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NEWS CLIPPINGS • March 23, 2019

Sibling rivalries? The Carolina Hurricanes have a few, brother

By Chip Alexander

Raleigh

A lot of kids have big brothers who prod and push them, fight them, compete against them, toughen them up and make them better.

Not all become NHL players whose big brothers also happen to be in the NHL, but the Carolina Hurricanes have a bunch.

Jordan Staal had two older brothers pushing him. The oldest, center Eric Staal of the Minnesota Wild, will be in PNC Arena on Saturday as the two teams play a game with playoff implications.

Canes forward Brock McGinn also has two older brothers who made it to the NHL. Defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk is the younger brother of forward James van Riemsdyk of the Philadelphia Flyers and will go up against him twice in the last nine games of the season, with much at stake.

Andrei Svechnikov’s older brother, Evgeny, is a former first-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings and defenseman Dougie Hamilton has an older brother, Freddie, who has been with four NHL teams.

“It’s neat thing that we all get to do the same job and all can relate the same way,” Jordan Staal said, speaking about the Staal siblings but also summing it up for the group. “We all have something in common, that we can share, a true passion for hockey.”

The competition in Thunder Bay, Ontario, at the Staal sod farm was legendary. Eric and Marc, a veteran defenseman for the New York Rangers, were the two oldest but Jordan grew into the biggest and the youngest brother, Jared, wasn’t little, either.

“We had our scuffles,” Jordan Staal said. “There were a few elbows ‘by accident.’ There was some of the ‘I wish I wasn’t your brother’ said at times.”

Linda Staal, Jordan said, had to be the “referee” and get everybody settled down. “We didn’t mess with Mom too much,” Jordan said.

It was much the same at the van Riemsdyk house in New Jersey, Trevor said, where it was often all hockey all the time.

“We’d play in the basement with these little cut-down sticks, play in the driveway,” he said. “We’d have our friends over and have two-on-two games until the wee hours of the morning, until Mom told us to call it a night and go to bed.

“We’d have some pretty intense games. There might be sticks flying across the room by the end of it. Some tears were shed. But it was definitely fun.”

James van Riemsdyk was a first-round draft pick of the Flyers. Trevor was not drafted, playing college hockey at New Hampshire -- the Canes’ Brett Pesce once was his teammate and roommate -- before signing with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2014. A younger brother, Brendan, is a forward and has followed his two brothers to New Hampshire.

Brock McGinn is the youngest of the McGinn boys, who battled it out in a backyard rink in Fergus, Ont. Jamie and Tye tested Brock, and not just in hockey.

“We were competitive in everything,” Brock said. “That was in our blood in everything we did. We were always challenging each other, never wanted to lose in anything. We all wanted to have the first spoonful of food.”

Like Jordan Staal, Tye McGinn was the biggest and strongest of the brothers. “We were always beating on Tye,” Brock said. “Or we’d beat on him until Mom came in and said, “It’s time to stop.’”

Jamie McGinn, 30, was a second-round NHL draft pick of the San Jose Sharks in 2006, has played more than 600 games for six NHL teams and now is with the Florida Panthers. Tye, 28, was a fourth-round pick in 2010 and has spent much of his career in the American Hockey League while getting in nearly 100 NHL games with four teams.

Brock, 25, was drafted in the second round by the Hurricanes in 2012 and made his NHL debut against the Detroit Red Wings in October 2015, scoring on his first shift. By then, Jamie McGinn, with some big brotherly pride, had said Brock would be the best of the three, noting little brother also “hits like a Mack truck.”

“We shoot texts every day,” Brock said of his brothers. “Our bond is something special.”

The McGinn brothers have joined their dad, Bob, in owning the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs of the Southern Professional Hockey League. That’s something different that Brock said has helped him learn about the business side of things.

Jordan, Eric and Marc Staal all were first-rounders and Jordan and Eric have Stanley Cup rings -- Eric with the Canes in 2006 and Jordan with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009. Jordan was traded to the Canes in June 2012, determined to join Eric in making Carolina a Cup contender again, but it didn’t happen and Eric was traded late in the 2015-16 season.

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The two will be on opposite sides again Saturday night at PNC Arena, brothers but both trying to drive their teams to a needed victory.

Preview: Wild vs. Hurricanes

Canes host Wild in final regular-season game vs. West

by Michael Smith

The Carolina Hurricanes draw the curtains on a five-game homestand with a back-to-back set that begins on Saturday with a cross-conference face off against the Minnesota Wild.

The Hurricanes are 2-1-0 on this homestand after dropping a 6-3 decision to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday.

Expectations

Tampa Bay is the league's best team for a reason. They're quick. They're skilled. They're deep. They make the opposition pay for its mistakes.

The Hurricanes matched up very well, if not even slightly better, against the Lightning through two periods on Thursday. The third belonged to the Bolts, as they netted four unanswered goals to record their league-leading 58th win of the season.

It would have been easy for the Canes to simply be satisfied with their play through two periods and write that game off. It probably would have happened last season.

But this team is different. This team has elevated expectations.

The Canes expect to win. They expected to win against the Lightning and were 20 good minutes away from doing so.

The reaction from the locker room reflected that shift in thinking.

"It was a good game for the first two [periods]. Everyone was engaged," said Jordan Staal, who escaped a scary check to the head and later scored a goal. "Kind of fell off it in the third and let them creep back in."

"We pissed it away, and it's unacceptable," captain Justin Williams put succinctly, not mincing words.

"It wasn't good enough. When you play a team like that, everyone has to be dialed right in. We took a breath on a couple goals, and that's inexcusable," head coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "We worked hard and had some opportunities, but not good enough against a team like that."

Expect the Hurricanes to respond against Minnesota. After all, this is a team that hasn't lost back-to-back games in regulation in over two months.

The Perfect Storm

The Hurricanes acquired Nino Niederreiter from the Wild in a one-for-one player trade on Jan. 17. Since then, Niederreiter has posted 24 points (12g, 12a) in 27 games with the Canes, after recording 23 points (9g, 14a) in 46 games with Minnesota in the first half of the season. His average per game ice time has jumped nearly four minutes since the trade, and he's found a home on the first line alongside Sebastian Aho and Williams.

"If you know the organization wants you and you know the coaches and your teammates believe in you, that's the biggest thing," Niederreiter said on the latest episode of CanesCast. "You're out there together. Everybody has to pull on the same rope, and you have to make sure everybody can trust each other."

The Last Meeting

The 2018-19 regular season was barely even a week old when these two teams first met on Oct. 13 in Minnesota. The Canes erased two deficits in the third period, the second coming when Williams scored his first goal of the season with 68 seconds left in regulation and the extra attacker on. It was then Aho tallying his second goal of the game - the first was a much-needed power-play marker in the third to tie the game with about 10 minutes left - in overtime, helping the Canes improve to 4-0-1 on the young season.

The Opposition

The Wild edged the Metropolitan Division-leading Washington Capitals, 2-1, on Friday night. Minnesota currently is holding on to the second wild card spot in the Western Conference, but at just 3-4-3 in their last 10 games, they have some work to do down the stretch if they want to qualify for postseason play.

AT THE RINK

It's the sixth and final Homegrown Series night of the season, which brings you the best our local community has to offer in t-shirts, food, beer, music and art. Be sure to check

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out this guide of what's what and where you can find it all so you don't miss any of the fun.

Giveaway time! The first 10,000 fans in attendance will receive an Upper Deck trading card set featuring six Hurricanes players.

The 50/50 cash jackpot continues to build toward March 30. Tonight's non-cash prize is a 2018-19 Hurricanes team-signed replica stick. Full raffle details and ticket prices can be found here.

WORTH A CLICK

News

Hurricanes Homegrown Series Guide: March 23

Recap: Canes Fall to Lightning

Videos

Postgame Quotes: March 21 vs. TB

Highlights: TB 6, CAR 3

Gameday Links

Buy Tickets

Hurricanes Homegrown Series

Upper Deck Trading Card Giveaway

50/50 Raffle

Auction Items

First Goal Contest presented by Kayem

WATCH, LISTEN & STREAM

Watch: FOX Sports Carolinas, FOX Sports GO

Listen: 99.9 The Fan, Hurricanes app, Hurricanes.com/Listen

Hurricanes Homegrown Series Guide: March 23

by Michael Smith

The 2018-19 Hurricanes Homegrown Series concludes on Saturday, March 23, when the Carolina Hurricanes host the Minnesota Wild in the fourth game of a five-game homestand.

Refined in its third season, the Hurricanes Homegrown Series features six games that showcase the best our local community has to offer in t-shirts, food, beer, art and music.

Here's an in-depth look at each Homegrown aspect for Saturday night at PNC Arena.

T-Shirt

Porch Fly Supply Co. t-shirt: $30 at north end location of The Eye (limited quantity of 250)

Porch Fly Supply Co. designed and produced the above squirrely t-shirt. When doors open at 6 p.m., 250 of these shirts will be available at the north end location of The Eye team store (section 112). Each $30 shirt is marked by a unique printed tag that denotes the game and shirt series, and there is a limit of two shirts per person per purchase.

Food

Giant turkey leg: $12.50 at section 109

The featured in-house, signature entrée is a State Fair favorite: a giant turkey leg, which is smoked and paired with

grilled corn on the cob. You can get this for $12.50 at the section 109 concessions stand (where all Homegrown entrées are available this season).

Strawberry shortcake: $7 at section 111

The featured in-house, signature dessert is strawberry shortcake: spongy shortcake topped with fresh strawberries and whipped topping. This treat is available for $7 at the Homegrown Series dessert cart at section 111.

Beer

Lonerider Brewing Co.: $13 flights at section 112

Flights, featuring four six-ounce pours, of Lonerider Brewing Co.'s beer will be available at section 112. You can select any combinations of the brews they offer, and the flights are priced at $13.

Art

This poster, designed by local artist George Hage, will be available free to the first 1,000 fans. Swing by section 108 to pick one up and chat with the artist, as well.

Music

Britton Buchanan, a local singer-songwriter who was runner-up on season 14 of "The Voice," will perform live during the first and second intermissions.

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Gourde suspended two games for actions in Lightning game

Forward banned for illegal check to head of Hurricanes center Staal

by NHL Public Relations

Tampa Bay Lightning forward Yanni Gourde has been suspended for two games for a check to the head of Carolina Hurricanes forward Jordan Staal

NEW YORK -- Tampa Bay Lightning forward Yanni Gourde has been suspended for two games, without pay, for an illegal check to the head of Carolina Hurricanes forward

Jordan Staal during NHL Game No. 1138 in Carolina on Thursday, March 21, the National Hockey League's Department of Player Safety announced today.

The incident occurred at 14:05 of the first period. Gourde was assessed a match penalty for illegal check to the head.

Under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and, based on his average annual salary, Gourde will forfeit $10,752.68. The money goes to the Players' Emergency Assistance Fund.

Lightning’s Gourde suspended for hit on Hurricanes’ Staal

Tampa Bay Lightning's Yanni Gourde catches Carolina Hurricanes' Jordan Staal in the head with a questionable check. The Hurricanes' captain would leave the ice for concussion protocol while Gourde is handed a match penalty.

Mike Johnston

Tampa Bay Lightning forward Yanni Gourde received a two-game suspension for his illegal check to the head of Carolina Hurricanes veteran Jordan Staal.

The NHL’s department of player safety announced the supplemental discipline Friday following a hearing with the player. Gourde, a first-time offender, was ejected in the opening stanza of Thursday’s 6-3 Lightning victory after he clipped Staal with a direct shot to the head.

As you can see in the video at the top of the page, Staal was leaning forward while fending off Lightning blueliner Ryan Callahan when Gourde made contact.

Hurricanes defenceman Trevor van Riemsdyk came to the defence of Staal and it earned him a roughing minor that took two minutes off the five-minute power play the Hurricanes were due.

Staal has a history of documented concussions and even missed a huge chunk of this season recovering from one. The centre was assessed by his team’s medical staff before returning to the game later in the first period. He then scored his eighth goal of the season in the second.

The 27-year-old Gourde has 20 goals and 24 assists with a career-high 64 penalty minutes while averaging 15:45 of ice-time through 75 games this season.

Tampa Bay, which has already clinched the Presidents’ Trophy, will look to extend its current seven-game winning streak Saturday in St. Louis against the Blues.

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Playoff Push: Games to watch this weekend for the Metropolitan Division

By NBC Sports Washington Staff

With seven games and coutning remaining in the regular season for Washington, the Capitals are looking for all the points they can get to hold onto their lead over the Metro. But with the road ahead getting tougher, each result will have massive implications for playoff seeding.

After falling 5-4 in overtime to the Tampa Bay Lightning Wednesday, Washington has a three-point lead over the Metro. From there, the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins each have a four-point lead over the Hurricanes, who are sitting in the first wild-card spot, and the Blue Jackets are one point out of a playoff spot.

As the postseason looms, the current race is a close one, and the games this weekend could ultimately decide who faces who in the first round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and if the regular season ended today, the Caps would play host to the Carolina Hurricanes. Still, there's plenty of time left and things can always change; here are the games to keep an eye on heading into the weekend.

New York Islanders (42-25-7, 91 points) vs. Philadelphia Flyers (36-30-8, 80 points)

Though the Isles are currently tied with the Penguins for second in the Metro, they hold the tiebreaker with fewer games played. Recently, they were shutout by the Montreal Canadiens 4-0. Carey Price made 28 saves, and the Canadiens moved into the second wild-card spot with the win.

They'll take on the Philadelphia Flyers, who are still fighting for a playoff spot and are 6-4 in their last 10 games, in a Saturday afternoon matchup. The Islanders will have a chance to diminish Philadelphia's last gasp at a playoff spot, while also moving ahead of the Penguins and staying in the fight for first.

Pittsburgh Penguins (40-24-11, 91 points) vs. New York Rangers (28-32-13, 69 points)

The Penguins still have a shot at taking the Metro lead away from Washington, but they've played 75 games and have lost their first chance at a tiebreaker. Pittsburgh slugged out a 2-1 win over the Nashville Predators Thursday and have gone 6-2-2 in their last 10.

After taking on the Dallas Stars, also in a heated playoff race in the West, Saturday, Pittsburgh will face a cellar-dwelling New York Rangers team that has lost four straight, but is still looking to spoil their division rivals' season finishes.

Carolina Hurricanes (40-26-7, 87 points)

The Hurricanes have snuck into the first wild-card position, nd it's looking more likely than not that is the team the Caps will face in the first round. Riding goalie Petr Mrazek's improved play in net, the Canes have managed a 6-3-1 record in their last 10 games.

After falling to the Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday, the Hurricanes will look to redeem themselves against the Minnesota Wild Sunday, who are fighting for one of the coveted wild-card spots in the Weest and face the Capitals Friday. With a victory, they can extend their lead and maintain their hold on that first wild-card spot.

Columbus Blue Jackets (40-30-4, 84 points)

The Jackets are on the cusp of the playoffs this season, just one point out. Even after making a push to sign Matt Duchene, Ryan Dzingel and Keith Kinkaid at the trade deadline, they've had trouble racking up much-needed wins. They could not crack even in their last 10 games, with a 4-5-1 record, including a loss to Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers 4-1.

With time flying fast, Columbus needs to scrounge as many points as possible, starting with a must-win against the Vancouver Canucks Sunday. However, the victory won't come easy; Vancouver has won three straight and is still very much in the running for a shot at the playoffs.

Wild roll into Hurricanes matchup with momentum

Field Level Media

As Nino Niederreiter looks to continue helping the Carolina Hurricanes' push toward ending their nine-year playoff drought, he can also potentially deliver a hit to his former team's postseason plans.

On Saturday night in Raleigh, N.C., the Minnesota Wild face Niederreiter for the first time since they traded him to the Hurricanes in this matchup of playoff hopefuls.

A long-time contributor and fan-favorite for the Wild, Niederreiter was losing ice time in his sixth season with the

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club when it dealt him to Carolina on Jan. 17 for Victor Rask. Though the move was tough for the veteran Swiss forward at the time, he's been reborn while becoming a key piece to the Hurricanes' cause.

Owner of the first wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, Carolina is 18-7-2 since acquiring Niederreiter, who has 12 goals and 12 assists in 27 games there. Those 24 points are one more than he totaled in 46 with Minnesota this season.

Niederreiter registered a point in his third straight contest with a goal in the Hurricanes' irritating 6-3 home loss to Presidents' Trophy-winning Tampa Bay on Thursday. Carolina led 3-2 after two periods, but for only the second time in 2018-19, lost in regulation when leading into the third.

"It's not our style," forward Jordan Staal, who had a goal with an assist, told the Hurricanes' official website. "All in all, that third period was not what we wanted to see out of the group.

"We'll have to learn from it, put it aside and move forward."

Carolina has not lost consecutive games in regulation since Jan. 15 and 18, but welcomes a desperate Minnesota club to town. The Wild are 12-11-6 since dealing Niederreiter, while Rask has one goal with an assist in 16 games for them.

The Wild enter play Saturday owners of the West's final wild-card position following a 2-1 victory at Washington on Friday. Luke Kunin's tiebreaker with 7:35 left in regulation led to a much-needed win for Minnesota, which entered that game amid a 1-4-1 stretch.

It also improved to 6-1-1 on the road over the last month.

"We've got to do it again (at Carolina)," coach Bruce Boudreau said. "I think the belief is there that they can win on the road."

Ryan Donato assisted on both goals, giving him 11 and 15 points in 15 games since coming over from Boston.

Devan Dubnyk, who made 21 saves at Washington, equaled a career high by stopping 52 shots during a 5-4 overtime home loss to Carolina on Oct. 13. Boudreau hinted he could again start Dubnyk, who has a 1.68 goals-against average in his last three outings.

Sebastian Aho's goal 2:57 into overtime gave Carolina that win at Minnesota. Aho, with a team- and career-high 79 points, had two goals with two assists in that contest.

Aho went knee-to-knee with Niederreiter on Thursday, and though the former left the game, he returned to the ice. However, Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour said Aho would be further monitored.

Carolina's Curtis McElhinney, who had 26 saves Thursday in falling to 1-2-1 with a 4.75 goals-against average in his last four starts, needed just 19 at Minnesota in October. Petr Mrazek, meanwhile, has an 0.98 goals-against average while winning three straight home starts.

--Field Level Media

Carolina Hurricanes vs. Minnesota Wild: Game Preview and Storm Advisory

The Hurricanes take on Victor Rask and the Wild tonight as they try to get back on track after a loss on Thursday night.

By Andrew Ahr

Carolina Hurricanes (40-26-7) vs. Minnesota Wild (35-31-9)

Saturday, March 23, 2019 - 7:00 PM ET PNC Arena - Raleigh, NC

TV: Fox Sports Carolinas Radio: 99.9 The Fan

SBN Opponent: Hockey Wilderness

The Hurricanes host Victor Rask and the Minnesota Wild tonight in his first game back in Raleigh since being traded for Nino Niederreiter back on January 17th.

Vital Statistics

Category Hurricanes Wild

Record 40-26-7 35-31-9

Points 87 79

Division Rank 4 Metro 5 Central

Conference Rank 7 EC 8 WC

Last 10 Games 6-3-1 3-4-3

Streak Lost 1 Won 1

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Category Hurricanes Wild

Goals/Game 2.96 2.68

Goals Against/Game 2.77 2.85

Shots/Game 34.7 31.5

Shots Against/Game 28.6 29.3

Faceoff % 48.7% 49.7%

Power Play % (Rank) 16.8% (27) 20.7% (13)

Penalty Kill % (Rank) 81.7% (T8) 80.7% (T14)

ES Corsi For % 54.68% 51.22

ES PDO 99.2 98.6

PIM/Game 7:45 8:01

Goaltender #1

Category Petr Mrazek Devan Dubnyk

Record 19-13-3 29-25-6

Save % .909 .916

GAA 2.50 2.56

Goaltender #2

Category Curtis McElhinney Alex Stalock

Record 18-9-2 6-3-3

Save % .913 .893

GAA 2.59 3.05

Game Notes

Tonight’s game is the second and final matchup between the two teams this season. The Hurricanes earned a 5-4 overtime win in the first matchup between the two sides in October.

Sebastian Aho tallied four points (2g, 2a) in Minnesota, including the overtime winning goal. Justin Williams earned three points (1g, 2a) including the game tying extra-attacker goal in the waning minutes of the third period.

Tonight’s game is Victor Rask’s first game back in PNC Arena since being traded for Nino Niederreiter. With a goal against the Lightning on Thursday, Niederreiter has recorded 24 points (12g, 12a) in 27 games for Carolina this season. That’s a massive improvement over his 23 points (9g, 14a) in 46 games with Minnesota.

After recording an assist on Thursday, Brett Pesce has set new career highs in goals (6), assists (19), and points (25) this season.

Storm Advisory

Why has Nino Niederreiter been such a good fit with the Canes? He’s getting opportunities now that he never had before. A must read from Michael Russo. [The Athletic ($)]

Brady Tkachuk was challenged to a floss off.

After a long NHL career to date, Justin Faulk finds himself at the threshold of the NHL playoffs. [ESPN]

More on the signing of Stelio Mattheos and the path that led him to his first pro contract. [Brandon Sun]

The Charlotte Checkers have clinched a spot in the AHL playoffs!

Braden Holtby won’t be visiting the White House this year.

This... is a stat.

Stalking the Standings

Last night was relatively quiet other than a Wild win over the Capitals. The Islanders take on a team battling for their lives in Philadelphia tonight in a matchup that could set the Islanders back to third in the Metropolitan.

Metro 1: Washington Capitals: 75 GP, 94 points, 39 ROW, 103 point pace

Metro 2: New York Islanders: 74 GP, 91 points, 38 ROW, 101 point pace

Metro 3: Pittsburgh Penguins: 75 GP, 91 points, 38 ROW, 99 point pace

WC 1: Carolina Hurricanes: 73 GP, 87 points, 38 ROW, 98 point pace

WC 2: Montreal Canadiens: 74 GP, 85 points, 37 ROW, 94 point pace

9th: Columbus Blue Jackets: 74 GP, 84 points, 39 ROW, 93 point pace

Tonight’s Rooting Guide:

No overtime in Flyers vs. Islanders and a Flyers win

Sabres over Canadiens

Stars over Penguins

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Systems Analyst: Net Drives

Driving hard to the net giveth; allowing hard drives to the net taketh away.

By Ford Hatchett

Last night’s meeting between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Carolina Hurricanes looked an awful lot like playoff hockey. It was the type of physical, hard-nosed hockey that is meant to be played in late March and April.

While the Lightning prevailed, aided by a four goal third period, there were positives to take away from some of Carolina’s play, specifically their net drives in the first period.

As the hockey intensifies and goals become harder to score, the pretty plays seem to evaporate and more and more goals are scored from in tight. And if the goals do come from the slot or blue line, it is a safe bet that a strong net front presence influenced the tally.

Both Hurricanes’ first period goals came as a result of hard drives to the net, backing up defenders and forcing Tampa goaltender Louis Domingue to battle.

The Canes’ first goal featured a snazzy pass from Sebastian Aho to Nino Niederreiter who toe dragged and fired the puck past Domingue.

But Niederreiter only has that time and space thanks to a solid net drive by Justin Williams.

With both Victor Hedman and Cedric Paquette focused on the puck carrier, Aho, Williams’ drive towards the blue paint draws Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev, leaving Niederreiter with plenty of space to play with in the slot. He makes no mistake.

The second Hurricanes’ goal featured a similar net front presence.

The obvious net drive comes in the form of a strong, Erik Cole like, wide drive by rookie Andrei Svechnikov, but just as critical is Teuvo Teravainen’s path towards the crease.

First, Svechnikov blows by Braydon Coburn forcing Domingue to hug the post and play deep. As the puck ricochets into the slot, Teravainen brings Tampa back checker Alex Killorn to the net with him leaving Dougie Hamilton time and space in the slot. More importantly,

Teravainen’s drive keeps Domingue deep in his net, preventing the goaltender from getting on top of his crease and better challenging Hamilton’s wrister.

Unfortunately, the same type of net drives that aided the Hurricanes early plagued them as the game wore on. The Lightning began to be the more desperate and hungry team fighting for every inch of ice, especially in front of the net, as seen here on Anthony Cirelli’s third period equalizer.

It is a 4 on 4 situation and the Hurricanes appear to be in decent shape with each defender accountable for a Lightning attacker. Steven Stamkos gets a step, but is closed nicely by Jordan Staal and Jaccob Slavin, forcing Stamkos to throw a backhand pass towards the goal.

It is painful to watch the battle that ensues between Cirelli and Teravainen, who it should be noted starts in good position. The 21 year-old Cirelli simply establishes inside body position on Teravainen, fights through a stick check and outmuscles the Finnish Hurricane in front. Other camera angles don’t help Teravainen.

Ooof. Curtis McElhinney never had a chance and Teravainen winds up on his back with a minus on the stat sheet as his only reward.

Tampa’s game winning goal saw a similar trend.

The Lightning enter the zone with possession and eventually the puck finds the stick of Hedman. The reigning Norris Trophy winner is a dangerous and gifted offensive player, but is located in a low danger position near the blue line along the boards. But again the Lightning are hungrier to get to the blue paint and the veteran Ryan Callahan nets his seventh goal of the season.

Callahan catches Warren Foegele puck watching (a reoccurring problem for the Hurricanes which was discussed last week) and again establishes inside body position. By the time Foegele realizes what is happening, Hedman has found Callahan’s tape for an easy redirection.

