One thing that is so obvious after watching hockey closely for 30 years, and what can be so darn tricky, is that hockey is just a different sport altogether in "Game 1" of a season compared to "Game 20" or 60 or whatever.
NHL coaches and teams pushes tremendously hard to do the best they can with what they have. It is like a chess game to a not insignificant extent. The NHL is at a point today where offensive teams can beat defensive teams -- IF -- they play that offensive game really well and manage to achieve certain things that aren't entirely easy to achieve. If the offensive team cannot achieve those things -- it will definitely not have the odds on its side. Hockey is a game with small marginals, but if its anyway to "lose a game" with high probability its to play a naive offensive game against a disciplined defensive team.
Like most games is a total coinflip with maybe up to 5% tilting the odds either way. To score a goal is 9/10 times about marginal, getting bounces etc. The first team to score a goal most often win the game. If its close, its more or less a coin flip.
Almost always, the only time you don't get a coinflip situation is when a naive offensive team plays a disciplined defensive team.
I like David Quinn's work in many areas, and maybe a little less in others. But -- if there is one area I think he really is weak in, it would be to get this team ready for a best of 3 series after only a very short camp lol. We have the record we have against Carolina and that is great, but if we like faced Philly, I wonder if I wouldn't have bet the house on us getting swept in 2 games because AV would just coach eights around DQ. Even peak season they could just back down and counter us fast and we gave up a tremendous amount of odd man rushes. These were really really important games in what was it 29 February and 1 March, but DQ had no idea what it would take to have a shot at winning those games. If we play those 2 like 10 times I wonder if we win 5%...
Rod Brind'Amour isn't AV and obviously we have done a lot of good things against Carolina for a long time. But this factor is what makes this series impossible to predict from my POV. We do have a pretty experienced team. Everyone have played important games before. Even most (all?) young kids have a lot of experience from IIHF best of 1 games in junior tournaments. Like even this team will of course understand that in a best of 3 series, you cannot give an inch away. We can't go down by 2 expecting to score 3.
But, OTOH, our best stretch all season came when Ziba was hurt, right? The reason for that is really obvious, in those games we didn't aim to high. We knew we would only win if we didn't shoot ourselves in the foot. If we can do that here, with Ziba, we could be dangerous.