Welcome to RANKED. Each week we will be ranking players, moments and anything else we can think of, hockey or not. This week, with the playoffs starting and the Flyers not involved, we’re ranking the 16 playoff teams in order of who we think we should be supporting.
The NHL playoffs are starting this Saturday and we are going to witness some of the most chaotic, entertaining, and fantastical hockey that we have available to us.
Unfortunately, our beloved Philadelphia Flyers will not be taking part and have had their season washed away after 82 regular-season games and now we just have to look forward to a summer full of transactions. But, that doesn’t mean we won’t be watching and paying attention. Why miss out on some incredible hockey in an environment we hope some of these current Flyers players get to experience some day?
With that in mind, for this week, we have decided to rank the 16 playoff teams from teams we want to see lose the most, to teams we wouldn’t mind seeing lift Lord Stanley’s cup in June. We might just be neutral observers, but we can still have some skin in the game. Of course, this is just one blogger’s opinion about who we should maybe cheer for.
16) New York Rangers
Obviously, the one true rival of the Flyers that gets to appear in the playoffs is going to be a team that virtually every single one of us will want to see losing in the first round. What a joy it would be to just see a team that won the Presidents’ Trophy, and gets to have all this glory throughout the regular season with players hitting high marks, to just come crashing down and experience just a handful of games and an early summer.
Screw the rags.
15) New York Islanders
Somehow, this Islanders team made the playoffs and in the spot that the Flyers held on to for so long. Now, they get the joy of facing the goliath Hurricanes in the first round and hopefully get swept. They really don’t belong to be here — and while some would be saying that about the Flyers, it is just so funny to see a team whose best player might be Bo Horvat, actually end up in the postseason.
The Islanders are not good and one of the only reasons they are even here is because they managed to have one of the league’s top team save percentages. Something the Flyers could only dream of.
14) Boston Bruins
It leaves a warm and soft taste in the mouth to cheer against a Boston sports team in the playoffs. The entire country (and really the entire continent) outside of New England gets to have a shared hatred for whatever team that stupid town trots out in the respective postseasons.
The Bruins’ roster is just insane. We don’t know how they got to survive with Pavel Zacha and Charlie Coyle being the two top-six centers, but they are here and they are facing a Leafs team that has the entire world of pressure on them to do the thing. It is wild.
13) Florida Panthers
We do like the Panthers as a team, and it would be fun to see them win the Cup after all the garbage years they have gone through, but when it comes to benefitting our favorite hockey team, we have to really cheer against them this year.
Thanks to the Claude Giroux trade, the Flyers own the Panthers’ first-round pick in this year’s draft, and if Florida suddenly loses in the first round, that means that pick rises to becoming 25th overall, instead of potentially a few picks later. We all have to be cheering for the Lightning in this first-round matchup to help our boys. Sorry, Cats.
12) Vegas Golden Knights
Okay, you had your fun little golden team. You and your ugly ass jerseys got to win one championship just a handful of years into existence and some shrewd transactions. The fun should be over.
We do like celebrating the fact that the salary cap is non-existent for this team and almost every other team should just be as aggressive as the Golden Knights are when it comes to making deals, but also we do not want to see Vegas as a champion once again.
11) Washington Capitals
Yes, the Capitals are a division rival but it would also be very funny to see Alex Ovechkin and his old-ass friends get a first-round victory over the Rangers. We aren’t actively cheering for this to happen, but we would just like to see the Rangers lose more than the Capitals win — if that makes any sense.
And if it makes you sleep at night, you can also imagine what the Flyers would have done in place of this team.
10) Los Angeles Kings
The Kings are just such a nothing team to me. Gross and boring jerseys that just remind me of some miserable times in the mid-2010s and no real, true exciting players. Sure, Kevin Fiala is nice to watch at times and the blue line can be as active as any other team’s, but it just feels so blah. They deserve to be just plopped down in the middle. I am comfortable not thinking about their first-round matchup against the Stars because I will hopefully be sleeping peacefully during those games.
