from Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News,

Red Wings fans would probably like to completely forget last season, but let's look back one more time.

The Wings won a grand total of 17 games (with 39 total points earned) in 71 games, before the pandemic forced the NHL to end its season.

That certainly made for a low bar for the Wings to hurdle to show any sort of improvement.

But, still, the Wings reached an interesting of milestone, of sorts, with Saturday's 1-0 shootout victory over Tampa, that being their 18th victory of this season.

So, the Wings surpassed last season's total in this season's 53rd game, and have 45 points.

That shows progress, in a pure numbers sense.

But coach Jeff Blashill, who is still without a contract for next season, offered further evidence that this Wings team is a much better version from the one a year ago.

"I don’t think there’s any doubt, anybody who’s watched us, that we’re a much better team this year than we were a year ago,” Blashill said. “What I’ve liked here in the last bit is we’ve won a number of games with a whole bunch of young guys in the lineup and that’s a big thing for our organization.

"That's not to discredit the older guys in the lineup, and they’re making great contributions, and we’ve got a number of them that have done a great job.

"But we're a better team today than we were a year ago at this time."

continued

Below, watch Jonathan Bernier and Jeff Blashll plus the game highlights.

The last home game this season for the Wings and they still have scoring issues. Wings lose 2-1 to the Lightning.

Key point of the game, late in the 3rd period the Wings had a full blown 2 man advantage for almost 2 minutes and I don't think they had a quality scoring chance.

Team Stats

Detroit goal is below.

I have a houseful of friends waiting to dine, so to the grill I go which means the post game videos will be done later tonight or in the morning.

All season long goals have been a rare commodity for this Wings team, and the drought continues. In hockey, teams usually don't win games without scoring goals, but, the Wings did manage a win yesterday, without scoring a goal in regulation or OT.
The skills competition decided the outcome, and both goaltenders recorded a regulation shutout. Even in the shootout, goals are not added to a player's total goals or points.

The Wings play another early game today, then thankfully, a four day break until the last two games of the season. It's almost over........

It's a Live Blog!

Ken Kal and Carley Johnston with the latest news and updates.

from Ed Barkowitz of the Philadelphia Inquirer,

When it comes to writing the obituary on the Flyers’ 2020-21 season, this miserable week against the Devils might not be in the first paragraph, but it is an example of how things have deteriorated since March 1.

The Flyers’ playoff hopes had all been dashed when it started, so these four games were going to be meaningless.

The Devils beat the Flyers again, this time pinning on them a 4-1 loss as the Flyers allowed the first goal for the 10th consecutive game. That should be impossible.

The players, 4-9-2 at home since March 1, have not quit, according to their captain.

“The guys care in [that] locker room,” Claude Giroux said. “I don’t think there’s laziness on the team. I think that when one thing goes wrong, there’s always a second and third thing. I don’t think laziness is part of this.”

The 9-0 loss to Rangers, the laughable trip to Lake Tahoe, or any mention of Carter Hart’s regression will take precedence in telling this season’s story.

continued

from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- The shortened NHL schedule is robbing Maple Leafs fans and their two best players of possible team records. The Leafs are playing at 113-point pace. The most points they’ve ever had in any season is 105. Auston Matthews leads the NHL and is scoring at 62-goal pace. No Leaf has ever had more than 54 goals in a season. Mitch Marner is scoring at 101-point pace. No Leafs winger has ever been over 100 points. No individual records or team records will obviously be broken in a 56-game schedule. It makes you wonder what if — and what might have been possible over 82 games.

- Connor McDavid, meanwhile, is scoring at a pace that hasn’t been seen in 25 years. And just six years into his career, he’s still getting better. McDavid trails only Gretzky, Lemieux, Bossy and Bobby Orr in career points per game. McDavid is at 1.386 points per game, his agent Orr is at 1.393 a game. He should pass him soon. This season, McDavid is scoring at 1.75 point a game.

- Funny, nobody needed graphs, charts and computer printouts to determine how great Bob Gainey, Guy Carbonneau or Jari Kurri were defensively. Same with Patrice Bergeron today. All you have to is watch the games. What a concept.

- If you’re an NHL player and you’ve lived the entire season with strict COVID-19 restrictions, why would you ever go to Latvia for the world hockey championships? Wouldn’t you just say no.

