Frank Seravalli was joined by Colby Cohen to discuss which teams need a win the most tonight in the latest episode of Daily face-to-face live.
Frank Seravalli: When you look at the four games on the slate tonight, all four teams face a 2-0 loss on the road. Which is crazy to think, since all four lost their home games on Tuesday night, which team needs a win the most?
Coby Cohen: So I’m going to go against pretty much everything Cam just talked about and I’m going to say the Devils. Because, again, I don’t dive into analytics or necessarily look at numbers or understand numbers like Cam does. But at the end of the days, a few things I wrote really stuck with me. You have a number of playoff freshmen in Hughes, Bratt, Hischier. These are guys you rely on to carry your team, but have no playoff experience.
They therefore lost 0-2 entering Madison Square Garden against Igor Shesterkin who has the series’ overall advantage in goal. It becomes very problematic and I don’t know if these players even know what it takes or how to dig deep to win these playoffs. You look at guys like that and I’m not sure they necessarily have that in their dressing room.
Now, next season or the season after that is a totally different story, but I think this year if they go 0-2 down to Colorado or Vegas, they’re going to be in big trouble. Vegas has guys to lean on like cup-winning Pietrangelo, Mark Stone is a big, brave leader. Colorado coming out of a Stanley Cup, plenty of guys in that locker room who can take over a game and just skip a series. So at the end of the day, I think the biggest and must win tonight comes from the New Jersey Devils.
Frank Seravalli: I couldn’t agree with you more. I also think the Leafs, for all the reasons we just mentioned, desperately need a win. They need to feel good about something and if they’re shaking and looking scared again, I think there’s a real chance for the Tampa Bay Lightning to make it a short streak and you know they’re a team that has no problem putting a skate to an opponent’s throat, which is definitely what you need at this time of year.
These are some really intriguing games tonight.
You can watch the rest of the episode here…
