WaFd Bank Weekly Warmup: Aug. 10

The NHL postseason continues this week with a final 16 teams playing in what is officially called the First Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. But fans who watched the Qualifying Round and round-robin seeding from Aug. 1 through Sunday know the league's postseason is aleady in full-beard and high-suspense mode.
Let's drop the
WaFd Bank
Weekly Warmup puck to size up the next round of matchups.

Support for Dumba
His Minnesota Wild team was eliminated by Vancouver Friday, but the Wild defenseman made an unforgettable, historic imprint on the 2020 NHL postseason with his anti-racism speech before the first puck drop in the Western Conference hub city Edmonton. Reaction to Dumba's brave and strong words were instantly praised and resonated across all forms of media. Dumba knelted for the U.S. national anthem following his speech and before the Chicago-Edmonton Game 1. For Minnesota's four games, Dumba raised a fist as his form of protest in support of Black Lives Matter and against police brutality.
Two days later, before a Vegas-Dallas round-robin seeding game, Vegas Golden Knights forward Ryan Reaves, who is Black, knelt for the U.S. and Canada national anthems. He was joined teammate and goaltender Robin Lehner and two Dallas Stars, Tyler Seguin and Jason Dickinson. All three players are white.
Seguin explained how the protest occurred to ESPN's Greg Wyshynski: "I was giving it a lot of thought in the last 24 hours about what to do. I talked to Reaves during warmups. He said he saw what I was doing in Dallas [raising funds], and that him and Lehner were going to kneel, and asked if I'd like to join them. I told them I'd join them. Before the game, I went into the dressing room and told everyone what I was doing. Told them there was absolutely no pressure to do anything. Dickinson grabbed me and said he'd like to be a part of it and support his beliefs and my beliefs."
Reaves talked to the media via video conference after the game: "People go across seas and they go to war and families are torn apart for those wars, for the freedom of his country, only to come back and find out this country isn't free for everybody. And I think that's where I'm coming from. Not everybody is truly free in this country."

The No. 1 Draft Choice Goes To...
At 3 p.m. Monday, eight NHL general managers were likely fighting off a racing heart. That's when the second phase of 2020 NHL Draft Lottery decided which of the "placeholder" teams-the losing teams in the just completed Qualifying Round-gets the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, scheduled for Oct. 9 and 10. The winner: New York Rangers and their GM Jeff Gorton, who actually might his heart rate still elevated at the thought of selecting consensus No. 1 pick is Alex Lafreniere, a Team Canada star who excelled in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. The eight teams, each with a 12.5 percent, were Minnesota, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Nashville from the Western Conference bracket and Pittsburgh, New York Rangers, Florida and Toronto from the East.
Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four...
When the league introduced a format that featured 12 teams from each conference would participate in this unprecedented postseason due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was some talk about the potential for upsets by lower seeds. But no one would have expected both No. 12 seeds to win their best-of-five series (Montreal over No. 5 Pittsburgh in the East and Chicago ousting No. 5 Edmonton in the West), plus a No. 11 seed joining the final 16 teams (Arizona booting No. 6 Nashville). And all three series didn't even go the full five games. By record, Arizona, Chicago and Montreal grade out as the 22nd, 23rd and 24th ranked team to make the Qualifying Round. One more note: Both hub city hometown teams, the Maple Leafs in Toronto and Oilers in Edmonton, were eliminated. Toronto got to a Game 5 but didn't score against Columbus in a 3-0 loss Sunday night.
Round and Round
The first-round matchups for series that start Tuesday with lots of fun intersections. In Edmonton, upstart Chicago goes up against No. 1 Vegas and the aforementioned goalie Lehner, whom Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman traded at the league's February deadline because he didn't see that Lehner would re-sign and his CHI team looked likely to miss the playoffs.
Also out West, defending champion St. Louis came into the round-robin seeding tournament as No. 1 and finished No. 4, drawing Vancouver and its impressive group of young forwards plus rookie-of-the-year candidate, the offensively gifted defenseman Quinn Hughes. Other Western Conference series are Dallas-Calgary and Colorado-Arizona.
In the East, Columbus' Game 5 in Toronto and against Toronto earned a ticket to meet Tampa Bay in the First Round. CBJ vs. TBL, hmmm, sounds familiar. Oh yeah, the underdog Blue Jackets not only beat heavy favorite Tampa Bay, they swept the Lightning in four games. Should be fun.
Philadelphia came in the round-robin tournament as No. 4 and finished undefeated to be the top seed in the Eastern Conference, drawing looks to be a better matchup (famous last words?) against Montreal (beware Carey Price in goal who will go up against young goaltender Carter Hart, the former Everett Silvertip). The other East series feature Boston, another No. 1 who fell to No. 4, facing a hot Carolina team (ouch) and Washington and Alex Ovechkin going up against the New York Islanders and former Seattle Thunderbird star Mathew Barzal.
Testing, Testing
Amid the quality hockey, perhaps the best news was the success of the bubble cities to date. More than 7,000 players, coaches, team employees, arena workers, security guards, hotel employees and more were tested for COVID-19 during the first week-plus of play. There were zero positive results.