Articles in NHL Teams

from Ryan S. Clark of ESPN,

Perspective can be everything. Look no further than the Vegas Golden Knights.

Missing the playoffs for the first time in franchise history last year has led to questions that had never really been asked about the team before. Then again, this is just the sixth season in franchise history, and the Golden Knights actually finished the 2021-22 campaign well above .500 while also posting the second-most victories in a season in their brief existence.

But lofty expectations have become the standard. That is what happens when a franchise reaches the Stanley Cup Final in its first season and the Western Conference finals in two others. Arriving at those heights only to fall short has since fostered a win-at-all costs culture. It has led the Golden Knights to change coaches along with significant portions of their roster at what might be considered a breakneck pace.

This is what happens when winning a Stanley Cup is the only goal that matters.

"I think when you come here to a team like this, your goal should be to win the Stanley Cup," Golden Knights center Jack Eichel said. "I think we have the players in here to do it. I think that's the standard this organization holds themselves to. ... But it's such a long way away. Nobody has ever achieved a goal eight months away tomorrow. You have to take care of your business throughout the year and give yourself a chance."

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* After dropping their first two games of 2022-23, the Blackhawks have rallied with three straight wins – overcoming a multi-goal deficit in each contest and joining rare company in the process.

* The retooled Red Wings are off to their best start in more than a decade, with offseason acquisition Dominik Kubalik leading the way by collecting eight points through his first five games of the campaign.

* Phil Kessel is set to tie Keith Yandle for the longest “Ironman” streak in NHL history and will do so in Toronto – a place where his stretch began nearly 13 years ago as a member of the Maple Leafs.

from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

-- A five-game assessment of the Leafs by an NHL coach: “That’s a soft team. Really talented, but soft. You don’t go anywhere being that soft.” And right after that, it was no accident the Leafs added Wayne Simmonds and Kyle Clifford to the lineup Saturday night.

- The Florida Panthers had 122 points last season with Aaron Ekblad as their best defenceman and MacKenzie Weegar their No. 2. Now Ekblad is injured and Weegar is in Calgary. And poor Paul Maurice is coaching the same kind of defence that got him in trouble in Winnipeg.

- In the 2017 NHL draft, the Dallas Stars took defenceman Miro Heiskanen and goalie Jake Oettinger in the first round and high-scoring forward Jason Robertson in the second round. That’s three all-stars in two rounds, almost a career changer for the affable 64-year-old general manager, Jim Nill.

- The Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche began the season with Nazem Kadri gone to Calgary and now captain Gabriel Landeskog is out for three months. That’s 18 playoff goals and 37 playoff points missing from the champs’ roster.

a few more notes, mostly Toronto related...

from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

The Vancouver Canucks have never had a home-opener like this one. Has anybody?

In their first game in front of their paying fans, 11 days into a season in which everyone in the organization believes the National Hockey League playoffs are the baseline goal, the Canucks lost 5-1 Saturday to the Buffalo Sabres and were booed off the ice at Rogers Arena.

Three times late in a listless third period, when the Canucks barely competed despite trailing only 2-1 when it began, Vancouver jerseys had to be scraped off the ice after being discarded like trash by fans who have seen too many losses over too many seasons.

After a winless five-game road trip to start the year, the Canucks are 0-4-2. They have 40 home games remaining. Forty!

A jersey on the ice was the symbolic last straw for the Jim Benning-Travis Green era last season. Both were fired on Dec. 5, the evening after the Canucks came home from a long road trip and were beaten 4-1 by the Pittsburgh Penguins on a Hockey-Night-in-Canada Saturday night.

The new regime, headed by president Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin, can’t possibly wait until December if this continues.

continued

Below, Rutherford after the game and the game highlights.

* Stars forward Joe Pavelski posted 3-1—4 to eclipse Brett Hull as the oldest player in franchise history with a hat trick and help Dallas extend its season-opening point streak.

* Sabres defenseman Rasmus Dahlin found the back of the net once again to extend the longest season-opening goal streak by a blueliner in NHL history.

* David Poile of the Predators served his 3,000th career regular-season game as an NHL general manager and became the first GM in League history to reach the milestone.

On this edition of 32 Thoughts, Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman give an update on where Jakob Chychrun may land and also discuss the NHL looking to play future games in Australia and the candidates for the top jobs in Hockey Canada.

Watch at Sportsnet

added 9:42pm, or watch below///

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

It seems as if the dead puck era is as much a thing of the past as the Flyers winning Stanley Cups and the Maple Leafs winning playoff series.