The early net drives led to Hurricanes’ goals, but that level of competitive hunger must be matched at the other end of the ice for a full 60 minutes if the Canes hope to win these playoff style games.

About Last Night: Close calls, special teams battle, third-period collapse

The Canes took a one-goal lead into the third period against the NHL’s best team, but, largely due to losing the special teams battle, could not seal the deal.

By Andrew Schnittker

The Hurricanes took a 3-2 lead into the third period against the President’s Trophy winning Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday night, but could not close it out in a 6-3 loss. The team will be glad to have survived a pair of injury scares after Jordan Staal took a hit to the head in the first and Sebastian Aho and Nino Niederreiter collided knee to knee in the second.

The biggest reason for the Canes’ loss was the cardinal sin of putting one of the best power plays in the history of the NHL on the ice too many times, and not being able to convert on their own man advantages. Let’s take a look at a few key takeaways from the loss.

The good: Canes survive injury scares: Everyone in Canes land held their collective breath in the first period when Staal, who has already missed extensive time this season with a concussion, took a shoulder to the head from Yanni Gourde in the first period and went to the locker room.

It was a dirty hit, made all the worse by Staal’s history with head injuries. Fortunately, he ended up being ok, and came

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back in the game to start the second period, and actually scored the go-ahead goal on a breakaway.

The other incident came when, with the Canes on a power play shortly before Staal’s goal, Aho and Niederreiter ran into each other on a knee to knee collision. Niederreiter stayed in the game, and Aho returned after a brief trip to the room. Brind’Amour said after the game the team would need to see how things looked with Aho the next day, but Carolina appears to have avoided a major injury to a star player.

The bad: Special teams- This one’s pretty simple. This time of year especially, you have to win the special teams battle. The Canes did not score on their three power plays, including a three-minute one as a result of Gourde’s major in the first (the major started with two minutes of four on four after Trevor van Riemsdyk was called for roughing).

Carolina confounded the issue by putting the best man advantage in the NHL on the ice five times, and the Lightning scored twice, including the game’s first goal and the back breaking fifth tally late in the third.

The special teams battle is going to be important both in the Canes’ final nine games and, should they qualify, in the playoffs, and Carolina will need to find a way to win it.

The ugly: Third period- There’s no shame in losing to a historically good team like the Lightning. However, going into the third period, the Canes held a one-goal lead, and you’d like to see them get at least a point in that situation.

As the team looks to lock up the points it needs to reach the postseason, closing out games against good teams is a must.

The Canes seem to have taken the four-goal third hard, and the team has bounced back from a tough loss just about every time this season.

The Canes will need to bounce back quickly from this one as well, with two more home games this weekend, including Sunday’s massively important showdown with Montreal.

TODAY’S LINKS https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article228277594.html

https://www.nhl.com/hurricanes/news/gameday-preview-minnesota-wild-carolina-hurricanes/c-306033356 https://www.nhl.com/hurricanes/news/hurricanes-homegrown-series-game-guide-march-23/c-306001030

https://www.nhl.com/news/lightning-forward-yanni-gourde-suspended/c-306046182 https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/lightnings-gourde-suspended-hit-hurricanes-staal/

https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/capitals/playoff-push-games-watch-weekend-metropolitan-division https://sports.yahoo.com/wild-roll-hurricanes-matchup-momentum-073309108--nhl.html

https://www.canescountry.com/2019/3/23/18278247/carolina-hurricanes-vs-minnesota-wild-game-preview-statistics-notes-links https://www.canescountry.com/2019/3/22/18276067/systems-analyst-net-drives-tampa-bay-lightning-carolina-hurricanes

https://www.canescountry.com/2019/3/22/18276889/about-last-night-close-calls-special-teams-battle-third-period-collapse

CAROLINA HURRICANES


1137044 Carolina Hurricanes

Sibling rivalries? The Carolina Hurricanes have a few, brother

BY CHIP ALEXANDER

MARCH 22, 2019 12:05 PM

A lot of kids have big brothers who prod and push them, fight them, compete against them, toughen them up and make them better.

Not all become NHL players whose big brothers also happen to be in the NHL, but the Carolina Hurricanes have a bunch.

Jordan Staal had two older brothers pushing him. The oldest, center Eric Staal of the Minnesota Wild, will be in PNC Arena on Saturday as the two teams play a game with playoff implications.

Canes forward Brock McGinn also has two older brothers who made it to the NHL. Defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk is the younger brother of forward James van Riemsdyk of the Philadelphia Flyers and will go up against him twice in the last nine games of the season, with much at stake.

Andrei Svechnikov’s older brother, Evgeny, is a former first-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings and defenseman Dougie Hamilton has an older brother, Freddie, who has been with four NHL teams.

“It’s neat thing that we all get to do the same job and all can relate the same way,” Jordan Staal said, speaking about the Staal siblings but also summing it up for the group. “We all have something in common, that we can share, a true passion for hockey.”

The competition in Thunder Bay, Ontario, at the Staal sod farm was legendary. Eric and Marc, a veteran defenseman for the New York Rangers, were the two oldest but Jordan grew into the biggest and the youngest brother, Jared, wasn’t little, either.

“We had our scuffles,” Jordan Staal said. “There were a few elbows ‘by accident.’ There was some of the ‘I wish I wasn’t your brother’ said at times.”

It was much the same at the van Riemsdyk house in New Jersey, Trevor said, where it was often all hockey all the time.

“We’d play in the basement with these little cut-down sticks, play in the driveway,” he said. “We’d have our friends over and have two-on-two games until the wee hours of the morning, until Mom told us to call it a night and go to bed.

“We’d have some pretty intense games. There might be sticks flying across the room by the end of it. Some tears were shed. But it was definitely fun.”

James van Riemsdyk was a first-round draft pick of the Flyers. Trevor was not drafted, playing college hockey at New Hampshire -- the Canes’ Brett Pesce once was his teammate and roommate -- before signing with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2014. A younger brother, Brendan, is a forward and has followed his two brothers to New Hampshire.

Brock McGinn is the youngest of the McGinn boys, who battled it out in a backyard rink in Fergus, Ont. Jamie and Tye tested Brock, and not just in hockey.

“We were competitive in everything,” Brock said. “That was in our blood in everything we did. We were always challenging each other, never wanted to lose in anything. We all wanted to have the first spoonful of food.”

Like Jordan Staal, Tye McGinn was the biggest and strongest of the brothers. “We were always beating on Tye,” Brock said. “Or we’d beat on him until Mom came in and said, “It’s time to stop.’”

Jamie McGinn, 30, was a second-round NHL draft pick of the San Jose Sharks in 2006, has played more than 600 games for six NHL teams and now is with the Florida Panthers. Tye, 28, was a fourth-round pick in 2010 and has spent much of his career in the American Hockey League while getting in nearly 100 NHL games with four teams.

Brock, 25, was drafted in the second round by the Hurricanes in 2012 and made his NHL debut against the Detroit Red Wings in October 2015, scoring on his first shift. By then, Jamie McGinn, with some big brotherly pride, had said Brock would be the best of the three, noting little brother also “hits like a Mack truck.”

“We shoot texts every day,” Brock said of his brothers. “Our bond is something special.”

The McGinn brothers have joined their dad, Bob, in owning the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs of the Southern Professional Hockey League. That’s something different that Brock said has helped him learn about the business side of things.

Jordan, Eric and Marc Staal all were first-rounders and Jordan and Eric have Stanley Cup rings -- Eric with the Canes in 2006 and Jordan with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009. Jordan was traded to the Canes in June 2012, determined to join Eric in making Carolina a Cup contender again, but it didn’t happen and Eric was traded late in the 2015-16 season.

The two will be on opposite sides again Saturday night at PNC Arena, brothers but both trying to drive their teams to a needed victory.

News Observer LOADED: 03.23.2019

1137121 NHL

Holtby says he won’t go with Capitals to White House

March 22, 2019 at 11:10 am Updated March 22, 2019 at 11:11 am

By The Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — Washington Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby said Friday he will not join his teammates next week for a White House celebration of their Stanley Cup championship.

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Holtby is the second player on the Capitals’ active roster to decline, joining fellow Canadian Brett Connolly.

“It’s one of those things that we have to think about, but with me, I’ve got to stay true to my values, and I’m going respectfully decline the offer,” Holtby said. “For me, it’s just a personal thing. I believe in what I believe in, and in order to stick to those values, I think I have to do what I feel is right, but that doesn’t make a difference on everyone else’s decision.”

President Donald Trump has occasionally been at odds with pro athletes, from NFL players protesting racial injustices during the national anthem to NBA players including LeBron James and Stephen Curry.

The defending Stanley Cup champions will hold a private tour of the White House and meet Trump on Monday . The event will not include a public ceremony.

Russian captain Alex Ovechkin, Americans John Carlson and T.J. Oshie and coach Todd Reirden have said they will attend.

Seattle Times LOADED: 03.23.2019

1137090 Minnesota Wild

Wild notes: Victor Rask to face Hurricanes for first time since trade

By Sarah McLellan Star Tribune MARCH 23, 2019 — 12:07AM

WASHINGTON – Suiting up for his first NHL game is among the memories Wild center Victor Rask cherishes the most from his five seasons with the Hurricanes.

And he’ll experience an-other highlight Saturday when he returns to Carolina for the first time since he was traded to the Wild two months ago.

“It’s going to be a special night, for sure,” Rask said.

Until he was moved out in exchange for winger Nino Niederreiter on Jan. 17, Rask had only ever played for the Hurricanes.

They drafted him 42nd overall in 2011 and after he made his debut in 2014, Rask exited the franchise having played 339 games and racking up 63 goals and 163 points.

“It’s always emotional when you go back to your other team that you last played for,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “I hope he puts on a good show, and we play good for him.”

While Niederreiter has soared since the trade, totaling 12 goals and 24 points in 27 games, Rask has had a bumpier transition.

He chipped in a goal and assist in his first 10 games before getting hurt and missing 12 contests because of a lower-body injury. And while the 26-year-old remained without a point, Boudreau felt Rask has been better in recent games.

“With Victor, it’s going to be a lot about confidence,” Boudreau said. “If he ever gets to scoring regular again like he did a few years ago in Carolina, I think he’ll be fine.”

That type of production would help the Wild up the middle, especially with Rask under contract for three more seasons.

“I really like it here,” he said, “and I’m looking forward to staying for a while.”

Read plays

Although he was called up under emergency conditions Thursday, winger Matt Read slotted into the lineup Friday as the Wild’s fourth and final recall from the American Hockey League.

That’s because winger Pontus Aberg was a healthy scratch against the Capitals, the first time that’s happened since he was acquired in a trade with the Anaheim Ducks on Jan. 16.

Read filled out a line with Rask and winger Jason Zucker.

This was only Read’s third appearance this month despite repeatedly getting called up in recent weeks as insurance for the Wild.

“It’s been kind of a whirlwind,” he said. “Obviously, it’s not ideal. Just excited to go up and down and get an opportunity to play back in the NHL and prove myself again. You never know what’s going to happen. You just kind of live in the moment and enjoy every second of it.”

Sheehy lands ATO

The Iowa Wild signed former Gophers forward Tyler Sheehy to an amateur tryout agreement Friday.

Sheehy joins the organization after finishing his senior season at the University of Minnesota; the Burnsville native tallied 12 goals and 29 assists in 38 games, leading the Gophers in assists and ranking second in points.

Star Tribune LOADED: 03.23.2019


Wild-Carolina gameday preview

MARCH 23, 2019 — 12:04AM

SARAH MCLELLAN

6 p.m. at Carolina • FSN, 100.3-FM

Back-to-back is last of season

Preview: The Wild wraps up a quick two-game road trip with its final back-to-back of the season. Carolina took the first matchup this season 5-4 in overtime Oct. 13. The Hurricanes are coming off a 6-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday.

Players to WATCH: Former Wild F Nino Niederreiter has a goal and two assists in his past three games. F Sebastian Aho leads the Hurricanes in goals (30) and points (79). D Jaccob Slavin averages a team-high 22 minutes, 56 seconds in ice time.

Numbers: Carolina is 25-9-2 in its past 36 games. Aho had four points vs. the Wild earlier this season. The Wild is 6-5-3 in the second half of back-to-backs.

Injuries: Wild Fs Joel Eriksson Ek (lower body) and Mikko Koivu (torn ACL and meniscus) and D Matt Dumba (torn pectoral) are out.



Wild's rookies lead the way in win over Capitals

CAROLINA HURRICANES


By Sarah McLellan MARCH 22, 2019 — 10:26PM

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Center Luke Kunin hasn’t played this deep into an NHL season before in his career, while winger Jordan Greenway has made only one previous push to the playoffs.

Same with fellow winger Ryan Donato.

But the lack of experience with pressure-packed games that have a postseason berth on the line doesn’t seem to be fazing the Wild’s rookies, not after the three led the team to an impressive 2-1 win over the Capitals Friday at Capital One Arena to swing the Wild back into the second and final wild card spot in the Western Conference.

VideoVideo (00:55): Sarah McLellan recaps the 2-1 win over the Capitals in her Wild wrap-up.

“It's great to kind of feed off each other for the young guys and maybe create something, a great line,” Donato said. “Hopefully we can kind of build off what we did tonight.”

The three were superb against Washington, contributing both goals and combining for four points.

Greenway had the first, a workmanlike-effort in which he swooped into the Capitals’ zone, shrugged off winger Tom Wilson and cut to the middle before wiring the puck by goalie Braden Holtby.

“It was good effort by Donny,” Greenway said. “He made a great play on the wall, and I saw a lane to the net and put my head down and put my knee out and just kind of put it in.”

In the third, Kunin scored another highlight-reel goal – a blistering wrist shot that went top-shelf on Holtby to break a 1-1 tie.

Donato assisted on both goals, his sixth multi-point game with the Wild, and he has 15 points in 15 games with the team since coming over in a trade with the Boston Bruins last month.

“Keeping things simple,” Kunin said about his line’s mojo. “Getting pucks in on the forecheck, having a third guy high, playing with a guy like Greener down low. Not many people can get it from him so if you get in the right spots, those guys are going to find you.”

The effort by the rookies, however, wasn’t the only catalyst.

Goalie Devan Dubnyk was solid, making 21 saves and chipping in an assist on Greenway’s goal. And with the Wild still in desperation mode, he’ll be back in net Saturday when the team concludes this back-to-back in Carolina against the Hurricanes.

“It’s at that crunch time,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “You gotta play your best all the time.”

At a spotless 3-for-3, the penalty kill was clutch – especially against Washington’s top-10 power play.

Even more impressive was the unit’s ability to shut down shooting lanes, as the Capitals got off only one shot with the man advantage. And it didn’t belong to superstar Alex Ovechkin.

“We’re having to use so many different combinations with [Joel Eriksson] Ek out and [Mikael] Granlund and [Charlie] Coyle gone,” Boudreau said. “So tonight I thought [Jason] Zucker was really good on the PK, and Matt Read did his job on the PK. So all of those things were really good.”

Overall, the Wild’s defensive posture against the Capitals was stout.

Washington racked up an eyepopping 58 shots in its previous game but was limited to 22 Friday.

“We spent a lot of time in their zone,” winger Zach Parise said. “We broke them down a lot below the goal line. We didn’t want to give them rushes because we know how good they are off the rush and how they can make plays off the rush. We wanted to slow them

down in the neutral zone, and I thought for the most part we did a pretty good job at that.”



Wild-Washington game recap

MARCH 23, 2019 — 12:03AM

SARAH MCLELLAN

GAME RECAP

STAR TRIBUNE’S THREE STARS

1. Luke Kunin, Wild: The center scored the game-winning goal in the third period.

2. Ryan Donato, Wild: The winger recorded two assists.

3. Devan Dubnyk, Wild: The goalie made 21 saves.

BY THE NUMBERS

4 Points for the Jordan Greenway-Kunin-Donato line.

20 Road wins for the Wild.

24 Goals by Wild rookies this season, tied for fifth in the NHL.



Wild edge Capitals 2-1 to move into playoff position

By STEPHEN WHYNO Associated Press MARCH 22, 2019 — 8:45PM

WASHINGTON — Luke Kunin scored the go-ahead goal with 7:35 left, Devan Dubnyk made 21 saves and the Minnesota Wild moved into playoff position by beating the Washington Capitals 2-1 on Friday night.

Jordan Greenway also scored for Minnesota, which snapped a two-game skid and leapfrogged the Arizona Coyotes and Colorado Avalanche to move into the second wild-card spot in a competitive Western Conference race. Ryan Donato assisted on the goals by Kunin and Greenway and was the Wild's best forward in a game dominated by that second line.

Dubnyk did not have to make too many high-danger saves, but was dependable in Minnesota's net. A sliding pad save on a one-timer by John Carlson on a Capitals power play in the second period was his most impressive stop.

Brett Connolly scored his 21st goal of the season and Braden Holtby made 25 saves for Washington, which has lost four of six. The defending Stanley Cup champion Capitals missed an opportunity to add to their lead atop the Metropolitan Division and still lead the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins by four points.

CAROLINA HURRICANES


It wasn't a masterpiece, but Minnesota needed two points in any way possible. Returning to face the team that gave him his start in the NHL, coach Bruce Boudreau knew full well that with only two games Friday night the Wild were the only ones who could gain ground after getting some help from a Coyotes loss on Thursday.

Despite losing seven of their previous nine games, the Wild remain in control of their playoff hopes with seven games remaining.

NOTES: Minnesota improved to 20-15-2 on the road. ... Donato's primary assist on Greenway's goal was the 10,000th point in Wild franchise history. ... Connolly has 13 points in his past 16 games. ... Washington's power play went 0 for 3 with just one shot in those six minutes. ... Capitals D Christian Djoos returned to the lineup to replace Michal Kempny, who's out indefinitely with a lower-body injury. ... LW Carl Hagelin was a late scratch with an illness and was replaced by Chandler Stephenson. ... Alex Ovechkin remained two goals away from his eighth career 50-goal season.

UP NEXT

Wild: Visit the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday in Victor Rask's first game against his former team since being traded for Nino Niederreiter.

Capitals: Look to end their brief losing streak Sunday when they host the Metropolitan Division-rival Philadelphia Flyers.



Wild stays hot away from home, topping Capitals 2-1

By Sarah McLellan Star Tribune MARCH 23, 2019 — 1:55AM

WASHINGTON – How the Wild’s season will end is still up in the air, uncertainty that should make the final two weeks of the schedule intriguing if not outright entertaining.

But what’s already a given is that the 2018-19 version will be remembered for its impressive, and perhaps uncanny, knack for knocking off the NHL’s best teams. That habit continued Friday when the Wild waltzed into Capital One Arena and blitzed the defending Stanley Cup champion Capitals 2-1 and jumped over Arizona and Colorado to reclaim the second wild card spot in the Western Conference with 79 points.

VideoVideo (00:41): Coach Bruce Boudreau discusses the 2-1 win over the Capitals Friday.

Not only could this trend help decide the Wild’s fate, but it may also give the club an edge in this three-team race for that final berth since all its remaining opponents are ahead of it in the standings.

“With our schedule, it’s going to have to be the same for every game from here on out,” goalie Devan Dubnyk said. “If we play like that, even though we might not go 7-0, it’s going to give us a really good chance.”

What would also improve its outlook is if its class of youngsters continue to dazzle like it did against Washington.

The all-rookie line of wingers Jordan Greenway and Ryan Donato and center Luke Kunin was responsible for both goals, with Kunin delivering the clincher 12 minutes, 25 seconds into the third period. Overall, the three combined for four points; Donato had two assists.

VideoVideo (00:55): Sarah McLellan recaps the 2-1 win over the Capitals in her Wild wrap-up.

“They deserve it,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “They’re playing well, especially at this time of year. It’s great for now, but it’s 10 times better for the future.”

While the Wild has struggled at home this season, especially against lesser opponents, it’s been remarkedly better on the road. And that switch flipped again Friday.

Greenway opened the scoring 16:33 into the first on a jaw-dropping individual effort in which he cut around winger Tom Wilson and bulldozed to the middle ,where he deked before wiring the puck past goalie Braden Holtby.

The goal was Greenway’s first in 13 games and marked the team’s first 5-on-5 tally in three games.

Donato’s assist on the play notched the franchise’s 10,000th point, and Dubnyk recorded a rare second assist to go along with 21 saves. He’ll be back in action Saturday against the Hurricanes.

In the second, the Wild was even more aggressive and had the Capitals scrambling at times amid 15 shots. The lone blemish on the period was Washington’s tying goal, a deflection by winger Brett Connolly at 10:42.

But that didn’t slow the Wild. The team continued to test Holtby, who totaled 25 saves.

“My goal at that point was get through the next five minutes because if we could get through the next five minutes, everything sort of slows to our pace again and it did,” Boudreau said.

Kunin’s go-ahead goal in the third, a top-shelf wrister off the rush for his first tally in 11 games, was the 24th by a Wild rookie, tied for the fifth-most in the NHL. It sealed the Wild’s 20th road win — just the fourth time in franchise history it’s reached that mark — and grew the team’s stash of signature performances.

And because of those previous victories over Tampa Bay, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vegas and Toronto, the Wild had the confidence to persevere against the reigning champions in their building.

“It just shows the character in the group we have,” Kunin said. “We know we can do it in this room.”



Wild still in a position to control its own destiny when it faces the Capitals

By Sarah McLellan MARCH 22, 2019 — 11:59AM

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The race for the second and final wild card berth in the Western Conference got more complicated while the Wild was idle this week, with the Colorado Avalanche taking possession after tying the Arizona Coyotes at 78 points.

But the Wild can still jump both teams Friday to regain a playoff spot with a win Friday over the Capitals at Capital One Arena.

“We gotta take advantage of it,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “It’s up to us. It’s up to the boys in the room. If they play the right way like we did against Tampa, good things are going to happen.”

That the Wild still can control its destiny with just eight games left after falling behind the playoff pace may seem surprising, but this is exactly the position Boudreau expected the team to be in at this juncture of the season.

CAROLINA HURRICANES


“The bottom line is at some point, when you’re under 10 games to go in the season, you have to do it for yourself and you can’t hope for somebody else,” he explained, “because eventually, especially with the amount of teams that are playing, somebody’s going to win.”

A look at the NHL standings by division, conference and wild card races.

Forward Matt Read joined the Wild on the ice Friday after getting recalled Thursday under emergency conditions. It’s possible, though, his recall becomes the fourth and final recall if he plays and someone is a healthy scratch. Winger Pontus Aberg skated late Friday, along with defenseman Nick Seeler.

“That’s a decision in the afternoon,” Boudreau said. “I’ll talk to [General Manager] Paul [Fenton] when he gets here and see what the situation is.”

Projected lineup:

Zach Parise-Eric Staal-Kevin Fiala

Jordan Greenway-Luke Kunin-Ryan Donato

Jason Zucker-Victor Rask-Matt Read

Marcus Foligno-Eric Fehr-J.T. Brown

Ryan Suter-Jared Spurgeon

Jonas Brodin-Greg Pateryn

Anthony Bitetto-Brad Hunt

Devan Dubnyk

Key numbers:

8-3-2: Record for the Wild in its last 13 road games.

33: Points for winger Zach Parise on the road, tops on the Wild.

12-4-2: Record for goalie Devan Dubnyk in his last 18 road starts.

74: Points for center Eric Staal in 77 career games vs. the Capitals.

2: Goals and an assist for Washington defenseman Dmitry Orlov in a 5-2 Capitals win over the Wild Nov.13.

About the Capitals:

Washington is leading the Metropolitan Division with 94 points, three ahead of the New York Islanders. The Capitals are coming off an overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning Wednesday. They’ve won eight in a row against the Wild. Captain Alex Ovechkin leads the NHL in goals with 48. He’s two shy of 50, the eighth time in his career he’s reach that plateau.



Wild back in playoff position after win over defending Stanley Cup champions

By Dane Mizutani PUBLISHED: March 22, 2019 at 8:32 pm | UPDATED: March 22, 2019 at 9:56 PM

WASHINGTON — As inconsistent as the Wild have been, especially over the past couple of weeks, as many times as the critics have written them off, especially over the past couple of weeks, they somehow entered Friday’s matchup with the Washington Capitals only one point out of a playoff spot.

That was enough to keep coach Bruce Boudreau optimistic. Or at least enough to keep him feigning optimism for the time being.

“It’s like a team that’s getting outplayed,” Boudreau said. “If you let them hang around until the third period and all of a sudden they get it going, then that team usually ends up winning the game, and you get mad because (it’s like), ‘How did that team win?'”

That analogy only works, though, if the Wild find a way to get it going down the stretch. They entered Friday’s contest nothing more than a team that’s getting outplayed.

“We have to do it for ourselves,” Boudreau said. “We can’t hope for somebody else (to lose), because eventually, especially with the amount of teams that are playing, somebody is going to win.”

For the Wild, perhaps a 2-1 road win over the defending Stanley Cup champion Capitals can serve as a start.

After Friday’s impressive win, the Wild are back in a playoff position, one point clear of the Colorado Avalanche and Arizona Coyotes, both of which have a game in hand.

“It means temporarily we’re in a playoff spot,” Boudreau said. “That’s what that means.”

He placed tons of emphasis on the word “temporarily” and for good reason. After all, the Wild have made a habit of looking like Stanley Cup contenders from time to time, only to follow it up with a wretched performance akin to that of a Pee Wee game.

