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Host, TSN The Reporters with Dave Hodge

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Thumbs down to the assumption that the facts and figures compiled during the 1230 games of the NHL's regular season are solidly relevant when it comes to the playoffs. 

The only way to make post-season predictions is to use the regular-season as evidence at hand, right? If so here's how the Tampa Bay-Detroit series might have been analyzed.

Unlike last year, Tampa Bay had a healthy Ben Bishop in goal, coming off a 40-win season. Tampa Bay was the highest-scoring team in the regular season, and Detroit had goaltending problems. 

If you were watching the Lightning unsuccessfully struggle to score a goal against Petr Mrazek last night, did any of that enter your mind? 

Tampa Bay owned the season's best home record. It took 60 minutes of Game 1 to place home-ice advantage on the side of the Red Wings, and Tampa is on the edge of elimination unless it's regained in game four. 

Nothing has been decided yet in any of the eight first-round series, and maybe the final results will all make sense according to the regular-season form charts. But for every time you quote a regular-season stat to support a playoff pick, you should make a wild guess, because, chances are, the two will even out.

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Thumbs up to Chicago's three-overtime victory over Nashville that put the Blackhawks in a 3-1 driver's seat and gave hockey fans the chance to stay up late and celebrate the fact that a shootout wasn't allowed to spoil the fun.

I'm not completely serious, because I'm actually a shootout fan and there's a time limit on how long I'll stay with games that threaten to go on forever. But that doesn't mean I advocate shootouts in the playoffs - well, read on, maybe I do - and it doesn't suggest that the Chicago-Nashville encounter was that hard to endure. 

The first time a playoff game unfolds that way, it is celebrated. But I draw the line at too many marathons, and at anything that lasts much longer than game four in Chicago. 

So, I'll risk the outrage, three overtimes - or the equivalent of a second game - is enough and a fourth overtime is too much. If the NHL can use four-on-four and is about to include three-on-three for regular-season overtime, there's no reason those measures would be out of place beyond a certain point in a playoff game. And once in a very early morning blue moon, a playoff shootout just might be necessary. 

Now, I'll return that suggestion to the file of ideas never to be adopted by the NHL. And you may cheer that fact, if you're awake.