from Joe Romano of the Tampa Bay Times,

Certainly, the Panthers deserved to celebrate. Their pressure was relentless.

The Lightning deserved their fate, too. They have allowed Florida to control the puck and the pace.

As for Andrei Vasilevskiy? He deserved so much more.

If the Lightning cannot win a playoff game with their goaltender sliding, diving and denying pucks from every direction, then this season could be heading to a quicker end than last year.

Florida beat Tampa Bay 3-2 in overtime Tuesday night to claim the first two games of the first-round series. And when Carter Verhaeghe’s backhanded flip ended up in the net less than three minutes into the extra period, Vasilevskiy was sprawled on the ice with Florida forward Matthew Tkachuk on top of him, and three Lightning players arriving too late to do a stinking thing to help their goaltender.

“I thought Vasy made some great saves,” Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. “Both goalies played outstanding tonight. One had a little more action than the other but both made some really quality saves.”

continued and watch the game highlights...

from Bob Duff of Detroit Hockey Now,

Next season could be viewed as the year of the more for the Detroit Red Wings. That’s because the team will be dealing with so much more than they were at the outset of the 2023-24 NHL campaign.

There will be more expectations placed upon this team after missing this season’s playoffs via a tiebreaker. That will lead to more pressure, more responsibility and more growth within the team.

Will it all result in more wins? That’s the great unkown at this juncture. But it will also lead to more opportunity and Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde is viewing that as a good thing.

“Expectations for certain are going to change and that’s a positive,” Lalonde said. “Those expectations changed when we went 16-4-2 in February. Expectations changed when we started the season 5-1. Expectations changed when we won six straight.”

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from Paul Friesen of the Winnipeg Sun,

Before Tuesday’s tilt with Colorado, Winnipeg Jets coach Rick Bowness, talking about the 8:45 p.m. start time, joked about having a nap on the bench during the game.

Hours later his team went out and did just that.

In good shape with a 2-1 lead past the middle mark of the second period, the Jets plopped their heads on the proverbial pillow and curled up into a ball.

By the time they’d pull on their pajamas for real, they’d dropped a 5-2 decision, evening the series at a game apiece as it moves to Denver.

Three Colorado goals in the last six minutes of the second period turned what could have been such a sweet dream into a nightmare.

Inches from a 3-1 lead – Kyle Connor rang a shot off the goal post, sending play the other way – the Jets instead saw Artturi Lehkonen’s deflection tie it.

No problem, no panic, right? Bowness’s crew hadn’t been nearly as loose as it was in Game 1.

What came next can best be described as a recurring nightmare from Connor Hellebuyck’s past.

continued and here are the game highlights...

from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,\

Never have the Vancouver Canucks shot so often, and rarely have they shot so poorly.

The only way injured goalie Thatcher Demko could have helped his team Tuesday was if he had traded his paddle for a regular hockey stick, taken a position in front of the Nashville Predators’ net and actually hit the six-foot-by-four-foot target that seemed to be protected by some force field — and every human being in the Predators’ organization.

The Canucks attempted 84 shots on Nashville goalie Juuse Saros, and forced him to make a save just 18 times. Until a late, meaningless Predator power play, Nashville had blocked more Canuck shots (34) than they’d attempted shots of their own against Casey DeSmith, who is suddenly a focal point of Vancouver’s first real playoff series in nine years due to a Demko injury that coach Rick Tocchet said will keep the star goalie out “week to week.”

The Predators’ first shot of the third period occurred with 1:53 remaining and was Kiefer Sherwood’s empty-net goal that capped a 4-1 victory as Nashville evened the first-round series at 1-1 with Game 3 Friday in Tennessee.

continued and the game highlights are here...

* The Panthers and Lightning contested the first overtime game of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs which saw Carter Verhaeghe score the winner to give Florida a 2-0 series lead.

* The Avalanche and Predators both evened their series at 1-1, with the former becoming just the third team in NHL history to score 11-plus goals through the first two games of the playoffs versus the team that had the fewest goals against in the regular season.

* The Rangers took a 2-0 series lead with the help of K'Andre Miller, who became the fourth defenseman in the past two decades to score a shorthanded goal and have it stand as the game winner.

* Three contests are scheduled for Wednesday, including a Game 3 between the Bruins and Maple Leafs as well as a couple of Game 2s featuring Western Conference squads.

But the visitors may have something to do about that.

