With their 4-2 series win over Columbus, the Capitals are going to play in their seventh second-round playoff series in the last 11 years. That’s incredible! Don’t ask how they did in those second-round series.

Ten people were killed and 15 others hospitalized on Monday when a man drove a rented van onto the sidewalk and plowed through pedestrians for more than half a mile on one of Toronto’s busiest streets. It feels almost rote by this point to transition from tragedy to sporting event, but it makes sense. Where else but…

No sport really needs four rounds of playoffs. Sure, you get the occasional good first-round series, but mostly it’s about weeding out the fatally flawed teams before they have a chance to shit up the later rounds, which in theory should be quality hockey all-around. The Flyers are out of the playoffs, thank goodness,…

The NHL issued an alert today that the league would be investigating emails received by numerous people purportedly from commissioner Gary Bettman “requesting a phone call or other calls to action,” claiming the emails were being sent from fake accounts:

This was the Maple Leafs’ chance, and it was probably their season.

When we last saw Filip Forsberg scoring for Nashville, he was putting the finishing touches on a Game 1 win against the Avalanche with a goal of pure sorcery. After a quieter two games, Forsberg’s magic has reappeared in Game 4, opening the scoring with a hurricane of a breakout goal that may have forced Colorado…

The NHL announced today that Winnipeg’s Josh Morrissey would be suspended for his team’s Game 5 against the Wild, after Morrissey smashed Minnesota’s Eric Staal with a cross check to the back of the head in Game 4.

Virtually any day of the year, there is no real reason why you or anyone else should be watching CNBC. If you are someone who follows or cares about financial news, you really probably shouldn’t be watching television to keep up with it. If you are someone who likes watching a bunch of gray-faced old sourpusses sit at…

Marc-André Fleury is dominating the NHL playoffs again, and the expansion Vegas Golden Knights are cruising to the second round for the first time ever in their first opportunity ever. Vegas beat the Kings 1-0 Tuesday night to sweep their opening round opponents, and they’re the first team to get a playoff sweep in…

It had been two games of the same script so far in the Capitals-Blue Jackets series—Washington loses on a gut punch in overtime—but tonight, the Caps themselves actually caught a bit of luck, as they survived double overtime to beat Columbus on the road in Game 3, 3-2.

It doesn’t take much imagination—“if he’d been just a centimeter out of position there” or “if that had been just half an inch to the right”—to imagine most blocked shots as goals. But, goddamn, this one below is almost easier to imagine as the hypothetical goal that it wasn’t than the actual save that it was.…

On Sunday, a cute little girl sitting in the money seats at the Caps playoff game banged on the glass as Brett Connolly skated by. He noticed her and tried to flip her a puck over the glass, but a dad-person behind her caught it and handed it to the young fan beside her. She was sad. The same thing happened with the…

Capitals winger Andre Burakovsky suffered an “upper-body injury” on a big check in Sunday’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Blue Jackets, and will not travel to Columbus for the series’ next two games. He got off easy compared to linesman Steve Barton.

Game 3 was going to be nasty, and the Golden Knights knew it. With the Kings down 2-0 and the series leaving Vegas, where the Knights have been so good at home (the “Vegas Flu” is real, but so is their home-crowd advantage), Los Angeles was going to come out pesty and physical, finishing their checks, talking a ton of…

The Penguins and Flyers came into today’s game in Philadelphia tied at 1 in their opening-round series. Pittsburgh destroyed the Flyers in the opener, 7-0; Philadelphia came back with a 5-1 win in Game 2.

It’s pretty hard for a team to be a bigger disappointment than the Edmonton Oilers were this year. Coming off a tough Game 7 loss in the second round of last year’s playoffs, this year’s squad—led by the attractive young duo of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, plus a potentially great defenseman in 23-year-old…

In his ninth season, in his fourth city, Evander Kane had played 574 games without ever making the playoffs. (That was just five games shy of Carolina’s Jeff Skinner, who now has no real challengers.) So when Kane earlier this week called himself a “playoff player,” he was talking style, not experience.

Filip Forsberg scored twice in the third period of the Predators’ 5-2 win over the Avalanche in Game 1 of their first-round series tonight, but forget about that first goal for now, because his second one was truly gorgeous. It’s unclear how exactly he managed to keep track of the puck here in order to pull this off,…

Maybe it’s just me, but it felt easier to talk myself into the Capitals this playoffs. They’re still a very good team, the thinking went, but without the pressure of the Presidents’ Trophy—which they won the past two years—maybe they could learn from experience and surprise people by avoiding the inevitable postseason…

Despite one truly beautiful goal from Toronto’s Zach Hyman, the Bruins easily dispatched the Maple Leafs at home in the first game of their opening-round series tonight, winning 5-1. Boston looked good doing it, too—they closed the night with four straight goals, including this third-period highlight tap-in from Sean…