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.