nhl-playoffs Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Calgary's Andrew Mangiapane Didn't Have To Embarrass Philipp Grubauer Like That
Flames winger Andrew Mangiapane decided that the best time to show Calgary he was worth calling up on the last day of 2018 was in Game 1 of his team’s series against the Colorado Avalanche. With less than six minutes left in the second period, the 23-year-old was able to deke his way past three defe...

Good Lord, The Caps Don't Like Making Things Easy
Just because the championship monkey is off the backs of the Washington Capitals doesn’t mean the team has forgotten where it came from. In Game 1 of the series with the upstart Carolina Hurricanes, the Caps showed flashes of the team’s former self best known for handing momentum right back to posts...

Leafs' Nazem Kadri Sets Up Beautiful Breakaway For William Nylander With Pinpoint Feed
After going down against the Boston Bruins early, the Toronto Maple Leafs spent a majority of Game 1 (so far) effectively defending seemingly every scoring opportunity their opponents got. The Leafs have now gotten to the point where they’ve been able to turn that strong defense into some magical of...

Jordan Binnington Would Not Be Rattled
The unlikely savior of the St. Louis Blues’ season came through again in Game 1 of their first-round fight with the Winnipeg Jets. Rookie goalie Jordan Binnington, who showed up midseason to go 24-5-1 and pilot the Blues from last place to the playoffs, didn’t get overwhelmed by a sellout crowd in M...

Islanders Fans Reminded Everyone What Home-Ice Advantage Sounds Like
The way-ahead-of-schedule resurgence of the Islanders has coincided with a partial return home, to the Nassau Coliseum, where they’re playing half their home games as they figure out a way to get out of Brooklyn. So it’s only fitting that their playoff opener was back in the old barn, thanks to an a...

Sharks' Joe Pavelski Takes One On The Chin For His Team To Score Opening Goal
Once the Stanley Cup playoffs start, the debate over whether the structural integrity of your face is more important than a goal no longer becomes a debate. There are only two options that players have: give up your face, or let your team down. Less than 15 minutes into Game 1 of the Sharks-Golden K...

The Columbus Blue Jackets Are Not Here To Get Steamrolled
Some fans say that the 3-0 lead when you’re the Presidents’ Trophy winners playing Game 1 at home in the first round against an eight seed from Ohio is the most dangerous lead in hockey, and the Tampa Bay Lightning found that out the hard way in their 4-3 upset loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on W...

Annoying Refs Bust Up A Party On Long Island, But Jordan Eberle Restarts It
Nassau Coliseum was so frickin’ loud at the start of Game 1 in this first-round series between the Penguins and Islanders, and it somehow got even more deafening 30 seconds into the game. Tom Kuhnhackl came right off the bench for the Isles and set off an explosion in the arena, as he fired a wriste...

A Cranky And Wishful Preview Of The 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs
The Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Wednesday, and while it is considered an incontrovertible truth that the Cup is a better entertainment than the NBA Playoffs, it is also its own hot mess in uniquely weird ways, starting with this....

NHL To Continue Using Playoff Format Everyone Hates
We’re about to enter year six of the NHL’s current playoff setup, a format that has garnered mostly complaints since its inception. To be fair to the league, hockey fans can and do complain about everything, but the format’s drawbacks do seem to outweigh its benefits. So, just a few days out from th...


Alex Ovechkin's Face Said It All
“This moment...” Alexander Ovechkin started, flanked at the podium by the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe Trophy. He never once that I saw looked at the latter, but he kept glancing toward the big one, the one he had kissed and lofted and screamed into and shared with every single one of his teammat...

So Much Cool: My Night Among Joyous And Drunken Caps Fans<em></em>
Tomorrow is a bigass waste of time. I am a grown adult, which means that the majority of my decisions are based around tomorrow. I save money. I go to bed at a reasonable hour. I don’t do crack. Tomorrow dictates a great deal of my actions, which is a shame because today is RIGHT HERE to be celebrat...

The Game Clock Broke In Vegas And Caused Total Chaos
If ever you need confirmation of the theory of general relativity, just watch your team in a Stanley Cup clincher. After Lars Eller scored the go-ahead (and soon to be Cup-winning) goal with 7:37 left, time started doing funny things, depending on who you were rooting for. While those final minutes ...

An Emotional T.J. Oshie Describes Winning The Cup In Front Of Father, Suffering Dementia<em></em>
You will get absolutely nowhere if you try to keep the emotion bottled up inside while watching Caps winger T.J. Oshie talk about winning the Stanley Cup with his father in attendance. Oshie’s father is battling Alzheimer’s disease, so big joyous events they can experience together take on added imp...

The 2018 <i>Hockey Night In Canada</i> Season-Ending Montage Is Here<em></em>
Hockey is over for the summer. That sucks! Perhaps, maybe, the only thing that can get us through those lean months will be the annual masterpiece that is the Hockey Night In Canada season-ending montage, set this year to Oasis (??). Here you are....

The Capitals Are Finally Champions
This year was different. The Washington Capitals are Stanley Cup champions....

Backstrom To Ovechkin Has Never Been Bigger Or Prettier
It’s 2-1 Washington as I write this, but the goals are coming fast and furious so let’s not spend too much time on this before the score changes. (No shit, Vegas made it 2-2 before I finished writing that sentence.) But the Caps have been scoring some of the prettiest goals of the playoffs—especiall...

Ovechkin And Fleury Say Hello, With Sticks
Alexander Ovechkin’s and Marc-Andre Fleury’s playoff familiarity goes all the way back to 2009. Fleury’s side has won every single one of their series (even if he happened to be on the bench for some of that). That could change tonight, obviously. Even before puck drop, they were sending each other ...

D.C.'s Chinatown Is Sinking Under A Sea Of Red
It has been a long, long while since the last time D.C. had any reason to throw a public sports watch party. With the Caps on a run through the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the weather around town holding up beautifully, Caps watch parties, taking place inside and around the Caps’ Chinatown arena, hav...