This has never happened before in the NHL. The NHL has never had a season where all three California-based teams finished in the bottom three spots of the Western Conference. It almost happened before. In 1995-96, the Kings (12th) and Sharks (13th) were at the bottom of the conference, but the Ducks were ninth. The […]
Continue readingTurns out it’s not as bad as all that after all. Shea Weber is officially expected out four to six weeks with an ankle injury, not forever, as implied by some social media musings. Still, that spells the rest of the season from where I’m sitting, unless the Habs make a miraculous push and find […]
Continue readingPart of the process is to try not to be too reactionary to short-term success. These rankings are for the rest of the season, so a recent hot streak technically doesn’t play into them other than to help develop the go-forward prognosis for a player. St. Louis Blues winger Zach Sanford moved into our rankings […]
Continue readingNow that the 2020 NHL All-Star Weekend is in the rearview mirror, the league’s trade season is underway in earnest. The next several games for each team will be pivotal, as general managers decide whether their teams should be buyers, improving their chances for the Stanley Cup playoffs, or sellers, perhaps accelerating rebuilds. Get caught […]
Continue readingIn order to catch up on some teams limping along with relatively new scoring lines, here are some of the players forcing themselves onto the radar due to injuries to their teammates. Dominik Kubalik, W, Chicago Blackhawks: Even before Dylan Strome was sidelined, the Hawks have been tinkering with a Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews […]
Continue readingThe defining moment of the 2019-20 season thus far. Akim Aliu’s accusation that Peters used racial slurs toward him, coupled with corroborated accusations of physical abuse of players while with the Carolina Hurricanes, led to Peters being suspended by the Calgary Flames before he tendered his resignation in November. The fallout from this has been […]
Continue readingSo which team has a chance of repeating that success this season? Here’s how teams currently not super secure in a playoff position stack up, in four different tiers. Los Angeles Kings Anaheim Ducks New Jersey Devils Detroit Red Wings Ottawa Senators Sure, three of these teams (Ottawa, New Jersey, Detroit) are where the Blues […]
Continue readingHe’s currently on his second chance with his third-chance team – if that phrasing makes sense. In six seasons with the Montreal Canadiens, he got to 30 goals in his fourth season, 2015-16. It looked like he was on the verge of becoming something, but the goals dried up over the next two years. And […]
Continue readingThe comments went viral. “That blew up more than I thought it would,” MacKinnon told me last week in Chicago. “I forgot I was in Toronto speaking. I’m used to being in Denver. If I said that in Denver it would have just been brushed aside.” Nonetheless, I wanted to know if MacKinnon stood by […]
Continue readingThat’s why it’s particularly dangerous to put too much stock into wild shooting percentage swings over a short stretch of games. While there’s no doubt that a shot from Nikita Kucherov is more likely to go in than one off of a fourth-liner’s stick, those are two ends of the extreme. For the players in […]
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