“I think we’re trying to figure it out, too,” Zach Parise said, trying to explain the Jekyll and Hyde charade to no avail. “Just like we’ve been doing for a little while, we got ourselves right back in the mix, so it was a good win.”

Luke Kunin scored the game-winner late in the third period with a top-shelf snipe off a rush into the offensive zone. He was sent in alone thanks to a perfect lead pass from Parise.

That saved the Wild from potential disaster as they appeared to be letting the game slip away in the final frame.

After an incredible effort for 40 minutes, the Wild came out discombobulated to start the the final 20 minutes of play. They coughed up pucks with regularity as the Capitals applied relentless pressure.

“It’s not like we’re not playing the Mighty Ducks from movie fame out there,” Boudreau said, praising his team for responding to the push. “That’s the Stanley Cup champions. There’s going to get shifts where we’re hemmed in our own zone. It’s about how we handle that. I thought we did a good job.”

Nobody did a better job than Devan Dubnyk in those hairy situations. He made a handful of clutch denials before Kunin took the edge off.

Those late-game heroics from Kunin didn’t seem like they’d be necessary early on.

No doubt motivated by the playoff chase, the Wild raced out of the starting blocks and were rewarded when Jordan Greenway gave them the lead late in the first period with an incredible individual effort.

Still, the Capitals hung around and hung around before striking midway through the second period when winger Brett Connolly deflected a puck into the back of the net.

That simply set the stage for the third period, though, and the Wild battled to secure a hard-fought win heading into Saturday’s tilt against the Carolina Hurricanes.

“With our schedule it’s going to have to be the same (effort) for every game from here on out,” Dubnyk said. “If we play like that, even though we might not go 7-0, it’s going to give us a really good chance.”

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Pioneer Press LOADED: 03.23.2019


After weeks of back-and-forth, Wild winger Matt Read gets another chance

By Dane Mizutani | PUBLISHED: March 22, 2019 at 5:58 pm | UPDATED: March 22, 2019 at 7:54 PM

Matt Read woke up in Tucson, Ariz. Thursday ready for a game as a member of the Iowa Wild later that night. Then his phone rang.

Just like that, Read was headed to the airport to meet up with the Minnesota Wild in the nation’s capital. He had been recalled under emergency conditions in advance of Friday night’s game against the Washington Capitals.

“I was at the airport at 8:15 in the morning and just caught flights all day,” said Read, who has navigated the less-than-glamorous role of emergency call up for the past month. “I got here (around 10:30 at night) and then went to bed.”

As the emergency call up, Read is only allowed to play in place of someone suffering from injury or illness. If neither of those circumstances is met, he must either be recalled under regular conditions or reassigned to the minors.

Because teams are only allowed four recalls under regular conditions after the trade deadline, and the Wild had already used three, Read has been called up and sent down several times over the past month.

It’s become commonplace for Read to wake up, catch a commercial flight to meet the Minnesota Wild where they are, participate in a morning skate, watch the game from the press box, and catch a commercial flight back to rendezvous with the Iowa Wild.

Sometimes in a span of less than 24 hours.

“It’s been kind of a whirlwind,” Read said. “Obviously, it’s not ideal. You never know what’s going to happen. You just kind of live in the moment and try to enjoy every second of it.”

Perhaps understanding how it sounded to be complaining about travel as someone currently playing in the NHL, Read quickly backtracked on his original statement.

“Oh, it could be worse,” he added. “This is what we do: Just strap them on and help the team perform.”

Read’s patience was rewarded Friday. He was recalled under regular conditions and set to skate in place of Pontus Aberg, a healthy scratch for the first time since he was acquired in a deal that sent prospect Justin Kloos to Anaheim.

The Wild have eight regular-season games to move into the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. They started Friday, a point behind Colorado and Arizona.

Read, 32, has played two games this month for the Wild. Before that, he hadn’t played since October.

“Just excited to go up and down and get an opportunity to play back in the NHL and prove myself again,” Read said before the game. “This is my favorite time of the year to play. You basically put your life on the line and go out there and do whatever you need to do to help the team succeed.”

BRIEFLY

The Iowa Wild signed two-time Gophers captain Tyler Sheehy to an amateur tryout on Friday afternoon. He finished with 12 goals and 29 assists in 39 games in his senior year with the program.

#iawild has signed two-time @GopherHockey captain forward Tyler Sheehy to an ATO. #TheHuntIsOn

�: https://t.co/EBfUVURUcU pic.twitter.com/nzy7kgwXJK

— Iowa Wild (@IAWild) March 22, 2019

Pioneer Press LOADED: 03.23.2019


Wild waltz into Washington and top the champs because the world is an enigma

By Michael Russo 4h ago

WASHINGTON — OK, OK, we all know by now that this edition of the Minnesota Wild makes absolutely zero sense.

Nothing this maddening team does anymore should shock any of us, yet it still always does when the Wild do unexplainable stuff like somehow strolling into the home barn of the defending Stanley Cup champs and outplaying the Washington Capitals for a huge 2-1 victory Friday night.

How the heck does a team that has lost SEVENTEEN of its past TWENTY-TWO home games (!?!?!) keep storming into enemy arenas and pulling out such impressive road wins?

Of the Wild’s 20 road wins — which, incidentally, is five more than they have in 38 mostly lousy home games, the Wild have won in difficult places like Toronto, Vegas, Winnipeg, Calgary, Tampa Bay and now … Washington.

How is this humanly possible?

“I think we’re trying to figure it out, too,” Zach Parise said, laughing, after assisting on Luke Kunin’s game-winning goal with 7:35 left. “I guess, just like we’ve been doing for a little while, we get ourselves right back in the mix, so it was a good win. It was a hard game, a hard-fought game for us.”

That it was.

Fittingly, in Our Nation’s Capital, the Wild’s young Americans — Kunin (21), Jordan Greenway (22), and, of course, Ryan “The Revelation” Donato (22) — led the way for a Wild team that at least temporarily hopped back into the top eight in the Western Conference.

Besides Kunin’s mammoth third-period goal where he went bar-down from between the circles, Greenway scored a highlight-reel goal off a power move to the net and Donato assisted on both. Since his Feb. 21 debut with the Wild, Donato leads all NHL rookies with 15 points.

“They’re playing well, especially at this time of year,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “It’s great for now, but it’s 10 times better for the future.”

The Wild held the Capitals to 22 shots on goal, limited Washington to one shot (it was a Devan Dubnyk robbery on John Carlson) on three scoreless power plays and handed them their first regulation home loss since Feb. 3 (7-0-2). In fact, it was Minnesota’s first win in Washington since March 5, 2015, snapping an eight-game overall losing streak against the Capitals (0-7-1).

CAROLINA HURRICANES


“We didn’t want to give them rushes,” Parise said. “We know how good they are off the rush and how they can make plays off the rush. We wanted to slow them down in the neutral zone. And for the most part, we did a pretty good job of that.”

Alex Ovechkin usually lights up the Wild for fun. His 2.09 points per game against the Wild since 2011-12 is the most by any Wild opponent. In 15 previous games against Minnesota, the future Hall of Famer had only been shut out once. But on this night, even with the flirtation of another 50-goal season inches away, Ovechkin was held to one shot on goal and had another six attempts blocked.

“I think we didn’t play our game at all,” Ovechkin said. “We knew they were going to play desperate — they need points, as we do — but I think the sense of urgency was on their side, not on our side.”

You could tell that right from the outset.

The Wild played fast, with energy, got pucks deep and spent a lot of time in Washington’s end in the first two periods. In the second period, they out-attempted the Capitals 35-17.

It could have been a deflating thing to play so well in the second period yet see your 1-0 lead turn into a 1-1 game on a Brett Connolly deflection. The goal came a shift after a 4-on-4 in which Braden Holtby made a great save on Brad Hunt, Parise slid a bad-angle tap-in through the crease and Kunin hit the crossbar.

But the Wild had an outstanding response to being scored on.

Their next three shifts by the Eric Staal, Kunin and Victor Rask lines, the Wild pressured hard and buzzed with tremendous chances and zone time.

“I think we liked how we played the second (period),” Parise said. “We spent a lot of time in their zone. We broke them down a lot below the goal line.”

In Boudreau’s mind, those successive shifts demonstrated the Wild weren’t going to sprint for the exit.

“Coming at them and not taking a backseat and letting them come at us,” he said. “My goal at that point was get through the next five minutes because if we could get through the next five minutes, everything sort of slows to our pace again, and it did.”

Donato played another fabulous game.

He hustles every shift and assisted on both goals by making strong plays in the neutral zone. The pass to his Olympic team linemate, Greenway, was capped by Greenway using his big reach to fly by a flat-footed Brooks Orpik outside the blueline. Greenway then drove by Tom Wilson and cut to the net before scoring a gorgeous goal, his first in 13 games.

“It was good effort by Donny,” Greenway said. “He made a great play on the wall and I saw a lane to the net and put my head down and put my knee out and just kind of put it in.”

In the third period, Donato forced a turnover and pushed the puck up to Parise, who skated down the left-wing boards before centering for Kunin. Without a goal in his past 10 games, Kunin let her rip from the outside edge of the right circle. His celebration was cool as he lifted his arms, turned toward the crowd and pumped his left leg.

Kunin said it was sweet justice after the second-period iron he hit.

“Big moment. Nice to get that one,” Kunin said.

It was nice to see Donato, Greenway and Kunin playing so well in such a huge game. Remember, Donato and Greenway were in the Olympics 13 months ago and Kunin captained the United States to a gold medal in the world junior championships two years ago.

“They are two great players,” Greenway said. “Donny has a ton of skill. Kunin plays a real responsible game. I think I do a little bit more work in the corners and behind the net. We really complement each

other well. We played with a lot of confidence tonight. I think everyone helped with that, which is huge. If we keep playing like that, I think we’ll continue to do a lot of good things.”

Added Donato, who has six multi-point games with the Wild, “I think we’re learning from each other. I think we’re starting to get each other’s habits, where we’re going to be on the ice, where the other guys are going to be, where they like to pass to. Being able to learn with each other, it makes you feel comfortable on the ice. You don’t feel like you’re doing anything wrong. You’ve got to make sure you’re passing to each other and kind of playing and feeding off each other.”

It’s also cool watching Kunin continue to thrive in the middle since the injuries to Mikko Koivu and Joel Eriksson Ek and departure of Charlie Coyle. Kunin is willing to be that responsible third guy high in the offensive zone, and it has led to a lot of chances.

Asked his ceiling, Boudreau said, “I just think he’s going to be a really good player. I don’t want to put too much pressure on him. He’s getting better all the time. He’s been in big games before and it was a great shot for a guy who hasn’t scored in a while.”

So, big, big win.

But Boudreau’s not getting ahead of himself.

Earlier this month, he watched the Wild convincingly walk into Tampa and blank the NHL-best Lightning. The next night, they laid a giant egg in South Florida.

So, he will do one thing very differently Saturday morning in Raleigh.

He won’t let his team sleep in.

He’ll get them out of bed and down to the rink in the morning.

“We’ve got to do it again (Saturday),” Boudreau said. “Quite frankly, the thing I think of is playing a great game in Tampa and then having nothing left for Florida. So we can’t afford that. We gotta be ready again.”

Added Dubnyk, who is expected to start against the Canes, “With the way our schedule is, we’re going to have to do that for seven more games here. That was a start tonight. We have to have that same emotion against a very, very good team (Saturday) night.”

The Wild hit the 20-win mark on the road for the fourth time in franchise history. Another big road win in Raleigh would be just what the doctor ordered.

“I think they believe they can win on the road right now, and at home they’re holding their sticks really way too tight because they want to win so badly at home,” Boudreau said. “But here, it’s amazing what the mind can do and the belief is there that they can win on the road.”

Boudreau looking for more from Fiala

In 12 games with the Wild, Kevin Fiala has scored two goals and three assists.

“He’s shown spurts of great skill that you can sit there and say, ‘Man, this guy could be really good,’” Boudreau said. “I’d like to see it on a more consistent basis. But, I think that’s going to come. Everything’s fresher when you start it in training camp. But he’s going to be a good player.”

One thing Boudreau wants him to get rid of is the persistent turnovers.

“I think he’s got to figure it out,” Boudreau said. “I think he’s one of those guys that is so skilled he thinks he can make every play. I’ve been around guys here in (Washington) in their younger days that thought the same thing. Sometimes the simpler way is an awful lot better than trying to force things or think you can bank it off nets and have something good happen to it.”

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Rask returns to Raleigh

Rask, who has scored one goal and one assist in 16 games with the Wild, returns to Raleigh on Saturday for the first time since the Jan. 17 trade for Nino Niederreiter.

“It’s going to be a special night, for sure,” said Rask, who scored 63 goals and 163 points in 339 games for the Hurricanes. “It’s definitely going to be fun.”

Rask’s Wild career hasn’t gotten off to the stellar start that Niederreiter’s has for the Hurricanes. Niederreiter has already scored 12 goals and 24 points in 27 games.

Rask has played better the past four games, but he hasn’t produced.

“Just a matter of time to put the puck in the net. Hopefully I can do so,” Rask said.

Said Boudreau, “I think at the beginning he struggled. You’re starting to see more of what he can do, especially last game (against Colorado) I thought he had his legs underneath him. He was skating and creating chances. The game before (against the Islanders), he had two good chances to score.

“I think with Victor, it’s going to be a lot about confidence. If he ever gets to scoring regular again like he did a few years ago in Carolina, I think he’ll be fine.”

Rask only has 19 shots with the Wild.

“I think it’s him not being around the puck and his line not being around the net a lot,” said Boudreau, who changed things up and had Rask center Jason Zucker and Matt Read against the Capitals. “I think if you look at his career, he’s more of a passer. He’s not a shoot-first. Like (Ryan) Donato is a shoot-first guy. Victor’s definitely not a shoot-first guy.”

Rask has three more years left on his contract.

“I really like it here and I’m looking forward to staying for awhile,” he said. “We’ve got an important push here the last couple games here, so it’s going to be fun to see how we end up doing here. … Everyone is really excited about this time (of) the year, so hopefully we can get a good push here and make it into the playoffs.”

The Athletic LOADED: 03.23.2019

1137100 Montreal Canadiens

Canadiens' Andrew Shaw has grown a longer fuse with maturity

STU COWAN, Updated: March 22, 2019

The Canadiens’ Andrew Shaw is known for having a short fuse on the ice and doesn’t think he would have made it to the NHL if he didn’t.

“Probably not,” Shaw said Friday after the Canadiens held an optional practice at the Bell Centre. “We were talking about it today, actually.”

Shaw was talking about the night eight years ago that Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin — then the director of player personnel with the Chicago Blackhawks — attended an OHL playoff game in London when the Knights were playing Shaw’s Owen Sound Attack team. Bergevin was there to scout Knights centre Vladislav Namestnikov.

“I ended up fighting (Jarred) Tinordi that night and (Bergevin) said that’s when he recognized who I was,” Shaw said. “So I don’t think without that (short fuse) in my play, I don’t think I would have been in the NHL.”

Namestnikov ended up being selected by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round (27th overall) of the 2011 NHL Draft, while the Blackhawks took Shaw in the fifth round (139th overall).

Did Shaw win his fight with the 6-foot-6 Tinordi?

“That one, no,” Shaw said with a grin. “But I fought him again and I made sure I got the upper hand early. He was a big boy.”

Shaw has always played bigger than his size, listed at 5-foot-11 and 182 pounds, and his short fuse has got him in trouble at times. During his first season with the Canadiens after being acquired from the Blackhawks in the summer of 2016, Shaw had 110 penalty minutes. This season, he has 65 penalty minutes and with 17-21-38 totals is one point away from matching his career high — set in 2013-14 with the Blackhawks — despite having missed 19 games.

Shaw took an interference penalty in the third period of Thursday’s 4-0 win over the New York Islanders at the Bell Centre and had a few words for the referee while skating to the penalty box. But with a little longer fuse now, he didn’t blow up.

“Normally, I would have lost it maybe a little bit,” Shaw said. “Maturity, I think, takes over a bit.”

Said coach Claude Julien about Shaw: “There’s still times where you got to reel him in. But, having said that, that’s what makes Andrew Shaw Andrew Shaw. He’s a fiery little guy. I always say the same thing: I’d rather pull a guy back a little bit than have to kick him to get him going. With Andrew, that’s usually the case. You got to reel him back in once in a while, but his emotions … and he’s always there every game. He’s ready to play, he wants to win, and those are all good traits that he has. But with good things there’s always a little challenge that comes along the way and we just have to manage that.”

That fuse is a little longer now — but it’s still there.

Montreal Gazette LOADED: 03.23.2019


Canadiens Notebook: Habs' chances of making playoffs at 50.9 per cent


The Canadiens were basically given the day off Friday with only a handful of players taking part in an optional practice after the official team photo was taken at the Bell Centre.

“I think we’ve done enough practising and we’ve all skated enough this year that you got to do what you need to to be ready to play,” Brendan Gallagher said. “I think we’ve done a good job of that. The coaches reward us with some days off, which as players we always like. But I think we got to reward them back with some good efforts. I think the last couple of games we’ve done that. We’ve come ready to play, prepared to play. That obviously can’t change.”

The Canadiens are coming off back-to-back wins over the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Islanders that moved them into the second wild-card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, one point ahead of the Columbus Blue Jackets with both teams having eight game remaining in the regular season. The Canadiens are two points behind the Carolina Hurricanes, who hold the first wild-card spot and have nine games left.

The Canadiens will play the Buffalo Sabres Saturday night at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., SNE, CITY, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio), while

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the Hurricanes play host to the Minnesota Wild. The Canadiens will play the Hurricanes Sunday night in Carolina (7 p.m., SN, RDS, TSN 690 Radio), while the Blue Jackets visit the Vancouver Canucks (10 p.m., SNP).

“This is really the first time that we’ve been in this position,” Gallagher said about the playoff race. “When we’ve made the playoffs (in the past) we’ve kind of been in first (place in the division) or competing for a top spot. And when we miss, we’ve been out of it pretty early. This is the first time in my career, anyways, that we’ve kind of been fighting for a playoff spot right to the end and it’s a unique experience.”

The sportsclubstats.com website had the Canadiens’ chances of making the playoffs listed at 50.9 per cent heading into the weekend.

Price expected to play back-to-back

You can expect to see Carey Price in goal for the Canadiens Saturday against the Sabres and Sunday against the Hurricanes, although coach Claude Julien wouldn’t confirm it on Friday.

“Even though it’s cliché, I don’t know what’s going to happen after tomorrow night so I can’t answer you for Sunday,” Julien said Friday at the Bell Centre. “That’s why I don’t like to predict because very often we change ideas or because of something there are changes. So we’ll go with tomorrow night and there’s a big chance you’ll see Carey tomorrow.”

Price has played in 21 of the last 22 games, starting 20 of them. He has won the last two games while allowing one goal on 61 shots, beating the Flyers 3-1 and the Islanders 4-0. For the season, Price has a 31-22-5 record with a 2.50 goals-against average, a .917 save percentage and four shutouts.

Rolling the lines

Julien pretty much rolled four lines during the last two games and plans to continue doing that. Artturi Lehkonen led all forwards in ice time against the Islanders with 18:18 — including 3:30 short-handed — while Jonathan Drouin had the least ice time with 12:15.

“I think we’ve said all year, in order for us to have success we need everybody going,” Julien said. “We’re not a team that can lean on three, four players and say they’ll carry us. We don’t have that. We’re all aware of that, we all know that, we all respect that part of it. It doesn’t make us a bad hockey club and it doesn’t make them bad hockey players. But that’s how we’re getting success. Just like the team that we played last night’s had success basically the same way.

“So by having balance, it’s allowed us in the last couple of games to really play well both sides of the puck. We’ve been able to score, we’ve been able to keep the puck out of our own net. So right now that’s working and when it stops working then I got to make some adjustments. But right now it’s working well for us.”

Team effort

Gallagher also spoke about the total team effort the Canadiens need in order to win games.

“The last couple of games have been good for us,” Gallagher said. “They’ve been pretty complete efforts and I think that’s important for us right now. The margin for error, I guess, is as small as it’s ever been. So I think with everyone showing up and everyone contributing right now, it’s nice.

“The last couple of games have been a pretty good example of that,” he added. “Everyone’s done their job and it’s a good feeling at the end and then we got rewarded with a couple of wins. The situation that we’re in, can’t really enjoy it for too long. Get ready for the next game. But hopefully the style of play and the way that everyone’s coming prepared to play is going to stay the same.”

Annual team picture �⚪� @Nicdeslauriers4 pic.twitter.com/19WdOy1rW3— Joanie Deslauriers (@Joadeslauriers4) March 22, 2019

Lehkonen’s slump continues

Arturri Lehkonen is pointless in the last six games and is also pointless in 21 of the last 22 games. Lehkonen, who is now playing on a line with Max Domi and Andrew Shaw, has 1-4-5 totals in the last 36 games.

Julien said after Thursday’s game that Lehkonen has been snakebit and he has been hitting a lot of goalposts recently.

“Four games in a row,” Lehkonen said. “It is what it is. I don’t really care if I score if we win. We just got to keep winning games. Of course I’m trying to score, but we just got to focus on the next game. I know it’s going to come.”

As for playing with Domi and Shaw, Lehkonen said: “It’s a lot of fun. Both of those guys are really competitive. They’re really aggressive playing types. They’re all over the park. Both guys are fierce battlers out there. I enjoy it for sure.”

Shaw said he enjoys playing with Lehkonen.

“I think we play well together,” Shaw said. “I think we read each other well. He knows if I’m getting in on the forecheck he’s going to be right in behind me to pick up pucks or bodies as well. I do the same for him. One of us is always going to be around the net, which is always a good thing. He competes. He works hard.”

Shaw also thinks Lehkonen will break out of his scoring slump.

“I do,” he said. “I think he’s got an amazing shot. He puts himself in good positions. A bounce is going to go his way here and then things are going to open up for him.”

Ce gant est maintenant à Flambo.

That's Flambo's glove now.#GoHabsGo #NationalPuppyDay@taikinajalka @chcfondation @fondationmira pic.twitter.com/nIPpG8Jtnb— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) March 22, 2019

What’s next?

The Canadiens will have a morning skate at 10:30 a.m. Saturday in Brossard before facing the Sabres at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., CITY, SNE, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio), followed by a rare Sunday night game against the Hurricanes in Carolina (7 p.m., SN, RDS, TSN 690 Radio).

After that, the Florida Panthers will visit the Bell Centre Tuesday (7:30 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio) before the Canadiens hit the road for games against the Blue Jackets in Columbus on Thursday (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio) and the Jets in Winnipeg on Saturday (7 p.m., SNE, SN360, CITY, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio).



Stu Cowan: Lots of smiles on team photo day for the Canadiens


The Canadiens’ Andrew Shaw has posed for a lot of team photos as a hockey player — including two with the Stanley Cup when he was

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with the Chicago Blackhawks — but one of the photos taken Friday morning at the Bell Centre was extra special.

The Canadiens take two official team photos each season, one early in the year and one after the NHL trade deadline passes. On both occasions, they take a photo of all the players, coaches and hockey staff together and a second unofficial one that includes wives and children.

The second photo taken Friday included Shaw, his wife, Chaunette Boulerice, and their first child, nine-month-old daughter Andy.

“First team picture with her,” Shaw said in the Canadiens’ dressing room afterwards. “It was fun. She was well behaved, just I think in awe just looking at everything, staring at everyone. Bright colours on the ice. I think she enjoyed it.

“It’s special,” Shaw added. “It’s all for the kids, really, to be a part of it. I think they love it and it seems like they enjoy it a lot. I’ve wanted to have a kid for a while. I was ready. The timing worked well for us. We’re planning on having more.”

The Canadiens’ kids were running around outside the dressing room and in the family room at the Bell Centre Friday morning wearing tiny team sweaters with their fathers’ names and numbers on the back. Youppi! was there, too. There were lots of smiling faces.

There are also a lot of new faces in this year’s final team photo, including Max Domi, Tomas Tatar, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Brett Kulak, Nate Thompson, Dale Weise, Christian Folin, Joel Armia, Jordan Weal and Matthew Peca. They weren’t around last season, when the Canadiens were already out of the playoff race by the time the second official team photo was taken.

Now, with eight games left in the regular season, the Canadiens hold the second wild-card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference following Thursday night’s 4-0 win over the New York Islanders. The Canadiens are one point ahead of the Columbus Blue Jackets and trail the Carolina Hurricanes, who hold the first wild-card spot, by two points. Their chances of making the playoffs are now 50.9 per cent, according to sportsclubstats.com.

“It’s just a good group of guys,” coach Claude Julien said about this year’s team. “Things have gone better and so the mood is better than it was last year and a lot of things are coming into play. But we’ve had a good group of players here that believe in playing together and working hard as a unit and just doing the job right. From there, you get a little bit more success than you did last year and right now you’re in the playoff hunt where last year we were probably done by this time. So there’s a lot of differences that creates probably a better atmosphere this year.”

The Canadiens are back in action Saturday when the Buffalo Sabres visit the Bell Centre (7 p.m., SNE, Citytv, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio) and then they travel to Carolina to play the Hurricanes on Sunday (7 p.m., SN, RDS, TSN 690 Radio).

