July — one month after the Bruins won the Stanley Cup — the official NHL highlights video gets its premier in Boston on Monday and in New York on Tuesday. It’s a good, not great video, unless you’re a Bruins fan in which case you will forgive its shortcomings — including omitting some of the B’s more rugged play — due to the happy ending and the inside look at your heroes. For Bruins fans everywhere, this will be a must-have addition to their hockey collection.
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