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DENVER -- Colorado goaltender Alexandar Georgiev went home after a recent shaky outing and immediately watched film -- the car-racing thriller "The Fast and the Furious."
Anything to keep his own mind from racing.
It's playoff time, where teams march to the beat of their goaltenders. They want them laser-focused, full of confidence and ready to save the day.
There are quite a few teams going into the postseason with big decisions in net. That includes Boston, which could split the goaltending duties, and the Avalanche, where Georgiev led the league in wins (38) but also goals against (183). Not every team has a Connor Hellebuyck, the Winnipeg goaltender who will try to shutdown the Avalanche and is a favorite to capture the Vezina Trophy as the league's best.
"Your goalie (in the playoffs) is the most important thing, like a quarterback or a pitcher. You need them to be on top of their game," said former NHL goaltender Michael Leighton, who now lives in Windsor, Ontario, and runs a goalie academy. "If they're not, your team's in trouble."
It simply boils down to that. When a goalie is going good, everything seems to be going good.
"It gives us a ton of confidence," Jets defenseman Neal Pionk said of Hellebuyck's big-save ability. "It lets you play freely, make some plays. Because when we play these good teams, they're going to make some plays no matter what we do. We could play a perfect game and still give up a few scoring chances and that's where the goalie helps us out."
All across the league, the situations vary in net heading into the playoffs:
-- Nashville vs. Vancouver. For Nashville, it's the Juuse Saros Show after leading the NHL in saves (1,672). Thatcher Demko is back from a knee injury for the Canucks.
-- Florida vs. Tampa Bay. Andrei Vasilevskiy has rounded into familiar stellar form for the Lightning after returning from back surgery earlier this season. Florida has its own star Russian goalie in Sergei Bobrovsky (six shutouts).
-- New York Rangers vs. Washington. With the Presidents' Trophy-winning Rangers, it's Igor Shesterkin, who won at least 36 games for a third straight season. Washington's Charlie Lindgren will be making his NHL postseason debut.
-- Boston vs. Toronto. The Maple Leafs will rely on Ilya Samsonov while the Bruins have two standouts in Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman.
-- Edmonton vs. Los Angeles. Stuart Skinner is in the crease for Edmonton as a familiar foe awaits. The Kings used both Cam Talbot and David Rittich down the stretch as they prepare to face the Oilers for the third consecutive postseason.
"There ain't no more pace," said the 39-year-old James, the league's oldest active player and all-time scoring leader who is seeking a fifth NBA title. "Pace yourself for what? Now it's the sprint. It's a sprint now. We already went through the marathon."
Round 1 begins Saturday with four games: Orlando at Cleveland, Phoenix at Minnesota, Philadelphia at New York and the Los Angeles Lakers at Denver. On Sunday, four more Game 1s await: Miami at Boston in a rematch of the last two East finals, Dallas at the Los Angeles Clippers, Indiana at Milwaukee and New Orleans at Oklahoma City.
The Thunder won 22 games three seasons ago, then 24 games the year after that. Those days are long gone already: 40 wins last season showed the potential, and 57 wins this season -- with no full-time starter over age 25 -- suggest that OKC's time may be now.
"It means a little more, how we got here, for sure," said Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder guard who is a legit MVP candidate after averaging 30.1 points this season. "But at the end of the day, it's home-court advantage, I guess, until the Finals. And that's always a plus when your home court is like ours."
They are young, they might be brash, and they certainly are fun. Thunder guard Jalen Williams was asked why he wasn't wearing his division title T-shirt when the Thunder clinched the No. 1 seed: "This leather jacket cost a lot," he said, drawing laughs.
The Thunder weren't expected to be in this position; they were given 100-1 odds to win the NBA title when the season started. Boston is a very different story; much was expected from the Celtics, and they delivered.
All Boston did this season was put up the fifth-best record in franchise history, which is a big deal for any team and an even bigger deal when a team is as storied as the Celtics franchise. Of the four Boston teams that had better regular season records, three went on to win NBA titles.
"You can't even expect that you're going to be a 64-win team," Celtics President Brad Stevens said. "That's a really hard threshold to meet no matter how good you are, no matter how well organized you are from a coaching standpoint, how many options you have from a playing standpoint. That's just a hard thing to do."
There is no apparent weakness with the Celtics, who finished the season ranked No. 1 in offensive rating, No. 2 in points per game, No. 3 in defensive rating and No. 5 in points allowed per game. Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Kristaps Porzingis all finished averaging at least 20 points per game; only two other Celtics teams had three 20-point scorers in a season. And they added Jrue Holiday -- a U.S. Olympian this summer, just like Tatum -- in the offseason to help anchor a defense built for this time of year.
"Everybody has that right mindset," Celtics guard Derrick White said. "We're looking forward to this."
The Knicks lost Julius Randle and have somehow kept climbing, led by its Villanova trio -- MVP candidate Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo. They get a showdown first-round series against Joel Embiid and the 76ers, a team that was vying for probably a top-2 seed before Embiid got hurt and missed much of the year.
"We just focus on getting better, every single day," Brunson said.
There are some new faces in the playoffs: The Thunder, Indiana -- the highest scoring team in the league this season -- and Orlando are all playing at this time of year for the first time since 2020. Indiana faces a Milwaukee team that will open without star Giannis Antetokounmpo, and the Magic take on a Cleveland team that hasn't won a playoff series without James in uniform since 1993.
"We're going to enjoy this," Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said, "because they deserve to."
Odds are, it'll be either Boston, Oklahoma City, Denver, New York, Milwaukee or Minnesota winning the title. Since 1984, 39 of the 40 NBA champions have entered the playoffs seeded 1, 2 or 3 in their conference.
That said, it's been an unpredictable year. And the playoffs inevitably bring surprises.
"The reality is we're going to have to play well on Sunday," Stevens said. "And beyond."