Had a great time at team picture day! � � https://t.co/RAjy9F01BI— Andrew Shaw (@shawz15er) March 22, 2019

“This is a big weekend for us,” Brendan Gallagher said. “Obviously, we have a game here at home … you got to take advantage of your home games. And then we’re not going to look past that one. And then after that, obviously, we know who we’re playing. It’s a critical time for us.

“I think what makes our group good is (that) for us to win everyone needs to play well,” Gallagher added. “We can’t have guys take off-nights and it’s kind of an accountability factor that our group has that kind of makes it special. Everyone feels like you got a job to do and when you do it you get rewarded. It’s a good group to be around.”

Annual team picture � � � @Nicdeslauriers4 pic.twitter.com/19WdOy1rW3— Joanie Deslauriers (@Joadeslauriers4) March 22, 2019

This is Gallagher’s seventh season with the Canadiens, and he doesn’t remember much about the day he posed for his first team photo. He does remember that Carey Price is the only other player in that photo from the 2012-13 season who is still with the Canadiens.

“I think the picture day is pretty cool,” Gallagher said. “You get to see the families and everyone that’s kind of involved get involved. You get together for a picture and then kind of on with business after that.

“I think it’s exciting,” he added. “It kind of brings a smile to your face. It’s a pretty unique experience that those kids have and it’s something that they’ll obviously remember. You kind of look at Doms (Max Domi) and that’s what Doms was doing (when his father, Tie, played with the Toronto Maple Leafs) and he ends up playing in the NHL. It’s probably something that can motivate you and it’s probably pretty cool for those kids.”

It’s also pretty cool for the parents.



Hickey on Hockey: Les Canadiennes, Inferno renew fierce title rivalry

PAT HICKEY, Updated: March 22, 2019

There will be no need for introductions Sunday when Les Canadiennes play the Calgary Inferno for the Clarkson Cup (Noon, SN, TVA Sports).

This is the fiercest rivalry in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and the teams will be meeting in the final for third time in four years. Calgary won it in 2016, while Les Canadiennes were victorious a year later.

The top players on both teams are accustomed to playing together — against each other — in international competitions and the two rosters are stocked with Olympic medallists from Canada and the United States.

“These teams match up well,” said Les Canadiennes rookie coach Caroline Ouellette, who was on the ice for the last two Clarkson Cup meetings. “Both teams have world-class goaltenders and skilled players who can score. We have to play well defensively and use our speed to turn that into offensive chances. They have a tremendous amount of depth and experience.”

There’s one huge question mark for Les Canadiennes and that’s the health of Marie-Philip Poulin, who is, arguably, the best player in the women’s game. The CWHL’s leading scorer with 50 points in 26 games, Poulin suffered a lower-body injury in the final game of the regular season and Ouellette described her status as day-to-day.

“She has been skating in practice and she’s working hard to get in the lineup,” said Ouellette.

Even without Poulin, Les Canadiennes have a formidable offence. Ann-Sophie Bettez finished second in the scoring race with 48 points and U.S. Olympian Hilary Knight had four goals and four assists in the three-game semifinal series win over Markham. Erin Ambrose, a finalist for defender of the year, led all CWHL blue-liners with 24 points.

Calgary also has top-end snipers in former CWHL most valuable player Rebecca Johnston, Blayre Turnbull, Brianne Jenner and

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Brianna Decker, the U.S. Olympic star who wowed fans with her skills in a guest appearance at the NHL All-Star Game festivities.

The interest in the goaltending matchup goes beyond the fact Emerance Maschmeyer of Les Canadiennes and Alex Rigsby of the Inferno finished 1-2 in the CWHL. Maschmeyer, who led the league with a 1.45 goals-against average and a .935 save percentage, previously played for the Inferno. She was replaced this season by Rigsby, who led the U.S. to a gold medal at the 21018 Winter Olympics. Rigsby has a 2.04 GAA and a .916 save percentage. The Inferno won four of the six regular-season games against Les Canadiennes, but Maschmeyer shut out Calgary 3-0 in their final regular-season meeting.

The rosters of the rival teams reflect the growing stature of the CWHL and the respective teams.

Ambrose, who played for the Toronto Furies after graduating from Clarkson University, said coming to Montreal was one of the best decisions of her life. In addition to playing for Les Canadiennes, she’s also working as an assistant coach for Concordia University’s women’s team.

U.S. Olympic gold medallist Knight said she came to Montreal because she wanted to play against the best female players. Rigsby, Decker and Kacey Bellamy are the U.S. Olympians on the Calgary roster, which also includes players from Finland and Japan.

Ouellette said the next logical step is a merger with the U.S.-based National Women’s Hockey League. She said the major stumbling block was a difference in philosophy. The NWHL was established as a for-profit operation, while the CWHL teams are run on a non-profit basis.

The Clarkson Cup has turned into a weekend affair with an awards night on Friday. The game will be televised in Canada and on the NHL Network in the U.S. with an all-female broadcasting crew featuring Olympic gold medallists Cassie Campbell, Jennifer Botterill and Natalie Spooner.

“Unacceptable” peewee decision: While the Clarkson Cup will be celebrating the accomplishments of female hockey players, the folks who run minor hockey in the Mauricie region took a step back.

Les Rafales, an all-girls peewee team that competes in a boys’ league, qualified for the Dodge Cup inter-regional competition. But Hockey Mauricie decided that it would not send the girls on to a competition for which they qualified because, well, they’re not boys.

“It’s completely unacceptable,” said Les Canadiennes’ Ambrose, who was the captain of a boys’ AAA team when she was 12.

Ouellette, who competed with boys from age 9 to 17 — “I’m old and there wasn’t any girls’ hockey in those days” — said the decision sent the wrong message to the girls as well as to the boys.

“Even though the girls are going to the Dodge Cup for girls, they earned the right to play in the boys’ competition,” said Ouellette, who is a longtime advocate for girls’ hockey.

Primeau among Richter finalists: For the second consecutive year, Canadiens prospect Cayden Primeau is among the 10 finalists for the Mike Richter Award, which goes to the best goaltender in U.S. college hockey.

The sophomore assured Boston’s Northeastern University a place in the 16-team NCAA tournament last weekend when he stopped 74 of 76 shots in a pair of 2-1 victories over Maine in the best-of-three Hockey East quarter-finals. He was particularly impressive in the first game in which he made 42 saves, including five in overtime.



The Art of Deception: How Canadiens prospect Nick Suzuki tricks defenders to rack up points

By Mitch Brown Mar 22, 2019

Every season, a handful of the NHL’s most promising prospects are trapped in a tug-of-war between the CHL and the NHL. Although the tides might change soon, the CHL won the battle in its agreement with the NHL, which precludes players drafted out of the OHL, QMJHL, and WHL from playing in the AHL full-time until their 20-year-old season.

As a result, players like Canadiens prospect Nick Suzuki return to junior for their 18-year-old and 19-year-old seasons, despite already having illustrious scoring records in the CHL. Proponents of the NHL-CHL Agreement argue that stars, like Suzuki, put fans in the seats, which means a stream of revenue to keep Canada’s great junior hockey institutions afloat. Critics argue that an extra year or two in junior stalls their development, and they would be better served honing their skills in the AHL.

When Suzuki failed to make Vegas out of camp in 2017-18, it looked like he was following the path of stagnation. He was essentially the same player that he was the season before. Since the trade to the Canadiens, Suzuki’s improved, and lately, he’s making plays in the OHL that most players – top scorers included – can’t.

To highlight these improvements and skills, I’ve selected a number of impressive plays from all facets of Suzuki’s game. The goal of this piece isn’t to cherry pick the flashiest, most highlight-reel worthy clips, although many clips will qualify. If Suzuki makes the NHL, especially in a top-six role, it won’t be because of the dazzling plays. He’ll make it for the diversity of details that make him effective. The goal is to identify the plays that best describe Suzuki’s many high-level skills, defence included, and then relate those patterns of play to his progression and NHL future.

If there’s a word to describe Suzuki’s skill, it’s deceptive.

Every element of Suzuki’s game has some form of deception in it. It’s challenging to talk about Suzuki’s shooting without his passing and vice-versa, because Suzuki conceals his shots with the threat of a pass and his passes with the threat of a shot. He does this as well as anyone in the CHL, and it allows him to pile up points.

Earlier this season, I wrote about Suzuki’s drawback and delay wrister. He pulls the puck back, shows the goaltender shot, and then he doesn’t shoot. Sometimes Suzuki’s delay is to pick his spot, maximize power and keep the goaltender guessing where he’s shooting.

Other times, that delay is to mask a pass. Off the rush, Suzuki makes heavy usage of this deceptive move. In this particular sequence, he runs over a player, which he’ll do every now and then. On a 2-on-1, Suzuki slows down, shows the goaltender and defender that he’s shooting, and then fires a hard pass across the ice. The opposition’s convinced a shot is coming, so it’s an easy goal for Suzuki’s teammate.

On the power play, Suzuki uses the threat of the shot to shred the penalty kill. It’s impressive to watch. He gets set for a shot, the penalty kill shifts, then he makes a powerful cross-ice pass to create a better look on the other side.

Since being traded to the Guelph Storm, Suzuki’s using more shooting tricks. The most prominent one is the angle change. Suzuki will set up for a shot, then curl and drag around a defender and fire. He usually combines it with a delay to draw a defender between the puck and the goaltender, making the shot even harder for the goaltender to stop.

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Now, watch this setup by Suzuki. On a 2-on-1, Suzuki pulls the puck towards his skates like he’s going to curl, drag, and shoot, but turns it into a cross-ice pass.

The deceptive tricks that Suzuki pulls on defenders have become even more dangerous, and projectable to the NHL, thanks to an increase of pace.

One of the greatest hurdles that CHL players have to overcome while transitioning to the NHL is pace. Pace isn’t just about physical skating speed. Of course, the average NHL player is much further ahead in terms of skating than the the average CHLer. What pace really is about is how quickly gaps close in the NHL. To get around the ever shrinking amount of space in the NHL, players have to think and play fast. Find space, perfectly time movement into space, and keep your feet moving. Gliding through the neutral zone with possession is dangerous.

Until this season, Suzuki was often a glider through the neutral zone; he lacked pace. He’d slow down immediately after gaining the zone and wait for options to emerge. In junior, high-skill players can get away with that. The NHL isn’t as forgiving.

With stick skills and deception as good as Suzuki’s, attacking with more pace ramps up his ability to walk through defenders. It looks like this, where Suzuki accelerates through the neutral zone, shoulder fakes one way, then goes the other, which enables him to stickhandle right through without trouble and set up a goal:

The most skilled puckhandlers don’t just attack at one speed. They deceive by slowing down to make it look like the defender has a chance to stop them, then they speed up as soon as the defender reaches in. Suzuki’s doing that a lot more this season. It looks like this:

Building on that, the best don’t enter a deke with just one option. They have to use creativity and problem-solving to turn a bobbling puck or unforeseen error into a chance. In these examples, Suzuki enters the zone with pace, but loses the handle. For many players, it’s over here. Just whack the puck in and chase it down. But since Suzuki attacked with pace and he’s so talented, he turns the effort into a flashy deke. Then, he puts the puck in his own feet to beat a defender, fishes it out, and rings a shot off the post. An almost-goal of the year candidate.

As striking as his increased pace this season has been, there’s still work to be done. He could attack in the middle or across the dot line, rather than parallel to it, with more regularity. He still comes down the right wing and immediately stops striding to pass or dangle relatively often. Integrating his shooting, passing, or stickhandling into his stride will allow him to keep the pace up in the offensive zone and attack with more diversity.

The improved pace doesn’t just create different looks for Suzuki, it increases the volume and efficiency of his touches. This matters because NHL players get fewer touches and fewer opportunities than they do in the CHL. There are so many junior players every season who rack up points because of the volume of touches they have. They’re a bit stronger, faster, and more experienced than everyone else, so they get the big minutes and points.

But not every big junior scorer is created equal. While many are high-end prospects, others don’t even get an NHL look. So, what separates the high-end prospects from the high-end junior scorers? The skills play a huge role. The Suzukis of the CHL are more skilled, which they show at a younger age, and they have more creativity and pace in the way they attack. The skills required to separate in the NHL are much greater than those in the CHL.

The more difficult to identify skills matter, too, such as problem-solving and decision making, particularly making the right play at the right time. These traits allow players, especially those without notable speed or strength, to separate and execute at the higher

levels of hockey. Admittedly, identifying these requires off-ice considerations, but they manifest themselves in on-ice plays.

Let’s start with an obvious example of problem-solving: Defence. On the penalty kill, Suzuki has just gotten beaten with a no-look backhand pass on the point. The passer gets the puck back, and tees up a shot. Suzuki waves his stick in front to deceive the passer into thinking he’s taking away the shot, then immediately blocks the passing lane. A good play there would’ve just been to take the pass away; a great play is to force the player into turning the puck over.

Forechecking, backchecking, and off-the-puck routes are also good examples of problem-solving. Suzuki’s a strong backchecker, as we see in this next example. After stealing possession, he cuts across and passes. Then, he immediately drives down the middle to make himself an option and open up the cross-ice pass. Suzuki realizes that he can’t handle the pass, so he simply sticklifts the defender, and the puck goes right to an open teammate.

When it comes to making the right play at the right time, Suzuki’s definitely positive. The results are just incredible: 121 goals and 169 assists in 188 games over the past three seasons. That’s a dual threat right there. The diversity of plays that Suzuki can make really benefits him. You just never know what Suzuki’s going to do, and it can be hard to discern patterns because he’s just so good at making plays of all kinds.

I do think there’s room for improvement with his play selection, however, notably with his shooting-passing balance. Suzuki will pass when shooting is the best option. Sometimes, it results in a ridiculous set up like this:

Others, it results in nothing. And weeding out those plays that result in nothing will be important for Suzuki going forward. There’s reason to believe that he will. Through his four seasons in the OHL, Suzuki has always adapted to the players around him. With Owen Sound separating Kevin Hancock and Suzuki, Suzuki took on more of a shooter role. Traded to Guelph, Suzuki has been more of a playmaker alongside 50-goal scorer Isaac Ratcliffe; his goals per game has jumped from 0.69 to 0.87 playing alongside Suzuki.

Then, there’s that Suzuki can make subtle expressions of high-end skill and awareness in any given situation. We’ve seen many of them, from the way that he rushes the puck up the ice, to the deceptive passing. But here’s one more.

Suzuki’s in position for a sharp angle, low percentage shot. He’s moving, and he’s on his off-wing – this isn’t a look that players get every game. Suzuki assumes a stance that readies him to both receive a pass and shoot. He takes the weight of the pass to essentially scoop the puck onto his blade. A foot off the ice, he releases the puck and shovels it top corner. It’s basically an angle change, but a vertical one.

If he does what just about every other player does from that situation, that’s just another sharp angle shot that gets saved.

Now that’s maximizing your opportunity.

The improvements that Suzuki’s made pace-wise are really impressive. After all, many high-skill players never improve their pace; it’s hard to change habits that have previously led to success. The added pace has allowed Suzuki’s deception and creativity to shine even brighter than before.

Of course, Suzuki’s still a prospect. And while he might be one of the best prospects in the world, there’s still work be done. He could get to the middle more, both off the rush and in the offensive zone. The generic need to get stronger and faster applies, too. And of course, luck.

But before the NHL, Suzuki’s got important matters to attend to – winning an OHL title.


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Melnick’s GBU: Springtime in Montreal is fun again

By Mitch Melnick Mar 22, 2019

Happy days are here again.

It’s springtime in Montreal. The snow is melting (yeah it’s coming back but won’t stay much longer), the Boys of Summer, led by Felipe Alou, Larry Walker, Dennis Martinez and Steve Rogers, are about to hit town, and the Canadiens are in a playoff spot.

Who could ask for anything more?

Ok, maybe a fast-forward button to April 7, but the tide sure shifted in a hurry.

One week after a dismal effort in unfamiliar surroundings (for most of the Habs) at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, after which they were called out by their coach, their goaltender and their two-time Stanley Cup winning winger, Andrew Shaw, for not being playoff ready, the Canadiens have bounced back.

They fired nearly 50 shots on goal in a shutout loss on home ice to Chicago but played a near-perfect road game for their first win (over a more desperate team) in Philadelphia in five years and followed that up with a major edition of payback time against the Islanders, who are now suddenly scuffling, losing their last two games by a combined score of 9-0.

The schedule said it was game 74 of the 2018-19 season. But once the puck was dropped at 7:38 PM between Nate Thompson and Casey Cizikas, it was a playoff game. At least it was for the home team.

The Islanders, already dealing with injuries to Johnny Boychuk and Valtteri Filppula, and with several others who are playing through significant ailments, were battered by the Habs, who played like their playoff lives depended on it, even if it was a week late.

Watching everybody from their 33-year old captain to their 18-year old rookie centre throw their bodies around in the first period, there was no mistaking the Canadiens’ will and desire. It seemed like on every second shift there was an Islander down on the ice, slowly trying to get up, from Cizikas, who was hit by a fire hydrant named Max Domi, to Mathew Barzal, who surely woke up back home with a deep bruise on his lower back, to Brock Nelson and Andrew Ladd and even Matt Martin, all with hits that were delivered with the purpose and accuracy of a tenderizer.

Montreal opened the scoring after a dumb decision by Leo Komarov, who was trying to respond to the physical punishment by seemingly attempting to dislodge Brendan Gallagher’s left knee from the rest of his leg. But it was the manner in which they did it, with a struggling Jonathan Drouin helping to set up a goal on a power play that was struggling just as badly at the very end of the opening period, they at least were able to do something they couldn’t do in their last home game – take the early lead and run with it.

One week after they “cracked” and played without any “bite” on Long Island, the Habs kept buzzing and made the Islanders look like the team searching for its playoff mojo.

Meanwhile, in Carolina the Hurricanes blew a lead against Tampa Bay while in Edmonton, the post-game vibe out of the Columbus room kind of echoed what we heard from Julien and some of his players after the late goal by Anders Lee gave the Islanders that 2-1 win over Montreal a week earlier.

“We’ve talked enough,” said Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella after his team went down, without much fight, to the Oilers. “We just have to have some sort of urgency to try to get back into this or we have no chance. I just don’t think we understand the level that we need to play at right now.”

Even more bizarre than their play since the trade deadline acquisitions of Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel is the state of Sergei Bobrovsky. The multiple Vezina-winner didn’t play in Edmonton after Tortorella stated earlier in the day that he was “nicked up.”

Isn’t that what Carey Price has been since 2016?

Anyway, it was a perfect night for the Habs. But just as quickly as they moved back into a playoff spot three days after Claude Julien had to say “We’re not dead” is how sudden the playoff positioning can change again. But with just eight games left the Habs know that it’s up to them and nobody else to get it done, especially with upcoming games in Carolina and Columbus.

Isn’t this fun?

Play Ball!

THE GOOD

· Shea Weber: If he’s played a better game this season, I might have missed it. He fired the puck, he blocked shots, he fired the puck, he hit, he fired the puck again, he roughed up a couple of opponents, and he scored. He had a real presence, even as he hooked Nick Leddy after the Islanders’ defenceman blew by him through the middle of the ice inside the Montreal zone that briefly put the Habs down by two men. Leddy’s speed victimizes a lot of opposing players. Weber’s laser of a shot in the first minute of the second period went in and out the net faster than a falcon moves in on its prey. It was his 13th goal of the season. Only seven defencemen have scored more. All but one of them (Kris Letang in 62 games) have played at least 20 more games than Weber’s 50. The Habs captain led all players with six shots on goal while firing a total of 12 shots in the direction of Thomas Greiss. Or more than enough to rattle and hum. Whether it’s by design or out of necessity, Weber has eclipsed the 25-minute mark in just five of Montreal’s 33 games in 2019. And not once since a Feb. 25 loss in New Jersey. This is proving to be a wise decision.

· Special Teams: It’s been a long time coming since both units clicked on the same night. It was an early test for the penalty killers when their two busiest skaters, Jeff Petry and Weber, took overlapping penalties. But Nate Thompson literally took control of the puck and wouldn’t let it go, just missing a shorty for what would have been his first goal as a Hab. Thompson played like a man possessed, not a 34-year old role player. And it must have been so gratifying to watch Armia’s shot from the slot trickle through Greiss for his first career power play goal. As of this moment, perhaps the most important goal of the season. There was so much to like about it. Weber casually tapping the puck out of the air to keep it in the zone. Drouin working down low, an area the coaches just moved him to. An outstanding, tight, no-look pass by Jordan Weal (he was looking at Drouin) to set up Armia. And with just six seconds left on the clock before the first intermission.

· Carey Price: It might not have been a game-saver, but Price’s save on Jordan Eberle five and a half minutes into the second period was beyond timely. Thirty seconds later Montreal increased its lead to 3-0. Eberle is not having a productive season and you can see why. Alone with the puck to Price’s right and with so much of the net to shoot at, he hesitated just long enough to allow a desperate Price to get the tip of his left pad on the puck. It was such a surreal moment, almost like Price was frozen in time, waiting for the puck to hit him. But that’s what he does, huh? Two days after the NHLPA named him the best goalie in the NHL in their annual player poll, Price recorded career shutout number 44, as he moves into new milestone territory trailing Ken Dryden by two. He’ll eventually get to number two on the list (Jacques Plante at 58) but the top spot, even for

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Price, is out of reach. George Hainsworth racked up 75 shutouts, most of them, including 22 in one season, during the dead puck era of the late 1920s. Since surrendering eight goals to the Ducks in Anaheim on March 8, Price has stopped 138 of 144 shots for a save percentage of .958. And what do NHL players know about goaltending anyway?

MY LATEST FOR @INGOALMEDIA LOOKS AT THE @NHLPA PLAYERS POLL. THEIR CHOICE OF CAREY PRICE FOR BEST GOALIE WAS SOMEWHAT SURPRISING, BUT NUMBERS FROM @CSAHOCKEY SUPPORT THEIR DECISION. HTTPS://T.CO/F6KD9B3ICB

— PAUL CAMPBELL (@WAYTOGOPAUL) MARCH 20, 2019

· Phillip Danault: Went head to head with Mathew Barzal and dominated the speedy Islanders centre. Maybe Barzal had been softened up a bit by an early Petry cross-check to his lower back. But by the time he was stripped of the puck by Drouin inside the Montreal zone that led to Drouin’s first goal in 18 games (a beauty of a three-way passing play with Drouin starting and finishing with Armia and Jesperi Kotkaniemi) Barzal looked almost disinterested. Earlier in the day when asked about the challenge of stopping Barzal’s speed, Danault almost shrugged while pointing out that it was more a case of Montreal working a lot harder than they did in Uniondale. Or, as Claude Julien put it, “We have to be ready and bring our game and impose our game on them.” Mission accomplished. Danault won 9-of-12 faceoffs, including a perfect 5-for-5 against Barzal. Danault was also a force on the penalty kill and had to feel especially good at the end of the night when he looked at the score sheet and saw that Barzal did not get a single shot on goal.

· Artturi Lehkonen: Lehkonen was also a big part of the penalty kill while he continued to amp up his intensity level playing alongside Max Domi and Andrew Shaw. There was his (seemingly) nightly hit goalpost on an impressive wraparound that ultimately saw the puck slide out to Weber for the all-important second Montreal goal. Now that Drouin finally ended a long scoring drought what happens next: a goal by Lehkonen (one goal in 36 games) or the first career goal by Victor Mete, who had another strong night and actually whizzed a couple of shots that handcuffed both Islanders netminders?

· Jordan Weal: How’s this for good hands? First the high-quality pass to Armia for the power play goal; a perfect deflection of a Jordie Benn shot for his second goal as a Hab (and first two-point game); and 6-for-7 on faceoffs, or 81 percent. “Relax your hands,” said Weal after the morning skate. We’re back to the Zen of hockey. Or as John Lennon might have added, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.”

THE BAD

· Matt Martin: Spent the last five minutes looking for a dance partner before he was finally tossed from the game with less than a minute to play. The line of Martin, Cizikas and Clutterbuck is a classic shit-disturbing trio and usually effective. One week ago in Uniondale they set the tone early and had the Habs totally disrupted. But there was no case of rinse and repeat in this game. They were held to a total of one shot on goal and badly outplayed by Montreal’s fourth line. By the end of it they, especially Martin, looked like something out of a time warp.

THE UGLY

· Leo Komarov: Dirty and dangerous take out of Brendan Gallagher led to the game-winning goal by Armia late in the first period. It was called a trip but Komarov used his knee to hit the back of Gallagher’s knee to knock the Habs winger off his feet. It was a lonely skate back to the Islanders bench for Komarov, whose stupidity more or less handed the game to the Canadiens. The only thing missing was a thank you lick from Brad Marchand.


1137165 Washington Capitals

Kunin’s goal helps Wild edge Capitals, move into wild-card

By Associated Press March 23 at 12:58 AM

Luke Kunin scored the go-ahead goal with 7:35 left, Devan Dubnyk made 21 saves and the Minnesota Wild moved into playoff position by beating the Washington Capitals 2-1 on Friday night.

Jordan Greenway also scored for Minnesota, which snapped a two-game skid and leapfrogged the Arizona Coyotes and Colorado Avalanche to move into the second wild-card spot in a competitive Western Conference race. Ryan Donato assisted on the goals by Kunin and Greenway and was the Wild’s best forward in a game dominated by that second line.

Brett Connolly scored his 21st goal of the season and Braden Holtby made 25 saves for Washington, which has lost four of six. The defending Stanley Cup champion Capitals missed an opportunity to add to their lead atop the Metropolitan Division and still lead the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins by four points.

