Beyond Center Ice

 It's a rematch of the 2020 West Finals! In that series, the Stars took it. Who takes it now... Once again, this playoff continues to surprise as each of these two teams were widely expected to be out in the 2nd round, but they prevailed. For Dallas, they had to fight a really tough to beat Kraken team that saw really good goaltending from Philip Grubauer. For the Knights, they had to face McDavid and Draisaitl, but they managed to absolutely break Stuart Skinner and outscore the Oilers, advancing here. As I said, this is a rematch of 2020's Bubble Conference Finals, and the Stars took it. The Golden Knights haven't been to the cup finals since their inaugural 2018 season, so these two teams are certainly used to the pressure. The two who aren't used to these big stages are the goalies. Adin Hill has had to take over the job after Brossoit went down in the middle of the Oilers series, and he has done fantastic. The timeline on Logan Thompson is still muddy, so it looks ...

 The Kraken upset the defending cup champions... can they upset the Stars now? Dallas handled Minnesota in 6, while the Kraken surprised everyone by not only keeping up with the Avs, but taking several series lead and winning the winner-take-all game 7 by a score of 2-1. The Kraken put up an incredible team effort, while the Stars also had decent play from everyone but relied heavily on solid defense and goaltending.  Jake Oettinger carried the Stars into round 2. That much is obviously known, and he has been the best goalie of the first round. He put up a 4.3 GSAx with a .929, and he outmatched Filip Gustavsson, who tried his best to bolster the Wild into round 2. Oettinger's numbers are incredible also when you take into account that he had a rough game 2 that definitely made his numbers a lot worse. The Wild played better in most senses of the word, but I said before this series that Oettinger would be the difference, and he was. But, he was not the only one who stepped up....

 This is it. Our final First Round Playoff Preview. And this is my 2nd rated series to watch, as this one will be great. It's the Dallas Stars (2 seed central) vs Minnesota Wild (3 seed central).  The Stars narrowly missed out on the Central Division title after having it for most of the season. The Wild were doing great too, but trailed off of a bit once they clinched the playoffs, seemingly not taking games as seriously. This series though, will have a little bit of everything. Explosive offense, lockdown defense, stellar goaltending, physicality, everything. It's a matchup between rivals, and it's going to be an exciting one. And, for this final preview, I am going to format things a bit differently. Instead of talking individually about each team, how they got here, and top performers, I feel it more fitting in this serious to compare and contrast the teams as I go through the team play, forward core, defensive core, and goaltending. It will show you just how evenly mat...