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.