I am sitting tonight out so you are on your own.

from Thomas Drance of The Athletic,

On Tuesday, as the club took an optional morning skate ahead of Game 2 of its first-round series against the Nashville Predators, Demko was absent. It was reported, first by Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff and later confirmed by sources to The Athletic’s Rick Dhaliwal, that Demko will be out for Game 2. His status over the balance of Vancouver’s first-round series is now very much in question, with Tocchet describing the injury as “day to day.”

“He skated yesterday. He’s not going to play tonight,” said Tocchet. “It wasn’t the old injury and that’s all I really got for you guys.”

Demko is an ace in Vancouver’s hand when he’s healthy. The Vancouver starter won an astounding 35 of his 51 starts this season, while posting a .918 save percentage and a goals saved above average number bested only by Connor Hellebuyck. He is, without question, one of Vancouver’s most important players....

Between Casey DeSmith and Arturs Silovs, Vancouver has the goaltending depth to get a level of puck stopping that should still permit the Canucks to win games. You don’t expect Silovs or DeSmith to steal games (or steal an entire series) the way Demko can, but both of Vancouver’s auxiliary netminders have been good enough to win games in front of all year. Now they’ll have to continue to be as Demko recuperates.

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from Kevin Allen of Detroit Hockey Now,

CapFriendly.com shows Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman with $28.8 million in cap space remaining. But that amount will evaporate quickly as he begins to sign his players he wants to keep.

Yzerman has 13 returning players under contract. He has five restricted free agents, including Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond who will receive the majority of his cap space if they want long-term contracts. Other restricted free agents in the plans for next season are Jonatan Berggren, Albert Johansson and Joe Veleno. Berggren and Johansson won’t be waiver exempt in 2024-25, meaning they can’t be sent to Grand Rapids without passing through the waiver process.

“We have to make room for them and it’ll be up to them as individuals to earn that spot, whatever spot in the lineup they can. I wouldn’t rule out anybody, pick a name in GR,” Yzerman said. “I don’t want to say definitely they won’t be here because they’re winding down their season and hopefully are going to have a good playoff run and things can change over the course of a long playoff run and we could potentially see more players pushing for a spot on the roster.”

continued

The best of the best..

from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

In a battle of two divergent styles, Edmonton owned Game 1 by dictating how the game would be played for most of the 60 minutes. This game was about skating, passing and carrying pucks into the Kings zone, rather than the more deliberate — and boring — type of game L.A.’s one-three-one alignment is designed to produce.

“That’s not our model. That’s not the way we play,” stated L.A. defenceman Drew Doughty, whose Kings have lost two straight Round 1 series to Edmonton and got waxed in the opener of the 2024 edition. “It’s frustrating. We just have to put that game in the past and get back to doing what we do best and that’s playing good two-way hockey.”

Edmonton won the fight for how the game would be played, and as such, took a 1-0 series lead in this Round 1 series.

“We know that’s their game. We know they’re good,” Doughty said. “We’ve played them so many times, but that was probably the poorest we’ve played against them in the last three years in my opinion.”

read on and game highlights are here...

from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

In the final minute of Auston Matthews’ tour de force, with overtime seemingly looming, with the Boston Bruins buzzing, with Ilya Samsonov unsure of the location of the puck Matthews slid the disc under Samsonov’s pads.

There is no statistic for composure. There is no statistic for assuring victory. There is no statistic, overall, for being the most complete player on the ice in every zone and every way of a playoff victory.

There is a statistic for this though: The Maple Leafs and the Bruins are tied 1-1 after two games at the TD Garden. This playoff series is now a best of five. The blasted Leafs from Game 1, battled back in Game 2, made some stunning mistakes and some shocking errors and still wound up standing tall enough for a 3-2 hold-your-breath win Monday night over a clearly exasperated Bruins team.

You expect Matthews to score, because that’s what he does better than anyone in hockey. His 70th goal of this season didn’t happen in the regular season. And he set up two other scores. Three goals for the Leafs, three points for the giant, Matthews.

On a night the Leafs were losing at faceoffs, he was winning his. He did what he usually does, win puck battles, block shots, rarely turned it over, rarely get beat in any situation, and think the way great hockey players are supposed to think when the game and the series and maybe the season are all on the line.

continued

Below watch TSN on Matthews and watch the game highlights here.

from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

The Islanders’ season-long kryptonite of holding a lead had gone away for a while.

But it reared its ugly head at the worst possible moment on Monday night, as the Islanders took a 3-0 lead and turned it into a 5-3 loss to the Hurricanes to go down 2-0 in the first round of the playoffs after Carolina scored three times in the last 2:30 to complete the comeback, with Jordan Martinook netting the winner.

