Hockey Page 550 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Just say you wanna f**k the Stanley Cup
Hockey’s hallow-fication of The Stanley Cup has been cartoonish for a while. It’s perhaps the pointy end of its #PleaseLikeMySport inferiority complex. “We play for a Cup while others play for a championship,” as if it wasn’t really the same fucking thing. ...
Canucks won last night, but that’s not worth celebrating
The Canucks returned to the ice last night, beating the Toronto Maple Leafs in overtime, 4-3. Which resulted in a predictable reaction from the hockey press:...
Once again, for those in the back: Cancel the Canucks season now, because this proposed schedule is doo-doo
The NHL came to its senses a tiny bit by pushing back the Vancouver Canucks’ return to the ice, but a team that already has a minuscule chance of making the playoffs still will be asked to play a grueling gauntlet of a schedule to close out the season....
The NHL trade deadline, and the Maple Leafs in particular, continue to be really weird
There’s nothing like the NHL trade deadline to warp what you thought you knew about teams’ priorities and how players are valued. GMs alternate between desperation to chase the Cup and desperation to get anything for players who can’t wait to high-tail it out of town at the season’s end. The process...
Canucks finally set to return after teamwide COVID nightmare, but why?
The Vancouver Canucks will return to practice on Sunday, and resume their season on Friday against the Oilers, the NHL announced. What’s more, the eight games the Canucks have missed, or will miss, have been rescheduled, extending their season to May 16....
In one Texas town, a dead Black man and a hockey team’s divisive ‘thin blue line’ jerseys
Marvin Scott III’s family wasn’t notified of his death in the Collin County Detention Agency until nearly 15 hours later, and then only by a text message from the medical examiner....
Miracle on Ice hero Mark Pavelich’s suicide is why it's unacceptable that the NHL does little to end hits to the head
When I get mad about the lame-ass suspensions and fines the NHL hands out for hits to the head, this is why....
Carter Hart looks good in return, but the Flyers still suck
Carter Hart made his return to the net after an eight-game “reset” for the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday, and no, let’s not go with any rising from the dead analogies, but he was looked to as the savior of the franchise....
Vancouver Canucks in full-blown COVID crisis with more than 20 players, coaches on protocol list (Updated)
UPDATE (4/4/21, 12:24 E.T.): Initial reports of 14 positive tests within the Canucks organization have swelled to more than 20 confirmed infections among the team’s roster and coaching staff, according to TSN’s Darren Dredger:...
Nathan MacKinnon’s helmet toss sums up the Arizona Coyotes
I’ve had my share of fun at the expense of the Coyotes and will continue to do so as they continue to be the dopey buzzard of NHL, and really all sports teams. It must be a rotten existence to play for them, other than the warm weather and athlete’s paycheck and lack of any pressure whatsoever. Last...
Conor McDavid should have been suspended for this garbage, but of course the NHL didn’t
The NHL only threw a fine at Connor McDavid for this attempted decapitation of Montreal’s Jesperi Kotkaniemi on Tuesday night:...
The Flyers have eaten another one
As every sport relies more heavily on analytics to tell us what’s really going on, there are fewer and fewer occurrences that seemingly spring from a different plane of existence. Something beyond explanation. Things that are only familiar to Wiccans. We can just about always point to some number or...
Taylor Hall runs from the living and the dead
Taylor Hall is for sale again. It seems he’s destined for this, toiling away on an also-ran while the speculation about his next stop, and his impending free agency, consumes all the oxygen around him. He has become a drifter, the object of blame for an organization-wide failure. Is it merely coinci...
Darryl Sutter gets point across to Johnny Gaudreau as only he can: Through snark
Darryl Sutter played 406 games in the NHL, so he knows what an achievement it is to get to 500....
Avs announcer John-Michael Liles and his wine cave are a life goal
I’ve always liked John-Michael Liles. He was the type of player I had spent decades as a Hawks fan wishing they would have. When my professional life combined with my fandom life, my cohorts and I must’ve dreamed up 50 different proposals to pry him loose from Toronto or Carolina to bolster the Hawk...
Tim Peel is just a symptom of the NHL’s problem with enforcing fake parity
As expected, the NHL couldn’t wait to toss Tim Peel out on his ass after he got caught on a hot mic basically admitting to make-em-even calls. It’s not really much of a punishment. Peel was due to retire next month anyway, will still get paid, and due to his years and years of clown shoes refereeing...
NHL ref caught saying exactly what we’ve always suspected
Update (9:40 AM EDT): Just minutes after this story’s publication, the league announced that Tim Peel “no longer will be working NHL games now or in the future.” Womp womp....
The Colorado Avalanche make medicine sick
It isn’t much of a story when a preseason favorite starts rising to the top of the standings. Most everyone thought the Colorado Avalanche would be a Cup contender this year, playing 56 preseason games and one warm-up series before a West Division final with the Vegas Golden Knights that will contai...
Flyers need to shake off epic Rangers beatdown in a hurry, and history’s on their side
The 9-0 beating that the Flyers took at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night wasn’t a record breaker, but it was a rarity. It’s the first time Philadelphia has gotten shut out by that wide of a margin since 1969 against Chicago, only the 82nd game in NHL history that was 9-0 or worse, and the 17...
The Minnesota Wild have a fun player in Kirill Kaprizov, and suddenly everything seems possible
Even if you’re a hockey fan, it always takes a second to remember that the Minnesota Wild exist and what their jerseys look like. In all of the four major sports, the Wild are the most guy-in-the-work-kitchen that no one really knows. You see him there, he might nod to someone once a month, and then...