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For a weird pro playoff season, the Stanley Cup is tops.
Two eighth seeds are still alive in the respective world series of professional basketball and hockey.
The Miami Heat, the No. 8 seed who barely got into the NBA postseason, are three wins away from winning their first world championship since the days of LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and Ray Allen over the San Antonio Spurs and four Hall of Famers of their own.
The Heat dispatched overall No. 1 seed Milwaukee in five games, the New York Knicks in six games and the Boston Celtics in seven games. Heavy underdogs against the Western Conference top-seeded Nuggets, Miami has already stolen one game in Denver and now goes home for Games 3 and 4.
The Stanley Cup playoffs are even more bizarre, with the eighth-seeded Florida Panthers sneaking in and coming back to win the last three games against No. 1 seed Boston, beating Toronto in five and sweeping the second-seeded Hurricanes in four one-goal goals, two in overtime and one of them in 4 extra periods, both in Raleigh.
So you would think the Panthers had a great shot at upsetting Vegas in the Stanley Cup Finals, and who knows? Maybe they still can despite getting outscored 12-4 in the first two games in Sin City. The series moves to South Florida for the next two. The Panthers’ Matthew Tkachuk, who came into the finals as a beast with several miracle goals of his first nine, managed only one in the first two games, a meaningless goal in the third period of a blowout.
The coaching juxtapositions are perhaps the most interesting aspect of the hockey playoffs. Florida’s Paul Maurice coached the 2002 Hurricanes to the Stanley Cup Finals before losing to Detroit in five games.
Bruce Cassidy is in his first season coaching the Vegas Golden Knights, hired eight days after getting fired by the Bruins despite making the playoffs for all of his six seasons at the helm in Boston and compiling a 399-245-108 record.
Cassidy’s teams accumulated at least a hundred points in four of his five full seasons. But he was let go because the Bruins allegedly weren’t tough enough. His successor in Beantown, veteran Jim Montgomery, led the Bruins to the best regular season record in NHL history before they were completely outmuscled by the Panthers in the first round. Cassidy’s new team seems plenty tough enough so far and should be kissing the Cup pretty soon.
Go figure.
Featured image via Associated Press/John Locher
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