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This week in the NHL: Looking back at the oldest to play; Handing out awards for 2023; Kris Letang's historic night
Hockey players are a different breed. While most sports see their stars fizzle out by the time they reach their late thirties, the NHL routinely has their stars shine well into their forties. Hockey players play the game with grit and resilience, unlike any other athlete. Maybe that’s why they boast...

This might be Sidney Crosby’s masterpiece, because it has to be
It hasn’t worked in Pittsburgh. While the Penguins made perhaps the offseason’s splashiest move by trading for Erik Karlsson, pairing another surefire Hall of Famer with the three they already had, they’re still only being propped up in the Metro Division by the pointless Blue Jackets. They’re only ...

The Penguins power play will be a doomsday device, just not yet
The Penguins might be the most-watched team in the league this season. When you trade for the reigning Norris Trophy winner, surefire Hall of Famer, and d-man who changed how the position is viewed in Erik Karlsson, to add to your collection of three Hall of Famers already, fans are going to want to...

If Penguins GM Kyle Dubas is going to go down, it’s going to be with the most flames possible
Whatever Pittsburgh Penguins GM Kyle Dubas’s analytic-rep is, he’s going to be remembered for always opting for the big swing. While he may have been championed as a hockey sabermetric darling who rose to the biggest chair in the sport in Toronto, those that deride him would happily point out that a...

If only the NHL had a leader
It is yelling at the rain to lament that commissioners in any league aren’t stewards of the sport anymore. Look at Roger Goodell’s face and wonder if you’d trust that man to steer a fucking tricycle. But there comes a point where the commissioner is the only one who can steer a league out of a skid ...

Alexander Ovechkin, the 'GR8 One'
Alexander Ovechkin is the best pure goal-scorer in NHL history. That’s not up for debate. The longtime Washington Capital hasn’t been hockey’s best player for years, but his ability to put the puck in the back of the net is nearly as good as it was 15 years ago when he scored 65 goals during the 200...

Here come the Pens again, falling on our heads like a memory
The NHL season has been invigorated by some surprise teams and new blood announcing themselves as either contenders now or soon to be. The New Jersey Devils sit atop the Metropolitan by open lengths, redefining what the Devils mean as a whole with their obscene amounts of speed and skill. The Dallas...

Phil Kessel is still here, more than anyone else has been
Phil Kessel has never been here for your shit. Which might be one of the reasons he’s going to break the consecutive games streak by playing in his 990th straight game tonight for Vegas....

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 ...

It’s time for the yearly symposium on whether this is finally it for the Penguins
This is yet another distasteful side effect of the NHL’s salary cap. Fans and observers of a certain team, especially a successful one, have to start judging just how much sand is left in the hourglass. They have to weigh the age of the best players, salaries of those players, when contracts run out...

Whew, there’s been a lot of bad hockey so far
It’s wonderful as a hockey fan that in this new era of ESPN coverage, playoff games have staggered starts – 7, 7:30, 9:30, and 10 Eastern – so that in this first round, the most exciting round of the playoffs where anything can happen, we can watch as much playoff hockey as possible and not be stuck...

Rangers give Igor Shesterkin the Henrik Lundqvist treatment in 79 save performance
Perhaps the one downside of the NHL game speeding up is that more and more teams look the same. It gets harder to identify a specific style to a specific team as rosters are just packed with players who can move at a high pace and are directed to just get the fuck up the ice as quickly as fucking po...

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...

Sidney Crosby nets 500th goal vs. team he seemed to score nearly all of them against
Sidney Crosby scored his 500th career goal on Tuesday night, and of course he did because the Penguins were playing the Flyers and exactly 10 percent of Crosby’s career goals have come in the Battle of Pennsylvania....

Here are the Penguins again, hanging around, hanging around, can’t get rid of them…
In a world where the Patriots didn’t exist (and what a world that would be), perhaps the gold (and black) standard for bucking against the tides, refusing to be victims of a salary cap and system specifically designed to prevent sustained success, and just general obstinance would be the Pittsburgh ...

Fare Thee Well, Penn State, it was’t even fun while it lasted
Penn State has now lost back-to-back games by blowing a two-touchdown lead at Iowa and scoring eight points over the course of nine overtimes at home against Illinois. That’s quite a way to go from being No. 4 in the country to having no hope for the national title whatsoever....

NHLers are returning to the Olympics... let’s build some rosters
The Olympics have always felt like the pinnacle for several sports around the world. Only the best sprinters in the world can win gold at the 100-meter dash. Only the fastest swimmers can rise above everyone else in the 200-meter freestyle. Yet, for other sports, the Olympics hasn’t felt like the to...

The Kraken are preserving cap space apparently, but for who? For what?
We’re still only in the leaked stage, and leave it to the NHL to not think that the Seattle Kraken’s expansion draft would get out before the big show tonight thus rendering it moot, but it appears that GM Ron Francis has gone the pretty boring route. No Carey Price, no side deals that actually pilf...

How many firing squads can Carey Price turn back?
The Montreal Canadiens aren’t quite as chained to their history and tradition as the rest of the hockey world (including yours truly) likes to joke about. They can never escape it, and nor should they. it’s the MONTREAL CANADIENS, for fuck’s sake. But the drawn-out pregame ceremonies and insistence ...

MLB doesn’t need a 'face of baseball,' and the proof is in the playoffs
Mike Trout has as many MVP awards as career playoff games played, with three, and for as much talk as there might be in baseball — even from the commissioner — about MLB’s need for the best player of his generation to take on the mantle of the face of the game, no amount of marketing can make up for...