Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri

Filipovich.

Welcome to the Hockey PEDEO cast. My name is D Demetri Filipovich and joining me here in studio, my good buddy Thomas Trans. Tom, what's going on, man? Dmitri. It's good to be back with you, man. Yeah, we're so back. I missed you, bud. Yeah. It's been a PDO cast listeners. I missed you guys too. Yeah. Well, I think the feeling is mutual. It's been a couple weeks.

Since we last spoke, we did promise we were going to try to at least do one of these where we catch up and have a chat about what's going on in the playoffs once per round. Last time we talked

was, I think the opening weekend of the 2026 postseason, which feels like an eternity goat at this

point. We're into the back half of round two. We're coming out of a final weekend of games, and we're going to try to run through all four series and talk about where we're at with them and what we saw while watching the games this weekend. Do you want to start with Hab Sabers? I think so. Let's do it. So the Habs... I thought that was a beat down. Well, so they drop game one to start the series. And I thought the Sabres looked really good in that game. I did a show the day after. And I did kind of point out that I think it was a big ask for the Habs to go from not only playing at Game 7 in Tampa Bay, but white knuckling their way through the end of

that, holding on to that lead all the way through the finish line, and then jumping into this

series on the road again. And I think that explains some of that effort that we saw from them

in game one. The series has looked different than then. Certainly with them bouncing back,

winning these last two games.

And I'm with you. I don't think the final number is do it justice partly because of the score and then how the third played out in the Sabres with their credit, which we can talk about, did give a bit of a pushback where they nearly made it four or three at some point of the third. But I felt like it was an absolute meltdown defensively from the Sabres. especially, I mean, in so many ways, but I thought especially on the penalty kill, I thought the, a number of backdoor tapins that the house manufactured that they didn't quite capitalize

on, but that they were like an inch away from capitalizing on.

I mean, obviously there's the obvious two from Caffield, the one where he's got Samuelson

in his hip pocket. And I had like, I wrote down at the time. I was like, he has position. He's at the net. He's in the blue paint. And people are going to be like, well, he's too small to score in the playoffs. And it's like, no, that's just luck. And luckily, we don't have to have that conversation since they scored that beautiful

two one goal. But he

had the other one off the That's just luck. Luckily, we don't have to have that conversation since they scored that beautiful

two one goal.

But he had the other one off the six Slavkovsky backhand feed.

Yes.

But he was that play right off the draw.

I mean, they were inches away from scoring multiple, just backdoor tapins.

I don't understand too why the sabers didn't at any point

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