DUCKS 4, SHARKS 3, OT

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Jakob Silfverberg scored the winning goal 38 seconds into overtime to give the Ducks the victory over San Jose.

Silfverberg, who had a goal and two assists, had his fifth multi-point game of the season and second against the Sharks. The goal, which beat San Jose’s Aaron Dell on his stick side, was his 23rd of the season.

Rickard Rakell scored two goals and assisted on the game-winner. Adam Henrique also scored a goal and Troy Terry had two assists. John Gibson stopped 23 shots.

Kevin Labanc, Timo Meier and Justin Braun scored for San Jose, which has lost five straight.

Washington Post LOADED: 03.23.2019


Capitals are off the mark in 2-1 loss to Wild

By Isabelle Khurshudyan March 22 at 10:25 PM

The Washington Capitals’ best opportunities were the ones that never reached Minnesota goaltender Devan Dubnyk. Two nights after the Capitals recorded a franchise-record shot total, their offense was stunted by the Wild, which stuffed lanes to the net and blocked as many shots as the team was able to put on Dubnyk.

In a grinding game Friday night, the Capitals lost to the Wild, 2-1, and missed an opportunity to extend their lead in the Metropolitan Division. Washington has a three-point cushion but has lost its past two games. Goaltender Braden Holtby finished with 25 saves in the loss. Dubnyk needed to make just 21 saves; his teammates blocked 22 of the Capitals’ attempts.

“We didn’t play our game at all,” said captain Alex Ovechkin, who had six shot attempts blocked. “We knew they were going to play desperate — they need points, as we do — but I think the sense of urgency was on their side, not on our side.”

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The teams started the third period tied at 1. For 12 minutes neither club was able to sustain much offensively before the Wild capitalized on a neutral-zone turnover by defenseman Matt Niskanen. Center Luke Kunin scored with a wrist shot off the rush, placing the puck just over Holtby’s blocker-side shoulder. It was Minnesota’s 26th shot of the game and just its fourth of the period, though Washington had also tallied just four shots for the frame and 19 for the game. Two nights earlier, the Capitals had recorded a whopping 58 shots in an overtime loss to Tampa Bay.

“They don’t give up much; they’re pretty stingy defensively,” Holtby said. “After coming off some emotional games lately, we didn’t ramp it up enough for this one, for their situation, how they were playing. It was a close game. It was one that we’d like to play a bit better, but we still did a lot of good things.”

After an intense, playoff-like game against the league-best Lightning on Wednesday, there was a noticeable letdown to start Friday’s game against the Wild. Minnesota entered this meeting fighting for a postseason berth, just one point out of the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference. The Wild got on the board first, with forward Jordan Greenway poking the puck away from defenseman Brooks Orpik and fending off Tom Wilson before drawing Holtby out of his crease and scoring around him 16:33 in.

Washington enjoyed roughly six weeks with a fully healthy lineup before it lost defenseman Michal Kempny indefinitely. He appeared to injure his left leg late in the second period Wednesday night, falling on it awkwardly during a tussle with Tampa Bay’s Cedric Paquette. With Kempny out, second-year blue-liner Christian Djoos took his spot on the top pairing beside John Carlson, and Djoos finished with more than 16 minutes of ice time, two shots and three attempts blocked. The Capitals were also without forward Carl Hagelin against the Wild; the team announced that he was ill.

“We missed his energy tonight,” Coach Todd Reirden said. “You see the type of impact that this guy has on our team. He brings the speed and the pace to our lineup and allows us to move people down and kind of build four lines of an attacking style of team. We needed that tonight. We didn’t have it.”

Washington’s power play was fully staffed with its usual personnel, and it sucked the momentum away from the team with three failed tries through the first two periods. The Capitals got three man-advantage opportunities before the Wild was awarded one, but Washington managed just one shot on goal in those six minutes, equaling Minnesota’s one shorthanded.

“We start doing some bad things, maybe a little casual,” Ovechkin said. “But I think we just have to simplify our game and just play smarter. I think we’re better than that, all of us.”

The Capitals scored the equalizing tally at even strength when Brett Connolly deflected defenseman Nick Jensen’s point shot 10:42 into the second period. But with how well the Wild played defensively, Washington wasn’t able to get another puck past Dubnyk.

“It goes with how well we played in the neutral zone, not giving them a lot of speed, not giving them a lot of time, and we were breaking up plays pretty quickly in the [defensive] zone, which was probably frustrating for them,” Minnesota’s Zach Parise said.

“Everybody needs points right now,” Ovechkin said. “It doesn’t matter who you play against; it’s not going to be an easy one, especially a team who fights for a playoff spot. It’s playoff hockey. I don’t think we were ready tonight, and the blame’s on us.”



Wild edge Capitals 2-1 to move into playoff position

By Stephen Whyno | AP March 22 at 10:43 PM

WASHINGTON — Jordan Greenway pumped his fist, and Luke Kunin held out his arms waiting for teammates to join him.

They celebrated like kids after performing like seasoned veterans.

With the Minnesota Wild outside a playoff position with little margin for error, the kid line of Kunin, Greenway and Ryan Donato pumped in two crucial goals to beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals 2-1 on Friday night. Minnesota snapped a two-game skid and leapfrogged the Arizona Coyotes and Colorado Avalanche to move into the second wild-card spot in a competitive Western Conference race.

“When we have the focus that we did tonight, the confidence, the commitment, I think we can do a lot of good things, and we can beat anyone,” Greenway said. “Whether it’s Washington or whoever, I think we can beat them.”

Minnesota fed off the confidence of the second line of 21- and 22-year-olds to hand the Capitals their second consecutive loss. Devan Dubnyk made 21 saves, but more impressive was the Wild holding Washington to 22 shots a game after it put up 58 on NHL-leading Tampa Bay.

“That was just a playoff game,” Dubnyk said. “The focus was there.”

Donato — acquired from Boston in February — was the best player on the ice for much of the night and assisted on the Greenway’s goal in the first period and Kunin’s go-ahead goal with 7:35 left in the third. Coach Bruce Boudreau believes having three young players on a line together gets rid of the expectation to pass to a veteran, and this mix is working lately.

“We’re learning from each other,” Donato said. “I think we’re starting to get each other’s habits, where we’re going to be on the ice, where the other guys are going to be, where they like to pass to. Being able to learn with each other, it makes you feel comfortable on the ice. You don’t feel like you’re doing anything wrong.”

It wasn’t a masterpiece, but Minnesota needed two points in any way possible. Returning to face the team that gave him his start in the NHL, Boudreau knew full well that with only two games Friday night, the Wild were the only ones who could gain ground after getting some help from a Coyotes loss on Thursday.

Remembering his team’s recent roller-coaster play, Boudreau said the victory only “means temporarily we’re in a playoff spot.”

The Capitals are in a good spot atop the Metropolitan Division, but have now lost four of six. They missed an opportunity to add to their division lead and still lead the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins by four points.

“We didn’t play our game at all,” captain Alex Ovechkin said. “We knew they were going to play desperate — they need points as we do — but I think the sense of urgency was on their side, not on our side.”

Brett Connolly scored his 21st goal of the season and Braden Holtby made 25 saves for Washington, which didn’t have the same intensity as its showdown against the Lightning two days earlier.

“After coming off some emotional games lately, I think we didn’t ramp it up enough for this one, for their situation, how they were playing,” Holtby said.

Despite losing seven of their previous nine games, the Wild remain in control of their playoff hopes with seven games remaining.

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“It’s never easy when it’s out of your control, so for us having it in our control and getting a win like that, it’s definitely a feel-good win,” Donato said.

NOTES: Minnesota improved to 20-15-2 on the road. ... Donato’s primary assist on Greenway’s goal was the 10,000th point in Wild franchise history. ... Connolly has 13 points in his past 16 games. ... Washington’s power play went 0 for 3 with just one shot in those six minutes. ... Capitals D Christian Djoos returned to the lineup to replace Michal Kempny, who’s out indefinitely with a lower-body injury. ... LW Carl Hagelin was a late scratch with an illness and was replaced by Chandler Stephenson. ... Ovechkin remained two goals away from his eighth career 50-goal season.

UP NEXT

Wild: Visit the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday in Victor Rask’s first game against his former team since being traded for Nino Niederreiter.

Capitals: Look to end their brief losing streak Sunday when they host the Metropolitan Division-rival Philadelphia Flyers.



Capitals defenseman Michal Kempny out indefinitely

By Stephen Whyno | AP March 22 at 1:18 PM

WASHINGTON — The defending Stanley Cup champion Capitals have lost top-four defenseman Michal Kempny to an injury.

Coach Todd Reirden said Friday that Kempny is out indefinitely with a lower-body injury. Kempny appeared to injure his left leg in an overtime loss to Tampa Bay on Wednesday, when he needed helped getting to the locker room.

Reirden said the 28-year-old from the Czech Republic is still undergoing tests and he didn’t want to rule out Kempny for the rest of the regular season.

“I don’t feel comfortable saying that until I get a little bit more medical advice on that one, and so we go through all the proper testing we need to know so we can set that proper timetable,” Reirden said. “But right now, I just plan on not having him for an indefinite amount of time.”

Kempny was a significant piece of the championship run last spring after being acquired ahead of the trade deadline. He has remained an important player for the Capitals this season on a pairing with All-Star John Carlson, recording six goals and 19 assists and averaging 19:11 of ice time in 71 games.

“He’s a good defender, he’s got great speed and a good attacker, I would say, on defense,” Carlson said. “He takes away time and space really well. A guy that’s really stepped it up in the offensive department too this year. We’re surely going to miss him.”

With Kempny out and the Capitals up against the salary cap, 24-year-old Christian Djoos goes into the lineup alongside Carlson. Djoos played on Washington’s third pairing in the playoffs last year with veteran Brooks Orpik.

“He adds different dimensions of the game than say Kemps does,” Carlson said. “We get to see that more now. I’ve played with him before. I’m looking forward to it again. I think we have depth ... I think the talent and how everyone can work together that we’ve proven in

the past, in this year alone, guys have been out of the lineup and other people have stepped up and filled voids.”

Washington is trying to finish first in the Metropolitan Division for the fourth consecutive year.



Defenseman Michal Kempny out indefinitely with left leg injury


Washington Capitals defenseman Michal Kempny is out indefinitely after he appeared to injure his left leg during Wednesday’s overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Kempny won’t play against the Minnesota Wild on Friday, and it’s unclear whether he’ll be back in time for the playoffs, which start April 10.

“I’d say we’re going to have to be without him for an indefinite amount of time right now,” Coach Todd Reirden said Friday. “We’re just getting some more tests before we can make an official time statement on that, but I would just say right now that indefinitely he’s out of our lineup.”

As Kempny wrestled Tampa Bay forward Cedric Paquette by the Capitals’ bench late in the second period Wednesday night, his leg got awkwardly caught under him as he fell to the ice. Asked whether Kempny could be out for the rest of the season, Reirden said: “I don’t feel comfortable saying that until I get a little bit more medical advice on that one and we go through all the proper testing we need to know so we can set that proper timetable. But right now, I just plan on not having him for an indefinite amount of time.”

With Kempny out, second-year blue-liner Christian Djoos is expected to take his place beside John Carlson on the team’s top pairing. In more than 600 minutes Djoos and Carlson have been on the ice together at five-on-five this season and last, the Capitals have taken 53.45 percent of the shot attempts, according to Natural Stat Trick. Kempny has skated an average of 19 minutes per game this season, and he has scored a career-high six goals with 19 assists.

Djoos has been largely out of the lineup for the past month, after the Capitals acquired defenseman Nick Jensen from the Detroit Red Wings. He played Tuesday night against the New Jersey Devils, skating 16:26 and tallying a primary assist. Carlson said Djoos “could be the smartest hockey player in this room altogether.”

“It’s a great opportunity,” Reirden said. “I’ve seen those two play together before, and I thought he had a strong game the other day against New Jersey. This is why we have the depth we do. We’ll put him in that situation tonight, but it’s going to be probably a little bit of a committee as you move forward, depending on the game. You know, a lot of times during the game the number of penalties helps sway things in a certain way one way or the other. Obviously we’ll miss Michal; he’s been a really good player for us in the playoffs last year. He’s had a strong regular season push his numbers to career highs and stuff. Hopefully we can get some better news on that, but for now Christian will be starting there and expect to see some movement in those spots as well.”

The Capitals acquired Kempny before the trade deadline last year, and adding his mobility to the blue line helped Washington solidify its defensive play en route to a Stanley Cup championship. According to CapFriendly.com, the Capitals’ current cap space is $807,333, so the organization could recall an extra defenseman, likely rookie

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Jonas Siegenthaler, but Reirden said the team will stick with six blue liners through at least Friday’s game.

“He’s a big piece of this team and we’re going to have to all step up,” Carlson said of Kempny.



Goaltender Braden Holtby says he won’t visit White House with Capitals on Monday


Canadian goaltender Braden Holtby said he will not visit the White House with his Washington Capitals teammates, joining forwards Brett Connolly and Devante Smith-Pelly as players who have declined the invitation to honor the team’s Stanley Cup victory Monday.

“I’ve got to stay true to my values, and I’m going to respectfully decline the offer,” Holtby said Friday morning. “In saying that, it’s a tough situation for everyone to be in, to be forced to make a decision of that standing. You’re a team and you want to stick together no matter what, so I hope everyone kind of blows it away and that we don’t worry about who goes and who doesn’t.

“For me, it’s just a personal thing. I believe in what I believe in, and in order to stick to those values, I think I have to do what I feel is right, but that doesn’t make a difference on everyone else’s decision. We stick by every single teammate we have and their decision. That’s about it.”

Holtby has marched in D.C.’s Pride Parade and served as the Capitals’ designated “You Can Play” ambassador, and in September, he spoke at the Human Rights Campaign national dinner. Asked specifically about his involvement with the LGBTQ community, Holtby said it factored into his decision.

“My family and myself, we believe in a world where humans are treated with respect regardless of your stature, what you’re born into,” Holtby said. “You’re asked to choose what side you’re on, and I think it’s pretty clear what side I’m on. I believe that this is the right decision for myself and my family.”

The Capitals announced Thursday there will be no official ceremony or media availability while they are in the White House. The team will take part in a private tour and will meet President Trump in the Oval Office. Smith-Pelly, who is black and Canadian, was the first to say he would not want to be part of a White House ceremony because “the things that [Trump] spews are straight-up racist and sexist,” he told Canada’s Postmedia.

Smith-Pelly was waived in February and sent down to the American Hockey League in a salary cap-clearing move, so he is no longer with the Capitals, but all members of the 2018 team are invited and will have the option to attend. Players and coaches new to the team this season will not be part of the visit.

Connolly joined Smith-Pelly last year in saying he would skip a White House visit, and he stood by that decision when asked Tuesday night, referencing his support for Smith-Pelly.

“I respectfully decline,” said Connolly, who is Canadian. “That’s all I’ll say about it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. It’s obviously a big deal, and it gains a lot of attention. I’ve been in full support of an old teammate that I’m really good friends with who I agreed with and a

guy who will be back here, I’m sure, at the end of the year. That’s all I’ll say.”

Unlike Connolly and Smith-Pelly, Holtby is among the highest-profile members of the team. He won the Vezina Trophy in 2016 as the best goaltender in the league that season, and this month he became the second-fastest goaltender in NHL history to record his 250th win.

Trump canceled the 2018 Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles’ visit to the White House after some players said they would skip the ceremony to protest the president and his rhetoric. When the Golden State Warriors won the 2017 NBA championship, multiple players, including superstar guard Stephen Curry, said they were not in favor of a visit to the White House. They were later disinvited by Trump. The Warriors won another title last year and, rather than visit the White House during their trip to Washington in late January, they met with former president Barack Obama. The team visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture during its trip to Washington the previous February.

“Once the first team doesn’t go, it puts the onus on every other player in professional sports to be forced into making a decision, if you’re political or not,” Holtby said. “That’s why I think our team, we’re trying to take the most professional way we can with the every player has a right to choose and stand by each and every one of us regardless of what you decide. Obviously, I’ve been a little more outspoken on my views than everyone else, so I feel like it’s important for me to stand by that. But in the long run it’s not going to affect our team at all. We’re a close-knit group in here, and those things don’t affect us as a team.”

Most Capitals, including Russian captain Alex Ovechkin, have said they will participate in the visit.

“I’m obviously going to go,” American defenseman John Carlson said Friday. “It’s an experience that I want to be a part of and see through. It’s something that you dream about, getting honored as the champions, and something that we worked really hard for. That’s what I’m thinking.”

Said Coach Todd Reirden: “I speak personally on this one to start with. I think it’s an amazing opportunity. Something for the last five years you drive to the rink, you see this, you hear about it, you think about it. I was really excited about the invitation and will be going and be happy to be going. In that respect, I get it. I understand our players and their decisions, and I respect it. They’re allowed to make their own decisions. It’s important that we support them in whatever decision that they make.”

Asked whether he struggled with the decision to decline the invitation, Holtby said it wasn’t a hard choice.

“In the end, I never really came up with a situation where I’d feel comfortable going,” he said. “But the toughest part is I’ve always tried to live my life and my career that the team sticks together. So, that’s probably the toughest part, but that’s just the way the world is. Sometimes you’re forced into situations where you have to stick by what you believe. But in the end, I think there’s more important things I can do in the future. Trying to make a stand this way, I don’t think it does the most in terms of creating change. In the future, I just want to stick by what I believe in and try to push toward a world where people are created equal.”



Capitals defenseman Michal Kempny out indefinitely with lower-body injury

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By Adam Zielonka - The Washington Times - Friday, March 22, 2019

Washington Capitals defenseman Michal Kempny will miss an indefinite amount of time with the lower-body injury he suffered this week, coach Todd Reirden said Friday.

Kempny was injured in Wednesday’s loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning during a second-period fight with Cedric Paquette. After Paquette and Kempny traded blows, Kempny’s leg bent awkwardly and Paquette rained down several more punches on him while he was on the ground. Kempny needed the help of Capitals trainers to limp to the dressing room.

Reirden wouldn’t say whether there was a possibility Kempny could miss the rest of the season.

“We’re just getting some more tests before we can make an official time statement on that,” Reirden said. “I would just say for now, indefinitely he’s out of our lineup.”

Washington did not recall any defensemen from the AHL Hershey Bears on Friday and will dress their remaining six defensemen for Friday’s home game against the Minnesota Wild.

Christian Djoos skated in Kempny’s spot on the top pairing with John Carlson at Friday’s morning skate. Djoos was a healthy scratch for 11 of the last 12 games as Washington’s seventh defenseman.

The other pairings, Dmitry Orlov-Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik-Nick Jensen, remained intact.

Carlson said Djoos “adds different dimensions of the game” than Kempny does.

“Fortunately for me I think Djoos, he could be the smartest hockey player in this room altogether. That’s everyone,” Carlson said. “We’ve had stints. When Nisky went down beginning, middle of last year, we played a lot together. Always kind of sneak in shifts here and there with him this year. I feel comfortable with him.”

The Capitals acquired Kempny before last season’s trade deadline from the Chicago Blackhawks, and soon the blueliner became a regular in Washington’s top four defensemen. In 71 games this year, he led the team in plus/minus with a plus-24 rating and tallied six goals and 19 assists.

Washington Times LOADED: 03.23.2019


Braden Holtby will not visit White House with Capitals

By Adam Zielonka - The Washington Times - Friday, March 22, 2019

Washington Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby announced Friday that he will not join the team in visiting President Donald Trump at the White House.

Holtby said he had to stay true to his values and “respectfully decline the offer.”

“It’s a tough situation for everyone to be in, to be forced to make a decision of that standing,” said Holtby, a 29-year-old Canadian. “You’re a team. You want to stick together no matter what. I hope everyone kind of blows it away and don’t worry about who goes, who doesn’t.”

Holtby joins Brett Connolly in declining to attend the visit, but the majority of Capitals players have said they will go. President Trump will host the team March 25 to honor their 2018 Stanley Cup victory.

The goalie said he wasn’t surprised by the controversy surrounding the Capitals’ visit. Since Trump won office, teams like the Golden State Warriors and the Philadelphia Eagles have been “disinvited” from championship celebrations at the White House because some of their players criticized Trump.

“Once the first team doesn’t go it puts the onus on every other player in professional sports to be forced into making a decision, if you’re political or not,” Holtby said. “That’s why I think our team we’re trying to take the most professional way we can with the ‘every player has a right to choose’ and stand by each and every one of us, regardless of what you decide.”

A supporter of LGBTQ rights, Holtby has participated in activism both with the NHL and the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest gay rights advocacy group.

“My family and myself, we believe in a world where humans are treated with respect, regardless of your stature, what you’re born into,” Holtby said. “That’s just where it’s at, in terms of this decision. You’re asked to choose which side you’re on and I think it’s pretty clear what side I’m on.”

John Carlson and T.J. Oshie, both Americans, confirmed to reporters Friday that they will be part of the visit.

“It’s an experience that I want to be a part of and see through,” Carlson said. “Something that you dream about, getting honored as the champions, and something that we worked really hard for.”

Coach Todd Reirden told reporters he personally considered the White House invitation “an amazing opportunity,” but he’s also expressed support for his players who chose not to go.

“I support whatever our players’ choices and decisions are,” Reirden said Friday. “I’m backing them. That’s their individual choice to attend or not attend and I’ll always support our players.”

Washington Times LOADED: 03.23.2019


Wild tame the Caps as Washington fails to add to their division lead

By J.J. Regan March 22, 2019 9:12 PM

WASHINGTON – After the Caps and Tampa Bay Lightning treated fans to one of the best games of the season, the Minnesota Wild came to Washington and did just enough to walk away with a 2-1 win on Friday.

The Caps were able to fire 58 shots on goal against the Lightning, but managed only 22 against Minnesota, easy pickings for Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk. With the loss, Washington was unable to add to its three-point lead atop the Metropolitan Division.

Here are four reasons the Caps lost.

An emotional letdown

Wednesday’s game between the Caps and Tampa Bay Lightning was one of the best, most intense, well-played game of the regular season in the NHL. Friday’s game was…not.

One reason the playoffs are such a grind is because of how much each game takes out of the players emotionally. Washington looked

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like a team that was still trying to recover from Wednesday’s playoff preview and the emotional letdown led to some pretty rough hockey. Passes were hard to connect, shots were not on target, the puck management was poor, nothing seemed to come easy for the Caps at all.

Perhaps the epitome of the type of night it was for Washington came early in the third period. With the game tied at 1, Tom Wilson came out of the penalty box and was fed an alley-oop breakaway pass by Nicklas Backstrom. The puck, however, never settled for Wilson and when he tried to move to the backhand it simply rolled off his stick. Wilson had a golden opportunity to give Washington the lead, but walked away without so much as a shot on goal.

The power play

The first three power plays of the game all were awarded to Washington, but the Caps failed to convert on any of them. Getting the puck into the zone was a struggle and even when they did get it in, it usually was taken right back after one bad pass and sent in the other direction. The threat of Alex Ovechkin is usually enough to open space on the power play, but that was not the case on Friday. The pass just was not there all night and still Washington tried to force the puck to him at times rather than take advantage of the room that opened up on the right side of the ice.

The Caps managed just as man shots on goal (one) in those three power plays as the Wild’s penalty kill.

Getting caught in the neutral zone

With the puck loose in the neutral zone, Brooks Orpik stepped up to try to get possession. Jordan Greenway swept the puck away from him and then just kept his feet moving to turn the corner around a trailing Tom Wilson. Braden Holtby went down to the butterfly, but Greenway deked around him and buried it into the net. He had plenty of room because Orpik was trailing the play after losing it in the neutral zone and Luke Kunin boxed out Nick Jensen.

Getting caught in the trap

Washington managed to battle back and tie the game at 1 in the second period, but the Wild retook the lead in the third period thanks to a neutral zone trap.

Matt Niskanen had control of the puck and was looking for the breakout. He thought he had Ovechkin open, but Zach Parise stepped up and swept his stick into the passing lane at the last second. Ryan Donato fed it back to Parise and Washington’s breakout was suddenly a 2-on-1 in the other direction.

Neutral zone turnovers are so dangerous because you instantly have gone from offense to defense with no time to get into position. Sure enough, the Wild caught the Caps completely out of position with one defenseman challenging Parise and three red jerseys trailing him meaning there were four Caps players on the right side of the ice and none covering Kunin. Parise found him with the pass and Kunin buried the puck into the top corner for the game-winning goal.

Comcast SportsNet.com LOADED: 03.23.2019


Playoff Push: Games to watch this weekend for the Metropolitan Division

By NBC Sports Washington Staff March 22, 2019 5:25 PM

With seven games and coutning remaining in the regular season for Washington, the Capitals are looking for all the points they can get to hold onto their lead over the Metro. But with the road ahead getting tougher, each result will have massive implications for playoff seeding.

After falling 5-4 in overtime to the Tampa Bay Lightning Wednesday, Washington has a three-point lead over the Metro. From there, the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins each have a four-point lead over the Hurricanes, who are sitting in the first wild-card spot, and the Blue Jackets are one point out of a playoff spot.

As the postseason looms, the current race is a close one, and the games this weekend could ultimately decide who faces who in the first round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and if the regular season ended today, the Caps would play host to the Carolina Hurricanes. Still, there's plenty of time left and things can always change; here are the games to keep an eye on heading into the weekend.

