Kukla's Korner Hockey

As the hockey season draws to a close, anticipation is mounting for the playoffs. April 22 is the date when it’s all due to kick off in the race to win the Stanley Cup.

It’s a race that 16 hopeful teams will enter. But only one is going to emerge victorious.

via the NHL PR department,

Macklin Celebrini (North Vancouver, B.C.), a center from Boston University who was named the 2024 Hobey Baker Memorial Award winner on Friday, remains No. 1 among North American skaters for the 2024 Upper Deck NHL Draft as the NHL Central Scouting Bureau today released its final rankings. Anton Silayev (Sarov, Russia), a 6’7” defenseman, moved up one spot to become the top-ranked international skater.

NEW YORK (April 16, 2024) – The National Hockey League has set an all-time record for total attendance in a single season.

More fans have experienced live the 2023-24 regular season, acclaimed for scoring feats not seen in decades and competitive races right to the wire, than any other in the League's 106-year history.

The eight-game Monday slate pushed the total attendance figure for the 2023-24 regular season to 22,560,634 (1,294 GP), surpassing the previous high of 22,436,532 set in 2022-23. NHL games have played to 97% capacity at the 36 host venues, which include the 32 home arenas plus Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, Avicii Arena in Stockholm, T-Mobile Park in Seattle and MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

The 18 games remaining in the 2023-24 regular season, which concludes Thursday, April 18, will add to the record total.

* With just 72 hours remaining in the regular season, we still have four teams in the race for the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference with the Capitals, Red Wings and Penguins – three teams within one point of one another – all claiming victories Monday.

* Connor McDavid continues to thrill the hockey world: this season it’s with the first 100-assist campaign produced in 33 years, with The Great One the last to do so.

* Both New York teams secured clinches Monday as the Rangers earned the 2023-24 Presidents’ Trophy, while the Islanders became the 15th team to secure a spot in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

* The Capitals and Red Wings will have an opportunity to clinch the final berth into the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs as part of an eight-game Tuesday. Washington will do so with a win, while Detroit will do so with a victory and a Capitals loss of any fashion.

* The 2023-24 campaign set an attendance record Monday after the season total reached 22,560,634, surpassing the previous record set in 2022-23 (22,436,532).

* NHL Central Scouting will release its final rankings for the 2024 Upper Deck NHL Draft today at 11 a.m. ET on NHL.com and Media.NHL.com.

NEW YORK (April 15, 2024) – Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews, Nashville Predators defenseman Roman Josi and Calgary Flames center Nazem Kadri have been named the NHL’s “Three Stars” for the week ending April 14.

NEW YORK / CHICAGO (April 15, 2024) – The National Hockey League (NHL) today debuted its new campaign for the 2024 Stanley Cup^® Playoffs that highlights some of the crazy things fans do in the name of love for their teams. Three spots will launch today on the NHL’s digital and social media platforms before making their national TV debut tonight during game broadcasts, including the 9:30 p.m. ET Minnesota Wild-Los Angeles Kings game on ESPN.

TORONTO—, Prime Video and NHL Productions reveal the trailer for the upcoming original hockey documentary Saving Sakic, premiering on April 16 for Prime members in Canada (April 17th on ESPN+ in the USA). The documentary follows the high-stakes saga that ensued when Colorado Avalanche Chairman/CEO Charlie Lyons was blindsided by an attempt to sign away the captain of his team, Joe Sakic. With only seven days to raise $15 million to save his star, Charlie finds a lifeline from an unexpected place - Hollywood.

from Ethan Sears of the New York Post,

As messy as the Islanders’ season has been, it’s fairly simple now.

Beat the Devils.

And that’s it.

Beat the Devils and the Islanders will clinch third place in the Metropolitan Division and a likely first-round rematch against the Carolina team which beat them at the same hurdle a year ago.

Beat the Devils and the Islanders will have a chance to erase the exhausting ups and downs of this season.

Beat the Devils and it will not matter that the Islanders have lost more times than they have won this season, or that they hold a negative-21 goal differential, because they will have a chance to make history and memories this spring.

“We were in a tough spot. A lot of people counted us out,” Mathew Barzal told The Post following a short practice on Sunday afternoon. “Came together as a group and have given it everything we have. Every guy in here’s been committed the last three weeks more than I’ve maybe ever seen.”

On March 24 — just three weeks ago — the Islanders were behind the Red Wings, Capitals and Flyers in the standings by three, four and six points, respectively.

