2018-nhl-playoffs Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Capitals Finally Did It
It doesn’t really matter. It’s just a conference final appearance. The Capitals are only halfway through the postseason, eight wins down, eight tough wins still left to earn for the only ending that’ll leave them truly satisfied. And each of the four other teams still alive are better bets to go th...
Filip Forsberg Is Too Pretty To Die Without A Game 7<em></em>
The Predators beat the Jets 4-0 in Winnipeg tonight to fight off second-round elimination and force a Game 7 back in Nashville. It was a mostly tense game despite the final, with the danger of a two-goal lead particularly looming over the Preds when the Jets had an early third-period power play. But...
Evgeny Kuznetsov Frees The Capitals From Playoff Hell<em></em>
For the first time ever, an Alexander Ovechkin Capitals team has both advanced past the NHL’s second round and beaten the Sidney Crosby Penguins in a playoff series. Evgeny Kuznetsov got the Game 6 series-ender in overtime, breaking the teams’ 1-1 tie off a turnover stolen by Ovechkin and passed acr...
Marc-Andre Fleury Is Playing The Hockey Of His Life
Marc-Andre Fleury was the face of the Golden Knights long before the Golden Knights had any faces. The two worst-kept secrets in hockey were that 1)the Penguins were prepared to hitch their wagon to the decade-younger Matt Murray and would not protect Fleury in the upcoming expansion draft, and 2)Ve...
It Has Come To This: Coach Orders Brad Marchand To Stop Licking Opponents
A request from the league didn’t do the trick. A sternly worded letter has been sent; an NHL bigwig also delivered the message to the player and his team’s manager. Now we are here: Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy ordering his player to stop licking the faces of his opponents before the start of today’s ...
Report: The NHL Tries, Once Again, To Talk Brad Marchand Out Of Licking People
Bruins dingus Brad Marchand was reportedly asked by the NHL to stop licking opposing players on April 26. The licking did not stop: Friday night, during his team’s eventual overtime loss to the Lightning, Marchand was spotted licking the face of Tampa winger Ryan Callahan. Hard as it may be to belie...
Pekka Rinne And His Knob Kept The Predators Alive
In the highest leverage game of their playoffs so far—don’t you hate the term “must-win” in non-elimination games?—Predators goalie Pekka Rinne turned in his best performance of the postseason yet, anchoring Nashville as they beat Winnipeg 2-1 on the road in Game 4 to tie their second-round series a...
Sidney Crosby Makes Everyone Better
Here’s a stat—a quirk?—that has very little to do with anything else in this blog but is too amazing not to lead with: In this series, Sidney Crosby has been on the ice for all 10 of Pittsburgh’s goals....
NHL Suspends Tom Wilson Three Games For Jaw-Breaking Hit
Less than 24 hours before Game 4 of the Capitals and Penguins’ second-round series—which Washington leads 2-1—the NHL announced that it has suspended Capitals enforcer Tom Wilson three games for his hit on Penguins forward Zach Aston-Reese in Game 3, which broke the Pittsburgh player’s jaw and gave ...
The Capitals-Penguins Blood Feud Now Maybe Has Some Spit In It
Familiarity breeds contempt, yes, but also, contempt breeds contempt. The Capitals and Penguins would dislike each other even if they didn’t meet four times a season and then again seemingly every spring, but the prolificity of the rivalry gives the bad blood the time and exposure it needs to ripen ...
Alex Ovechkin Pulls A Crosby And Beats The Penguins
With 1:07 to play in tonight’s Caps-Penguins Game 3, which was tied at three, Alexander Ovechkin delivered a stellar game winner on a two-on-one to put Washington up 2-1 in the series. And he did it by batting a puck from mid-air and into the net in the signature style of his rival Sidney Crosby. (S...
Tom Wilson Strikes Again
Washington Capitals bruiser Tom Wilson, after escaping discipline for knocking Pittsburgh’s Brian Dumoulin out of Game 2, made his presence felt again in Game 3 of their series tonight. As Penguins forward Zach Aston-Reese tried to take the puck out of his own zone near the benches in the second per...
The Golden Knights Won A Game Of Inches
Series can hinge on the slimmest of margins, but rarely can you see those margins so starkly as in Monday’s Game 3. It is no overstatement to say that the Golden Knights are up 2-1 in their series with the Sharks because of an inch here, an inch there....
This Is What We All Came To See
Because these are two relatively young franchises, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking of the Jets’ and Predators’ rosters the same way, as playoff ingénues. But Nashville has been here before, seven postseasons in nine years, and has carried over most of the same faces from last year’s Fina...
Isn't This A Goal? It Sure Looks Like A Goal
Soon after the Capitals killed a Penguins power play, at about the 11-minute mark of the third period of today’s Game 2, with the Capitals holding a 3-1 lead, the Penguins scored what sure looked an awful lot like a goal:...
Jets-Predators Is A Cruel And Fantastic Second-Round Series
First off, I have to admit that I actually like the current NHL playoff format, and its focus on intra-division competition in the opening two rounds. I think the general geographic closeness of the early-round games is a plus for the competitors, but more importantly, the repeated match-ups year af...
What If The Golden Knights Just Never Lose?
How are things going for the Vegas Golden Knights? Marc-Andre Fleury is doing the wave:...
Penguins Remind Us That The Capitals Can Never Relax
Behind a lead-off goal 17 seconds in from Evgeny Kuznetsov, and a sniper shot at the start of the third from Alex Ovechkin, the Capitals were cruising tonight with a two-goal lead in Game 1 of their second-round series against the Penguins. But in the span of five minutes, it all fell apart, as thre...
Report: The NHL Called The Bruins To Ask Brad Marchand To Stop Licking Other Players
The NHL called up the Bruins to let them know that Brad Marchand should not be licking or nuzzling his opponents, as first reported by SportsNet and later confirmed by ESPN. ...
So Much For The Leafs
This was its own collapse, in its way. Sure, it was not as shocking or brutal as 2013, but few things in sports history are. In 2013, the Leafs entered the third period of Game 7 against the Bruins with a lead and surrendered four unanswered goals to lose 5-4. In 2018, the Leafs entered the third pe...