Hockey Page 488 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Blues Exorcise The Decades
The thing you have to understand is how big a deal this is. In the coming days, before and after the Stanley Cup Final begins on Monday in Boston, you are going to hear ad nauseam that this is the St. Louis Blues’ first finals appearance since 1970. That is true, and 49 years is a long, long time, b...
The Blues Took The Sharks Off Life Support And Advanced To The Stanley Cup Final
Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals followed the exact same template as the last two games in this series, as the Blues got out to an early lead and kept it, eliminating the banged-up Sharks in front of an uncontainable home crowd whose force almost rivaled the storms outside. St. Louis earned t...
Anthony Mantha Is Blazing A Path Of Destruction Through The World Championship
We’re just a few hours out from a hugely important, potentially decisive Western Conference Finals Game 6, so right now is obviously the perfect time to talk about how dominant this one Detroit Red Wings kid has been over in Slovakia. Yes, for all those fans who don’t have a team left in the playoff...
Counterpoint: A Little Scuffle Only Means The Sharks Are Ready To Shock The World
I have been a lifelong Sharks fan for at least two weeks, and if there’s anything my hours of fandom have taught me it’s this: Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky is wrong to underestimate the mighty Sharks....
Game 6 Just Got A Lot Tougher For The Sharks
The Sharks will not have Erik Karlsson or Tomas Hertl for Game 6 tonight, and Joe Pavelski is a game-time decision. By the low, low standards set by a disastrous Game 5, the news could be worse. Joe Pavelski could be definitely out instead of just possibly out and definitely hampered. Joonas Donskoi...
Well, That Was A Disaster For The Sharks
The Sharks seem pretty, pretty boned after Sunday’s 5-0 loss to the Blues, which gives St. Louis a 3-2 series lead. And it’s not even the whole verge-of-elimination thing; San Jose has faced that before, and they’re still here. But if they’re to complete another series comeback, and win yet another ...
Well, At Least David Backes Is In A Cup Final
I’m sitting here trying to come up with a reason it’s not a total bummer that the vile Boston Bruins are in their third Stanley Cup Final of the decade after a 4-0 win to complete a sweep of Carolina, and, reader, I am struggling. (This applies to non-Bruins fans only, of course. For Bruins fans: Co...
Kaapo Kakko Looks Like A Beautiful, Unstoppable Monster
The projected second pick in the upcoming NHL Draft has been nothing short of dazzling for his native Finland during the ongoing IIHF World Championships in Slovakia. Kaapo Kakko, the 18-year-old winger who broke the Finnish league’s record for most goals by a first-time draft-eligible player, has b...
Is There Anything Fishy About The Sharks?
The San Jose Sharks have forged a reputation over the decades of always being invited to the party and always having to leave by 10:30, either because that’s when their ride is leaving or they have to relieve the babysitter or they have to work in the morning and need their eight hours because they ...
Don't Send Joe Thornton To The Old Folks Home Just Yet
On your typical playoff team that features a wizened old veteran looking for his first-ever championship, the old guy isn’t much more than a walking feel-good story, there to positively affect the locker room and take charge with the media. As the San Jose Sharks moved through the Western Conference...
The Blues Got Screwed By Yet Another Officiating Disaster
Images the NHL wants to linger after an hard-fought overtime game: the jubilation of the goalscorer; his teammates erupting on the bench and spilling over to celebrate on the ice; the disappointment and hard-earned exhaustion of the losers, skating off in disbelief....
Timo Meier's Controversial Assist Hands The Sharks A Game 3 Win
You’re not going to believe this, but there was a huge controversy in the NHL Playoffs tonight. In overtime of Game 3 between the Sharks and the Blues, Erik Karlsson scored the winner, his second goal of the game, to give San Jose a 2-1 lead in the series. The Sharks’ 5-4 victory was not received po...
The Hurricanes Finally Didn't Stink, But Tuukka Rask Made Sure That Didn't Matter
Sometimes, it just isn’t your series. Sometimes, you just run into a buzzsaw—or perhaps a brick wall. The Carolina Hurricanes, now down 3-0 to the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference final, may not particularly care which of those two cases is more applicable here, but it’s really a Venn diagram...
Robert Bortuzzo Scored An Unlikely Goal And Then Got Roasted By His Teammates
Robert Bortuzzo doesn’t score goals. He doesn’t really try to, and he’s not good at it. There’s no more delicate way to put this....
The Four Horsemen Of The Second Round
As the second round came to a close I looked upon the remnants of the NHL and beheld the Four Horsemen who delivered judgment upon the match-ups. Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death each sent a team into the next life, which appears mostly to be either Worlds, or a golf course in British Columbia....
The Avalanche Were Sunk By A Bad Rule, Badly Applied
Pretend you don’t know anything about hockey. Take a look at this frozen moment of action. Where is the puck? Where is the play happening, and where is it not? Who is involved in the action, and who still has the potential to affect it? Who is violating the rules? More importantly, who is violating ...
Sharks Do Their Job, Get Some Help, And Eliminate The Avalanche In Game 7
It would have been very on-brand for the perennial choke-artist San Jose Sharks to blow it against the 8th seed in the second-round of what might be the most wide-open NHL playoffs of all-time. But to their credit, San Jose recovered from Gabriel Landeskog’s Game 6 overtime winner and got the win th...
We Demand More Overtimes
The best overtime game of the Stanley Cup Playoffs was the Denver-Portland game Friday night. All glory and honor to Blues-Stars Game 7 Tuesday night, which certainly did its best, combining multiple overtimes with the additional sparkle of not just sudden death but expulsion, but it remains the sil...
Patrick Maroon Did It For St. Louis
Until Patrick Maroon finally, finally beat Ben Bishop 5:50 into the second overtime and put the Blues through to the Western Conference final, no player in the history of the NHL had ever scored a Game 7 overtime winner in his hometown. It’d been close, once, when in 1979 Yvon Lambert, out of Drummo...
The Blues Laid Siege To The Stars Until They Finally Fell In Game 7
The St. Louis Blues should have won Game 7 about four times over before regulation even ended, but finally, in double overtime, they got some reward for an absolutely dominant performance. While an instantly legendary showing from Stars goalie Ben Bishop almost allowed Dallas to survive, the Blues b...