It’s the second time the Islanders have blown a 3-0 lead against the Hurricanes this season, but unlike the first one on Nov. 4, this will be excruciatingly tough to get over....

It looked as though the Islanders — despite having sat back and absorbed pressure for most of the night — would somehow get out of the night alive when they entered the final three minutes hanging onto a 3-2 lead....

But quickly following Carolina’s timeout with 2:49 to go, Sebastian Aho deflected in Andrei Svechnikov’s shot at the right post with the extra attacker on for Carolina.

Just nine seconds later, Martinook completed the Islanders’ collapse, beating Noah Dobson to the left post off the faceoff and sticking the puck in.

“Obviously the tying goal, we lost our coverage,” said a shell-shocked Patrick Roy. “I was going to call a timeout right there and I said, ‘We’ll see if the puck goes in our zone. If it goes in our zone, I will call a timeout to cool off a bit.’

more

Catch the game highlights here.

from Eric Duhatschek of The Athletic,

We’ve debated this topic endlessly before, and the most common practical solution — which has also been suggested by several NHL general managers over the years — is to tweak the rules as they apply to LTIR and make every team be cap-compliant for every playoff game, which they aren’t obliged to do at the moment. It would be a simple fix and one that might tone down the anger and suspicion surrounding the current system.

Question: If teams had to be cap-compliant for every playoff game, how would Vegas have looked with Stone, Hertl and Hanifin all in the opening night lineup vs. Dallas?

Before we add up the totals, what’s your guess?

Are they cap-compliant? Close to compliant? Or miles over?

The correct is b) close.

For the 20 Vegas players in the lineup against Dallas, the salaries add up to $84.247 million, or $747,000 over the 2023-24 salary cap of $83.5 million.

more ($)

* On the heels of his 100-assist season, Connor McDavid recorded the first five-assist outing in the playoffs since 1998 while Zach Hyman netted the first hat trick of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs in a high-scoring Oilers win.

* Sebastian Aho and Jordan Martinook scored nine seconds apart in the final minutes of regulation to help the Hurricanes pull off just their third three-goal comeback win in franchise postseason history and take a 2-0 series lead.

* The Golden Knights made the first step at defending their 2023 Stanley Cup championship as they skated to a 1-0 series lead.

* The Maple Leafs evened their series at 1-1 as it shifts to Toronto and now own the third-most postseason wins in Game 2s after suffering a Game 1 loss over the past 30 years.

* Four teams will have the opportunity to tie their series during a four-game Tuesday as the Capitals, Lightning, Avalanche and Predators will each be eyeing road wins to even their First Round matchups.

Six playoff games have been played in 2024, the home team has yet to lose. Does it continue tonight?

Enjoy your holiday.

added 5:08pm,

via the YouTube page of the NHL,

NHL bloopers, wacky and lighthearted moments from the last few weeks of the regular season including an unfortunately timed broken stick, a solar eclipse preview in Washington and the epic conclusion of the Fleury / Duhaime prank wars!

Watch the 20 minute video below.

from Tracey Myers of the NHL's website,

Miragh Bitove got to see firsthand when the Vegas Golden Knights players and staff had their individual celebrations with the Stanley Cup last offseason.

This season she’ll travel even more in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and offseason as one of the Cup handlers.

“It’s exciting,” said Bitove, who has been an archivist with the Hockey Hall of Fame since 2005. “It’s really neat to get to watch people at the top of their game and get to see how they choose to celebrate with something they’ve been dreaming about their whole life in sports. That part is exciting but also just meeting people along the road.

“I love meeting all different kinds of people and finding common ground and learning about people and hearing people’s stories about their associations with the Cup. That always keeps it interesting and entertaining and it’s an honor.”

Bitove, who will become the first woman to be a Cup keeper, isn’t a stranger to traveling with the hardware: when the various trophies and Stanley Cup are brought to events such as the NHL Awards or NHL Draft, Bitove is there with them. Now she’s also part of the offseason traveling tour, which includes a group of Cup handlers and keepers who rotate through 100 days of travel to celebrate Cup days with the winners. She’s not sure how much her travel will increase this year, but it will be more than the 24 days she spent traveling last summer.

continued

from Paul MacLean at the NHL's website,

The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2023-24 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.

In this edition, Paul MacLean, former coach of the Ottawa Senators, who won the 2013 Jack Adams Award voted as NHL coach of the year, and assistant with the Anaheim Ducks, Detroit Red Wings, Columbus Blue Jackets and Toronto Maple Leafs, looks at how coaches deal with matchups in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

For coaches, the Stanley Cup Playoffs become a whole different beast, mostly because you only get seven games and in those seven games you're playing against the same team.

