The wacky playoffs

See the Boston Bruins go into Tampa and steal Game One from the Lightning. Boston's pretty good -- ask the Maple Leafs. Advantage Beaners. See them go back home and get blitzed on their own ice to fall behind 2-1 in the series. Who's going to win? Coin flip.

See the Utah Jazz get hammered in Game One of their NBA series at Houston. No surprise there. See the Jazz come out and steal Game Two from the Rockets to take home court advantage and even up the series 1-1. Who's going to win? Probably still Houston. But now the series goes back to Utah for the next couple games.

If, and a mighty big if, the Jazz were to take Game Three and go up 2-1, the pressure on Houston would be enormous. It further figures that if Utah stays clean at home and goes up 3-1, well, what comes after enormous?

And a whole lot of folks will start picking on/criticizing/dissecting Houston, making matters even worse. Could the team with the -- by far -- best regular season record in the league, get knocked off before even getting to the Conference Finals? Nah. They'll right the ship. Or coach Mike Dantoni better hope they do, or he's gonna have some serious 'splainin' to do to the press and his bosses.

As was noted before in this space, the Indiana Pacers should rightfully have knocked off the Cleveland Cavaliers. How Lebron and Co. escaped to move on is more a fluke than a sign of dominant play. The Cavs are ripe for the picking.

But -- now they're playing the Toronto Raptors. In Game One of that series, the hosers of the north had the Cavs right where they wanted them. Down 15 points midway through the third quarter, fans going nuts, and James having a bad game, at least by his standards.

What could go wrong?

Turned out -- plenty. The Raptors would blow the lead and lose the game. Don't be surprised if Toronto folds its tent like it did last year when the pressure ratcheted up, when they were supposed to be good as well. The same Cavs swept them in a four game series.

For a first year expansion team, the Golden Knights of Las Vegas have been amazing. At or near the top of the standings all year long during the regular season. Nobody saw that coming.

But the San Jose Sharks went into Vegas and punched them in the mouth early in their current series, stealing home ice away. Uh oh.

To their credit, again, the Knights just went into Saint Joe and returned the favor -- a convincing win, to reclaim home ice and the momentum. And the Sharks are really, REALLY tough to beat at home.

Can the upstart Knights polish them off? We'll see. Another coin flip.

Yep, these playoffs are definitely getting interesting.

Love it when at least a game or three is on TV every night.

Couch tater paradise.