With the first week of the Stanley Cup Playoffs nearing its end, a side discussion over at SCH HQ between LBR and myself seemed like it’d be good to bring to the people here, as it has some relevancy to the team watching from home (or some beachfront property) that’s being assembled over at 1901 W. Madison.
A couple of teams with rather young forward groups have grabbed early headlines, led by the Philadelphia Flyers, up 3-0 on their interstate rivals from Pittsburgh. An also young Montreal Canadiens team is in its second playoff appearance, but this youthful group is giving the veteran-laden Tampa Bay Lightning all they can handle through two games and have successfully stolen home-ice advantage with a Game 1 win in Tampa.
Below are the lineups those two teams used in their most recent games, with the ages of the players indicated in parenthesis. The Flyers are up first:
| Foerster (24) | Zegras (25) | Tippett (27) |
| Konecny (29) | Dvorak (30) | Martone (19) |
| Barkey (20) | Cates (27) | Michkov (21) |
Martone may be the one of the biggest stories of the postseason thus far, with last year’s No. 6 overall pick scoring two goals — both game-winners — with an assist while averaging 15:35 of ice time per night. There are some established veterans in this group who are at or near 30, while Foerster and Zegras have played many more games than the typical mid-20s NHLer. Still, this is definitely a group on the younger side up front.
Montreal’s next:
| Caufield (25) | Suzuki (26) | Slafkovsky (22) |
| Texier (26) | Newhook (25) | Demidov (20) |
| Bolduc (23) | Kapanen (22) | Dach (25) |
Even younger! All of the older Montreal players are down on the fourth line: Jake Evans (29), Phillip Danualt (who’s somehow 33 now) and Josh Anderson (turning 32 in two weeks).
We didn’t mention them up top because their not quite as young but the Ducks have some youth on their side as well, entering Game 3 against Edmonton with a 1-1 series split:
| Gauthier (22) | Carlsson (21) | Terry (28) |
| Killorn (36) | Granlund (34) | Sennecke (20) |
| Kreider (34) | Poehling (27) | McTavish (23) |
And just because these comparisons are going to be around for the next several years, it seems, here are the top three lines for San Jose in its regular finale last week, although they’re obviously at home as well:
| Chernyshov (20) | Celebrini (19) | Smith (21) |
| Eklund (23) | Misa (19) | Sherwood (31) |
| Graf (23) | Dellandrea (25) | Kurashev (26) |
The thing that seems to be missing with San Jose compared to the other teams above is the lack of a player in their prime years of the mid/late-20s who’s an established top-six forward. Our guy Phil isn’t quite it, no matter how much we all tried to wish him into that during his Chicago tenure. Terry’s that guy for Anaheim, with five seasons at 50-plus points and likely more than two in the 60s were it not for injuries. Montreal has Caufield and Suzuki. Philadelphia has Zegras and Konecny and Tippett (and Foerster could be included here as well).
Now, let’s look at a possible top-nine for the Hawks next season. Don’t draw any conclusions from how these players are arranged, it’s more about the players in this group than who their linemates are. The ages are based on what the players would be one year from now:
| Nazar (23) | Bedard (21) | Lardis (21) |
| Bertuzzi (32) | Frondell (19) | Kantserov (22) |
| Teuvo (32) | Greene (23) | Moore (22) |
You see the difference there, right?
And that group doesn’t even include the very real possibility that Chicago’s top pick from the draft in a few months could be among this group, which would throw another teenager into the mix and knock the average age down even more. And we’re also not factoring in Chicago’s similarly young D corps.
Based on this sample, it sure seems like playoff contention would still be multiple seasons away unless there’s a significant addition to this group in the near future — like this summer! That likely explains why there will probably be substantial chatter over the next few months regarding Chicago’s need for an established top-six forward to mix in with this rather infantile group of NHLers, because even the teams currently being labeled as “young” in this postseason still have an established top-six forward or two in their prime hockey years on the roster. The Hawks could have a wealth of such talent by the end of this decade if all goes to plan. But can we really wait that much longer for this that to happen?
It’s also worth noting that we’re only talking about the first handful of games of the first round, too.
Because we always seem to end up here, let’s take a glance at a team from the increasingly distant past that was loaded with young players and made a fairly surprising run to the Western Conference Final:
| Versteeg (22) | Toews (21) | Kane (20) |
| Sharp (27) | Pahlsson (30) | Brouwer (23) |
| Havlat (28) | Bolland (22) | Ladd (23) |
Six players 23-or-under, with two of them (Versteeg and Ladd) brought in via trades. Two of the more established veterans (Sharp and Havlat) were also brought in via trade, had been with the team for several seasons and were very much in the primes of their careers. The other (Pahlsson) was an acquisition at the trade deadline. This isn’t the only way to long-term success, of course. But it is a much different path than the one the Blackhawks are currently traversing.