Unpredictability, upsets, reliance on goaltending: It's Stanley Cup playoff time

Jon Cooper doesn't get much sleep from September through June, even less when the NHL playoffs begin.

After coaching the Tampa Bay Lightning to the league's best regular-season record in 2019, getting swept in the first round in stunning fashion and then winning the Stanley Cup back to back, he knows all too well how hockey changes when the playoffs start.

"You know when you're in a deep sleep and your alarm goes off at 6 in the morning? That's what it's like," Cooper said. "That's the difference."

The shift from Game 82 of the regular season to Game 1 of the first round in the NHL playoffs is perhaps the most dramatic shift in sports given the level and style of play, how goals are scored and prevented, and often how post-season games are officiated.

That explains the unpredictability and upsets, the reliance on goaltending and why those hoisting the Cup sometimes are so banged up they can't hold it over their heads.

"It's just changes everything," Lightning defenceman Victor Hedman said.

Still, with the Presidents' Trophy-winning Florida Panthers, Western Conference-leading Colorado and other top contenders so dominant on offence and rapidly evolving play predicated on skill and talent, this may be the first post-season a team can win it all with offence.

"Usually at the end of the day defensive hockey wins in the playoffs," said St. Louis general manager Doug Armstrong, whose Blues bruised their way to the Cup three years ago and won't try that this time around. "But I think there's so many high-scoring, good-scoring teams that this could be maybe the start of something different where you can score your way through the playoffs."

There were 6.28 goals scored per game this season, the highest average since the salary