Saturday is Aug. 1, which means...the New York Islanders and Florida Panthers will faceoff in the playoffs, naturally.
It’s so hard to know what to expect: Teams have only played one exhibition game each — for the Islanders, steady and victorious; for the Panthers, deflating and disastrous. They’re coming back from a long layoff, playing under quarantine-light conditions, in a strange rink, with no fans and no family.
In a way it will be a “pure” tournament, as Barry Trotz has said, because players are healthy and stars are not ground down from a long regular season.