New York Islanders (42-25-7, 91 points) vs. Philadelphia Flyers (36-30-8, 80 points)

Though the Isles are currently tied with the Penguins for second in the Metro, they hold the tiebreaker with fewer games played. Recently, they were shutout by the Montreal Canadiens 4-0. Carey Price made 28 saves, and the Canadiens moved into the second wild-card spot with the win.

They'll take on the Philadelphia Flyers, who are still fighting for a playoff spot and are 6-4 in their last 10 games, in a Saturday afternoon matchup. The Islanders will have a chance to diminish Philadelphia's last gasp at a playoff spot, while also moving ahead of the Penguins and staying in the fight for first.

Pittsburgh Penguins (40-24-11, 91 points) vs. New York Rangers (28-32-13, 69 points)

The Penguins still have a shot at taking the Metro lead away from Washington, but they've played 75 games and have lost their first chance at a tiebreaker. Pittsburgh slugged out a 2-1 win over the Nashville Predators Thursday and have gone 6-2-2 in their last 10.

After taking on the Dallas Stars, also in a heated playoff race in the West, Saturday, Pittsburgh will face a cellar-dwelling New York Rangers team that has lost four straight, but is still looking to spoil their division rivals' season finishes.

Carolina Hurricanes (40-26-7, 87 points)

The Hurricanes have snuck into the first wild-card position, nd it's looking more likely than not that is the team the Caps will face in the first round. Riding goalie Petr Mrazek's improved play in net, the Canes have managed a 6-3-1 record in their last 10 games.

After falling to the Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday, the Hurricanes will look to redeem themselves against the Minnesota Wild Sunday, who are fighting for one of the coveted wild-card spots in the Weest and face the Capitals Friday. With a victory, they can extend their lead and maintain their hold on that first wild-card spot.

Columbus Blue Jackets (40-30-4, 84 points)

The Jackets are on the cusp of the playoffs this season, just one point out. Even after making a push to sign Matt Duchene, Ryan Dzingel and Keith Kinkaid at the trade deadline, they've had trouble racking up much-needed wins. They could not crack even in their last 10 games, with a 4-5-1 record, including a loss to Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers 4-1.

With time flying fast, Columbus needs to scrounge as many points as possible, starting with a must-win against the Vancouver Canucks Sunday. However, the victory won't come easy; Vancouver has won three straight and is still very much in the running for a shot at the playoffs.

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How Tom Wilson's first game back from suspension against Minnesota sparked the Caps

By Brian McNally March 22, 2019 1:53 PM

WASHINGTON -– Capitals forward Tom Wilson did not miss a beat. That’s what happens when a player sits the first 14 games of a season because of an NHL-mandated suspension for a hit to the head of St. Louis Blues forward Oskar Sundqvist in a preseason game.

With his suspension reduced from 20 games to 16, Wilson was suddenly eligible to play Nov. 13 when Washington played a game against the Minnesota Wild.

Wilson scored a goal in the first period – and ironically was penalized on the same play for running into the goalie.

He later had a fight with Wild forward Marcus Foligno. He also helped the penalty kill strop five of six chances. That pretty much summed it up.

Wilson sees Minnesota again tonight when the Capitals host the Wild at Capital One Arena (7 p.m., NBC Sports Washington). That first game in St. Paul sparked a turnaround for the Capitals, who were lethargic early in the season as they tried to stay emotionally engaged after last spring’s dramatic championship run through the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Wilson’s return against the Wild had a visceral effect. The players had a jump not seen often in a 7-6-3 start to the season that included back-to-back home losses to the Columbus Blue Jackets and Arizona Coyotes.

The Capitals won 5-2 that night against the Wild and went on an 8-2-0 run in Wilson’s first 10 games. He had eight goals and seven assists in those games before sustaining a concussion during a fight in a Dec. 4 loss at the Vegas Golden Knights.

Wilson missed three more games and has only played 55 total. But he’s had a major impact on the top line with Alex Ovechkin and either center Evgeny Kuznetsov or Nicklas Backstrom. Wilson has 21 goals and 16 assists. Those are both career highs. His 37 points are also a career best. And that’s all in 23 fewer games than the 78 he played last season. There are eight games left for Wilson to top 40 points for the first time.

Djoos returns

The lower-body injury to Michal Kempny sustained Wednesday means Christian Djoos is back in the lineup. He will be on the top pair with John Carlson. Djoos is playing just his second game since Feb. 23. The Capitals will be experimenting here down the stretch thinking Kempny will be out for a while. It’s a good opportunity for Djoos, who has played with Carlson before.

Washington will not recall a defensemen from AHL Hershey for now. They will stick with six unless another player is needed during the remaining three games of this four-game homestand.

50

Alex Ovechkin couldn’t find the back of the net in Wednesday’s 5-4 overtime loss to Tampa Bay, but he is still just two goals shy of 50 for his career. That would be his eighth 50-goal season. Ovechkin

finished last year with 49. Only Wayne Gretzky and Mike Bossy have had more (nine each).

Ovechkin always torches Minnesota with 26 points (15 goals, 11 assists) in just 15 career games.

That’s his highest goals-per-game average against any franchise.

Holtby goes

No surprise here as the Capitals don’t have any more back-to-back games and will ride Holtby down the stretch until they possibly clinch the Metropolitan Division. They lead by three points over the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins and have eight games to go.

Holtby is 8-2-0 in his career against Minnesota with one shutout and a .922 save percentage.

Going streaking

The Capitals have won eight games in a row against Minnesota, led by former Washington coach Bruce Boudreau.

Expect a good push from the Wild, however, who are still in the playoff chase in the Western Conference. At 34-31-9, they have 77 points and are one point behind the Colorado Avalanche for the second and final wild card spot.

Expected lineup

Alex Ovechkin – Nicklas Backstrom – Tom Wilson

Jakub Vrana – Evgeny Kuznetsov – T.J. Oshie

Carl Hagelin – Lars Eller – Brett Connolly

Andre Burakovsky – Nic Dowd – Travis Boyd

Christian Djoos – John Carlson

Dmitry Orlov – Matt Niskanen

Brooks Orpik – Nick Jensen

Braden Holtby

Pheonix Copley

Scratches: Chandler Stephenson, Dmitrij Jaskin

Injured: Michal Kempny



With Kempny out indefinitely, Djoos set to play for Capitals tonight vs. Minnesota

By Brian McNally March 22, 2019 1:08 PM

ARLINGTON, Va. – Capitals defenseman Michal Kempny will be out “an indefinite” amount of time, according to coach Todd Reirden.

Kempny sustained a lower-body injury in Wednesday’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning when he fell to the ice during a scrap with forward Cedric Paquette. He had to be helped off the ice and could not put any weight on one leg. He did not return to the game.

“I'd say we're going to have to be without him for an indefinite amount of time right now,” Reirden said. “We're just getting some

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more tests before we can make an official time statement on that, but I would just say right now that indefinitely he's out of our lineup.”

Christian Djoos will take Kempny’s place on the top pairing next to John Carlson. Djoos was bumped from the lineup on Feb. 23 after Washington acquired Nick Jensen in a trade with the Detroit Red Wings. Djoos finally returned to the lineup on Tuesday in a 4-1 win against the New Jersey Devils when the team rested 38-year-old veteran Brooks Orpik.

Djoos and Carlson played together last season when Matt Niskanen missed 13 games with a left thumb injury. They have some history, which should help with on-ice communication. The duo have played together 600 minutes, 15 seconds since last season. Their Corsi-for percentage (53.45) is above water. That’s lots of shots directed at their own net, though that sample size is reasonably small over the course of a full season. With Kempny, Carlson has played 1150:19 and they are at 51.11 percent in 92 games.

"I don't know about communication. I think just not having to communicate is the big thing, and fortunately for me I think Djoos, he could be the smartest hockey player in this room altogether,” Carlson said. “That's everyone. We've had stints. When [Niskanen] went down beginning, middle of last year, we played a lot together. Always kind of sneak in shifts here and there with him this year. I feel comfortable with him. That's not an issue for me.”

Losing Kempny is a blow, however.

The Feb. 19, 2018 trade for Kempny helped stabilize a blue line that was constantly in flux and relying on rookies in key spots last season. His addition helped balance Washington’s pairs, gave them another strong skater and was a big part of their 15-7-0 finish in the regular season and their Stanley Cup title run.

Djoos is also a fine skater and makes for an interesting match with Carlson. But he’s also undersized at 6-foot, 169 pounds. He did play the final 22 playoff games last season on the right side next to Orpik on the third pair. Djoos is more comfortable on the left side, where he will be with Carlson. For now.

“That opportunity for Christian is first and foremost tonight for him,” Reirden said. “It's a great opportunity, I've seen those two play together before and I thought he had a strong game the other day against New Jersey. This is why we have the depth we do. We'll put him in that situation tonight, but it's going to be probably a little bit of a committee as you move forward depending on the game.”

Reirden was not ready to say Kempny will miss the rest of the season. It’s too soon for that.

“Obviously we'll miss Michal, he's been a really good player for us in the playoffs last year,” Reirden said. “He's had a strong regular season push his numbers to career highs and stuff. Hopefully we can get some better news on that, but for now Christian will be starting there and expect to see some movement in those spots as well.”

Added Carlson: “I think I'm a little bit more aggressive at the line and keeping guys out of the zone, and in-zone [Kempny is] a little more aggressive in terms of down below the goal line. We obviously know each other's games and work off each other pretty well. He's a big piece of this team and we're gonna have to all step up."



Braden Holtby says he will ‘respectfully decline’ invitation to the White House

By J.J. Regan March 22, 2019 12:24 PM

ARLINGTON, Va. – When the Capitals visit the White House on Monday to celebrate winning the 2018 Stanley Cup, Braden Holtby will not be among them. Citing his values, the Canadian netminder said Friday that he would “respectfully decline” the invitation.

“It’s one of those things that we have to think about, but with me, I’ve got to stay true to my values, and I’m going respectfully decline the offer,” Holtby said.

“In saying that, it’s a tough situation for everyone to be in, to be forced to make a decision of that standing. You’re a team and you want to stick together no matter what, so I hope everyone kind of blows it away and that we don’t worry about who goes and who doesn’t. For me, it’s just a personal thing. I believe in what I believe in, and in order to stick to those values, I think I have to do what I feel is right, but that doesn’t make a difference on everyone else’s decision. We stick by every single teammate we have and their decision.”

The news that the Caps would be making the traditional White House visit broke on Tuesday. As one of the team’s most outspoken political activists, it was not known whether Holtby would accept the invitation or not.

Citing his support of the LGBTQ community as “one of the factors” in his decision, Holtby said it ultimately was not difficult to reach the conclusion to decline the invitation.

“Obviously, I’ve been a little more out-spoken on my views than everyone else so I feel like it’s important for me to stand by that.”

“In the end, I never really came up with a situation where I’d feel comfortable going,” he added. “But the toughest part is I’ve always tried to live my life and my career that the team sticks together. So, that’s probably the toughest part, but that’s just the way the world is. Sometimes you’re forced into situations where you have to stick by what you believe. But in the end, I think there’s more important things I can do in the future. Trying to make a stand this way, I don’t think it does the most in terms of creating change. In the future, I just want to stick by what I believe in and trying to push towards a world where people are created equal.”

Holtby now joins teammates Brett Connolly and Devante Smith-Pelly who had previously declared they would not accept a White House invitation.



Coveted Capitals prospect Chase Priskie still pondering his NHL future: 'I'm kind of in the dark as well'

By J.J. Regan March 22, 2019 6:00 AM

Chase Priskie has had one heck of a season. In his senior season at Quinnipiac, Priskie leads all NCAA defensemen with 17 goals. He has 39 total points in 34 games and has been named one of 10 finalists for the Hobey Baker award, awarded annually to the top NCAA men’s hockey player in the nation.

As a second-year captain, he is the unquestioned leader of Quinnipiac. The Bobcats are ranked seventh in the nation after a 25-9-2 season and will vie for a national championship.

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Despite what he has managed to accomplish this season, however, it is what he plans to do afterward that everyone wants to know.

Priskie was drafted by the Capitals in the sixth round of the 2016 draft. After competing in college for four years, he has a choice to make after the season. As the Caps drafted him, they are the only team that can sign him until Aug. 15 when he becomes a free agent and can sign with whatever team he chooses.

But while everyone else is thinking about his NHL future, Priskie may be the only one who is not.

“Honestly, I've told my family advisor that I don't want to have to worry about any of that right now,” Priskie told NBC Sports Washington. “Right now, I'm focused on the 26 guys we have in our locker room and coming out next Friday and winning that game and trying to string together four consecutive wins and bring home a national title for our school. And I'm a big believer of everything happens for a reason so I haven't thought about that yet and I'll address it when the time comes, but until then I'm really just focused on playing my best hockey for Quinnipiac.”

The choice will ultimately not be an easy one to make.

Washington took a chance on Priskie drafting him in the sixth round. The team also tried to sign him after last season, and while he originally intended to sign, he ultimately elected to stay in school in order to leave “more of a legacy at this program.”

Having said that, Washington has a logjam of defensive prospects with Jonas Siegenthaler, Lucas Johansen, Connor Hobbs, Tobias Geisser, Alex Alexeyev and Martin Fehervary, among others. Other teams could offer Priskie a clearer path to the NHL.

The Caps also have already reached their limit of 50 contracts. They can still sign Priskie to an entry-level deal before Aug. 15, but it would have to be for the 2019-20 season, similar to what they did with the newly signed Joe Snively out of Yale. That means he could not be a late addition to the roster for this year’s playoff run as we saw with Shane Gersich last season.

But it does not appear that making the NHL immediately out of college is a major goal for Priskie, and he is willing to wait to compete for a spot next season.

“My dream is to play in the NHL and I feel like I've given myself every advantage to achieve that goal,” he said. “I think with the right motivation this summer, having a good summer, good training, I'm going to go into training camp and try to earn a roster spot.”

It is easy to jump to the conclusion that if Priskie is not sure what he intends to do by this point, then at the very least he must be considering spurning the Caps and going to free agency. But Priskie does not sound like someone who has made up his mind. He sounds like a 23-year-old who does not know what he wants to do beyond winning a national title at Quinnipiac.

And so here we stand with Aug. 15 looming and still no closer to a decision.

“I really told [my family advisors] just to not have it worry me because we've got enough going on with Quinnipiac right now and just trying to win a National Championship and I'm going to cross that bridge when I get there. I'm kind of in the dark as well, I don't want anything to do with it and anything to be hindering myself from being able to put the best product on the ice come next Friday in the tournament.”



Capitals on opposite sides of White House decision vow to stick together as a team

By Chris Kuc Mar 22, 2019

After battling through waves of adversity en route to capturing the 2018 Stanley Cup followed by very little turnover to the roster this season, the Capitals are about as close-knit as a team can be.

A scheduled visit to the White House on Monday to celebrate the franchise’s first championship has suddenly put some teammates on opposite sides of each other on the issue of whether to attend.

Braden Holtby became the second Capitals player to announce that he will not attend Monday’s event, saying following Friday’s morning skate that, “I’ve got to stay true to my values and I’m going to respectfully decline the offer.”

The goaltender will join Brett Connolly, who earlier this week said he will not attend the event to support former teammate Devante Smith-Pelly, who has been critical of President Donald Trump.

While their views on whether to meet with Trump in the Oval Office may differ, the Capitals are vowing that it won’t affect the bond the group shares or become a distraction as the team gets set to embark on its defense of the Cup.

“We’re such a close group of guys that I lose no respect for ‘Holts’ not going and I can’t imagine him losing any respect for me for going,” said T.J. Oshie, who was born in Washington state and grew up in Minnesota. “We’re so close and we have such a close bond and throughout the whole team that would never come between us.”

Oshie joined many of the high-profile Capitals players in saying he will attend the event, including Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, John Carlson and Tom Wilson, among others. As of now, Connolly and Holtby — and likely Smith-Pelly, who is currently playing for AHL Hershey — are the only Capitals players from the ’18 team who have said they won’t attend.

“It’s everyone’s choice,” Oshie said. “Me personally, I’ll be going. As an American you grow up learning about the White House and the history, it’s a dream come true for me to go. To be in the White House … I think it’s just a real cool opportunity for me. I’m not out to make a statement politically one way or another.

“I respect ‘Holts’ and the guys that don’t want to go but I’m excited to do it.”

Said Carlson, who was born in Natick, Mass.: “I’m obviously going to go. It’s an experience that I want to be a part of and see through. (It’s) something that you dream about, getting honored as the champions, and something that we worked really hard for. That’s what I’m thinking.

“But everyone can make assumptions or decisions on their own. We support each other in the room and past that, it doesn’t really matter.”

Holtby, who is from Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, is one of the more out-spoken Capitals players, including with his support of the LGBTQ community. Holtby said the decision to skip the event was not a difficult one.

“It’s a tough situation for everyone to be in, to be forced to make a decision of that standing,” Holtby said. “You’re a team and you want to stick together no matter what, so I hope everyone kind of blows it away and that we don’t worry about who goes and who doesn’t. For me, it’s just a personal thing. I believe in what I believe in, and in order to stick to those values, I think I have to do what I feel is right. But that doesn’t make a difference on everyone else’s decision. We stick by every single teammate we have and their decision.”

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Since Trump has been in office, controversy has surrounded the traditional visits of championship teams to the White House. After winning the NBA title in 2017, the Golden State Warriors were disinvited by Trump after several players said they were reluctant to make the visit.

The 2018 Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles were set to visit the White House but the event was canceled by Trump after some players indicated they would skip it. The Pittsburgh Penguins, winners of the Cup in 2016 and ’17, visited the White House following each title.

“Once the first team doesn’t go it puts the onus on every other player in professional sports to be forced into making a decision, if you’re political or not,” Holtby said. “That’s why I think our team, we’re trying to take the most professional way we can with the every player has a right to choose and stand by each and every one of us regardless of what you decide.

Obviously, I’ve been a little more out-spoken on my views than everyone else so I feel like it’s important for me to stand by that. But in the long run it’s not going to affect our team at all. We’re a close-knit group in here and those things don’t affect us as a team.”

Holtby addressed the media following the morning skate and said the decision not to go to the White House went beyond hockey for him but he doesn’t believe it will promote much change.

“In the end, I never really came up with a situation where I’d feel comfortable going,” Holtby said. “Sometimes you’re forced into situations where you have to stick by what you believe. But in the end, I think there’s more important things I can do in the future. Trying to make a stand this way, I don’t think it does the most in terms of creating change. In the future, I just want to stick by what I believe in and trying to push towards a world where people are created equal.

“My family and myself, we believe in a world where humans are treated with respect regardless of your stature, what you’re born into,” Holtby continued. “You’re asked to choose what side you’re on, and I think it’s pretty clear what side I’m on. I believe that this is the right decision for myself and my family.

“The more important thing is we’re just gearing up for a playoff run, and that’s not going to team unity. It’s just another thing that that’s going to be exciting, especially for the American guys, because there’s more to it than politics and that. For a lot of guys, there’s a lot of history and pride they take in their nation and it’s one of those really cool things that’s been a thing for a long time. So that’s why I think we really respect either way if you choose to go or not. I hope they have a good experience there and then we can get back to hockey.”


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The Athletic / The story of HockeyDB: ‘It sort of changed the world’

By Craig Custance Mar 22, 2019

It was like walking into sports collectibles heaven. For Scott Coates, who made the trip from Quebec to White Plains, New York, this was the ultimate experience. He’d read about it in hobby magazines but to see it in person, well, this was something else altogether.

“I was just floating,” Coates said. “This was the big leagues.”

There were over 300 tables of sports collectibles. Baseball cards. Hockey cards. Autographs. Jerseys. Figures. Anything you can imagine. He walked up and down the rows, in complete awe. One

vendor let him try on an authentic Oakland A’s sleeveless jersey from the 1960s. Later, he discovered Parkhurst hockey cards from the early 1950s. Those came home with him.

On later trips to White Plains he was on the other side of the aisle. A friend let him rent half of his table and he started selling from his collection.

This is where he often ran into Ralph Slate.

Slate was the guy always looking for hockey stats. The more obscure the better. Like some collectors try to complete a set of baseball cards from a certain year, Ralph was always looking to complete the set of stats from a certain league. The most effective route was to discover old programs or media guides from leagues all over the hockey ladder – the Central Hockey League, the USHL, the AHL, the IHL – anything that wasn’t covered in the NHL’s annual guide and record book.

Coates remembers finding programs from the Eastern Amateur Hockey league from the 1930s and knowing he’d have a buyer in Slate.

It was part hobby, part obsession. And now, Slate’s passion and dedication is a complete necessity.

“It sort of changed the world,” said a friend of Slate’s and fellow stat collector James Karkoski.

Ralph Slate is the creator of the Internet Hockey Database. Or as we all know it, HockeyDB.com. It’s a website so ubiquitous in the world of hockey that it took Slate recently joining Twitter to remind people that there was an actual human being behind it, that it wasn’t just some automated entity gathering statistics from the clouds and into a search box.

Now, more than ever, we’re realizing just how important that human element is. That someone with an obsession for accuracy, for confirmation, for detecting bullshit is pulling the levers on a website everybody from NHL GMs to the newest fans uses daily.

The human behind the data, as it turns out, is everything.

It can be hard to pin down the origins of a life-long passion. Why do we love what we love? What drove Slate to travel throughout the northeast to find a program from a minor league hockey game four decades ago? Or to retrace the steps of a stats pioneer like Charles L. Coleman, who was commissioned by the NHL in the 1960s to write a book called The Trail of the Stanley Cup, detailing stats and data from the earliest days of the league?

Sometimes it’s a family connection, an attempt to reach up the branches of an ancestral story to connect with the past. Slate’s grandfather was a ballplayer. A relief pitcher named Harry Slate. In the 1920s, he bounced around in a B-league called the New England League, playing for teams like the Albany Senators, Nashua Millionaires and Brockton Shoemakers.

He was once called the strikeout king of the New England league by the Van Wert Daily Bulletin. He pitched for Springfield Technical High School, where he graduated in 1923.

A few years later, chasing his baseball dream, he’d allow 22 earned runs in 180 innings in the Eastern League.

All this statistical history is now easily available with a 30-second search on the internet. But to a kid who only knew that his grandfather was a professional baseball player from family stories, those numbers were a mystery.

Harry Slate died on January 29, 1958.

His grandson Ralph was born in 1969. Those innings pitched and strikeouts accumulated in the 1920s were already fading from baseball’s memory.

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For most of time, that’s how it worked with the stats generated by athletes playing on the lower rungs of professional sports. They didn’t exist in one place. They only existed in yellowing newspapers, in game programs sitting in attics. Or in some cases, the collection of a passionate fan drawn to gathering them all in one place, in an attempt to centralize these numbers before they’re lost in time.

But mostly, they disappeared.

Ralph Slate remembers sitting in his dorm room with friends at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the early 1990s, and they would talk about old players from the hockey program, curious as to what happened to them when they left. Guys like Tony Hejna, Derek DeCosty, Ryan Kummu and Brian Ferreira – they loved watching them play for RPI. Then they found it really hard to track what happened next in their hockey careers.

An idea was sparked.

There had to be a better way to share sports history than late night conversations in the dorms or in media guides impossible to find.

Slate started to kick around the idea in his head that he could gather this data into one place. Maybe it was a book but that didn’t seem right. Especially in a time when the internet was just starting to launch.

At the time, there was an underground world of hockey stats collecting but it was still a very closed group. If you wanted obscure hockey stats, you had to offer something back. Verified statistics were mailed back and forth in negotiated deals.

James Karkoski, who now lives in Japan, was a part of that world. He’d get frustrated when the big stats collectors wouldn’t trade with him. He was reliant on the kindness of collectors who weren’t so stingy with the data. To help build out his collection, he’d write the NHL a letter asking for stats from specific seasons. They would photocopy the numbers and mail it back.

Karkoski connected with Slate, who was looking for RPI stats, and still remembers getting an email from him announcing his intentions of changing the way this stats underworld operated. “He said, ‘I’m going to put my database online,’” Karkoski said from Japan. “He wanted to collect data on players who went to RPI. When he told me he was going to put stuff up I said, ‘This is going to be different.’”

He was completely on board. Trading wasn’t going to be necessary. He was going to send anything he had to Slate to help build this public database.

“Open on the internet is better,” Karkoski said.

In 1997, nearly 40 years after Harry Slate died, HockeyDB was born.

With a steno pad yellow background and a picture of a goalie taken from an RPI program in the 1950s at the top, HockeyDB.com was launched with enthusiasm.

If you want historical information on hockey players or teams, you’ve come to the right place!

It wasn’t just stats. There were old hockey team logos, scanned in manually by Slate. There were hockey card checklists. It was early internet at its absolute best.

The NHL stats came from the annual guides. Slate would drive to the Night Owl News convenience store in Troy, New York, on Wednesdays when the latest issue of The Hockey News came out to look for more obscure stats. There were trips to White Plains, Toronto and Burlington, Massachusetts, for big collectibles shows to find obscure programs. There were trips to the library to search old newspapers on microfiche.

“It’s a lot of research, a lot of investigating, trying to make contacts,” Slate said. “People would email me and say, ‘I have this program,’ and I would scan it.”

For something that didn’t exist at any other point in history, the reception was exactly what you think it might be. People loved it.