Because while we are operating under a small sample size of 70 games having been played through Thursday, NHL clubs are scoring an average of 3.3 goals per game, the highest threshold in 30 years, since teams recorded an average 3.63 GPG in 1992-93.

Over the first 10 days of the year, seven or more combined goals had been scored in 39 of the first 70 contests. That does not include the two — only two — shootouts that have transpired.

It’s a veritable offensive explosion. Games are fun, even if lacking in uniform intensity. The league’s average save percentage of .902 is the lowest since 2005-06, the first year of the hard cap era, in which the new-age rules meant to open up the game were instituted following the Shanahan Summit and power plays were cheaper by the dozen.

A footnote: Brendan Shanahan, who conceived, convened and covered all the expenses of the congress, deserves credit for imagining the ultra-modern game.

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Magical.

“Sloppy. Poor execution. Really the whole night,” Bednar said. “So that’s why we didn’t get any shots. Tough to get shots when you can’t execute. Whether it’s decisions, execution: sloppy. Spent the whole night defending.”

-Jared Bednar, head coach of the Colorado Avalanche after a 3-2 home loss to the Seattle Kraken. Bennett Durando of the Denver Post has more.

Watch the game highlights below.

from Frank Seravalli of The Daily Faceoff,

The average goal scored in the NHL last season was fired from 22.3 feet away – a number that on paper probably seems further than you might imagine with players hacking and whacking in rebounds from just outside the blue paint.

And that number checks out when you do a deeper dive on the very best Net-Front Scorers in the game, the latest in our Daily Faceoff Archetype Rankings project.

Take a gander at their average shot distances, below, and you’ll see that every one of them blasts an average shot less than 30 feet away from the cage. They are not Corsi Champions who fling the puck on goal from anywhere. They aren’t snipers. These guys greasy and dirty, the battlers who go to the ‘hard’ areas and every other hockey cliche you can conjure as they clean up the garbage.

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from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

Before the Garden crowd took the low road by booing David Quinn when the Rangers flashed a picture of him on the video screen thanking him for his service, the one-time Blueshirts coach weighed in on his former team.

“They’ve got stars everywhere,” he said. “They’ve got stars in net, they’ve got stars on the blue line, they’ve got stars up front …”

Hours later, playing against Quinn’s current team from San Jose that had opened the season 0-5 while outscored by an aggregate 19-8, the Rangers played like a team of stars trying to win with skill rather than will.

They were disconnected and frustrated when early power plays did not connect. They practiced the fine art of poke-checking over and over again. They yielded swatches of open ice in a game where the Sharks were free to roam. Not a single Blueshirts skater was exempt from criticism.

And the Rangers lost, deservedly so, 3-2 in overtime on Erik Karlsson’s shot into an all-but-empty net at 0:49 after a typically dreadful attempt at defending that was a carryover from the third period in which the Blueshirts were outshot 16-2.

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* Juraj Slafkovsky tallied for the first time in his NHL career, while fellow No. 1 pick Rasmus Dahlin achieved a first-of-its-kind goal streak in the Sabres’ victory at Scotiabank Saddledome.

* Slafkovsky and Dahlin weren’t the only No. 1 picks to shine Thursday, with Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins combining for eight points as Edmonton handed Carolina its first loss of the season.

* New Detroit head coach Derek Lalonde can achieve a franchise-first when the Red Wings and Blackhawks square off in their 750th all-time head-to-head game, while the Lightning and Panthers are set to open their four-game season series after the clubs met in the 2022 Second Round.

A little over 4 minutes long.

Portland, Oregon / New York (Oct. 20, 2022) – adidas and the National Hockey League (NHL®) today unveiled the newest adidas Reverse Retro 2022 jerseys for all 32 NHL® teams. Building on the success of the 2020 program, adidas and the NHL® collaborated with teams this year to design new Reverse Retro jerseys that call back to unique historic moments in each Club’s history.

This season’s adidas Reverse Retro 2022 ADIZERO jerseys combine some of the most remarkable designs yet – including some colors never seen before on ice. All teams will wear the new jerseys during the 2022-23 NHL® season beginning in November, including a number of adidas Reverse Retro matchup nights, led by the Nov. 2 Pittsburgh Penguins-Buffalo Sabres game at 7:30 p.m. ET on TNT.

from Mike Stevens of The Hockey News,

This is a team that has endured one of the more dramatic reputation erosions in recent memory, a process that began when the Coyotes were stripped of a first-round draft pick back in 2020 for violating league draft-testing rules, continued with The Athletic's Katie Strang uncovering the organization's toxic workplace culture in an in-depth expose, really started to fall off the rails when the club was threatened with eviction from their own rink by the City of Glendale in December 2021 for failing to pay arena rent and business costs, and finally crescendoed into being stuffed into a 5,000-seat college rink where they'll remain for the next three years.

