NHL playoffs Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Golden Knights Found Success With A Slowdown
The Golden Knights chalked up their Game 1 loss to effort. “They outworked us,” coach Gerard Gallant said. “We have to compete harder. We got to battle harder.” It’s the sort of thing a coach says all the time, but it’s also just about the only thing a team can try to change when they’re up against ...

The Capitals Look Unbeatable And I Don't Know What's Happening
I’m sorry, what? The Caps spanked the Lightning last night. That’s two consecutive spankings! What is going on here? It would be a little too psychologically neat to posit that all the Ovechkin-era Capitals ever needed was to be underdogs, finally without pressure. Or that once they were finally abl...

How The Golden Knights Got So Good
You could see it from the 300 level. Watching the Vegas Golden Knights beat the Blackhawks 5-4 in Chicago on Jan. 5 cemented two things in my mind about this NHL season. First, the Blackhawks were done, having been made to look exceedingly old and slow again. Second, the Golden Knights were very muc...

Can Anyone Stop Winnipeg?
The Jets are now the Stanley Cup favorites, after dispatching Nashville in an occasionally disjointed seven-game series that saw the team alternate wins and where the road team generally ruled. In the end, Connor Hellebuyck was better than the increasingly erratic Pekka Rinne, and while that’s a fin...

The Capitals Finally Did It
It doesn’t really matter. It’s just a conference final appearance. The Capitals are only halfway through the postseason, eight wins down, eight tough wins still left to earn for the only ending that’ll leave them truly satisfied. And each of the four other teams still alive are better bets to go th...

OK, Roenick, That's Enough<em></em>
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Marc-Andre Fleury Is Playing The Hockey Of His Life
Marc-Andre Fleury was the face of the Golden Knights long before the Golden Knights had any faces. The two worst-kept secrets in hockey were that 1)the Penguins were prepared to hitch their wagon to the decade-younger Matt Murray and would not protect Fleury in the upcoming expansion draft, and 2)Ve...

Sidney Crosby Makes Everyone Better
Here’s a stat—a quirk?—that has very little to do with anything else in this blog but is too amazing not to lead with: In this series, Sidney Crosby has been on the ice for all 10 of Pittsburgh’s goals....

The Capitals-Penguins Blood Feud Now Maybe Has Some Spit In It
Familiarity breeds contempt, yes, but also, contempt breeds contempt. The Capitals and Penguins would dislike each other even if they didn’t meet four times a season and then again seemingly every spring, but the prolificity of the rivalry gives the bad blood the time and exposure it needs to ripen ...

The Golden Knights Won A Game Of Inches
Series can hinge on the slimmest of margins, but rarely can you see those margins so starkly as in Monday’s Game 3. It is no overstatement to say that the Golden Knights are up 2-1 in their series with the Sharks because of an inch here, an inch there....

This Is What We All Came To See
Because these are two relatively young franchises, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking of the Jets’ and Predators’ rosters the same way, as playoff ingénues. But Nashville has been here before, seven postseasons in nine years, and has carried over most of the same faces from last year’s Fina...

What If The Golden Knights Just Never Lose?
How are things going for the Vegas Golden Knights? Marc-Andre Fleury is doing the wave:...

So Much For The Leafs
This was its own collapse, in its way. Sure, it was not as shocking or brutal as 2013, but few things in sports history are. In 2013, the Leafs entered the third period of Game 7 against the Bruins with a lead and surrendered four unanswered goals to lose 5-4. In 2018, the Leafs entered the third pe...

Here We Go Again
With their 4-2 series win over Columbus, the Capitals are going to play in their seventh second-round playoff series in the last 11 years. That’s incredible! Don’t ask how they did in those second-round series....

Toronto Wins
Ten people were killed and 15 others hospitalized on Monday when a man drove a rented van onto the sidewalk and plowed through pedestrians for more than half a mile on one of Toronto’s busiest streets. It feels almost rote by this point to transition from tragedy to sporting event, but it makes sens...

We're All Very Lucky We Don't Have To Watch Another Flyers Game For Six Months
No sport really needs four rounds of playoffs. Sure, you get the occasional good first-round series, but mostly it’s about weeding out the fatally flawed teams before they have a chance to shit up the later rounds, which in theory should be quality hockey all-around. The Flyers are out of the playof...

Tuukka Rask Ruined The Maple Leafs' Best And Maybe Last Chance
This was the Maple Leafs’ chance, and it was probably their season....

NHL Linesman Can't Stop Getting Gruesomely Injured
Capitals winger Andre Burakovsky suffered an “upper-body injury” on a big check in Sunday’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Blue Jackets, and will not travel to Columbus for the series’ next two games. He got off easy compared to linesman Steve Barton....

The Golden Knights Won't Be Pushed Around
Game 3 was going to be nasty, and the Golden Knights knew it. With the Kings down 2-0 and the series leaving Vegas, where the Knights have been so good at home (the “Vegas Flu” is real, but so is their home-crowd advantage), Los Angeles was going to come out pesty and physical, finishing their check...
