from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

...Don’t we want the playoffs to be as much a showcase for skill as it is for guts? Have we gone to such an extreme with the “hardest trophy to win in sports” that triage becomes as much of the narrative as scoring goals and making plays?

It would be difficult enough to get through the tournament if the NHL actually enforced its rules. The way it is now, however, players begin beating up on each other without consequence starting with Game 1, Round 1. Cross-checks to the lower back and ribs are permitted, as if it were 1980 with Behn Wilson laying the lumber on Mike Bossy. Roughing, charging, slashing … they’re tolerated as part of the cost of the playoffs. It is about surviving as much as it is about thriving.

But it needn’t be that way, and it probably would not be that way with one simple change to the playoff format. And that would entail changing the first two rounds to best-of-five. Yes, I am fully aware of how much revenue is generated by the playoffs and equally cognizant of the hit that eliminating a potential 24 dates would represent. The past five tournaments featured 23 six-game series and 16 seven-game series across the first two rounds, so a hypothetical 55 dates would have been lost, or an average of 11 per year.

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Finally, couldn’t quite see, but was Brad Marchand blowing kisses to the crowd on his way to the bench on that disastrous line change at the end of the first period of Game 7?