stanleycupplayoffs - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Florida Panthers changing their narrative is the story of the NHL playoffs
The Florida Panthers were written off. Down three games to a lowly one to the Boston Bruins, the most dominant regular-season team of all time, needing two wins in their barn to even get out of the first round. Since that 6-2 loss at home to the B’s, the Panthers are 11-1. Three straight over the Br...
Carolina Hurricanes and Dallas Stars haven’t thrown in the towel yet, unlike their NBA counterparts
We could be breaking out the brooms for all four NHL and NBA conference finals. The Denver Nuggets finished off the LeBron-LeLakers and the Miami Heat will eventually put the Celtics out of their misery on the hardcourt side of things....
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. ...