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* Tomas Hertl’s overtime winner helped the Golden Knights complete the NHL’s 26th three-goal comeback win this season – the most the League has seen since the record-holding 1989-90 campaign. Vegas is now just one point back of Los Angeles for the Pacific Division’s third seed.

* Seth Jarvis and Sebastian Aho combined for three straight goals in the third period to help the Hurricanes rally to victory and stay alive in the Presidents’ Trophy Race.

* The Islanders can lock up one of the final two playoff spots in the Eastern Conference while the Rangers will have a chance at securing the Presidents’ Trophy during an eight-game Monday.

from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- The general managers I’ve polled believe young Quinn Hughes is the runaway winner of the Norris Trophy, as best defenceman. And in some years, not this one, he’d be an MVP candidate …Bobby Orr is the youngest player ever to win the Norris. He was 19. Then, just to be certain, he won when he was 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26.

- I like the rather complete Carolina Hurricanes to come out of the East. They’re first in the NHL in penalty-killing, second on the power play. Penalty-killing is more important in the playoffs than the power play. But since Jake Guentzel got to the Hurricanes, he has 24 points in 16 games and Carolina has points in 13 of those games.

- Boo-hoo to the players (families) on the Arizona Coyotes already complaining about moving to Salt Lake City. The wives on the Atlanta Flames hated moving to Calgary in 1980. Forty-four years later, that’s a rock-solid franchise and a great place to live. I covered the bankruptcy hearings of the Coyotes in 2009. The NHL should have moved out of Arizona back then.

- Don’t know of anyone who hates losing more than Steve Yzerman. Which would make him all but apoplectic over the last quarter of the Red Wings season.

more notes

NEW YORK –TNT Sports, Warner Bros. Games and the National Hockey League are joining forces to bring viewers a clash of excellence in hockey and real-time animation for the first-ever MultiVersus NHL Face-Off on Sunday, April 14 at 3:30 p.m. ET, exclusively on truTV and Max’s B/R Sports Add-on.

Legendary and beloved Warner Bros. Discovery characters appearing in the highly anticipated MultiVersus videogame, including Bugs Bunny, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, Velma and Shaggy, Steven Universe and Finn the Human, will take center ice in a fully animated presentation featuring a matchup of the two most recent Stanley Cup champions, Colorado Avalanche at Vegas Golden Knights. The slobbery and short-fused Looney Tunes character Tasmanian Devil will officiate the game and drop the puck on the afternoon’s action.

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

The NHL’s anticipated move to Salt Lake City after 28 years of unrequited love in the desert does not mark the end of Gary’s Folly, for we have been told by several members of the industry’s intelligentsia that Arizona will move to the head of the expansion line as if the hypothetical new team can get its arena situation sorted out. That’s a novel concept.

Indeed, there is every chance that when the NHL is ready to dilute its product by adding another two teams and perhaps a sum of another $2 billion to divide among the existing 32 ownerships’ respective bank accounts, Arizona and Atlanta will be waiting to give the league a back-to-the-future vibe. Quebec and Cleveland will have to wait.

Arizona did not fail as an NHL market nearly as much as multiple ownerships failed the market. That is why Gary Bettman won’t put a white flag on his door when it comes to the league’s interest in this Southwest outpost. The land-grab move to Glendale out of downtown Phoenix in 2003 was as predictably a colossal failure as choosing to receive the opening kickoff in overtime of the Super Bowl. A next time would include a pre-existing structure in a community that makes sense (and deferring).

I don’t know that adding Salt Lake City to the Original 32 necessarily adds much cache to the league. But removing this ongoing embarrassment of an eyesore in the desert — that, by the way, had increasingly become a ratcheted-up flashpoint between Marty Walsh’s NHLPA and Ninth Avenue — represents addition by subtraction for the league. The NHL gets to abandon its minor league facility while allowing Rob Manfred’s MLB to move into one of its own in one of the great self-owns in pro sports history.

read on plus other hockey topics of interest...

* The Eastern Conference’s final Wild Card spot changed hands three times in a span of 49 minutes Saturday, with the Penguins holding the position entering play before it was taken by the Flyers (7:30 p.m. ET) and Capitals (8:19 p.m. ET).

* The 13-game slate resulted in just one First Round matchup getting confirmed and one division title being clinched, meaning seven opening-round series, two playoff berths and the Presidents’ Trophy winner will be determined over the final five days of the regular season

* The NHL, TNT Sports and Warner Bros. Games are joining forces to bring viewers a clash of excellence in hockey and real-time animation for the first-ever MultiVersus NHL Face-Off – a simulcast of the Avalanche-Golden Knights game Sunday – exclusively on truTV and Max’s B/R Sports Add-on.

