nhl-playoffs Page 22 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

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....

Awful-Sounding Kings Fan Files Police Report Against Corey Crawford
According to TMZ, a 27-year-old Los Angeles man filed a battery report against Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford, alleging that Crawford squirted him with a water bottle while being pulled late in Monday's Game 4....

Mic'd Up Patrice Bergeron Is A Must For Hockey Fans
Every hockey player should wear a microphone at all times. These wonderful exchanges—between P.K. Subban and Patrice Bergeron, and between Bergeron and referee Dan O'Halloran—show how your penalty (or no-call) sausage is made....

Boston Hockey Twitter: Not As Racist As Made Out To Be
After Montreal's P.K. Subban scored to beat Boston in game one of their series, there were two inescapable talking points: That the word "nigger" was trending in Boston (this was quickly debunked) and there had been 17,000 tweets containing the slur and Subban's name. Would it change your impression...

The Habs' Luck Is Real, And It's Spectacular
The Canadiens' 3-2 overtime victory in New York puts them right back in this series, a close-fought game that devolved into an absolutely wild final five minutes or so. Three goals in short succession sent it to OT then decided it—punch, counterpunch, sucker punch—and all three were deflections that...

Daniel Carcillo Gets Game Misconduct For Lashing Out At Linesman
Rangers forward Daniel Carcillo took an early exit from Game 3 after hitting linesman Scott Driscoll as Driscoll tried to pull him away from a fight....

Where Did The Kings' Offense Come From?
Through the Olympic break, the Los Angeles Kings were struggling for offense. Or, more accurately, they were struggling to get the puck into the back of the net—which isn't the same thing at all....

Boston Barely Honors Bet, Flies World's Tiniest Habs Flag At City Hall
Before the Canadiens-Bruins series, the mayors of Montreal and Boston made a friendly wager: The flag of the winning team would fly over the losing town's city hall. You know how that series went, so today, Boston paid up. The bare minimum, anyway. ...