nhl-playoffs Page 21 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
How Many Wins Do The Ducks Need Until They're Taken Seriously?
So what if these Ducks are for real? That isn’t meant to be an insulting question. They had a fantastic regular season, but we’ve seen that twice before, each time before playoff flameouts. They rolled through the first two rounds in the West, but they faced a pair of creampuffs. Their Game 1 win ov...
The Lightning Won't Be Stopped
The Lightning appear to own Henrik Lundqvist. The Rangers goalie has now given up six goals in back-to-back games, and of six games this season in which he’s allowed five or more goals, the last four have come against Tampa Bay. This is not to suggest that the usually dependable Lundqvist has some p...
Why <i>Not</i> Allow Kickass Header Goals?
The best moment of last night’s triple-OT Blackhawks win didn’t even count. Andrew Shaw’s headbutt goal in the second overtime was waved off, quite possibly for being too awesome to process at 1 in the morning. Things worked out in the end for Chicago, but did we and future highlight reels really ne...
The Ben Bishop Save That Brought Some Sanity To The Lightning's Win
So rarely does a four-goal game have such an obviously pivotal moment as did last night’s 6-2 Lightning win to even their series with the Rangers at a game apiece. Rather than the laugher the score suggests, it was, for most of its runtime, a tense, thrilling game: maybe the fastest and most wide-op...
The Rangers Are Built To Just Get By
Again it came down to one game, one goal, and again the Rangers escaped by the skin of their teeth. When Derek Stepan slotted home a traffic-stopped puck that landed right at his feet, the Rangers had won their sixth consecutive Game 7, all in the last four seasons, tying an NHL record...
Joel Ward Gets Hockey Better Than Lazy Sportswriters
Alexander Ovechkin guaranteed that the Capitals will win tonight’s Game 7. What if the Rangers win? Or, more trickily, what if the Caps win and Ovechkin doesn’t appear on the scoresheet? How would that reflect upon Ovechkin, who (unfairly) has gained a reputation as a scorer who can’t score in the m...
The Lightning's Future Starts Now
You don’t think the Lightning, who had seen a 3-0 series lead cut to 3-2, and faced the prospect of heading back to Montreal if they couldn’t close things out last night, weren’t feeling an absurd amount of pressure? “We were talking about this game like it was Game 7,” Steven Stamkos said....
NHL Playoffs: Who Ya Got?
There are a lot of great NHL playoff previews out there. You will not find one here, because gimme a break, I’m pretty busy. ...
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...