EP Rinkside 3 stars for Week 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs

Hey, it’s the end of Week 1 of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs. And lucky for us, it always becomes obvious pretty quickly who the three stars of the week are, because every single game is right there in front of you.

Let’s go:

3. That first-round feeling

This is truly the most wonderful time of the year.

You sit down at 7 p.m., turn on the TV, and it’s nothing but playoff hockey delivered straight to your veins for the next six hours, minimum. And for a nice change of pace — instead of the “here’s 12 games that all start at 7 p.m. Eastern” strategy the NHL specializes in — the games’ start times are all staggered so that you can see a pretty good chunk of the period in both games that are going on.

Then, the second set of games on any given night only starts when there’s a pretty strong chance t