9) Nashville Predators
Another just boring team. But, they do at least have Filip Forsberg and Roman Josi, who could just absolutely shock the world at any moment and bust out some game-breaking moves.
But, cheering for the Predators feels like a death sentence and the team they are facing in the first round has not been named yet, so we obviously prefer it to go the other way.
8) Edmonton Oilers
As much as we would like to see Connor McDavid succeed and actually reach a Stanley Cup Final before his Hall-of-Fame-worthy career is done and over with, the Oilers belong right in the middle. They just have incredibly bad vibes, from Corey Perry to Evander Kane, and it would be just brutal to see the team being rewarded for the lack of good moves they have made.
Sure, just luck into a couple superstars and you can win.
7) Toronto Maple Leafs
When looking at the Leafs in this year’s playoffs, it is like an angel and devil are perched right on your shoulder. The angel is telling you to be nice, and to want a team who has only found misery for decades, to be led by their core full of star players to a historic Cup win that would make the city of Toronto burn to the ground. While the devil is telling you that it would be hilarious for the Leafs to lose to Boston in the first round yet again and cause a city-wide panic that would lead to some insane decisions coming from that front office.
6) Winnipeg Jets
The Jets have some fun players, terrible jerseys, weird vibes, and just a city that feels like an underdog no matter who they face in any playoff round. It could be fun watching this team finally get to a level that they have been trying to reach for so long, but also it feels so boring to think about a team in Winnipeg.
5) Tampa Bay Lightning
More than half of this support of the Lightning is for them to crush the Panthers in the first round and improve the draft pick the Flyers own. All of that in addition to that watching the Lightning in the playoffs is almost guaranteed entertainment — whether they get extremely dirty like they can, or display some skill — makes them one of the better teams to be fine with moving on.
4) Dallas Stars
To me, the Stars are just a fun team. Thinking about Jason Robertson mixing the perfect blend of all-around skill with his teammates, is just a joy to think about.
There is zero personal connection and we don’t really care about their fans or city, but just thinking in a vacuum, a team with Robertson, Roope Hintz, Miro Heiskanen, Chris Tanev, and the young core of Wyatt Johnston, Logan Stankoven, and Thomas Harley, just makes this team a fun dark horse team to pick. It’s a hipster pick of hipster picks to support the Stars as a neutral fan, though.
3) Carolina Hurricanes
Obviously, we here at Broad Street Hockey love our Carolina Hurricanes’ front office. We have decided to own our bias and we want them to ultimately win it all so we can say a blogger’s name is on the damn Stanley Cup.
But, the only reason they aren’t at the top is that they currently employ Tony DeAngelo and Brendan Lemieux — stark reminders of having a miserable time supporting this team. We would not like to see them every time we want this team to win.
2) Colorado Avalanche
Like the Lightning, watching an Avalanche playoff game is just pure fun and adrenaline. Instead of being entertained by the chaos of what a Tampa postseason game could be, the Avalanche give you just about all the speed and skill you can handle. Watching them at the top of their game makes you grip whatever piece of furniture is closest to you as you don’t blink for minutes. They probably deserve to have a second ring for the team they have put together, honestly.
Plus, Sean Walker is on the team and wouldn’t it be cool for him to win the Cup?
1) Vancouver Canucks
The Canucks are the top team we are cheering for and it’s for one specific reason: They are Flyers West and if they can do it, so can we.
Vancouver has survived a catastrophic decade of piss-poor management and missed opportunities. Now, with elite players at almost every position, they finally got to the next level and won the whole damn division. They got those players after never drafting higher than fifth overall and even after botching some of their top-10 picks completely. They have managed to surround those players with enough talent to get them to this point and potentially earn some individual awards for their efforts.
Ultimately, it would be so satisfying to see a team that has never done it — and suffered a heartbreaking defeat just one year after our favorite team did — be able to do it. It would show us that it is at least possible to get there and survive the vicious cycle.