- Both ESPN and Turner have to fill out their hockey broadcasting rosters now that they’re doing NHL games next season. In no particular order, I would reach out to Ray Ferraro, Eddie Olczyk, Pierre McGuire, Elliotte Friedman, Kevin Bieksa, Mike Johnson, Pierre LeBrun, Kevin Weekes, Kathryn Tappen, Kenny Albert, Mike Johnson, Steve Levy, Michael Farber, Anson Carter, AJ Mleczko, John Forslund, and yeah, I would make a call to Doc Emrick to see if he wanted to come out of retirement. And then I’d go from there and complete the staffs. And doesn’t Turner have to find a place for Charles Barkley, who loves the Stanley Cup playoffs, if only on occasion? And I’m probably in the minority on this, but for panel purposes, I’d bring back Mike Milbury. Every good panel needs a contrarian.

more, including time to break hockey's fighting code...

from Robby Stanley at NHL.com,

Erik Haula scored at 3:32 of overtime, and the Nashville Predators extended their lead over the Dallas Stars for fourth place in the Discover Central Division by defeating them 1-0 at Bridgestone Arena on Saturday.

Juuse Saros made 28 saves for Nashville (28-22-2), which has won three of its past four games and leads fifth-place Dallas by three points for the final Stanley Cup Playoff berth in the division.

"Well, what a game," Predators coach John Hynes said. "I think you knew both teams were going to come in and play as hard as they could. I thought it was a hard-fought battle by both teams. There wasn't a lot of room on the ice, lots of physicality. I thought both goaltenders played really well. A playoff-style game, playoff-style atmosphere. Our fans were fantastic. I just liked that we were able to find a way to win and stay with it against a really good team. It was a good night for us."

Anton Khudobin made 33 saves for Dallas (21-17-13), which has lost three in a row.

"We played our hearts out," Stars coach Rick Bowness said. "We did. We did. We didn't give up much, and obviously we didn't score, and we need to score. But in terms of the effort and the commitment to the team, 100 percent satisfied."

continued and note Dallas has played one less game than Nashville.

Below, watch the OT goal from Haula.

Let's turn to some fan sites for the answer.

from Tyler Kotila of Detroit Jock City,

Given the state of the Red Wings rebuild and the fact that the team is not going to turn a drastic corner and be competitive in the next year or two. It will likely be a two or three-year window before the team is entering that competitive era once again.

That means that the Red Wings will likely opt to extend and keep Blashill around as the bench boss for, at minimum, one more season. It seems like extending Blashill will be what Yzerman decides to do this offseason.

While it seems like there is a good majority of Red Wings fans who would like to see Blashill hit the road and find a new place to work, instead, the Red Wings are likely going to see Blashill sticking around for the next couple of seasons with the Red Wings.

One of the things to note is that a one-year contract with a coach is a bit uncommon. At least, it does not show a huge vote of confidence to give a one-year deal.

While Blashill is not the most deserving candidate, it seems like Blashill might be the coach for the immediate future.

more

from Nate Brown of Octopus Thrower,

It’s essentially two camps: One that believes Blashill should go while another believes he needs to have a real roster to make a judgement. I already wrote about the positives and negatives of Blashill’s tenure in Detroit. But a sweep of Tampa Bay, following back to back shutouts, with a team that is limping to the finish line, gives a high chance that Blash returns for at least a season....

Blashill, in my opinion, has earned another shot at coaching this team. I know this drives a lot of people nuts, but he’s done more with less this season and though his decision making has been puzzling at times, the man deserves his due.

But what Yzerman does next is anyone’s guess. If he in fact offers Elias Pettersson an offer sheet, and it’s accepted, it changes the timeline significantly. More likely, he goes according to his word and rides out what will be a long rebuild–using those picks in 2022 to fuse the final pieces necessary to begin the climb to contention.

Is Blashill the man for the job? Only Yzerman can answer that. We don’t know what happens behind closed doors, and fans only see the media sessions and performance on the ice.

more

Below, watch the extended game highlights from Saturday's shootout win.

THREE HARD LAPS

* Semyon Varlamov earned another “Battle of New York” shutout as the Islanders blanked the Rangers to clinch a berth in the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

* Marc-Andre Fleury backstopped Vegas to an overtime victory and continued his ascent of the League’s all-time wins list.

* Ryan Miller, who recently announced that he will retire at the conclusion of the 2020-21 season, was victorious in the final appearance of his NHL career at Honda Center.

Cole Caufield Has A Flair For The Dramatics and below, watch Caufield post-game.

Elliotte Friedman and Chris Johnston along with host Ron MacLean discussed- The allegations against Jake Virtanen, the IIHF Women's World Championship, the health of Frederik Andersen, Rob Brind'Amour's contract and the playoff plan for the NHL.

via Sportsnet

Sam Gagner first, below are Jeff Blashill, Mickey Redmond and the complete shootout plus Thomas Greiss and coach Blashill in one video.

added 7:23pm, game highlights are below.

