EP Rinkside 3 stars for Week 6 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs

Alright, let’s start with the caveat that we can’t just put Cale Makar as the No. 1 or 2 star every week even if he deserves it. Sometimes you just gotta shake it up! Feels like we’re gonna have plenty of opportunities to talk about how good the Colorado Avalanche are next week.

So instead, we’ll honor the nice Russian boys who are pushing us toward the highly desirable Tampa Bay Lightning/Colorado series we’ve been hoping for these past three years (sorry, New York Rangers fans!), and two fallen heroes.

Let’s go:

3. Mikhail Sergachev(?)

Hey, look, you need your depth to step up at least occasionally in the postseason if you want to win, especially on the road where you don’t control the matchups.

But there’s depth and then there’s whatever Mikhail Sergachyov has become. He’s playing plenty of minutes, but his underlying numbers are borderline bad (at best, in a lot of ways), not the least of which is the fact that Tampa Bay barely scores when he’s on the ice: Just 1.9 goals per hour at 5-on-5 coming into Thursday night's critical Game 5.

So of course he’s the guy who scored the game-tying goal and took the shot that deflected in off Ondrej Palat for the game-winner inside of two minutes to go, giving the Bolts their first road win of the series.