atlantic Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

That’s the difference between the goalies
Hockey — as weird, random, and boorish as it can get — is a pretty simple game at times. The storylines coming out of Game 3 were that the Tampa Bay Lightning authored some market correction to get back into the Stanley Cup Final after a 6-2 win to get the series to 2-1. And with no team having won ...

The NHL finally gets its era-shifting Final with Lightning vs. Avs
Hockey being what it is, mostly weird and random, rarely throws up the two best teams in the NHL’s showpiece, the Stanley Cup Final. Sometimes we get close, and most seasons it’s actually hard to decipher who are clearly the best teams. With shootouts and overtime goofiness affecting the standings, ...

The third period has become to the Rangers what the third quarter is to the Celtics
The New York Rangers lost their first game at Madison Square Garden during these Eastern Conference finals to the Tampa Bay Lightning, 3-1 last night. They’ve scored one goal in the last seven-and-half periods, and they haven’t really deserved much more than that....

The waiting is the hardest part
The Colorado Avalanche are waiting. And waiting for a Stanley Cup Finals opponent hasn’t treated those favorably in returning from mini-vacations in the past. We’re finishing up the 35th NHL postseason in which first-round games are contested as a best of seven, starting in 1987 and featured every y...

The Tampa Bay Lightning have channeled Admiral Ackbar to get back into the series
Perhaps the biggest sign that a team has entered its own class in the NHL is that it can play any way it has to, or wants to, to win. Whatever you ask of them, they have an answer. Some pretenders like the Hurricanes, once you take away their preferred style — in the case of the Canes it’s dump it i...

Looks like that’s it for the Boston Bruins, the dynasty that almost was
In every sport now, it seems one of the most fascinating things to watch is when an organization decides a particular roster has run its course. Thanks to salary caps everywhere (or just the totally not but really is a cap in baseball) there always comes a time when you have to pull that trigger as ...

Is the NHL’s Presidents’ Trophy curse real?
The Florida Panthers breezed through the first round of the playoffs and then got bounced from the second round so fast we barely had time for the annual discourse about the Presidents’ Trophy and whether it’s a curse for a team’s Stanley Cup hopes....


Leafs on precipice of some kind of history
Nobody ever tweeted about a Florida Panthers playoff series victory before last night, when Carter Verhaeghe, off a pass from Claude Giroux – trade deadline acquisition and bringer of tons of vicarious Panthers fans from Philadelphia – lifted Florida to a 4-3 overtime win over the Capitals, and a 4-...

Leafs and Lightning are playing the strangest series
In a playoff series, especially one between two very good teams which the Lightning and Maple Leafs are, you expect some swings. No one expected a short series, which means twists and turns as teams exchange wins. Momentum generally swings on the performance level of your goalie the next night, but ...

Florida teams thawing out in first round of the NHL Playoffs
The President’s Trophy winners are in trouble. The resilient regular season champion Florida Panthers have a tough task ahead of them to win their first playoff series in 26 years. They were overmatched Saturday afternoon by the Washington Capitals 6-1, giving the 2018 Stanley Cup Champions a 2-1 ov...

You should root for the Florida Panthers
I know there’s a lot of obstacles. First off, hockey is probably the most provincial sport we have, and once everyone’s team is out, those fans tend to not give a fuck about whatever happens next. We’ve spent so much time coming up with reasons to hate everyone else it’s impossible to change gears. ...

Can we please just watch the ballgame?
Major League Baseball made this exclusive deal with Apple for Friday night games, and Mets-Nationals was the very first one, Max Scherzer’s debut for New York (which the Mets won 7-3), against his old team, featuring JUAN SOTO, whom the broadcast gushed over as constantly as he gushed over Apple – b...

We are too broken and hopeless to deserve a Maple Leafs-Panthers series
At least for one night, I didn’t manage to motherfuck something. The Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers put on a hockey game dressed as Calvinball last night, with the Cats getting a 7-6 win in OT. It wasn’t even that simple, if a 7-6 game can ever be simple....

There’s something in the water in NBA and NHL arenas
Rarely does it make sense to link the NBA and the NHL, other than they tend to play in the same buildings at the same time of year. You wouldn’t really call them roommates, because when one is home the other never is. Though that probably makes them perfect roommates, come to think of it. Still, on ...

This Rickard Rakell pickup is very Penguins-y
The NHL trade deadline passed about an hour ago, and it wasn’t the most boring in the history of the game but it wasn’t the most exciting. The Bruins got better with Hampus Lindholm coming to town a couple days ago, except Hampus! Hampus! might not be that good anymore. The Avalanche, already the le...

When presented with the lesser of two evils, pray
I’ve never watched 90-Day Fiancé because I’d rather take an eyedropper full of corrosive acid to the iris, but I imagine Chelsea fans are awaiting the sale of their club with the same angst and uncertainty all these 90-Day Fiancé idiots have during their short courtship. (If that’s not how that show...

This is a Cinderella story
For the best chance at a major upset in this year’s NCAA Tournament, look no further than the Peacocks hailing from Jersey City, New Jersey....
![ACC needs to bench Buddy Boeheim... and it did [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/47793058815003d7ef99b5dd27712975.jpg)
ACC needs to bench Buddy Boeheim... and it did [Updated]
The Atlantic Coast Conference needs to suspend Syracuse’s Buddy Boeheim, the son of longtime Cuse head coach Jim Boeheim and the team’s leading scorer, for at least a game after he punched a Florida State player in the stomach during the second round of the conference tournament and didn’t even try ...

It’s happening to the Maple Leafs again
Even though we Chicagoans don’t get a spring — it’s winter until one day somewhere in May when it’s just suddenly summer and we’re all instantly drunk outside — that doesn’t mean we can’t recognize the signs of spring approaching elsewhere. Sure, we’ve been robbed of one of them in spring training. ...