Greiss was great, especially with a huge save on the 5-3 late in the 3rd.

Wings may have some goalie decisions to make in the off-season.

Back to the game and I feel we have done this recently, another 0-0 game headed to OT.

We had an exciting shootout but still no goals, the shootout will decide the winner.

Sam Gagner wins it in the 8th round of the shootout.

Detroit Stats

Gagner goal is below and added the Vrana goal too.

added 6:05pm, Below is the Greiss save when the Wings were killing a 5 on 3.

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

Exposing one injustice at a time.

One and only one of the Original Six has not retired No. 1, and that team is the Bruins, who apparently are laboring under the misapprehension that Mr. Zero, Frank Brimsek, wore 0 on his uniform.

The snub makes no sense. Brimsek, a Hall of Famer, was the preeminent goaltender of his time — winning the Stanley Cup twice in 1939 and 1941, named to the first- or-second All-Star team in each of his first eight seasons of his career, and winning the Calder Trophy and two Vezina Trophies while finishing in the top five of Hart Trophy voting three times.

It does not line up. The Bruins aren’t one of those franchises to ignore anything that happened in the NHL’s formative, pre-World War II days. They have retired the No. 2 for Eddie Shore (1926-40), No. 3 for Lionel Hitchman (1925-34) and No. 5 for Dit Clapper (1927-47).

Brimsek, born in Eveleth, Minn., was the first American goaltender to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. He was among the inaugural class of players inducted into the U.S. HHOF. So what gives?

continued plus more topics like coaching changes in Philadelphia and New Jersey?

It's a beautiful spring day, and, there is an early game featuring an uninspiring team playing today. Whoever wants to watch, welcome to matinee time.
Whoever has better things to do, well, if I'm being honest, we all probably have better things to do.....

It's a Live Blog!

NEW YORK (May 1, 2021) – Carolina Hurricanes center Sebastian Aho and Wake County chief operating officer Johnna Sharpe (Discover NHL Central Division), Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon and associate nurse manager Alyssa Laabs (Honda NHL West Division), Boston Bruins left wing Brad Marchand and registered nurse Meaghan Quinn (MassMutual NHL East Division), and Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews and clinical resource leader Sarah Rumbolt (Scotia NHL North Division) have been named the NHL’s “Stars of the Month” for April.

Throughout the 2020-21 season the NHL is celebrating the remarkable efforts of the off-ice stars who make it possible for us to play our games amid a pandemic by honoring frontline healthcare heroes from the regions represented by the League’s weekly and monthly “Stars.”

More on each frontline healthcare hero and NHL player can be found below:

from Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe,

Amid the Blueshirt surge, second-year blue liner Adam Fox, ex- of Harvard, has emerged as a bona fide Norris Trophy candidate as the game’s top defenseman. That’s rare territory for a 23-year-old who has logged but 120 regular-season games, and three more in the playoffs.

The Rangers haven’t had a Norris winner since Brian Leetch bagged his second in 1997. And as tough critic Larry Brooks noted recently in his New York Post column, only Bobby Orr won the Norris (the great Orr’s first of a record haul of eight) two years into his career.

The beauty of Fox, noted Brooks, is in “the way his game sings.”

Which is to say Fox is fast, smooth, and has superb command of the puck, be it lugging and moving it on offense, or using his smarts and filching skills in the defensive end to lead the transition game. Only two years removed from playing at Harvard’s Bright-Landry Center, he has shaped quickly into a heady, elite NHL backliner.

read on for more on Fox plus other topic including,

The Flyers announced Thursday that Carter Hart, once their franchise wunderkind goalie, was shut down for the season. He had not played since wrenching a knee two weeks earlier.

Hart, 22, appeared the last two seasons to be the answer to years upon years of Flyer goaltending prayers. But this season, the former Western League standout regressed dramatically — 9-11-5, 3.67 goals-against average, .877 save percentage. Those are nearly beer league numbers and won’t provide Hart much leverage in contract talks.

Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher now must figure a way forward, unsure if Hart is the real deal, and also in need of toughening up a club that was far too easy to play against, especially when there was still hope in March of making a run at a playoff spot.

Eight minutes of coach Blashill before the puck drops.

Labeled as the filthiest goals from April, have a look below at them.

Run time is over 30 minutes.

Carly Johnston and Ken Kal with The Morning Skate.

THREE HARD LAPS

* Thirty clubs are in action on the busiest day of the 2020-21 NHL season, which opens at 1 p.m. ET when the Bruins host the Sabres in the second half of their two-game set at TD Garden. Only the Jets are idle.