Before you get to the playoffs, in your preparation, you define all the things your opponent does well and maybe they don't do well, and you discover the identity of your opponent and their style of play.

Then you look at whether your style is better than theirs and what adjustments you potentially have to make game to game. And the adjustments can go not just game to game, but period to period and a lot of times, it goes shift by shift.

If we're talking about the Los Angeles Kings and the Edmonton Oilers, Connor McDavid's shifts versus somebody are going to be different than Ryan Nugent-Hopkins' shifts against somebody or Derek Ryan's shift against somebody else. They might play those shifts differently and adjust according to who the opponent is and who is on the ice at that time.

It takes a lot of practice from the team and preparation from the coaching staff knowing what things a team must do to counter the opposition and be ready to do it and execute it at the right time.

continued

from Max Bultman of The Athletic,

With the 2023-24 season in the books, though, and the proud franchise’s playoff drought now at eight years, one thing is clear: Expectations have begun to arrive in Detroit.

Arriving at the same time, however, is a complicated, challenging reality: Though the Red Wings took steps forward this year, they did so with a roster made up largely of veterans — not all of whom will be back next season. Yzerman has said he has interest in bringing all six of Detroit’s unrestricted free agents back, but realistically, he will have to prioritize certain players over others — and likely also do some subtracting elsewhere to make room on the roster and salary-cap ledger. Especially with young cornerstones Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond in need of new contracts.

And when some of those veterans inevitably depart, that will leave holes to fill and lost production that will need to be made up. Likely, those will be filled at least in part by younger players.

In some ways, that possibility is exciting. Yzerman’s conservative approach to promoting young players has been among the most criticized aspects of his GM tenure, and this season, despite the team’s rebuilding status, only one player with rookie status dressed for Detroit: Simon Edvinsson, who played in only 16 games.

Edvinsson looks locked into next year’s lineup, after an excellent stint to close the year, and in addition to him, Yzerman singled out forward Jonatan Berggren and defenseman Albert Johansson as players the team will need to make space for, as both will no longer be exempt from waivers.

“As far as young guys, anyone else, I wouldn’t rule out anybody,” Yzerman said.

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from Sean Keeler of the Denver Post,

Avalanche fans deserve Justus.

Do whatever it takes, Jared Bednar. Nyquil. Mucinex. Voodoo. Anything that gets Avalanche backup goaltender Justus Annunen healthy and ready to start Game 2 of this Avs-Jets series. Anything that gets No. 1 netminder Alexandar Georgiev away from the crease and out of the firing line.

Love Georgie.

He’s toast.

The Winnipeg Jets know it. John Buccigross knows it. The moose wandering around south Manitoba know it. Over his last six appearances, dating back to April 5, Georgiev’s given up 29 goals. Bednar, the Avs’ venerated coach, isn’t just running out of options here. He’s running out of time.

Winnipeg put seven more past No. 40 in Game 1 of their Stanley Cup Playoff series Sunday, roughly a week after peppering him for a touchdown and extra point at Ball Arena.

This time, it took two periods for Georgiev to become Fourgiev. It took three for him to become Sevengiev.

continued

from Ed Graney of the Las Vegas Review-Journal,

“Our goal at the start of the year was to make the playoffs, and we did that,” defenseman Brayden McNabb said. “Maybe not the exact way we wanted. There have been ups and downs. It took us awhile to find our game.

“Of course, you’d always like to have home ice. That’s always going to be an advantage. But getting into the playoffs is the most important thing. We need to understand that.”

Funny. It’s always interesting what players and coaches say about flipping the proverbial switch. About reaching a point such as a first-round playoff series and wiping the slate clean.

The Knights at their healthiest and best needn’t worry about such things. They’re good enough to repeat, on paper and on the ice. But there have been enough hiccups (and injuries) throughout the season that just showing up won’t be enough. They might have found their game along the way, but they need to be more consistent with it.

In other words, it’s go-time.

“This is what we wanted, what we battled all year for, and now we just have to prepare for it,” center Nicolas Roy said. “When you get into the playoffs, it’s a new season. Obviously, we didn’t have as good a season as last year, but we want to prove we have the same team or even a better one. I think we can go all the way.

“Flipping the switch is a tough question. I just think you want your game to be in a good spot. It’s tough to flip a switch, but I do think our game is in a good spot right now.”

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