Articles in NHL Talk

* The Avalanche and Oilers both scored six goals in big wins en route to 2-1 leads in their respective series, as both teams’ star players posted multi-point performances Friday.

* The Rangers rallied to move within one win of advancing to the Second Round with the help of Barclay Goodrow’s goal on the penalty kill, marking just the third time on record that an NHL team has scored a shorthanded winner in consecutive playoff contests.

* The Hurricanes and Panthers will both look to advance to the Second Round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs on Saturday as they’re two of eight teams taking the ice.

* The NHL announced that the 2024 NHL Draft Lottery will be held on Tuesday, May 7, at NHL Network’s Secaucus, N.J., studio. The event will be broadcast on ESPN, Sportsnet and TVA Sports (time to be announced next week). Click here for odds.

NEW YORK (April 26, 2024) – The National Hockey League announced today the 2024 NHL Draft Lottery will be held on Tuesday, May 7, at NHL Network’s Secaucus, N.J., studio. The event will be broadcast on ESPN, Sportsnet and TVA Sports (time to be announced next week).

The 2024 NHL Draft Lottery will determine the order of selection for the first 16 picks in the first round of the 2024 NHL Draft. Participants are all teams that did not qualify for the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs (or the teams that have acquired the first-round drafting positions of those non-playoff teams).

REMINDER: The NHL announced changes to the Draft Lottery format on March 23, 2021. Among the changes in effect since 2022 is a limit on the total number of selections (10) a team participating in the Draft Lottery can “move up” in the event it wins one of the Lottery Draws. Thus, only the top 11 seeds will be eligible to receive the first overall selection in the 2024 NHL Draft.

The allocation of odds for the 1st Lottery Draw of the 2024 NHL Draft Lottery is as follows:

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

The best of the best..

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.

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* 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.

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.

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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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* The Jets outlasted the Avalanche in a 13-goal, back-and-forth thriller that concluded as just the second game in Stanley Cup Playoffs history to feature two teams combine for at least six goals in multiple periods.

* Dakota Joshua appeared in just his second-ever postseason game, scored one of two Vancouver goals in 12 seconds and helped the Canucks rally to a Game 1 win against the Predators.

* Home teams improved to 6-0 in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Only four other postseasons in NHL history have featured the home team win the first six or more games to begin a playoff year: 1965 (10), 1959 (9), 1970 (8) and 1962 (8).

* The last two Western Conference series begin Monday as the Oilers and Kings meet in the First Round for the third straight season while the Stars and Golden Knights face off in the postseason for the third time.

from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- Why won’t Utah have a name and logo for its first season? It’s April. The season starts in October. Surely, a name, a logo and a jersey is more than possible by then. The best thing about the Seattle Kraken through three NHL seasons: Their jersey.

- There are 16 teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs, three of them are starting Canadians in goal — Edmonton, Los Angeles and Vegas. Of the other 13 starters, six are Russians and five are Americans.

- Hoping to see Derek Lalonde back on Sportsnet this playoff season. The Red Wings coach was a breath of fresh air on television last playoff season.

- The Ottawa Senators, New Jersey Devils and Buffalo Sabres all desperately need a head coach. Will any of them have the stones or the money to hire the best coach available, Joel Quenneville?

- Got thinking about this when former NHL referee Wally Harris passed away the other day. Time was, I knew just about every NHL ref by name and face. So many of us did. We used to travel with them. We used to eat in the same coffee shops or have the occasional drink in a lobby bar. I knew Bryan Lewis and Andy van Hellemond; Denis Morel, Kerry Fraser and Dave Newell; Bruce Hood, Bill McCreary, Wally and a whole slew of linesmen. Yesterday, the NHL put out its list of 22 playoff referees. I kind of knew two of them. The rest: Mystery names to me. I miss the days when NHL refs were allowed to have personalities and when they occasionally socialized with those who wrote about the game.

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* Jake DeBrusk scored two quick goals and Evgeny Kuznetsov had two points in his first postseason contest with Carolina as the Bruins and Hurricanes picked up Game 1 wins during the first night of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

* Teams that take a 1-0 lead in a best-of-seven Stanley Cup Playoffs round own an all-time series record of 515-242 (.680), including a 355-119 (.749) mark when starting at home.

