nhl-playoffs Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Do You Mind If We Dance With Your Dates? - NHL First Round Preview: Eastern Conference
In a bit of true hockey hilarity, the actual NHL bubble-ized playoffs will begin without either of the “hosts” on Tuesday. Both the Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers scheduled a date for their respective faces with the pavement, and hence will have to watch these modified playoffs take place i...
Connor McDavid Deserves Better Than This Garbage
If you’re lucky enough to have never known true despair and yet wish to understand, even only to show empathy, look into the eyes of Connor McDavid. Look deep, and see true hopelessness, the fear that the world will never truly understand what you are through no fault of your own, the knowledge your...
One Neutral Site Won’t Work For The NHL, But For Some Reason, Four Might?
Time for our routine check-in of the batshit ideas leagues are kicking around to finish their seasons and playoffs. They vary as to level of batshittiness (battyshit?), and the NHL is apparently lessening the level of theirs at the moment. Only barely, though....
St. Louis Blues Fans Yelled, Did Cartwheels, And Lost A Wedding Ring After Their First Stanley Cup Victory
After the St. Louis Blues won their first Stanley Cup on Wednesday night, fans celebrated on streets and in bars until the wee hours of the morning. The local news caught up with some of the yelling, cartwheeling, and sweaty revelers. One poor soul said he lost his wedding ring while high-fiving peo...
One Sequence Choked The Life Out Of The Bruins
Game 7 and thus the Stanley Cup Final ended in a 2:34 stretch in the third, and, on one level, Brayden Schenn’s goal to put the Blues up 3-0 was anticlimactic. Yes, it put the game functionally out of reach for the Bruins. But what it really meant was a stoppage in play, and so was the first time w...
Lift Stanley And Play "Gloria"
The St. Louis Blues are Stanley Cup champions. Say it to yourself, because no one’s ever been able to say it before. Swish it around in your mouth like a sommelier, picking out notes of gratification, bliss, and disbelief. Do not spit it out, because when you win the Stanley Cup, you keep drinking. ...
Oh No
Subscribers to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s saw this in Sunday’s e-edition, hours before the Blues played (and lost) Game 6. Science says there is now approximately a zero percent chance the Blues win the Cup....
Charlie McAvoy Made The Save Of The Series
Ignore the 5-1 final score. Far from a blowout, Game 6 had the feel of a rain-swollen reservoir. With the Blues one game away from their first Cup in franchise history, and 18,000 fans screaming so loudly that NBC didn’t even have to juice the crowd mic, and another 30,000 watching on screens outsid...
Tuukka Rask And The Bruins Spoil St. Louis's Party, Force Game 7
It certainly feels fitting that the first two of the Bruins’ goals in Game 6 came via some very visible influence from the referees. Not in any controversial way, for the record, but every Boston fan who believes in karma must surely feel that their 5-1 victory on Sunday night was preordained, afte...
Ivan Barbashev Is Suspended For Game 6 And The Blues Will Miss Him
When the Blues try to raise the Stanley Cup Sunday night, they’ll do so without forward Ivan Barbashev, who was given a one-game suspension by the NHL’s Department of Player Safety for a high hit on Boston’s Marcus Johansson. Given the tenor of this series and what the Blues are trying to do (and ha...
It's Downright Spooky How Ryan O'Reilly Is Always In The Right Place
The Ryan O’Reilly trade had a real “deck chairs on the Titanic” vibe when it went down last offseason. O’Reilly, who was depressed after losing so many games up in Buffalo, went over to St. Louis in exchange for three replacement-level players and some draft picks, and as the Blues struggled to win ...
Again? Seriously?
I’m tired. Of officials blowing big, important calls in the playoffs, mostly, but also of having to write blogs about them that try to say something more intelligent than well, it’s bad to get these calls wrong in such big moments, but also being an NHL official is a difficult job and even the best ...
Blues Benefit From Controversial No-Call To Take 3–2 Series Lead Over Bruins
The St. Louis Blues won Thursday night in Boston, 2–1, to take a 3–2 lead in the Stanley Cup Final. If Game 5 was the last hockey game of the season in Boston, the lasting image of the home finale will be trash raining down on the ice as furious Bruins fans expressed their displeasure with the way ...
Now, For Your Enjoyment, We Have Angry Bruins Fans Whaling On Each Other
Lots of tension in the arena tonight for Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final. Lots of wound-up hockey fans. Perhaps this sort of thing was inevitable, although you’d expect it to at least be between opposing fans. Not so! Here we have two young Boston bros talking shit and hurling beer into the face of ...
Sure Looks Like Zdeno Chara's Going To Play Tonight With A Broken Jaw
It was a fine question to ask. When did the Bruins make the decision that defenseman Zdeno Chara, who broke his jaw in Monday’s Game 4 against the Blues, could actually be able to play tonight? The problem is that the question started from a false premise. As head coach Bruce Cassidy noted today, Ch...
Blues Honor Rent-A-Car Company With Color Guard Flag, Then Quietly Dishonor It
You might think sports are about sports. No. They’re about the troops. And America. And sometimes Canada too, but rarely in the NHL playoffs. But how can you prove, if you’re a team in, say, the Stanley Cup Final, that you really care about America and its uniformed services? (If you go one day with...
Craig Berube Works The Refs, Because Not Much Else Is Working For The Blues
Jordan Binnington will be back in net and the Blues believe his newfound porosity was a fluke, and Oskar Sundqvist will return after serving his one-game suspension, so not only are they ready to move past their Game 3 shitkicking, but they’re out of excuses for it. Mostly. Down 2-1 in the Stanley C...
Oskar Sundqvist Will Face Hearing For Hit That Hospitalized Matt Grzelcyk
Bruins defenseman Matt Grzelcyk was taken to the hospital after being boarded by Oskar Sundqvist in the first period of Wednesday’s 3-2 Blues overtime win. Sundqvist got just two minutes, but a bunch more might be coming: Sundqvist has a hearing with the NHL’s Department of Player Safety. ...
Vladimir Tarasenko Nearly Ripped Himself In Half Scoring This Goal
Carl Gunnarsson’s rocket of a winner for St. Louis in Game 2 last night understandably gets all the love and applause this morning —it gave the Blues their first-ever Stanley Cup Final win and sent them back home with hope instead of despair. But back in the first period, long before Gunnarsson’s go...