* A total of 102 goals were scored during the NHL’s last 15-game day (including three shootout-deciding goals), which was on Nov. 16, 2019. It marked the second-most goals scored on one day in League history, one shy of the 103 from a 12-game slate on Jan. 23, 1993.

* The Avalanche extended their lengthy home point streak during Friday’s four games, while the Coyotes snapped the Golden Knights’ double-digit winning streak.

from Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News,

It’s been a problem all season, but especially now as the Red Wings head into the final days of this regular season. The Wings have had trouble scoring goals from opening night.

But it’s been exasperated as they get to the finish line. Thursday’s 3-1 loss in Carolina was the latest quiet, offensive evening.

In the last seven games — of which, the Wings have won only once — the Wings have scored more than two goals just once, in that 7-3 victory over Dallas. They have two goals total in the last three games, all losses....

But there are ways, said Blashill, to get offense.

“How do you manufacture offense?” Blashill said. “You spend more time in the other team’s end. You grind them down, and they chip it in your zone and try to make a change because they’re tired, you jam it down their throat.

"That’s how you create offense most of the time in this league, by grinding the other team down, kind of like they (the Hurricanes) did over the course of the game.”

more

NEW YORK (April 30, 2021) – The Seattle Kraken today completed the acquisition of their team and officially joined the National Hockey League.

“On behalf of the Board of Governors, I am delighted to officially welcome the Seattle Kraken to the NHL as our 32nd Member Club,” Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “Congratulations to David Bonderman, the Bonderman Family, their partners, the entire Seattle Kraken organization, the city of Seattle and Kraken fans as the Club continues on its exciting journey towards puck drop in October.”

from Brendan Kelly of the Montreal Gazette,

It looks like the pressure-cooker that is life as a Québécois Canadiens player has been tough for Drouin. He’s not the first local francophone to feel the heat nor will he be the last. The only other local francophone on the team, Phillip Danault, talked Wednesday about how locals like him and Drouin can’t help but listen to the radio shows, hear what people are saying on the street, and that can be rough.

Lots of unkind things have also been said this year about Danault, who is presumably the team’s first-line centre yet only has four goals. So he knows what Drouin is going through.

So does David Desharnais, another francophone Quebecer who was often scorched by fans during his tenure ici. Like Danault, Desharnais was a No. 1 centre who probably never should’ve been given the job. It’s no knock on him or Danault; it’s a knock on Habs management, which hasn’t had a bona fide No. 1 centreman for years.

Remember when then-mayor Denis Coderre tweeted to say Desharnais, who was in a scoring slump at the time, should be sent down to the American Hockey League? That was a horrible thing for Coderre to say. A fan can say that. The mayor of Montreal can’t.

Louis Leblanc, a Canadiens first-round draft choice (No. 18 overall in 2009), also knows all about the crazy pressure for local players here. So does Guillaume Latendresse, who was selected No. 45 overall in 2005 by Montreal. You could also have a good chat with Patrice Brisebois about what it was like to listen to thousands booing him every time he touched the puck at the Bell Centre.

There is something unique about being a francophone Quebecer wearing the CH. Many of the Habs greats — Hall of Famers like Maurice (Rocket) Richard, Jean Béliveau, Serge Savard and Guy Lafleur — thrived on the pressure.

But things have changed in the past quarter-century. A good half of the roster of the Canadiens team that won the 1993 Cup were francophones. Now, there are only two francophones on the team and so the weight on those two guys’ shoulders is all the greater.

more

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

This one is going to reverberate within the walls of the Rangers’ executive suite this summer. Or at least it should.

Because on yet another night opposing a team that was dedicated to taking away their time and space, in yet another game where will was going to be a more important ingredient than skill, the Blueshirts came up puny.

It was 4-0 Islanders at the Garden on Thursday in one that was even less competitive from the start than last Tuesday’s 6-1 humbling at the Coliseum. So this is nothing new. Last Tuesday was nothing new either if you paid attention to the Bubble Series against the ’Canes last August.

Once again, the Rangers’ marquee players, the ones with upper-echelon talent, the veteran ones who are supposed to show the way to the phalanx of youngsters, had nothing. Artemi Panarin was shockingly inept and never once was a factor in this one, failing to send one shot on net. Mika Zibanejad was slightly better but not by a margin distinctive enough to make the slightest bit of difference.

The playoff dream has all but evaporated, the Blueshirts slipping six points behind the Bruins and seven points behind the Islanders. The tragic number for elimination is five points as pertains to Boston. This almost seems like an afterthought.

Then again, the Rangers themselves seemed to treat their playoff hopes as an afterthought from the moment the puck was dropped.

continued

Catch the game highlights below.