nhl-playoffs Page 18 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Logan Couture Accuses Sidney Crosby Of "Cheating" On Faceoffs
So, here’s a subplot to watch as the Finals shift to San Jose. Sharks center Logan Couture on how Sidney Crosby has been so good on faceoffs through the first two games:...

Sidney Crosby's Called Play Worked To Perfection
The Penguins have been the clear better team in both Finals games, and they’re up two games to none. But it doesn’t always work that way; the sample size of a series is too small for puck justice to win out every time, and indeed, both games have been decided by one goal. Individual plays carry the ...

Nifty Little Conor Sheary Goal Gives Penguins 2-0 Finals Lead
The Penguins took a 2-1 overtime win tonight over the San Jose Sharks to hold serve at home and win both games in Pittsburgh. The first half of the game was a scoreless, tense affair that featured a photographer dropping their lens onto the ice and having it batted around like the puck for a second....

Patrick Marleau Won't Be Disciplined For Hit To Bryan Rust's Head
With his first-period goal, Bryan Rust has now scored six times in this postseason—a Penguins playoff rookie record. It may be a while before his next one. Early in the third, Rust suffered what appeared to be a concussion on this hit from Patrick Marleau....

Here's The Punjabi Call Of The Penguins' Game-Winner
Here’s Jim Hughson calling Nick Bonino’s goal with 2:33 left; a little understated. Here’s Doc Emrick; a little more excited, but come on guys, this is a tiebreaking goal late in a Stanley Cup Final game, let’s see some enthusiasm!...

Hot Damn, Sidney Crosby Was Great Last Night
You wouldn’t know it if you only looked at the stat sheet (or, um, if you watched the Warriors game instead), but that might have been one of the finest playoff games of Sidney Crosby’s career....

The New-Look Penguins Roll Deeper Than Ever
The Penguins are back in the Finals after their 2-1 Game 7 win over Tampa, but they are not the same old Penguins you love to hate. (But you can hate ‘em anyway.)...

The NHL Threatened To Fine The Lightning If They Didn't Shut Down Their Watch Party
The Tampa Bay Lighting hosted a very well-attended viewing party on Sunday for Game 5 of their Eastern Conference Finals series with Pittsburgh. Thousands went to the public showing (around 8,000 attended an analogous event last year), and the team had planned another official party for tonight’s Ga...

The Sharks Are In The Finals, Finally
Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau were the first two picks in the 1997 draft. They’ve played a couple thousand games in teal. They’ve both been captains, and both stripped of the “C” for perceived leadership failures and criticisms that for however good their Sharks were, they were never quite good e...

It's Matt Murray Or Bust
On his very last day as a 21-year-old, on the very first shot he saw, Matt Murray allowed a goal. Then he got an early birthday present: a coach’s challenge showed Jonathan Drouin had been offside by the merest fraction of a second. It was back to 0-0, and Murray got down to business....

Evgeni Malkin Slashed Ryan Callahan In His Penis And Balls
Ryan Callahan slashed Evgeni Malkin’s hands with his stick in the first period of Game 6, so the Pittsburgh center responded by taking a two-handed whack at Callahan’s down-belows. As Callahan’s reactions shows, he connected....

How Joe Pavelski Became A Tip Machine
It was, is, and will be for at least the next 36 hours the most important goal in Sharks history. Joe Pavelski’s redirection of a Brent Burns shot broke a third-period tie and stood up the rest of the way, the winner in a 6-3 victory that brings San Jose to within one game of the Stanley Cup Finals,...

Marc-Andre Fleury Is Back And Oh God That Went Poorly
This was certainly not the return Marc-Andre Fleury was hoping for. Starting for the first time since March, before a home crowd that cheered every time he made a save, Fleury, uh...didn’t make a lot of saves....

The Agony
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Holy Shit, That Joe Thornton Pass
The Sharks lead the postseason in plays that make their opponents’ fans exasperatedly say, “oh come the fuck on.” It’s a remarkably aesthetically pleasing brand of hockey they play, all speed and puck cycling and a preternatural awareness of their linemates’ positions only made possible by playing t...

Pittsburgh's HBK Line Is The NHL's Hottest
The verb that came to mind watching last night’s 4-2 Pittsburgh win was “overwhelms.” You can hold off the Penguins for a while, you can even shut down a scorer or an entire line for games at a time, but they’ve got so much talent, they’re so deep with scorers up and down their bench and offer barel...

Don't Leave Brent Burns Open
Back east we’ve got two fast, hard-hitting, well-rounded teams, that frankly play fairly similar games. Out west is a more intriguing clash of styles: The Blues are more defensive minded, more deliberate, more physical, while the Sharks thrive on offense, speed, puck movement, and the most exciting ...

Sidney Crosby Scores Right In Jeremy Roenick's Dumb Face
The corollary to not overreacting when Sidney Crosby goes eight games without scoring a goal is also not overreacting when he finally finds the net. But hot damn, did the Penguins need that goal. If only to shut Jeremy Roenick up....

Game 1 Belonged To Brian Elliott
In the 2016 Western Conference Finals: The Great Unchokening, I (and Vegas) give the slight nod to the Blues. They’ve beaten better teams to get here, and they’re constructed more defensively-minded, the sort of team that succeeds in tight playoff games. That’s the blueliners, for sure, but more tha...

Pekka Rinne Smashed The Shit Out Of His Stick, And Yeah I Get It
The Sharks’ dream Game 7 was, necessarily, a nightmare for Nashville. Or: You don’t lose an elimination game 5-0, getting outshot 17-3 in the first and only managing 20 shots on goal of your own all night, without just about everything going wrong....