Eastern Conference matchups to watch for in Round 1

The 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs kick off Monday night, with eight interesting first-round matchups to try and sort through over the next two weeks. This is personally one of my favourite parts of the year because it really scratches an itch on the strategic side of the sport. Each matchup is unique, with specific strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the series that will serve a huge role in determining how they play out.

To help get you ready for it all, we're really going to zone in on one specific thing to keep in mind for every single team involved in this year's postseason, with the hope that it'll expose an exploitable matchup against their particular first-round opponent. If styles make a fight, then we're interested in identifying the ones that could help deliver the knockout blow here.

In the spirit of covering as much ground as possible, I'm partnering up with my colleague Ryan Lambert to tackle it all the best we can. For each series, I'll take one side, and he'll take the other. We're going to focus on the four Eastern Conference matchups in this piece, but you can also read about the Western Conference matchups. 

Let's get to it.