Stanley Cup playoffs Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Jonathan Marchessault’s natural hat trick cements Golden Knights as Stanley Cup favorites
The Edmonton Oilers’ potential to turn back the clock officially stopped on Sunday night. Despite having two of the top five players in the league, a deep playoff run wasn’t in the cards, again. Three straight uninterrupted goals came in the second period off the stick of Jonathan Marchessault in th...
The Stanley Cup will be lifted by the Oilers-Golden Knights victor
Among a final eight that feels like a changing of the guard in hockey more than most years, with old standbys proving their age by exiting the ice until the fall, the duo of the Las Vegas Golden Knights and the Edmonton Oilers stand out like a sore thumb. Not necessarily because they don’t also repr...
I guess I can kiss Nazem Kadri’s ass now
The redemption narrative is the easy one. Everyone loves it, and it usually writes itself, which is why writers will flock to it at every opportunity (especially hockey writers who by the time the Stanley Cup Final is over are barely sober enough to find their hotel room key), and it feels good to a...
If the goal to all but clinch the Stanley Cup is scored and no one sees it, did it really happen?
There was no goal horn. No point to the net from the closest official. No audible cheer from the Avalanche faithful in attendance at Tampa’s Amalie Arena. All for the decisive shot and score from Nazem Kadri that essentially won the Colorado Avalanche the Stanley Cup....
Andre Burakovsky and the Lightning have a history
As Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals ended late Wednesday night, with the opening game of the championship series going to overtime, a hero and villain presented themself. For Colorado, Andre Burakovsky, a player commonly thought to be one needed to step up in order to lift the Cup did just that. In ...
The Rangers will almost certainly learn all the wrong lessons
To figure out where the New York Rangers are going after being dumped out on their ass by the Tampa Bay Lightning, it’s important to retrace how, and especially why, they got here....
The third period has become to the Rangers what the third quarter is to the Celtics
The New York Rangers lost their first game at Madison Square Garden during these Eastern Conference finals to the Tampa Bay Lightning, 3-1 last night. They’ve scored one goal in the last seven-and-half periods, and they haven’t really deserved much more than that....
The waiting is the hardest part
The Colorado Avalanche are waiting. And waiting for a Stanley Cup Finals opponent hasn’t treated those favorably in returning from mini-vacations in the past. We’re finishing up the 35th NHL postseason in which first-round games are contested as a best of seven, starting in 1987 and featured every y...
Tale of the tape: Battle of Alberta vs. Battle of Florida
The second round of the playoffs worked, in part, the way that the NHL dreamed up when it went to this postseason format of divisional brackets. You can question the wisdom of it happening in the second round, but we’re getting the Battle of Alberta and the Battle of Florida now....
No, these aren’t the tightest NHL playoffs of all time
There’s a common phrase percolating through each NHL playoff broadcast about how this is the most “evenly-matched” postseason of all time. It’s like these commentators get a bonus every time they talk about it. It’s nauseating and more importantly, it’s not correct. ...
Leafs and Lightning are playing the strangest series
In a playoff series, especially one between two very good teams which the Lightning and Maple Leafs are, you expect some swings. No one expected a short series, which means twists and turns as teams exchange wins. Momentum generally swings on the performance level of your goalie the next night, but ...
Florida teams thawing out in first round of the NHL Playoffs
The President’s Trophy winners are in trouble. The resilient regular season champion Florida Panthers have a tough task ahead of them to win their first playoff series in 26 years. They were overmatched Saturday afternoon by the Washington Capitals 6-1, giving the 2018 Stanley Cup Champions a 2-1 ov...
Connor Ingram goes from third string goalie to Nashville’s best bet at an upset
It may have been an impossible task after all. What more could Connor Ingram have done to stop the Colorado Avalanche other than grow a third arm or leg? In his second-ever NHL start, and first in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Ingram went from Nashville’s No. 3 goaltender to Patrick Roy overnight. He’ll...
Whew, there’s been a lot of bad hockey so far
It’s wonderful as a hockey fan that in this new era of ESPN coverage, playoff games have staggered starts – 7, 7:30, 9:30, and 10 Eastern – so that in this first round, the most exciting round of the playoffs where anything can happen, we can watch as much playoff hockey as possible and not be stuck...
How every team will lose in the 2022 NHL playoffs
As the chase to the Stanley Cup begins, the Eastern and Western Conferences have completely different outlooks. Colorado or Calgary look the part to be the Western Conference champions, and I’m not sure there’s anything the rest of the field of six can do about it. The Eastern Conference is as wide ...
There’s something in the water in NBA and NHL arenas
Rarely does it make sense to link the NBA and the NHL, other than they tend to play in the same buildings at the same time of year. You wouldn’t really call them roommates, because when one is home the other never is. Though that probably makes them perfect roommates, come to think of it. Still, on ...
The Golden Knights are running out of racetrack
Normally, a team five seasons out from its creation fighting for a playoff spot would be a mark of success. They’ve built and grown over four years, taken their lumps, accrued draft picks and developed their own, and were starting to see the first signs of something real. But nothing is normal about...
Here are the Penguins again, hanging around, hanging around, can’t get rid of them…
In a world where the Patriots didn’t exist (and what a world that would be), perhaps the gold (and black) standard for bucking against the tides, refusing to be victims of a salary cap and system specifically designed to prevent sustained success, and just general obstinance would be the Pittsburgh ...
The Rangers are a mystery that analytics can't figure out
The best way to determine the best teams in any sport is to look at the standings, right? If they’ve been playing well, they’ll be near the top of the league. As Bill Parcells said, “You are what your record says you are.”...
Can we make a ‘Habs-not’ joke real quick?
It was no secret that this season was going to be tougher for the Montreal Canadiens. They had to sneak into the playoffs last year when all they had to do was beat out the rest of the trash Canadian teams, and then went on a run because Carey Price was able to channel 2014 for a few weeks. ...