nhl-playoffs Page 21 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Kings Celebrate Stanley Cup Win Next To Devastated Henrik Lundqvist
The immediate aftermath of Alec Martinez's game-winning, double-overtime goal for the Stanley Cup on Friday night was a flash. Net, referee signals goal, and a Los Angeles mob around Martinez. It was great fun for the Kings, and absolute misery for the Rangers. Just look at all of these pictures of ...

Lego Kings And Rangers, Getting Wrecked In A Blender
This video, from the "Will it Blend?" folks, purports to predict a winner of Kings-Rangers by seeing whose Lego knockoff Lego players survive. On a more primal level, enjoy it as super-high-speed camera footage of little Lego men (and a little Lego zamboni!) getting destroyed in a blender. [via Puck...

The Rangers' Unsung Heroes Are UFAs. Will NHL GMs Take Notice?
The Rangers are still alive. But they sure as hell wouldn't have gotten to Game 5, let alone the finals, if not for two quiet contributors who, if there's any justice or sense in this world, will cash in this summer....

Fallen Rangers Fan Is The Saddest Subway Rider
A reader sends along this photo of a prone Rangers fan, fittingly adorned in a Rick Nash jersey and camo Rangers hat, lying prone on the Q train at 2:00 a.m. last night. We are told that this guy "barely moved" for at least three stops, at which time our tipster had to get off the train....

Luck Is Hockey's "Bullshit Dump"
That up there is Bruce Bennett's photo for Getty, zoomed in to unsustainable resolution, but still clearly showing the millimeters of shaved ice that brought the loose, potentially game-tying puck to a halt with 1:11 left. The notoriously shitty surface at MSG tends to increasingly make itself known...

Jonathan Quick Saved Everything And Salvaged Some Respect
The odd thing about this series, where L.A. finds itself up 3-0, is that it's never felt particularly dominant. The Kings have clearly been the better team, but Games 1 and 2 could have gone either way, and everything save the scoreboard says last night's 3-0 win was fortuitous. ...

On Hockey's Fetish For Finding The Latest "Best Player In The World"
Because hockey people have the attention spans of goldfish, some have pronounced Drew Doughty the best player in the world. That he's the third or fourth to receive the honor since the playoffs started should tell you how much weight that carries. ...

For 20 Minutes, The Kings Were Historically Dominant
The third period of L.A.'s eventual overtime victory was the Rangers' worst nightmare come to life—the Kings dominating possession as they have all year, forechecking the life out of New York, and raining down shot after shot. How overwhelming was it? Unprecedentedly so....

The Stanley Cup Will Come Down To The Best Team Vs. The Best Player
The Rangers and Kings are in the Stanley Cup Final because of depth, since this is not basketball, where a small number of very good or great individual players can drag a team to postseason success. You need top-flight players to win championships in hockey, obviously, but just as necessary are low...

Guy Buys $1 Stanley Cup Tickets; StubHub Takes Them Away
Thanks to yet another StubHub seller who is bad at decimal places, a New York Rangers fan was able to purchase a few tickets for Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals for $1 each (the purchase came with a $8.20 service fee, but who's complaining?). Unfortunately, this lucky Rangers fan probably won't end...

The Kings Will Beat You At Their Game, Or Yours
A game can be a classic without being particularly good hockey. We haven't had a conference final Game 7 go to OT in 20 years, so Kings-Blackhawks qualifies as an all-timer just on sheer novelty, but it was ugly at times. Bad goaltending, lax backchecking, freak bounces on questionable ice, and goal...

Los Angeles Kings Beat Blackhawks In Overtime, Advance To Stanley Cup
The Kings beat the Blackhawks 5-4 in overtime of Game 7 and advance to the Stanley Cup Final. It was another wonky goal in a game full of wonky goals....

The End Of The First Period Of Kings-Hawks Was A Goal Smorgasbord
I've re-written this sentence four times since I originally started this post, and I can't even remember what it was originally going to be about. Anyway, The end of the first period of Game 7 between the Kings and Blackhawks was bananas. With goals from Toews and Saad, Chicago jumped out to an earl...

Sad Canadiens Mascot In Rangers Jersey Is The Saddest Mascot
Oh my God, Youppi! What have they done to Youppi!? You would think it's impossible to look so wretched while covered in electric-orange spaghetti fur—and have a name that includes an exclamation point and is literally French for "yippee!"—but then you've never been Youppi! in a Rangers jersey all al...

How Henrik Lundqvist Lugged The Rangers To The Finals
It wasn't so long ago that the Rangers were staring down death, rather than refusing to touch a trophy. Through three-quarters of the postseason, even after getting by the Canadiens with relative ease, they've had to play four elimination games: one against the Flyers, and three in a row against Pit...

Welcome To The Henrik Lundqvist Show
It's tough to recognize goalie greatness just by watching. That sounds dumb, but the nature of the job is that the best of the best announce themselves only over the long-term. Spectacular saves can be made by bad goalies on any given night, and the corollary, a lack of soft goals, by definition ind...

Henrik Lundqvist Comes Up With An Unreal Save To Prevent A Habs Goal
The Rangers are leading 1-0 in a potential final game of the series against the Canadiens, and goalie Henrik Lundqvist deserves thanks for his part with a tumbling save in the second period to keep Montreal scoreless....

We're Still Catching Our Breath After That Overtime
"I've been involved in a lot of games," said Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville, "and that might have been the greatest overtime I've ever seen." Easy enough for him to say; his team won....

Canadiens Fans Throw Hats Onto Rene Bourque's Parents' Lawn
Rene Bourque's hat trick capped a wild Montreal win last night, and hats rained down on the Bell Centre ice. Around the same time, in Bourque's hometown of Lac La Biche, Alberta, some far-flung Habs fans gave Bourque's parents' lawn the same treatment....