nhlplayoffs Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Blues Got Screwed By Yet Another Officiating Disaster
Images the NHL wants to linger after an hard-fought overtime game: the jubilation of the goalscorer; his teammates erupting on the bench and spilling over to celebrate on the ice; the disappointment and hard-earned exhaustion of the losers, skating off in disbelief....
Robert Bortuzzo Scored An Unlikely Goal And Then Got Roasted By His Teammates
Robert Bortuzzo doesn’t score goals. He doesn’t really try to, and he’s not good at it. There’s no more delicate way to put this....
The Four Horsemen Of The Second Round
As the second round came to a close I looked upon the remnants of the NHL and beheld the Four Horsemen who delivered judgment upon the match-ups. Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death each sent a team into the next life, which appears mostly to be either Worlds, or a golf course in British Columbia....
The Avalanche Were Sunk By A Bad Rule, Badly Applied
Pretend you don’t know anything about hockey. Take a look at this frozen moment of action. Where is the puck? Where is the play happening, and where is it not? Who is involved in the action, and who still has the potential to affect it? Who is violating the rules? More importantly, who is violating ...
Patrick Maroon Did It For St. Louis
Until Patrick Maroon finally, finally beat Ben Bishop 5:50 into the second overtime and put the Blues through to the Western Conference final, no player in the history of the NHL had ever scored a Game 7 overtime winner in his hometown. It’d been close, once, when in 1979 Yvon Lambert, out of Drummo...
Gabriel Landeskog Had To Get His Hands Dirty
In hockey as in few other sports, things rarely play out like they’re supposed to. (If they did, the Avalanche wouldn’t have made it to this series, let alone be headed for a Game 7 in San Jose after a wild 4-3 OT win on Monday night.) The storyline/scouting report for Avs-Sharks was supposed to be ...
A Lover's Guide To The NHL Playoffs
The Stanley Cup Playoffs: they apparently started some time ago. I was not apprised of this, but then no one would have thought to do that because I have been very clear with the people in my life that I do not need to be told about the latest developments in the National Hockey League. It’s often a...
Brad Marchand Has Given Up Being Creatively Annoying And Just Punched A Guy In The Back Of The Head
The truly frustrating thing about Brad Marchand is that he’d be a star without all the bullshit. He’s on the top line of the team with the best odds to win the Cup because he’s really, really good at hockey, not because of the other stuff. It’s just that the other stuff—“pest” feels insufficient to ...
Now The Sharks Want An Apology From The NHL For A Controversial Call
The Sharks watched, amused, as some rough officiating in the first round led to their improbable Game 7 comeback, and as the league quietly apologized to the still-salty Golden Knights. Not that it did Vegas any good; they’re still golfing. (The Sharks’ general reaction to that kerfuffle could be su...
The 8 Deadly Sins Of The First Round
All your brackets are dead. Every prediction model is forfeit. Does the regular season have any meaning whatsoever? (Does life?) Does chance play too great a role in this slippery sport? Does the best team ever win the Stanley Cup?...
The Golden Knights Are Furious Over How Their Season Was "Stolen"
Let’s get this out of the way right at the outset: Yes, the Vegas Golden Knights could have avoided all of this controversy—and their elimination—by simply not allowing allowing four goals in 4:01. One of the weirdest and wildest comebacks in recent memory, a Game 7 eventually won by the Sharks 5-4 ...
Gerard Gallant Calls Peter DeBoer A "Clown" For Saying He Talks Too Much Trash To Players
The Golden Knights have squandered a 3-1 series lead against the Sharks and must now win Game 7 in San Jose tonight to advance, so it’s understandable if everyone on both sides is a little on edge. Even Sharks coach Peter DeBoer and Knights coach Gerard Gallant are squabbling in public....
Alex Ovechkin Had One Hell Of A Wild Night
In retrospect we couldn’t have asked for a better first-round matchup. The Capitals are the more talented team, but they’re also more banged-up and tired. The Hurricanes are younger and hungrier (whatever that means), but also less experienced—which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on...
Tomas Hertl Has Another "Guarantee" For Game 7
It was, the Sharks to a man insisted, not a guarantee. Just an excited kid with less than a mastery of English. Don’t believe them. If Tomas Hertl didn’t expect everyone to latch on to his comments ahead of a win-or-go-home Game 6 against the Golden Knights, he still knew what he was saying. And he ...
The Jets Can't Win At Home And Can't Protect Leads, But Other Than That, Everything's Fine
It all started so well for the Jets, and ended so poorly, which is how an alarmingly large number of games have gone for Winnipeg this year, and is why there are potentially an alarmingly small number of games left for them. For the 11th time this season, the Jets lost a game they had led entering t...
Is This The End For Joe Thornton And The Sharks As We Know Them?
The San Jose Sharks have been reduced in their time to being the NHL’s glorified version of the Portland Trail Blazers—almost always in the playoffs, always ultimately being on the business end of a handshake line. It’s almost a zen koan at this point; when unrequited love turns to “Call us when you...
Philipp Grubauer Saved A Game And The Flames Are On The Brink
It’s less sexy than the Blue Jackets clobbering Tampa, but out west the Avalanche are on the verge of upsetting the other top seed, taking a 3-1 series lead over the Flames after a comeback 3-2 overtime win. Colorado’s doing a lot right, but a large share of their success belongs to goalie Philipp G...
What The Hell Happened To The Lightning?
Six days in April can change a lot....
Cale Makar Has Arrived And His Parents Are Just Barely Holding It Together
It’s been a busy few days for Cale Makar. On Friday, he was named the Hobey Baker Award winner for top college player. On Saturday, he and UMass played in and lost the NCAA Championship game. On Sunday, he signed an entry-level contract with the Avalanche, who had drafted him fourth overall in 2017....
Vegas's Second Line Is Unstoppable Right Now
For all the things that went right for Vegas in its inaugural season last year, its second line occasionally proved a headache. The combo of James Neal, Erik Haula, and David Perron put in some goals, but was a defensive disaster—George McPhee claimed it was dead last in the league among second line...