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

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....

There's No Secret To Why The Capitals Lost
“We didn’t really play good enough for long enough,” Braden Holtby said. The Washington Capitals were very good, over a very long season, but even good teams falter when they run into better ones. ...

How The Hell Did Jay Beagle Make That Game-Saving Block?
The Pittsburgh Penguins dispatched the Washington Capitals 4-3 in overtime tonight in Pittsburgh, weathering a furious third-period comeback and eventually winning on a Nick Bonino tap-in. However, it could have ended earlier in overtime, had Jay Beagle not morphed into Superman and dove across the ...

The Blues Wouldn't <i>Really</i> Bench Brian Elliott For Game 7. Right?
It was a bad night for Blues goalie Brian Elliott, yanked after allowing three goals—against just four saves—in the first period of Dallas’s 3-2 win. Bad nights happen. But is there really a chance that Elliott was so out of sorts that Jake Allen will get the nod in Wednesday’s Game 7? Ken Hitchcock...

The Predators Have Something Left In The Tank
The Predators are counter-punchers. They fought back from 3-2 down to make it to the second round. They fought back from being outplayed in the multiple overtimes of Game 4 against the Sharks to snatch a win. With their backs up against the wall again last night, they fought back from an early two-g...