Articles in NHL Teams

* Matthew Tkachuk scored a pair of goals as the Panthers opened up a 3-0 lead in their First Round series against the Lightning and became the first Stanley Cup finalist to start the following postseason with three straight wins since the 1984 Oilers.

* Sebastian Aho climbed a franchise list with his fifth career game-winning goal in the postseason and Frederik Andersen backstopped the Hurricanes to a Game 3 victory thanks to a highlight-reel save in the latter stages of the third period.

* Alex Ovechkin can help the Capitals climb back into their series against the Rangers on home ice while the Predators, Avalanche and Kings all seek to take the upper hand for the first time in the opening round as their matchups swap cities.

The Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Islanders need a win tonight to avoid an elimination game on Saturday.

from Damien Cox at the Toronto Star,

Now, if there’s an NHL city in Canada that should be feeling nothing but gratitude toward its hockey team, it should be Vancouver. After missing the playoffs in seven of the previous eight seasons, and finishing sixth in the eight-team Pacific Division last season, the Canucks roared to a 50-win, 109-point campaign this year and won the division....'

• A good deal of uncertainty regarding No. 1 goalie Thatcher Demko, who missed much of the final part of the season, reappeared for Game 1 against Nashville and is now out again on a “week-to-week” basis with an undisclosed injury. Head coach Rick Tocchet said it was not a reoccurrence of the same injury.

• Unhappiness with the performance of star forward Elias Pettersson, who signed an eight-year, $92.8-million (U.S.) contract with the team last month but went pointless in the first two games against Nashville. Pettersson missed an open net in the dying seconds of the first period of Game 2, then later committed an awful turnover at his own blueline that led to Nashville’s third goal.

“I put us in a bad spot with my mistake on their third goal, that can’t happen. If I score in the first it’s a 1-1 game, different outlook,” Pettersson said afterwards. “I’m always my biggest critic and I take a lot of blame for this one.”

• Some rare mistakes by captain Quinn Hughes late in Game 2. Hughes took a late tripping penalty to slow what appeared to be a surging Canucks comeback attempt. Then, with the Vancouver net empty, Hughes was outskated and outmuscled by Preds winger Kiefer Sherwood along the boards, allowing Sherwood to ease the fourth Nashville goal into the unguarded Vancouver net.

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from Ed Graney of the Las Vegas Review-Journal,

You have to imagine Golden Knights goalie Logan Thompson awoke Tuesday morning feeling pretty good about himself.

He had the evening before won the first playoff game of his NHL career. The nerves were quelled. The butterflies were gone.

Imagine how Thompson feels now.

He was stellar Wednesday night, and for it the Knights have a 2-0 lead in their best-of-seven series against the Dallas Stars.

And for it the Knights prevailed 3-1 before a sold-out and — as you can imagine — incredibly unhappy 18,532 at American Airlines Center.

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Here are the game highlights.

from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

Whatever it is, however it happens, it always seems to happen this way.

When you lead the whole game, when you’re on your toes more than your heels, when your game is assertive, in the end you get “The Bounce.”

When you trail — “chase the game” as hockey people love to say — the chase seldom lands you the quarry.

We’ll never be sure whether Quinton Byfield made a super-skilled play to deflect that puck right onto Anze Kopitar’s stick in overtime, or if a puck that was destined for an icing call just banked off the kid and fluked its way on to the clutch captain’s blade for a game-winning breakaway goal.

And it doesn’t matter, really.

We know Byfield is a fantastic looking young player, and his superior play in Game 2 earned him “The Bounce” — whether planned or pure luck.

The Los Angeles Kings won their fourth consecutive overtime game over the Edmonton Oilers by a 5-4 score, a game the Kings deserved to win. They never trailed in Game 2, and now head home with a level series and a fresh breath of life that would have been scant, had they lost this one.

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Watch the game highlights and the OT goal here.

from Terry Koshan of the Toronto Sun,

With a 4-2 victory, the Bruins took a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, often smothering the Leafs and slamming the door on an ineffective Toronto power play, killing off all five minors.

“Power play is a big part of it, right?” Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said. “We get to two (goals). Power plays needs to get you one (more), it gets you to three, if not four, and then it’s a good night offensively in the playoffs, against an elite defensive team.

“I thought the power play was all right. We had some good looks in tight around the net that we didn’t make good on, but we have to find a way to get those in.”...

The power-play is ugly, though. Through three games, the Leafs are 1-for-11 (9.1%).

“The puck is not going in, which is frustrating,” defenceman Morgan Rielly said. “But there are chances coming. We’re trying to focus on our structure and I think our entries have been good. We’re trying to get pucks to the net, trying to create rebounds and traffic. It’s matter of getting the puck across the line.”...

On the other side of special teams, the Leafs are hurting as well. Boston is 5-for-10 on the power play in the series, including going 2-for-3 on Wednesday.

more and watch the game highlights here...

* Team captains Anze Kopitar and Brad Marchand scored the winning goal as the Kings and Bruins picked up road victories Wednesday.

* Jack Eichel became the fastest U.S.-born player in NHL history to reach 30 career playoff points as the Golden Knights defeated the Stars to take a 2-0 series lead home to Las Vegas.

* The Lightning and Islanders will look to earn a first win of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs as their First Round series shift to Tampa and Elmont, respectively, for Game 3 on Thursday.

from Nicholas J. Cotsonika of the NHL's website,

The players had been introduced to Utah. They’d been greeted by hundreds of youth hockey players at the airport; toured Delta Center and Utah Jazz headquarters; and come back to the arena to find about 12,400 people packed inside for a welcome event.

Now they introduced themselves as Utah’s new NHL team. On stage before a raucous crowd Wednesday, they were supposed to state their names, positions and hometowns one by one. But they were so emotional, so inspired, they couldn’t help but fire up the fans further.

Clayton Keller grabbed the mic and yelled, “Utah! How we doin’?” Lawson Crouse took it and yelled, “Let’s make some more noise!” Nick Bjugstad yelled, “Let’s go!” Liam O'Brien told the fans they could call him “Spicy Tuna,” and Jack McBain led a “Spicy Tuna” chant.

“This is honestly one of the coolest experiences we’ve all had as hockey players,” Alex Kerfoot told the crowd.

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Below watch the team receiving a huge welcome at the Delta Center.

One team will go up 2-1 in their series while two teams can go up 2-0.

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 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...

* 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 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.

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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.’

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Catch the game highlights here.

* 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?

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 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.

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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.

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