He’d get emails from hockey fans saying it was the best thing they’d ever seen. Each day, there would be a new batch of emails waiting. Five or six emails each day early on. Much more as the word spread. The ratio of people who visited the website and then reached out personally was remarkably high.

They also contributed to it. The database grew and Slate focused both on filling it out and zeroing in on data to find even the most minute discrepancy.

“For the first couple of years, we had to recreate the early NHL stuff. There were researchers out there but people don’t realize the early information wasn’t kept well by the NHL then,” Slate said. “When they published their guys, if a player didn’t score or get a penalty, he didn’t get included in the list. It would say, ‘Here are the Bruins in 1935’ and it wasn’t a complete list … there are six missing players, guys who played two or three games and didn’t take any penalties.”

Finding those players, and adding them back into hockey history, became part of the fun. In recent years, the NHL has undergone a massive statistical overhaul in digitizing old scoresheets that updated their public database.

It also changed stats that data collectors found on their own through independent research.

“They’ve made it all electronically available, the data,” Slate said. “This is a really interesting thing, they’ve changed a lot of the numbers. Now, you come into the question – who is right? For 75 years, they were saying this player had this many assists. What’s right? I suppose the NHL is right because it’s their information. They’re going through a flux. It’s still all up in the air.”

That’s one of the challenges that has evolved. Another has been attempts by outsiders to change the numbers in the HockeyDB database. Sometimes it’s a simple correction in the bio. Slate once got an email from Zach Hyman’s father while Hyman was playing for the Hamilton Red Wings. The father wanted to share a more accurate height or weight. This happens all the time, especially when it comes to prospects who want to be drafted.

Sometimes, the attempts at changing the database aren’t as innocent.

He’s had people print out a hockey team’s webpage, change a name on the printout and mail it to him in order to try and get themselves included in the database. He’s had people Photoshop themselves into other statistical listings.

One time, someone sent a notarized letter from the State of Illinois saying that he had officially changed his name. He asked Slate to make the adjustment to his HockeyDB page, one that included stats from playing days at Western Michigan, to reflect his new name.

It all looked very official and legitimate. So the name was swapped out.

“A couple weeks later, I got an email from the original person – ‘How come my stuff is under a different name?’” Slate said.

He reached out to the first guy, who fessed up. He was going through a divorce and he wanted to coach his kid’s hockey team and they wouldn’t let him do it unless he could prove that he had playing experience. He knew a page on HockeyDB would do it.

“People go through amazing lengths,” Slate said. “That was one of the key moments.”

SO, ANOTHER FATHER JUST TRIED TO GET US TO MANIPULATE HIS SON’S STATS.

1) HE BOUGHT A DOMAIN

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2) CREATED A FAKE WEBSITE, TRYING TO MAKE IT LOOK OFFICIAL

3) ENTERED HIS SON’S (FAKE) STATS UNDER THE “STATS” MENU OPTION

4) CONTACTED US CLAIMING OUR OFFICIAL STATS WERE OFF

1/2

— ELITEPROSPECTS (@ELITEPROSPECTS) MARCH 20, 2019

It’s not just hockey dads trying to change the data. Slate said a team executive reached out with inflated stats he wanted included on his page. They were close to the truth but didn’t mesh with the documentation Slate gathered in his research.

“The guy said, ‘Hey, I lived it. This is definitely the truth,’” Slate said. “Sorry, I need more than that.”

He’s become a guardian for accuracy. A protector of the data. More and more, that seems like such a necessity.

But the result is an ironclad trust between HockeyDB.com and the hockey world. There’s no second thought when any of us go to the website and type in a name for a quick stat. Or look for a draft result or award result. It’s a resource used by everyone.

But it’s not the only result of his work.

Now, because of the same statistical progression in other sports, his grandfather’s legacy is recorded for posterity. Click a link on Harry Slate’s baseball-reference page and it takes you to a page with an old black and white photo.

There he is, posing in what looks like a high school team picture from the 1920s. He sits on a folding chair, stockings pulled to the knee, a baseball glove no bigger than a small oven mitt covering his left hand resting on his lap. His small brimmed hat pulled down just above his eyes.

Harry Slate’s spot in baseball history is safe, staring back through time on a screen. Uploaded by a grandson he’d never meet.


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The Athletic / Are teams that enter the playoffs on a cold streak doomed to failure?

By Dom Luszczyszyn Mar 22, 2019

Boston and Toronto. Two teams whose paths are simultaneously converging and diverging in the days leading up to the playoffs. The two Atlantic behemoths are once again expected to square off in the opening round of the postseason but are trending in opposite directions on their way there.

The Bruins have been a buzzsaw over the season’s second half, earning the league’s second-best record at 23-6-5, a 123-point pace and outscoring opponents by 31 goals over that time. The Leafs have been anything but, letting the chance at home-ice advantage slip through their fingers by playing at a pedestrian 91-point pace while posting a modest plus-seven goal differential.

Naturally, the temperature in both cities couldn’t be more different, with the Bruins looking nearly unstoppable and the Leafs looking very beatable. What was once looking like a hotly contested series is now being treated closer to a foregone conclusion for the team that’s

going into the playoffs at its best over the team that’s playing its worst hockey of the season.

There’s obviously a long-standing precedent for that as ideally a team should be playing its best hockey leading up to the playoffs; it’s better to come in firing on all cylinders rather than hoping to flip a switch when the games start to matter.

Recent examples paint the exact same picture, as it’s easy to recall dominant stretch drives from previous Stanley Cup champions, like last year’s Capitals ramping up their possession game significantly and winning 64 percent of their contests in their final 25 games. There are the 2009 and 2016 Penguins, who turned into juggernauts under new coaching, going 18-3-4 with a 54 percent Corsi under Dan Bylsma and 33-16-5 with a 55 percent Corsi under Mike Sullivan — both huge improvements from floundering numbers early in the season. And, of course, there are the surprising 2012 Kings, the eight-seed analytics darlings that crushed opponents on the shot clock to the tune of a 60 percent Corsi after acquiring Jeff Carter, going 13-5-3 in the process.

Washington rode a late-season surge en route to winning the Cup. (Stephen R. Sylvanie / USA Sports)

There are teams on the other side of the coin, too, who came in cold and struggled to live up to their hype, like all three of the Presidents’ Trophy-winning teams in Washington that took their foot off the gas and coasted down the stretch in each season. The 2014 Blues were on their way to the top of the West but lost six straight to finish the season and got ousted in the first round. The 2012 Red Wings were first in the league in mid-February, went 7-11-4 to drop to ninth and then lost in the first round in five games.

Those teams that came in hot played extended that excellence all the way to June on their way to hoisting the Stanley Cup. The teams that came in cold fell flat on their face. They’re all crucial examples on the virtue of peaking at the right time, an old adage that those examples strengthen. In a short two-month tournament fuelled by randomness, that’s exactly what a team needs to win it all — finding that stride in the weeks leading up to the postseason is critical to that.

One of the more intriguing analytics findings over the past decade only bolsters that theory. In 2015, TSN’s Travis Yost wrote about the merits of a team’s score-adjusted Fenwick in its final 25 regular season games leading up to the playoffs and its predictive power. At the time, nearly 70 percent of series were won by the team that was stronger in that single metric — over eight percent higher than using a team’s full-season goal differential. In that sense, playing well down the stretch — specifically a team’s process at 5-on-5 — mattered more than its full-season play.

There is a lot of evidence that coming in hot matters, but perhaps it’s being pushed too far in one direction, especially as it pertains to the centre of the hockey universe imploding, where every second of every game is under intense scrutiny at all times.

There is no doubt that the Leafs’ current play is concerning, especially considering their first round opponent, a Bruins team that can’t lose, is basically set in stone. Toronto has not played to its full potential of late, losing four of its last six games in mostly embarrassing fashion, and while it is crucial that the team figures it out sooner rather than later, it’s not completely indicative of how the team will fare come playoff time. In other words, it’s not the end of the world and a first round exit is far from a foregone conclusion.

For starters, while Yost’s article is often cited, it’s important to note that it is now four years old and things have changed since then. Yost himself surmised the possibility that score-adjusted Fenwick was “running a bit hot over the past seven seasons” while the opposite might have been true for goal differential — a sample size of 105 series really isn’t that large. As it turns out, that seems to have been exactly the case as the team with the better score-adjusted Fenwick over the last 25 games has won only 43 percent of

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its series since, while the team with a better goal differential has won 58 percent. Over the full sample of 165 playoff series, the two have now “called” the exact same number of series, which suggests that while stretch drive performance still matters, so does a team’s full-season standing. It means the previous 57 games don’t need to be tossed in the trash in consideration of potential playoff outcomes.

Priors matter and shouldn’t be abandoned. That’s part of the reason many are concerned about Toronto’s play to begin with: the Leafs have shown they can be better than their last month of hockey. They may not look like the team that appeared to be one of the league’s best earlier this year, but the play that established those expectations shouldn’t be completely forgotten, either.

Digging deeper, I attempted to quantify how hot or cold a team was going into the playoffs by comparing its play (using win percentage, goal differential, Corsi and scoring chance rate) in the season’s first 57 games against the final 25. The goal was to figure out whether a team was peaking around playoff time and how that related to its playoff success rate, specifically in the first round, as that’s when something like this is most important.

As it turns out, there is truth to the notion that coming in hot matters. Of the 80 first-round series to happen since 2008, the “hotter” team was expected to win 52 percent of its series based on the market price of each and won 59 percent instead. It’s a very small sample, but it signals that a team at its best might deserve extra consideration when it is facing a club that is struggling prior to the postseason. When the gap between hot or not gets wider, the difference gets larger, too, as the top half of the hot teams won 60 percent of their series when they were only expected to win 48 percent of the time.

That paints a harsh reality for Toronto, but it’s not a death sentence. Whether it feels like it or not, the Leafs do have a very good team and a date with Boston can be won, even if it’s a little less than expected based on how the teams are trending. The Leafs came within one game last season and added John Tavares and Jake Muzzin to the mix, though the Bruins have perked up their own depth. The Leafs may not be favourites anymore, but the series should still be significantly closer than the team’s recent play might suggest where a 55-win team (based on Boston’s record since Jan. 1) facing a 42-win team would win over 80 percent of the time. It’s simply not that bleak, or even close to it.

Going through the data shows the hot-and-cold debate is far from a hard-and-fast rule, and there have been plenty of exceptions the Leafs can find solace in.

Just last year, the league’s “coldest” team swept its first-round matchup decisively and went to the Stanley Cup Final. In their first 57 games, the Vegas Golden Knights played at a 115-point pace, outscoring teams by 0.72 goals-per-game and earning a 52 percent Corsi. In their final 25 games, the Golden Knights limped to the finish with a 95-point pace, a 0.08 goal differential per game and a sub-50 percent Corsi. Far from dominant, but no team looked more potent in the opening round and Vegas parlayed that into a Cup final berth. It’s funny to note now that the second-coldest team was actually the Bruins, whose scoring chance rate dropped by nearly four percent and goal rate by nearly half a goal-per-game.

The year before? It was the Stanley Cup-winning Penguins who struggled in the final stretch of the season relative to how they started, getting outshot after being a dominant possession team at the beginning of the season. In 2016, there were some who figured the Flyers could upset the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Capitals in the first round because the former was red hot and the latter was ice cold. In 2015, the hottest team was the Andrew Hammond-led Ottawa Senators, who needed to go 21-3-3 just to improbably make the playoffs before bowing out in six games. That year, the Blackhawks and Lightning were far from hot en route to a Stanley Cup final clash, with both seeing a massive drop in their scoring chance share. Lastly, there’s the team that earned Mike Babcock his

lone Stanley Cup, the 2007-08 Detroit Red Wings — one of the most dominant teams of the salary cap era — whose win rate dropped from 72 to 52 percent and whose goal differential dropped by nearly a full goal per game.

For every team that’s championed as a hot team that kept the momentum going through the postseason, there’s another that imploded come playoff time. For every team whose struggles continued come playoff time, there’s another that figured things out or flipped a switch once April hit. Hotter teams generally do perform better than colder teams, but there are exceptions to the rule on both sides that can easily be cherry-picked.

Toronto can be that exception this year or it can start figuring things out in the season’s final eight games, with Wednesday’s game against Buffalo being a good start. Figuring it out early is the more appealing option to be sure, but it doesn’t mean the Leafs are doomed if they don’t.

The Leafs have a good team with a decent chance. When considering those chances, it’s important to remember what they’ve shown all season and prior, and not just the past month or so, even if their recent play does have more merit. More important, though, is the team itself remembering what kind of team it can be. Whether that starts now or Game 1 (at the latest) doesn’t really matter, but the clock is ticking. It’s time to flip the switch.


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The Athletic / LeBrun: Q&A with Mike Gillis, who travelled the world to find out what sets elite organizations apart

By Pierre LeBrun Mar 22, 2019

Mike Gillis certainly hasn’t sat on his hands in the five years since he was fired from his position as GM of the Vancouver Canucks, and his passport would certainly testify to that.

The former NHL player and longtime player agent has travelled to Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, England, Switzerland, China and France. We will get into his travels in just a bit.

It remains to be seen if the 60-year-old will get another chance to run an NHL team, but should the right fit come along, it’s clear that Gillis is ready to bring a drastically different management approach to a sport that he feels needs some modernization from the top down.

There were rumours that the Ottawa Senators approached him last summer, but obviously nothing came of that. There are currently GM openings in Edmonton, where much work lies ahead, and of course for the expansion Seattle team, where it’s believed Gillis has already had a conversation with ownership and could end up being among the long list of candidates.

Gillis wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea when he was GM in Vancouver. Some people found him arrogant. I’m fairly confident that if he gets another shot to run an NHL club, Mike Gillis 2.0 will have a softer approach with both the fans and media. But what won’t change is his never-ending desire to change the way things are done at the NHL level. From analytics to sports science, Gillis is eager to apply new ways of conducting business.

We caught up this week over the phone:

CAROLINA HURRICANES


I can’t think of a better way to start this conversation than for you to let the world know what exactly you’ve been up to since you left the Canucks.

I went back to school, Pierre. I travelled around the world learning best practices, looking at the best sports organizations I could find and finding out what was working and in some cases what wasn’t working. And why you had consistently strong performances out of certain teams and consistently weak performances out of other teams. So I’ve had a great few years meeting and speaking to lots of people and understanding the environment for really strong human performance.

What kind of places have you been to?

I spent a lot of time in Australia with the Aussie Rules Football guys. I spent a lot of time in California at Stanford. I spent a lot of time in Switzerland in Geneva at a place called the Biotech Campus, which is a cutting edge, a philanthropic place where they’re doing extraordinary things helping people who are disabled or having physical struggles. I went to China. I spent a lot of time in Spain, you know, really just going around and looking at what other people were up to and how they were approaching high-level performance in sports. It didn’t matter what the sport was, it just mattered how they were driving performance, how they were communicating, their daily training environment and talking to a lot of smart people.

If you had one key takeaway from all those experiences, what would you say that you now know that you didn’t know before that has really left a deep impression on you?

I think the one thing that has made probably the biggest impression on me is the emphasis that really high-end, high-functioning organizations have on leadership and culture. Which is a daily part of their training environment. So it isn’t like you decide to focus on that for a short period of time and hope that it’s going to work out. They drive leadership, they drive culture every day that the players are there. It’s totally aligned from the top of the organization to the bottom of the organization that they’re always in a teaching mode, they’re always teaching about how to be proper leaders, and how to maintain the culture and what culture is defined as. It’s clearly one of the biggest differences that I saw. The top organizations are removing hope from the equation. They’re implementing plans and implementing a strategy that constantly drives leadership and culture. As a result, they take players that may not be successful somewhere else and they become successful there. There’s only so many top players to go around. But if you get the highest utility out of every one of them that’s on your team because you’re communicating properly, they’re training properly, but they’re also learning about how to be better. That was definitely the biggest takeaway I’ve had.

Is there another area where you feel you’ve learned more about and would apply that on a hockey team?

One thing I’ve learned over the last few years is that there’s so much good science out there that can drive performance, provided you understand it and are prepared to apply it. When I look at organizations, they’re just so unwilling to go into that space. This place, the Biotech Campus in Geneva, it’s unbelievable, like unreal. In terms of vision and cognitive awareness analysis and hormonal changes that occur naturally in high-stress, high-performance situations. If you don’t know your own players, you can’t communicate with them properly. Once you know them well enough, you can communicate well enough where you can help drive performance. When these guys were doing hormonal tests about cortisone and testosterone, if you say the wrong thing or view the wrong visual, cortisone is going up, testosterone is going down, you drop 20 percent in performance. Stuff like that is doable. It’s just you have to have the right organization to do it.

If and when you get a chance again to run a hockey team, how do you think you would try to integrate some of these things?

Well, I made up my mind that if I ever did this again, and was fortunate enough to get back to a Game 7, that we would have everything done as perfectly as we possibly could to make sure we won that Game 7. And it begins far earlier than people presume. You look at Tampa Bay this year, they’re having a season that resembled ours in 2010-11. It doesn’t happen overnight, it takes a long period of time of things going very well for you to get into that position. But bearing in mind, if you took the top teams in the NHL, they win the Stanley Cup one out of five times, so the more things you have on the plus side of the ledger, the more opportunity you have to win it. And that’s part of the journey. I wanted to go and look at these other successful teams and see how they built these processes into their daily training environment and be prepared to build something like that if the right opportunity comes along.

You certainly came close to winning it all in Vancouver, but it always stinks when the job ends. Because it rarely ends nicely. So what would you say now, looking back with time on your side, and with less emotion, that you would like to learn from the Vancouver experience?

The biggest thing for me was to take responsibility for the things I should have done better, I should have thought of a little differently. I had really good people that worked with me in Vancouver. But in hindsight, we should have made some changes earlier in certain areas and we should have done things differently. And we didn’t do those things and I have to take responsibility for that. Part of the process is coming clean with what your shortcomings are and trying to get better. I think now, I’ve learned a lot from that experience, it was the first time in my life I had ever had that experience. Sure, there’s a lot of anger that goes with it, but then in the clear light of day, you need to take a look back and see what you are responsible for and how you might have done things differently. I think I’ve got a fairly good handle now on how I would approach it. But it wouldn’t lend itself to some of the issues that we faced.

And obviously, under the right circumstances, you’re hoping to get that chance again. What kind of opportunity do you think would make sense for you? I know you can’t get into a specific team but in terms of the environment which would allow you to bring a lot to the table?

I sit on this think tank at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan about organizational science with a guy named Richard Wolfe. We talk an awful lot about how successful organizations are designed and what they resemble. One of the very key elements is alignment. I have talked to some (NHL) people in the past little bit, but for me, there has to be alignment in the vision of what you are and where you’re trying to go. If you don’t have that alignment, you’re just sort of … I’m not going to say mailing it in, but you’re not all pulling on the same rope in the same direction and that just causes friction and your likelihood of success is remote. So for me, I made up my mind when I left Vancouver that I would only go into a situation where I felt that there was going to be alignment from top to bottom where you could do a lot of interesting things and people weren’t going to criticize you because you weren’t doing it the old way. They would, in fact, embrace the idea that you were finding new ways to be successful. If that kind of environment is there, then I’m absolutely interested. But if it’s not, then I’m not. So, we’ll see. Maybe it will present itself, maybe it won’t.


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Sportsnet.ca / Eugene Melnyk's radio appearances leave expected trail of carnage

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Wayne Scanlan March 22, 2019, 12:29 PM

When Eugene Melnyk speaks, the punch lines tend to write themselves.

For the first time in months, the owner of the Ottawa Senators spoke on radio shows in Toronto and Ottawa Thursday and Friday, and the interviews left the expected trail of carnage.

On 580 CFRA in Ottawa Friday morning, Melnyk said that Ottawa mayor Jim Watson should keep his mouth shut, in the aftermath of the collapse of a plan that would have created a new downtown NHL arena for the Senators. Melnyk ripped the Toronto Maple Leafs rebuild — “somebody forgot about defence.” He also called the Ottawa sports station that broadcasts Senators hockey “bush league” for asking general manager Pierre Dorion to listen to a taped call from a concerned fan.

On social media, the “bush league” remark went viral as popular Ottawa radio host Ian Mendes tweeted, “So, Eugene Melnyk just called me “bush league” on the air. So there’s that…”

Dozens of sports personalities, journalists and fans rallied to the defence of Mendes, who has a reputation for being fair and decent in his approach to a hockey team that has been at or near the basement of the NHL standings the past two seasons.

Just when hockey had forgotten about the Eastern Conference cellar-dwellers, the Senators again became the butt of national jokes.

Melnyk started his mini-blitz on Sportsnet 590 The Fan in Toronto Thursday evening, agreeing to speak with Prime Time Sports host Bob McCown, on the understanding Melnyk would get a chance to promote his newly-acquired company involved with eye-tracking for concussion victims, Neuro Kinetics.

From there, Melnyk addressed a variety of hockey and state-of-the-arena type questions, implying that there was now little chance the hockey club would be involved in the LeBreton Flats project near downtown Ottawa. Melnyk did say he has heard from developers interested in creating a downtown arena, and may have interest at some point.

“I’m still trying to pursue it, but if it doesn’t happen, I’m just as happy to stay in Kanata and do what we’re doing out there and actually expand up what we’re doing and what we have.”

Melnyk told McCown and co-host Richard Deitsch he ignores “99 per cent” of the fan vitriol on social media, saying that the Senators tripped up one such fan, who turned out to be “some 12-year-old in Toronto.”

This is just the kind of comment that further alienates the fan base in Ottawa. At least, during the CFRA interview Friday, Melnyk admitted that even his season ticket holders who take part in marketing focus groups are outraged with the organization.

“There’s no question, they are pissed,” Melnyk said of his team’s fans. “I think we did a terrible job communicating exactly what the plan is on a rebuild.”

And just what is that plan?

“We need a team that is consistently young,” Melnyk told CFRA host Bill Carroll. “We need a handful of veterans to take them through some of the rough patches . . . but our average age two years from now is going to be 23, 24. It’s going to be the youngest team.

“And I’m hoping to have a five- or six-year run with these players.”

Melnyk alluded to 10 outstanding prospects on the the AHL Belleville Senators, plus 17 draft picks coming in the first three rounds of the next three drafts. However, Ottawa doesn’t own its own lottery pick this summer, having traded it to Colorado for Matt Duchene.

To Ottawa fans disheartened that the team lost its top three scorers at the trade deadline, Mark Stone, Duchene and Ryan Dzingel, Melnyk argued that these 27- and 28-year-olds seeking seven- or eight-year deals were not a good fit for the rebuild. They would be in their early-to-mid-30s when the rebuild blossoms in about five years, Melnyk said.

“We’re not going to pay stupid money and then spend all this time trying to unload all these stupid contracts that other teams are stuck with,” Melnyk said.

Again, the owner vowed he was committed to spending to the cap in a few years time and ultimately winning a Cup in Ottawa.

“I’m not in this to be a participant . . . I’m in this to win. And to win, we know what you have to do. You have to have a young, vibrant team. You have to have the superstars and you’re going to have to pay them. If you don’t pay them, somebody else will.”

It’s a fine line between “paying the superstars” and not getting stuck with “stupid contracts.” A lot of fans and media believe Stone was the ideal future captain around which to build.

“These next six months are going to be critical for Pierre and his team and the whole hockey operations to get their act together in a big way to be able to use these assets . . . This core group we have sitting in Belleville are all going to stay, and yes they’re going to need big contracts and I’m prepared to step up for that,” Melnyk said.

“Whether we get support in attendance or not, I’m going to do this, because it’s something I’m committed to. We intend to win a Stanley Cup and I don’t have another 50 years to do it.”

Melnyk said he believes the negative narrative can change quickly, if the team starts to perform better on the ice, as the prospects grow and improve.

Here’s a sampling of Melnyk’s ‘He Said It’ moments:

• On whether NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is OK with the Senators staying in Kanata, in their 23-year-old arena: “Yes, I think he is. He lets his owners do as they — not as they please — but try to do the best they can for the franchise. They don’t want the laggards. And currently we are a revenue laggard for the rest of the league. Whatever it takes to do better on the revenue side is important to him and the other owners and to us, of course.”

• On the rebuild of the Toronto Maple Leafs: “look they’re stuck. OK, I better not say what I was going to say, but they’re going to have a very hard time winning a Stanley Cup without defence. Because they are hitting the cap. They can’t bring anybody new in. They’re stuck. And that’s where you have to be extremely careful . . . mistakes were made. Somebody forgot about defence.”

• On his commitment to the Senators: “I’ve invested more than $100 million, on top of buying the team, just in operating losses.”

• On Ottawa’s mayor, who criticized Melnyk for being difficult to work with: “He is so lucky I keep my mouth shut, he should keep his (shut). You know, I have a lot to say, but I don’t say it. I’d be very careful if I was him, walking around and mouthing off. It’s also very counter-productive. The NHL offices, say, ‘do we really want to bring more events to the city?’” (Melnyk says he was bidding for another All-Star Game for Ottawa at the time Watson spoke out on Melnyk).

• On why he dislikes Ottawa media: “Everybody has an opinion, but sometimes it’s an ill-informed opinion. I don’t like some of the tactics of a couple of your colleagues. I just won’t talk to them anymore. To try to ambush Pierre Dorion, in an interview, and say, I’m going to show you — the guy was going to play some irate fan’s recording on the show.

“I mean that’s bush league stuff. You do that in little towns in the middle of nowhere. Not in a G7 capital.”

