the-stanley-cup Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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....
That’s the difference between the goalies
Hockey — as weird, random, and boorish as it can get — is a pretty simple game at times. The storylines coming out of Game 3 were that the Tampa Bay Lightning authored some market correction to get back into the Stanley Cup Final after a 6-2 win to get the series to 2-1. And with no team having won ...
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 ...
Make it a best of 13
Usually, especially in a Stanley Cup Final, you need at least a few games before the level of play truly takes off. Coaches and teams want to try different things, chase their matchups, or keep things tight as they can to preserve already exhausted players until there is absolutely no choice. No one...
The NHL finally gets its era-shifting Final with Lightning vs. Avs
Hockey being what it is, mostly weird and random, rarely throws up the two best teams in the NHL’s showpiece, the Stanley Cup Final. Sometimes we get close, and most seasons it’s actually hard to decipher who are clearly the best teams. With shootouts and overtime goofiness affecting the standings, ...
Steph Curry and Steven Stamkos are having an Old Guy Summer
Well, spring. But whatever....
It’s OK, Matt Swarmer, Chicagoans were too drunk or distracted to remember that
The Chicago Cubs matter insomuch as they give the fine people of the Windy City an excuse to day drink and eat hot dogs. Outside of that one year, this season isn’t that much different from most others. They’re 23-35, 10 games back of the division leading St. Louis Cardinals, and nine games out of t...
Whatchagonna do NHL?
The NHL Department of Player Safety needs to get to the bottom of this quickly. The video evidence against Lightning captain Steven Stamkos allegedly spitting on Alexis Lafrenière appears damning, yet not conclusive. Why else would he cock his head back and lunge forward with his lips puckered at th...
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...
Auston Matthews is nearing an elite, rare echelon for American hockey players
The NHL’s most prestigious individual award was first handed out in 1924. Calvin Coolidge just became President of the United States. It took until Barack Obama’s final year in The White House for someone born and raised in America to win the Hart Memorial Trophy, the league’s most valuable player a...
This looks like Connor McDavid’s time
This could finally be it. The NHL is starving for its next superstar. Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby’s first-round exits with Washington and Pittsburgh left a void for a television-ratings hockey juggernaut....
Is the NHL’s Presidents’ Trophy curse real?
The Florida Panthers breezed through the first round of the playoffs and then got bounced from the second round so fast we barely had time for the annual discourse about the Presidents’ Trophy and whether it’s a curse for a team’s Stanley Cup hopes....
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....
Leafs on precipice of some kind of history
Nobody ever tweeted about a Florida Panthers playoff series victory before last night, when Carter Verhaeghe, off a pass from Claude Giroux – trade deadline acquisition and bringer of tons of vicarious Panthers fans from Philadelphia – lifted Florida to a 4-3 overtime win over the Capitals, and a 4-...
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. ...
Let’s appreciate all the money Ryan Johansen has stolen
The Predators bit the dust last night, as we all suspected they would. The Avalanche are just too much, the Preds were a wonky team whose best player on both ends is a defenseman, Roman Josi, because he has to be. For their entire existence, which is getting up near 25 years now, the Predators have ...
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 ...
Before the playoffs start, we should take a sec to marvel at what the Blackhawks accomplished
No, that’s not being such a shitfuck organization that they’ve basically gotten themselves erased from NHL history or PR. Watch any of these ads for the Stanley Cup playoffs, and you won’t see one highlight or shot of a Hawk. Even though they won the Cup three times, or were the most popular team fo...