Most of the talk about the Coyotes.

added 9:27pm, via Sportsnet,

On this edition of Saturday Headlines, Elliotte Friedman discusses the desire to announce the Arizona Coyotes' relocation this week, the Oilers saying Connor McDavid will be ready for the playoffs, and much more.

from Luke Fox of Sportsnet,

A quick mix of the things we gleaned from the week of hockey, serious and less so, and rolling four lines deep....

A great get by The Cam & Strick Podcast this week as Andy Strickland conducts the first thorough interview with exiled and decorated coach Joel Quenneville about his involvement in the Chicago Blackhawks' egregious blind eye to video coach Brad Aldrich's alleged sexual abuse of Kyle Beach in 2010.

I recommend watching the interview in full and drawing your own conclusions:

Quenneville does takes some ownership for turning a blind eye and assuming upper management (a group of we'll-handle-it execs he labeled "The Firm") would deal with the situation.

"I definitely didn't handle it properly. I definitely should've handled it differently. I should've ... confront(ed) Brad from what I heard, or follow up and ask more questions to get to the seriousness of it, and then report it correctly and make sure there's follow-up off of that, whether it was the head of HR or top management, making sure they follow through on the whole process," Quenneville says, in part.

more on Quenneville, watch the interview too plus other hockey topics...

* The final weekend of the 2023-24 regular season is stocked with storylines. If it weren’t enough that two playoff spots are available, all 16 playoff seeds are to-be-determined and none of the eight matchups for the First Round are locked in, we also are one day away from the first-ever NHL showdown between Batman and Superman.

* The Golden Knights erupted for seven goals en route to clinching the Western Conference’s final playoff berth as they continue their pursuit of back-to-back Stanley Cup championships.

* Filip Forsberg found the back of the net three times to establish a franchise record for most goals in a season.

from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

“This is the last season. It’ll be announced tomorrow.”

Reggie Dunlop, playing coach for the Charlestown Chiefs, just stood there dumbfounded — in full uniform — as Chiefs owner Joe McGrath looked up from his desk chair and laid down the bad news in the movie "Slap Shot".

It is expected that the address by Arizona Coyotes general manager Bill Armstrong to his team and staff Friday afternoon in Edmonton was a longer version of the "Slap Shot" shtick, but with the same message.

After 27 seasons in the desert, it’s over for the Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes.

The rumours that every staff member and player have been fending off for the better part of the franchise's history have finally hit critical mass, with the pending announcement that the Coyotes will close up shop expected to come after Wednesday’s season finale at home against Edmonton.

By September they’ll be in Salt Lake City with a new identity and a new owner — but playing in a basketball-first, NBA building that is nearly identical to the one that greeted this franchise in downtown Phoenix when it left Winnipeg back in 1996.

continued

from Eric Francis of Sportsnet,

When it comes to the debate over the Kings’ soul-sucking neutral zone clog, Drew Doughty has an admission to make.

“I’d rather play a different system,” chuckled the gap-toothed veteran in a quiet one-on-one chat.

“But this is the system we’ve chosen, and all bought into.”

Unfortunately for the game of hockey, it works.

Case in point, Thursday’s 4-1 win over the Flames at Crypto.com Arena.

On a night when a rink-side shot of Will Ferrell provided the bulk of the entertainment, the Kings perfectly executed their 1-3-1 system, stymying the potential of controlled entries, and limiting the Flames to just 23 shots.

Only five were of the high-danger variety, giving former Flame Cam Talbot an easy path to clinching the team’s official playoff pass as the Pacific division’s third-place team.

continued

* Sidney Crosby had a night to remember as he moved into the NHL’s top 10 for points, became the 14th player in League history to record 1,000 assists and helped boost his team back into the second Eastern Conference Wild Card position, marking the fifth time in the past seven days that spot has changed hands.

* The Kings guaranteed their place in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs as they extended their home winning streak to seven games, their longest run since 2012-13 (also 7-0-0).

* It was another night of noteworthy performances for the current leaders in both the Art Ross Trophy and Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy races as Nikita Kucherov surpassed 140 points and Auston Matthews hit 68 goals.

* The Rush to the Stanley Cup Playoffs continues Friday with 10 teams in action, including the Golden Knights who hold the final Wild Card spot and the Blues who are just three points outside the playoff picture.

TSN’s Hockey Insiders have the latest on the league and the Coyotes-Salt Lake City speculation, its effect on the Coyotes players, the Flyers and head coach John Tortorella, Noah Hanifin’s extension with Vegas and Canada’s 4-Nations GM

Watch at TSN