Hockey Rambling

One thing Montreal made it a priority to do under the new management regime is load up the blue line. Justin Barron a key piece of the Artturi Lehkonen trade, they grabbed Jonathan Kovacevic off waivers (more on him later), they traded for Mike Matheson, and brought in Arber Xhekaj (and there's still Lane Huston [...]

The Capitals and Rangers game was a little different than your average regular season matchup. Using some newfangled technology, they animated the game. https://twitter.com/TSN_Sports/status/1635789285293998080 For the fantasy relevant numbers, the Rangers showed why they’re in the playoffs and the Capitals aren’t. Mika Zibanejad scored twice, Patrick Kane and Vincent Trocheck each added two points, and [...]

Heading into Monday night’s game against Toronto, the Buffalo Sabres had lost six of their last seven games, going 1-5-1 in that stretch. They had games in hand on the teams above them, and still do, but they’re now seven points back of a playoff spot and even winning all the games in hand they [...]

After falling dangerously close to the bottom of the wild card race, the Penguins are really surging, going 7-1-1 in their last nine. Sidney Crosby, who is now 35, has 11 points during that run while 37-year-old Evgeni Malkin has 12. If this season isn’t Pittsburgh’s last kick at the can with these players, it’s [...]

Because of another commitment this evening, I’m posting this an hour or two later than I normally do. If you live in a time zone where the clocks move ahead one hour, then it’s going to be like 2-3 hours behind the normal time. Hopefully better late than never, and hopefully your internal clock can [...]

Remember when the Flyers were picked as a Stanley Cup favorite in the 2020 bubble? They’ve free-fallen considerably since then, first replacing the coach and now the GM Chuck Fletcher. Injuries have piled up since then to key players like Sean Couturier, Ryan Ellis, and Cam Atkinson (among others), but the Flyers did not have [...]

With Alex Tuch out of the Buffalo lineup, the team had been going with Jack Quinn alongside Tage Thompson in recent games. The acquisition of Jordan Greenway raised some eyebrows, given Greenway’s history with Buffalo coach Don Granato, and the raised-eyebrow people had reason as the deadline addition was moved to the top line for [...]

Perhaps the least-discussed injury of the season is that of Washington defenceman John Carlson. He hasn’t played since Christmas thanks to a puck to the head, and that put a strain on the entire lineup. Up until his injury, Washington was 13th by expected goal share at 5-on-5, 14th by overall goal share and ahead [...]

Things just keep going downhill for the last-place Blue Jackets. They managed to throw away the game last night against the Penguins, and in the process they lost Elvis Merzlikins to an injury. https://twitter.com/mark_scheig/status/1633306333205200903 That all being said, it is good to see the young players Kent Johnson, Liam Foudy, and Emil Bemstrom each with [...]

For all the bellyaching I’ve done about the NHL’s playoff format – and it does need to be changed – we went into Monday night’s action with a little over five weeks left and the East had six teams within four points of each other for two playoff spots. Some have more games played than [...]