Hockey Page 549 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Obligatory 'Is This It For The Capitals?' post
In a sport as random and silly, and at times downright stupid, as hockey, it’s oxymoronic to try and weave some overarching narrative from a playoff exit. Games and series are decided on a few bounces and deflections most of the time. Change any one variable, and you can get a completely different r...

The Panthers got a finish lesson
It sounds stupid to almost everyone who loosely followed the Panthers-Lightning Game 4 yesterday, considering that the Cats gave up six goals and lost by four. But for most of the game, especially in the first period, Florida kicked the absolute shit out of the Lightning. They relentlessly attacked ...

Please enjoy Dan Feeney’s glorious mullet as Jets O-line guzzles beer at Islanders playoff game
Shortly after 3 p.m., the puck dropped for game four of the Islanders-Penguins series. But it was 5 o’clock somewhere at the ol’ barn in Nassau County....

Nathan MacKinnon is unplayable
Everyone knows that after his 105-point-in-a-56-game season that Connor McDavid is the best player in the world. But what my book presupposes is... maybe he isn’t? (an old joke, and I’ve come to have no use for Wes Anderson over the years and you likely have to, but it’s still a good one). ...

Here’s another violent hit the NHL will do little about
The NHL is going to have another black mark that it won’t do enough about after Nazem Kadri went... well, Nazem Kadri:...

Hey, the NHL playoffs are actually pretty great
Playoff hockey is really cool, and my Twitter timeline seems to agree. It was littered yesterday with tweets echoing the sentiment that playoff hockey is the best of sports. I have to be honest — even my football-loving heart would agree. Seemingly every year, there’s a physicality and an intensity ...

Lawsuit claims ex-Blackhawks coach, a convicted sex offender, masturbated in front of player, threatened retaliation if he didn't participate in sexual activity
I don’t mean to turn this into “Chicago Controversies This Morning,” but it just so happened that another pretty gross story broke out of these parts last night:...

After 28 years, hockey finally corrects its Habs-Leafs mistake
The NHL has been through so many realignments that sometimes you wonder if it shouldn’t just do a random draw before every season (actually, that’s not a terrible idea). It’s when you get to the real aims of past realignments that things get more interesting. ...

Vladimir Putin ‘scores’ eight goals in Russian hockey game
If you think you’ve seen horrendous defense before, you clearly haven’t watched a bunch of guys skate against an authoritarian strongman....

NHL has a silly cap problem it needs to solve
On the ice last night, the Avalanche and Golden Knights put on one of the better games of the season as it actually had something riding on it. The Avs came from a goal down to win 2-1, and put themselves in position to usurp the Knights for the Presidents’ Trophy and home ice all the way through th...

So Jack Eichel is definitely done in Buffalo
Thanks to the haphazard scheduling of this NHL season and the need to make up games lost to COVID protocols and the virus itself, it’s hard to mark exactly when the season ends for a lot of fans. Some teams are already in the barn, while others still have a handful of games to go. Which leads to pre...

John Tortorella, a man never of his time
“Safe is death.”...

What would you say if this was the NBA and not the NHL
I don’t want to really get into the Caps-Rangers stuff. It’s stupid and ugly and caveman and makes it hard to remember for someone like me why we even bother to watch the game in the first place....

Rangers are right about NHL player safety, so it’s time to dump Parros and hire Marc Savard
As it always is, the NHL is in a mess of its own making. Rarely do you get a team decrying a league’s discipline system, at least not in hockey. Gary Bettman rarely tolerates stepping out of line like the Rangers did yesterday when the news broke that the Department of Player Safety doesn’t even wan...

Connor McDavid is skating with giants
It’s hardly news that Connor McDavid is the best player in the NHL. And perhaps it shouldn’t be news that McDavid is one of the greatest players of all time. And yet, due to his being tucked away in Edmonton, and hockey’s general struggle to cut out a foothold in the general sporting consciousness, ...

Tennessee State University wants to create nation's first HBCU hockey program
HBCUs have always been at the forefront of Black advancement in all areas of life....

Who wants to tell them?
It’s always worth a laugh, if it weren’t so infuriating, when an organization like the Chicago Blackhawks gets backed into a corner like this:...

Pierre oughta sit this one out
All I ask of TNT/TBS in their new deal with the NHL is to leave Pierre McGuire on the couch....

We can’t run from the Penguins and Capitals
This will be the third standings system or alignment the NHL has used in the past decade. But no matter how they shake out the teams or decide how they get into the playoffs, it’s a safe bet that the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals will be at the top. Part of that is the NHL basically we...

Deadspin Fixes: The NHL schedule
Yesterday over at ESPN, Greg Wyshynski put forth a report that says the NHL is looking to start next season somewhere around October 12. It’s a little later than a season would normally start, thanks to this season ending in the middle of July for two teams at least, and maybe more if the league has...