* Four more First Round series open Sunday, with the full-day slate getting underway when 57-goal scorer Sam Reinhart and the Panthers host Art Ross Trophy winner Nikita Kucherov and the Lightning at 12:30 p.m. ET.

* Game 1 between the Rangers and Capitals is set to pit Ryan Lindgren against his brother, Charlie, making them the fourth set of siblings in NHL history to go head-to-head in the Stanley Cup Playoffs where one was a skater and one was a goaltender. Click here to read more notes on all eight First Round matchups.

Feel free to discuss the games tonight, the playoffs,. the NHL or anything hockey related.

A little over 8 minutes long.

* After the full playoff bracket was finalized in the last 81 seconds of regulation play in the 2023-24 regular season, the focus shifts to night one of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs as four teams embark on their championship-seeking journeys Saturday.

* The first night of the playoffs features two matchups between familiar foes: the Islanders and Hurricanes are meeting for the third time in six postseasons, followed by the Maple Leafs and Bruins renewing a 99-year-old rivalry that will now include four playoff series since 2013.

* NHL CommissionerGary Bettman joined Ryan and AshleySmith, owners of the new NHL franchise in Utah, for a press conference at Delta Center, where the club will begin play in 2024-25.

via the NHL PR department,

The 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs open April 20th, the start of a two-month rollercoaster of upsets, overtime games, unsung heroes, and memorable moments. Whether you are wondering which fanbase has waited the longest for a Stanley Cup, what veteran you should root for or what players can climb NHL all-time lists this postseason, the #NHLStats team has you covered with a quick-hit cheat sheet.

via the NHL PR department,

It started with the highly-anticipated debut of an 18-year-old No. 1 pick, was filled from startto finish by star-powered performances not seen in generations, spanned three countries (and four continents when including the preseason) and culminated with “sweet, beautiful, end of the season mayhem” that featured down-to-the-wire scoring and playoff races that had people calling 2023-24 the “greatest regular season in NHL history.”

via the NHL PR department,

10 goals in just over 10 minutes.

via TSN's YouTube page,

On the eve of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Michael Farber examines the season-long resiliency of the four Canadian teams gunning for a championship.

from Dave Stubbs of the NHL's website,

Wally Harris, a former NHL referee who in retirement became the League’s first Director of Officials and subsequently an influential, highly respected supervisor of game crews, died Thursday in a Montreal-area hospital following a short illness.

He was 88.

Harris refereed 953 regular-season games and another 85 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs between 1966-83, working Stanley Cup Final series in 1973, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1982 and 1983. He also officiated in two NHL All-Star Games -- the League’s 28th in 1975 at the Montreal Forum, and the 34th in 1982 at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland.

The native of Montreal-suburban Lachine took ill during a recent trip to Florida. He returned home and was hospitalized in late March, remaining in the facility’s care until his passing.

“With a personality that would light up the room, Wally Harris was respected and revered by all officials he managed,” said Stephen Walkom, NHL Senior Vice-President and Director of Officiating. “There was an assuredness and confidence that he instilled in his people and an absolute love for the game of hockey.

“Wally understood the importance of officials in hockey and worked non-stop to pass along his great wisdom to the next generations. When he needed to be serious and get his point across, he did this exceptionally well, with both team executives and the rank and file on the ice.”

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NEW YORK (April 19, 2024) – The National Hockey League today announced the dates, starting times and national television coverage for the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs First Round, which begins Saturday, April 20. All times listed are ET and subject to change.

NEW YORK (April 19, 2024) – The 2023-24 National Hockey League regular season concluded with Tampa Bay Lightning right wing Nikita Kucherov capturing his second career Art Ross Trophy as the League’s scoring champion, Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews winning his third career Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy as the NHL’s goal-scoring leader and the Winnipeg Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck earning his first career William M. Jennings Trophy as the goaltender who plays at least 25 games for the team allowing the fewest goals.