hockey Page 14 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The best from the start
There’s an old hockey axiom that any young defenseman needs 200 games in the NHL to come into his own. Unlike most of the sport’s theories, which are usually grizzled old horseshit that everyone has just gone along with out of terror for ever rocking the boat in any way, it holds some water. It’s a ...
This is all Jack Eichel has
It’s not that the relationship between Jack Eichel and Buffalo Sabres fans will ever be good. Their union promised too much and delivered so little that there should be bitterness on both sides. The No. 2 pick the Sabres sold out for didn’t deliver them from the wilderness that they’ve been stuck in...
This is not your beautiful house, these are not your New Jersey Devils
Must’ve been a slow night, sports-wise, if I feel the need to talk about the New Jersey Devils. There has been no more scenery team, and dreary at that, than the Devils the past 10 years. You didn’t think about them until they came up on the schedule against your favorite team. And even when that ha...
Bruins get a finger in the wind and then jammed in their own eye
As far as public statements go, this one rings pretty hollow:...
Fair or extremely foul? Horrendous roughing the punter call costs Mizzou
There has been an interesting aura around the Missouri football program for decades essentially boiling down to weird things will happen to this team. It’s just a matter of when chaos ensues. In today’s edition of batshit crazy Southeastern Conference football, we found out a tackle box for a punter...
We’ll never be rid of the Bruins
The Boston Bruins will never be considered anything close to a dynasty. It’s probably sobering for Bruins fans how close they are to being one, if anything can actually be sobering for Bruins fans. Had Zdeno Chara hit the other side of the post in Game 1 against the Hawks in 2013, and if Brad Marcha...
The Buffalo Sabres are… fun? Is that what this says here? That can’t be right
You know you’ve gotten things unfathomably wrong for an unfathomably long time when you are held up as an example of why teams in any sport shouldn’t rebuild. That was always the call when a GM was threatening to tear it down from paranoid fans and media alike. “Look at the Buffalo Sabres! They’ve b...
Maple Leafs have no bottom
I am as guilty as anyone else of turning the NHL into “How The Maple Leafs Turn.”You spend enough time commenting on how everyone’s always commenting on the Leafs, and well, you’re then part of the problem. But every time the Leafs do something, it’s generally causing some sort of ripple given their...
Rob Manfred’s dumb ghost runner is here to stay
The start of the World Series always means that whichever ghoul is the commissioner of MLB is going to emerge from the damp and dark dwelling in which he inhabits. That’s the rule for every league of course, so it’s not to single out baseball. A Super Bowl, a Stanley Cup Final, the NBA Finals always...
Tom Brady and the infinite sadness
Thursday Night Football is usually a pretty sad occasion as ritual, given the mess that it tends to be with the short rest and everyone still very much sore from the game they played just four days prior, and the lack of practice time dulling any sharpness. But last night was particularly acute. ...
Mullett Arena is somehow dumber than you’d imagine something called Mullett Arena could be
I’m one of many hockey observers that Coyotes fans, whoever they may be, claim to have an agenda at all times against the Yotes. And on some level, it’s fair, because it is hypocritical to talk often at length about the place teams have for fans in their lives and the public trust that they really a...
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....
The NHL’s investigation into the allegations against Ian Cole are a joke
Warning: This story includes allegation of sexual coercion of a minor and may be disturbing...
It’s going really well in Vancouver
Nothing goes right for the Vancouver Canucks. This is an immutable law of hockey and the NHL. It’s mostly comedy fodder for everyone outside of British Columbia, and probably for more sadistic jokes within. It becomes less funny when you’ve spent a decade or two listening to Canucks fans bemoan thei...
Football sucks now, but why?
As a Bears fan, I can’t help but grin at the plight of the Denver Broncos on national TV. See, it can happen to someone else! The Broncos have been on an island game already four times this season, and there are three more to go. And in every game, they’ve been awful. To be clear, they’ve been awful...
Colorado Avalanche celebrate 'All the Small Things' that led to Stanley Cup title
Champions are made of heart, grit, determination... and perhaps a little dash of pop-punk nostalgia? ...
Manny Machado is great, whether anyone bothers to notice or not
There’s been so much noise around the San Diego Padres for a few years now, it’s quite understandable that Manny Machado has sort of sunk under the radar. There has been a raft of buzz-worthy players acquired by the Padres since Machado in 2019. He didn’t win an MVP like his fellow prize of that par...
Let’s hope rest doesn’t matter much
Right at the top, I’ll admit this is all a forlorn hope. Whatever happens in the first season of baseball’s expanded playoffs isn’t going to cause too much of a ripple in how the sport looks and how teams are managed. I get that. But we can at least start here. ...
The Maple Leafs are going to try again with Matt Murray and that’s great for the rest of us
The NHL season kicks off for real tomorrow night (the two appetizer games in Prague don’t count, especially because they involved the Sharks), or as it’s known for most of the hockey covering world, “Six months of how does this affect the Leafs?” Yep, the sport’s biggest soap opera, the question of ...
Tampa Bay Lightning’s Ian Cole accused of sexually abusing minor
Another banner day for hockey, as Tampa Bay’s Ian Cole was accused of grooming a minor and sexual assault by an anonymous person on Twitter. The Lightning have suspended Cole pending their own investigation and one conducted by the NHL....