So, yeah. Maybe regrouping for the next little bit to build a more stable foundation is not a bad idea, with that foundation hopefully beginning its evolution around the time the team's move to Tempe really starts to take shape.

And, frankly, the Coyotes have done a remarkable job of that so far.

The organization's draft capital is truly something to behold, with the Coyotes currently holding a total of three first-round picks, eight second-round picks, seven third-round picks, and four fourth-round picks over the next three NHL drafts combined. How they've accomplished that is by using those scant resources to their own advantage, becoming the premier dumping ground onto whom any cap-strapped teams can offload their unsavory contracts, albeit with a sweetener attached as the cost of admission.

That's all well and good for the future, though, but what about the present.

read on

* The Panthers posted 34 home wins in 2021-22, the second most in a single season in NHL history, and continued right where they left off to start 2022-23 as Carter Verhaeghe’s multi-goal effort propelled the club to another home-opening win.

* Mikko Rantanen posted at least three points for the second time in as many home games to start 2022-23 and continued his success during the month of October, posting 19-38—57 in 50 career games during the calendar month.

* Wednesday marked the fourth day in NHL history that defensemen accounted for each game-winning goal (min. 3 GP). The others: Feb. 18, 2008 (4 GP), March 14, 1985 (3 GP) and March 2, 1957 (3 GP).

Just over 7 minutes to watch.

from John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times,

Even Luciano Pavarotti had to occasionally clear his throat.

That’s what Tuesday night felt like for the Lightning. The once, and possibly future, champions took the ice through a flashing entryway amidst thunderous applause for the home opener at Amalie Arena. They looked as slick and chic as ever, and they had a sold-out crowd screaming its adoring approval.

And when it came time to hit the high notes, they burped.

It was disappointing, but not necessarily shocking. For teams that are well-traveled on the road to the Stanley Cup final, there is a lazy Sunday drive-quality to the regular season.

Don’t get me wrong, the regular season matters. You can’t pass Go without it. But, sometimes, it takes a little time to get everything and everyone steering in the right direction.

In the meantime, you have games like Tuesday when the Lightning blew a two-goal lead and lost 3-2 to a Flyers team with a little more energy, a little more spunk, a little more appetite.

continued

* Fans at Canadian Tire Centre were treated to a 12-goal offensive outburst, including a seven-goal second period, as the Senators outlasted their Atlantic Division rivals in their home opener.

* Six games featured a team erase a multi-goal deficit (regardless of result). Only four days in NHL history have featured more: Dec. 21, 2013 (8), Nov. 22, 2006 (8), Oct. 11, 1986 (8) and Nov. 16, 2019 (7).

* The NHL and its 32 Clubs released a comprehensive report, ‘Accelerating Diversity & Inclusion: NHL Report on Strategies, Initiatives and Progress,’ highlighting intentional efforts to promote positive social change within the sport. Click here to read more.

from Patrick Johnston of the Vancouver Province,

The collapse defied explanation, really.

“Tonight yeah, we did have two good periods. And just sh*t the bed pretty much (in the third),” Tanner Pearson said.

Bruce Boudreau said he was happy with how his team played in the first two periods.

“(The first) was the way we wanted to play, it was a very low scoring, low chance period … and then I thought we had a great second period and I think the game plan for the third period was fine,” he said. “But I mean, it did look like we started to, I don’t know what word I’m looking for, like just sort of collapse, and we’re afraid to win and, they came at us pretty good. And we just didn’t handle it very well.”

read on

Game highlights are below.

Watch below.

added 1:44pm, One game suspension, explanation is below.

* It has begun... Alex Ovechkin started his 2022-23 pursuit of Gordie Howe (801) by scoring his 781st and 782nd career goals and is now just 19 back of second place on the NHL’s all-time list.

* Artemi Panarin secured his second four-point game of 2022-23 and established a Rangers franchise mark for most points through the first four games of a season.

* Exactly two weeks before Halloween, a ghost (Shayne Gostisbehere) and a ghoul (Kaiden Guhle) made their mark on a Monday night that featured four comeback wins, five games with eight or more goals and two overtime winners.