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And with that, Melnyk rode off, the latest in a long line of hit-and-run audio performances from the owner of the Senators.

In Ottawa, this will tear off a lot of scabs that had been healing in the relative quiet after the trade deadline, while future stars like Brady Tkachuk, Drake Batherson and Erik Brannstrom have been thriving in Ottawa and Belleville.

Sportsnet.ca LOADED: 03.23.2019

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Sportsnet.ca / 15 late-season NHL call-ups making a case for 2019-20 roster spots

Rory Boylen | March 22, 2019, 1:52 PM

Everybody has a different motivation at this point in the NHL season. Some teams are playing for a playoff spot, while others who are long out of it are playing for pride. Some are playing for home-ice advantage, whereas the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Tampa Bay Lightning are still within reach of history.

From a player’s perspective there are other considerations. An ageing veteran could be giving it his all before retiring, or trying to play at a level that will make someone want to keep him around for another season. Other players may be playing for a contract, trying to hit a bonus or set a new career high.

Others, mostly younger players, are still just trying to get their foot in the door. This time of season brings lots of player call-ups either due to injury or because the team wants to give an up-and-comer a chance to show just where they are in their development. This is a chance for a player to make a name for themselves in the organization and get a leg up on the competition they’ll see in next fall’s training camp. In many cases, this is an opportunity to show you belong in the NHL full-time next October.

With that, we go around the league and highlight how some of these young late-season call-ups are doing.

CONNOR CLIFTON, BOSTON BRUINS

Injuries have opened the door for Clifton to get a look in Boston, but it’ll be hard for him to stick with the team next season unless someone is moved out or is forced to miss time again. Right now Clifton is in the lineup with Torey Krug, Matt Grzelcyk and Kevan Miller out, but they’re each signed through next season. Zdeno Chara has the only expiring contract on Boston’s blue line and it’s expected he’ll re-up again.

Clifton had a nine-game call-up earlier in the season, but since returning in March he’s played four games and his ice time has risen to above 18 minutes his past two outings. Coach Bruce Cassidy wasted no time challenging the player, matching him against Matt Duchene’s line on his off-side last Saturday.

“The conversation was, ‘Can you play left defence? If you want to play in the National Hockey League you’re going to have to, basically tonight.’ And he nodded his head, and off he went, so I give him credit,” Cassidy told WEEI. “It’s not easy. You know, you’re playing against Duchene’s line. It’s a good line, and you’re playing on your off-side, and you haven’t played a lot of games. So, he’s going to earn some trust with the coaches, and I think he’s going to earn some respect from the players.”

A fifth-round pick in 2013, this is just Clifton’s second season of pro hockey out of Quinnipiac University. The five-foot-11, 174-pound

defenceman scored 13 points in 54 AHL games last season and has doubled that point total in 2018-19.

Top three in Corsi differential for defensemen.

You know, the usuals: Erik Karlsson, Dougie Hamilton, Connor Clifton. pic.twitter.com/sscxcFtfX2

— Sean Tierney (@ChartingHockey) March 16, 2019

ALEXANDER NYLANDER, BUFFALO SABRES

This is the third year in a row Nylander has got a late-season call-up, but this is the first time it’s happened before April. His points per game have risen each year in the AHL, from 0.43 as a rookie in 2016-17 to 0.63 this season. He’s not among the best at his age in the AHL, but this progress is at least pointing the 21-year-old in the right direction.

“He’s taking advantage of the opportunity,” Sabres head coach Phil Housley told the Times-Herald’s Bill Hoppe. “Each and every game he seems to get better. His linemates are helping him out, they play a fast game. He’s just getting more confident down low, in the corner. He’s driving on cycles, he’s making plays up ice and he’s using his speed.

“I really like his shot mentality last game. Coming off the wing, he was thinking about shot entering the offensive zone. He’s got to continue to shoot pucks.”

Nylander has topped out at 12 goals in 49 AHL games this season and got his first NHL tally in 2018-19 five games into his call-up and against brother William Nylander’s Maple Leafs. Alex has three points now in his past two games.

Given the Sabres are struggling on offence just as much as they have in recent seasons, it’ll be hard for them to not at least give Nylander a look in October. Since the Sabres had a 10-game winning streak end Nov. 29, they rank 27th in the NHL in goals. He’ll likely return to Rochester for the Calder Cup Playoffs.

Alexander Nylander with a to bring the #Sabres within one. pic.twitter.com/UJ0HMSrtcj

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) March 21, 2019

JOEL L’ESPERANCE, DALLAS STARS

An undrafted signing out of Michigan Tech, L’Esperance earned this call-up by torching the AHL in his first full season as a pro. In 50 games he scored 29 goals, which is still just two off the league lead even though he hasn’t played a game there since Feb. 24.

Dallas has been in a desperate search for secondary scoring all season and split up Jamie Benn from Tyler Seguin and Alexander Radulov to try and get it. Even that hasn’t completely solved the problem. The hope was that L’Esperance would complement the proven pro, but he’s only managed one goal (and no assists) in 15 games, mostly from the second line.

Other young Stars such as Valeri Nichushkin (0 goals) and Denis Gurianov (four points in 21 games) haven’t done much to solidify their spots, so the opportunity is there for L’Esperance.

TARO HIROSE, DETROIT RED WINGS

Never drafted, 22-year-old Hirose just wrapped up his college career with Michigan State by scoring 50 points in 36 games, which tied him as the top scorer in all of the NCAA. He was one of the 10 finalists for the Hobey Baker Award, and then signed with the Red Wings when his season came to a close.

At this point in the rebuild, Detroit is still looking for as many young and skilled players as they can get, so Hirose was put right into the lineup to show what he’s got. In two games his ice time went from 13:44 to 16:12 and he’s recorded a couple of primary assists already.

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“He’s a smart player,” linemate Thomas Vanek told the Detroit Free Press. “Playing with him is actually really easy. The poise he has — it’s fun. It’s fun to play with a guy like that who thinks the game at a high level. He’s not afraid to make plays. He can hold onto pucks. I’m really impressed so far with him.”

JOSH CURRIE AND JOSEPH GAMBARDELLA, EDMONTON OILERS

There’s a big feeling out process going on in Edmonton these days, from finding their next GM all the way to figuring out which cheap players with enough skill should stick on next year’s team.

Neither Currie (26) nor Gambardella (25) are as young as most others on this list, but both have low-level contracts and are still controllable next season. While Currie is carrying a $687,500 cap hit through 2019-20, Gambardella is a pending RFA coming off a $725,500 cap hit. And though they are close in age and would both be considered late-bloomers if they ever stuck in the NHL, their roads to this point are very different.

Currie was never drafted, but left the QMJHL in 2013 and spent the following two-plus seasons in the ECHL. His past four have been in the AHL, where he’s been about a 20-goal scorer. With 24 goals and 37 points in 49 games, he was having his best AHL season to date before getting called up in February. He scored his first goal in his third NHL game, and has added another plus three assists in the 12 games since.

“I love to chip in offensively, everyone wants to,” he told the Edmonton Sun. “But I need to be responsible on the walls, good in all three zones and I think I’ve done that so far.

“You have to be good in your own zone in this league if you want to stay. If you’re a bottom six guy you have to be responsible. I kind of pride myself in being good in the defensive zone, but I love being in on the offence as well.”

Gambardella is only in his second pro season after moving on from UMass-Lowell and went from 19 points in 50 AHL games last season to 27 goals and 45 points in 48 games this season. He’s been called up a couple of times to the Oilers, seeing four games in March, but the most he’s played in one game is 8:46.

Neither player will be a big producer or the missing link if they do stick around next season, but both have the potential to be hungry, do-anything players to help fill out the bottom six.

SAMUEL MONTEMBEAULT, FLORIDA PANTHERS

Goaltending has been the Panthers’ biggest issue this season — even with average netminding they may have been able to make the playoffs. And though they won’t head into next season with Montembeault as the No. 1 if they really expect to get back into the mix, his late-season play is making it more likely that James Reimer is a goner.

A third-round pick in 2015, Montembeault got his NHL break on March 2 and got his first win six nights later in a 25-save victory over the Minnesota Wild. He played six games in a row for Florida, winning four of them and allowing more than three goals in none. Montembeault wasn’t an AHL standout, posting .896 and .901 save percentages the past two seasons. He was never an award winner in the QMJHL and only once finished in the top five in save percentage.

But he’s showing why he might be a decent candidate to be a No. 3 goalie next season. If the Panthers do go big into the goalie market this summer and explore signing UFA Sergei Bobrovsky, they’ll have to do something with Reimer or Roberto Luongo. It’s always possible the latter would retire, either due to injury or outright, but if he doesn’t, Reimer becomes a buyout candidate. He has a $3.2 million cap hit for another two seasons which, if bought out, would give the Panthers an extra $2.4 million in cap space for next season. They’d

get a $191,667 credit the year after, but would lose $658,333 in space for the following two seasons.

MATT ROY AND CARL GRUNDSTROM, LOS ANGELES KINGS

It can be hard to get a read on a young defenceman like the 24-year-old Roy when the team around him has been so thoroughly outplayed all season. He’s been a minus player three of the past four games and his 46.8 CF% is dreadful, though similar to what Drew Doughty is at for the season — albeit against top competition. Roy has earned more ice time as his call-up has gone on, seeing more than 19 minutes in three March games and getting paired with Alec Martinez.

A seventh-rounder from 2015, Roy’s 29 points in 45 games and 0.64 points per game rate is 17th-best among all AHL defencemen who’ve played at least half the season. He’ll be an RFA this summer, though not an expensive re-sign, and there could be two or three blue-line spots up for grabs in 2019-20, depending on how things unfold this summer.

“It’s good that they’re getting NHL games in, but to come to a team that’s in last place, (there’s) no direction right now,” Doughty told the Los Angeles Times of the youngsters who’re getting a late-season look. “Obviously we’re playing for something, but we’re playing for nothing, and it’s tough for these guys.”

Grundstrom is one of the pieces returned to Los Angeles in the Jake Muzzin trade and he’s getting his shot on the west coast far quicker than he would have in Toronto. We broke down what the Kings were getting in Grundstrom at the time of the deal: his strong-on-the-corners style fits into the Kings’ mold, while also giving them some goal scoring upside.

So far we’re seeing that come to fruition as Grundstrom has two goals in his first six NHL games. He’s earned a little time on the power play, is on the second line, and though the sample size is still very small, Los Angeles is getting a whopping 76.6 per cent of the high danger chances when he’s on the ice, per Natural Stat Trick. Things are happening offensively for Los Angeles when Grundstrom is out there and he’s provided a bit of a shot in the arm. Only two full-time Kings forwards are above 50 per cent in high danger chances this season.

MICHAEL MCLEOD AND JOHN QUENNEVILLE, NEW JERSEY DEVILS

A couple of recent Devils first-round picks are trying to show why they should be full-timers next October with some late-season opportunity for the injury-riddled team.

The more urgent of the two might be Quenneville, who was the 30th overall pick in the 2014 draft and had already seen 14 NHL games in second-half call-ups the past two seasons. By per game averages, his AHL production has been pretty good and he approached a point per game this season, but that hasn’t yet translated into NHL numbers. He’s actually had three different call-ups this season for a combined 18 games and finally scored his first of the season Wednesday in his hometown of Edmonton.

McLeod is the more highly touted prospect, going 12th overall in 2016, but so far the reviews have been mixed. Mostly used in the bottom-six, McLeod’s on-ice numbers haven’t been all that impressive, as the Devils have gotten just 40.5 per cent of the 5-on-5 scoring chances when he’s on the ice, per Natural Stat Trick. But he has also been a little unlucky as his team has converted on only 1.54 per cent of their shots when he’s on the ice. This is a factor as to why he’s been quiet on the score sheet, with just one assist posted in his 18 games so far.

The Devils are absolutely hammered by injuries right now, which has opened up room for McLeod to get a look. If the team wants only to use him as a centre it might be hard for him to crack next season’s roster that should feature Nico Hischier, Pavel Zacha and Travis

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Zajac down the middle. It might be better to keep McLeod in the AHL for a second full season first.

Michael McLeod's first eight games:

• 42.4 Corsi For% (5v5)

• four shots on goal

• four chances (two high-danger)

McLeod's last 6 games:

• 47.4 Corsi For% (5v5)

• 11 shots on goal

• 10 chances (seven high-danger)

Results aren't there yet but he seems to be progressing.

— Todd Cordell (@ToddCordell) March 22, 2019

ERIK BRANNSTROM AND VITALI ABRAMOV, OTTAWA SENATORS

These were the two big prospects picked up by the Senators at the deadline and though Abramov is more of a project with a good base of skills they hope will lead to NHL production, Brannstrom is the blue chip, can’t-miss player. If he whiffs, Ottawa’s whole rebuild plan will take a big hit.

“To win a Stanley Cup, I believe you have to have four or five superstar types all around the same young age — in their mid-20s, at the most — and a very, very hot top-flight goalie,” owner Eugene Melnyk said Thursday on the FAN 590 in Toronto.

The Senators are banking on Brannstrom being one of those four or five players and, along with Thomas Chabot, is a good start to what looks like a dynamic top of the defence corps down the road. Brannstrom’s been up and down twice with the Senators already, but doesn’t have a point yet in two games. The 15th overall pick in the 2017 draft, Brannstrom may be a top 10 pick if it was conducted again.

Abramov had a very successful junior career in the QMJHL, winning rookie of the year in his first season and being named MVP in his second. But there’s a reason he slipped to the third round of the NHL Draft. Not only is he on the small side at five-foot-nine, 172 pounds, his skating has been a bit of a weakness at the pro level and something that needs to improve. But since he played most of his junior career right in Ottawa’s backyard in Gatineau, GM Pierre Dorion should know the player rather well. He got into his first game Thursday night and was minus-3 against Calgary in 13:52 of ice.

Myers was never drafted and actually went to Calgary for a tryout, but was let go by the team without a contract. The Philadelphia Flyers saw something worth investing in, though, and he became mainstream among Canadian hockey fans in 2016 when he cracked the WJC roster. A big, lanky defenceman, Myers could be yet another exciting young blue-liner on a team that already boasts Shayne Gostisbehere, Ivan Provorov and Travis Sanheim, who himself has taken a critical step up in 2018-19.

Flyers interim coach Scott Gordon knows Myers well because the two were together in AHL Lehigh before Dave Hakstol was fired earlier in the season and Gordon was moved up. It’s yet to be determined if Gordon will return to the same NHL job next season, but he’s seen the growth in Myers’ game.

“I would say, by the middle of November, I felt like Phil was ready to play up here in Philly and would do a good job,” Gordon told NHL.com. “He just had to wait for his opportunity, but I felt pretty confident. The consistency in terms of the things we worked on his first year was definitely at that next level to where I thought he’d be ready when the call came.”

TEDDY BLUEGER, PITTSBURGH PENGUINS

The Penguins are always looking for cheap contributors to complement their big players, and GM Jim Rutherford has made various attempts over the past two years to acquire a third line centre — from Riley Sheahan and Derick Brassard last season, to Jared McCann this season. The latest to get a shot in that role is Blueger, a second-rounder from the 2012 draft who’s just now getting his opportunity.

He’s had a couple call-ups this season and has shown well across 21 games, recording four goals and seven points. The Penguins have scored 61 per cent of the 5-on-5 goals when he’s been on the ice and he seems to have some chemistry with Phil Kessel over the brief period they’ve shared a line. If that continues, Blueger would be a good bet to crack the team out of camp next fall.


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Sportsnet.ca / Kings' Kovalchuk: 'I don’t have a chance' playing under coach Desjardins

Emily Sadler | March 23, 2019, 1:31 AM

After being left out of the Los Angeles Kings‘ lineup for the second time in three games, Ilya Kovalchuk has spoken — and he didn’t mince words.

The veteran forward, listed as a healthy scratch under interim head coach Willie Desjardins last Saturday against the Florida Panthers and again Thursday versus the San Jose Sharks, openly questioned his coach’s strategy and wasn’t afraid to voice his displeasure about sitting out.

“It’s horrible,” Kovalchuk told The Athletic‘s Lisa Dillman on Friday (subscription required). “That’s the worst. But [Desjardins] didn’t play young guys. He plays seven D. That’s his new strategy.”

Desjardins’ decision to ice an extra defenceman in place of Kovalchuk was a bit of a head-scratcher, considering the usual motivation for scratching veterans at the end of a lost season typically centres around wanting to get a closer look at some AHL call-ups.

“What you can do? That’s his decision and he’s the head coach – 10 more games. What else we can do. Just practice hard and show the young kids that that thing can happen to anybody. You just have to keep going,” said Kovalchuk.

Hello from Staples Center.

The scratches : Phaneuf, Kovalchuk and Brodzinski.

Still can't understand the latter one …

— lisa dillman (@reallisa) March 22, 2019

The Kings have struggled from the start of the season and with the exception of a few hot streaks — for both Kovalchuk individually and the team as a whole — the 2018-19 campaign has seen the Pacific club spend most of its time in the league’s basement. A strong start for Kovalchuk quickly petered out, as has his ice time — a trend especially noticeable since Desjardins took the helm after the firing of John Stevens just a month into the season.

“Still we were winning games, we were right there,” Kovalchuk, who has 14 goals and 17 assists through 60 games this year, told

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Dillman. “After Willie came here, I don’t have a chance. I play five, six minutes a game.”

Now with a record sitting at 26-39-8 with nine games to go and no playoff hopes in sight, the Kings’ disappointing season is essentially in the books.

The 36-year-old, who returned to the NHL last summer when he signed a lucrative three-year deal with the Kings worth $18.75 million, was expected to play alongside Anze Kopitar — and while he did get some time on his captain’s wing, it didn’t last.

“A few games I play with Kopi,” Kovalchuk said. “We did well. We score all five games and then [Desjardins] decide to change and I never play again, much. That’s the way he sees the situation.

“Like I said, he’s the head coach and he’s responsible for result.”


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Sportsnet.ca / Maple Leafs respond to Senators owner Eugene Melnyk ripping their rebuild

Luke Fox | March 22, 2019, 2:24 PM

TORONTO – There is a saying going around regarding people in glass houses, but forgive Eugene Melnyk if he can’t hear it over the clatter of all the stones he’s been stuffing in his pockets.

During a news-talk radio appearance on Ottawa’s CFRA 580 Friday morning (Listen in full here), the Ottawa Senators owner shifted focus from the topic of his own club’s rebuild to offer a not-so-friendly critique of a divisional rival.

“I’m from Toronto originally as well,” Melnyk told host Bill Carroll, an admitted Leafs fan. “I’ve spent the past 15, 16 years now owning the Sens, and I dropped that affiliation very quickly.

“Look, they’re stuck. They cannot — OK, I better not say what I was gonna say. They’re going to have a tough time winning a Stanley Cup without defence, because they’re hitting the cap. They can’t bring anybody new in. So, they’re stuck. And that’s where you have to be extremely careful.

“Mistakes were made. Somebody forgot about defence.”

What was he going to say but decided better?

As Melnyk seeks to construct his own championship-calibre roster through drafting and developing, his public criticism of his financially stout provincial rival — a highly unusual, ill-advised play — touched a nerve and may have thrown a tank of gasoline on the rather quiet fire that has become the Battle of Ontario, with one team ranked sixth overall and the other mired in last place.

“That’s funny,” said Leafs top defenceman Morgan Rielly, when a reporter relayed Melnyk’s comments. “I don’t really have any comment on that except it’s pretty funny.”

The Senators, it feels relevant to note, rank 31st overall in goals allowed (3.7 per game) and 31st in shots allowed (36.1 per game). They traded away two-time Norris winner Erik Karlsson, arguably the best defenceman in hockey, at training camp.

The Maple Leafs, for comparison, rank 16th in goals allowed (2.99) and 23rd in shots allowed (33).

The Sens did, however, trounce Toronto Saturday 6-2.

A weekly deep dive into the biggest hockey news in the world with hosts Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek. New episodes every Thursday.

Toronto’s blue-line depth has fallen under increased scrutiny since last week when the Leafs surrendered 23 goals over an ugly four-game span as core D-men Travis Dermott (shoulder) and Jake Gardiner (back) rehabilitate their injuries.

“That’s just what [Melnyk] thinks. I don’t necessarily agree with that,” said long-serving Leaf Nazem Kadri, part of the NHL’s third-most productive offence.

“You’ve got to work with the people you have. We’ve been given the privilege to have that offence, to have that excitement. I think we’ve been pretty solid defensively except in that last little stretch we had — it was pretty brutal — but in the bigger picture, I think we can dial in on both ends of the ice.”

Kadri noted Dermott’s return to practice Friday (albeit in a red, non-contact sweater) and that in Tuesday’s loss to Nashville (20 shots allowed) and Wednesday’s victory in Buffalo (24 shots allowed), Toronto limited its opposition to fewer than 25 shots per game.

“Which is pretty exceptional compared to the offence that’s in the league,” Kadri said. “If we can continue that and put up three or four goals a game, I think we’ll be alright.”

To Melnyk’s point, the Maple Leafs have already committed $46.92 million (or a projected 57 per cent) in salary cap space to its forwards for 2019-20 — and that’s prior to signing RFAs Mitch Marner, Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson, all of whom are enjoying career seasons and will be due significant raises.

“I’m in this to win, and to win, you know what you have to do,” said Melnyk, referring to his own franchise. “You have to have a young, vibrant team, you have to have the superstars, and you’re gonna have to pay them. If you don’t pay them, somebody else will.”

With top-four defenders Jake Gardiner and Ron Hainsey both scheduled to walk, there is widely accepted sense that something has to give.

“We’ve got people questioning everything we do,” said Leafs coach Mike Babcock, when asked about Melnyk’s commentary.

“The great thing about our organization is, we’ve got so much fan support because we’ve got all you guys questioning everything we do. I think you get paid to question everything we do. And you [the media] get paid to sell — I think that’s what your jobs are. So, whatever you gotta do, I don’t spend much time worrying about it.

“We’ve got an unbelievable owner here in Larry Tanenbaum, and we’re blessed to have him. How’s that?”

The Maple Leafs will travel to Ottawa on March 30 to play Melynk’s rebuilding Senators.


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Sportsnet.ca / Rieder 'offended' by Oilers CEO's criticism: 'It's disappointing'

Emily Sadler | March 22, 2019, 8:55 PM

The 2018-19 season has not been kind to Tobias Rieder. Already mired in a season-long scoring drought on a struggling team, the Edmonton Oilers forward now finds himself facing questions about

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the public criticism aimed his way by the team’s CEO, Bob Nicholson.

“You look at it and you kind of can’t believe it,” Rieder said of his reaction to reading Nicholson’s comments. “I feel like it’s disappointing and I’m offended by it. I’m the first one to admit that I [haven’t had] a good year and it has not been an easy season for me. It’s been hard but I’m still going out there and giving 100 per cent every time I’m on the ice every game and try to help the team win.”

Nicholson was openly critical of Rieder’s performance this year during a season-ticket holders’ event in Edmonton Thursday morning, telling those in attendance that the club would not be re-signing Rieder and even going so far as to say that, “if Toby Rieder would have scored 10 or 12 goals we’d probably be in the playoffs.”

He apologized to Rieder later Thursday — which was accepted by his player — and admitted to Sportsnet’s Mark Spector that he “screwed up.”

“I promised I’d talk until all the questions were done. I don’t look back on that in a negative way,” Nicholson told Spector Thursday night ahead of the Oilers’ game against the Columbus Blue Jackets. “But where I got offside in my comment is that Toby wouldn’t be here next year. That, if he would have scored 12 or 15 goals, we’d be in the playoffs. That’s wrong for me to say that.”

Bob Nicholson reached out to Toby Rieder again today. Apologized in person. Also apologized to the Oilers’ leadership group to admit his fault.

— John Shannon (@JSportsnet) March 22, 2019

Rieder, 26, signed a one-year, $2-million deal with Edmonton last summer. The German-born winger was coming off a 12-goal campaign at the time, split between the Arizona Coyotes and Los Angeles Kings, and his deal with the Oilers was deemed a smart signing for a team looking to complement its stars with scoring depth. Rieder registered a career-high 16 goals with the Coyotes in 2016-17. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

“It was tough to read that somebody got singled out like that and kind of thrown under the bus but it is what it is now,” Rieder said. “I’m not proud of the season I’m having and like I said, I’m the first one to admit that I’m not playing to my capabilities. I think it went a little too far and I think Bob knows that too.”

Of course, it’s not just Rieder who has been struggling offensively this year. The Oilers as a whole have not lived up to expectations. The club ranks 20th in goals scored this season and have a goal differential of minus-35. Though not yet ruled out of the playoffs with a current record of 33-34-7, the Oilers have a tough road ahead if they’re to sneak into the picture.

“I thought the timing was a bit weird, we’re still in the race for the playoffs,” Rieder said of Nicholson’s comments. “I’m still going to go out there and play my heart out and play for the guys and my friends in the locker room and do my best to help the team win.”


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Sportsnet.ca / Blue Jackets' deadline moves on brink of falling through

Mark Spector March 22, 2019, 5:02 PM

EDMONTON — The reality is, Jarmo Kekalainen’s big gamble is already halfway in the ditch. Because only making the playoffs — then getting steam-rolled by Tampa — isn’t enough, in a town that has not seen the second round of the playoffs since it came into the league in 2000.

So, with apologies to the Montreal Canadiens and their fans, we are a little disappointed at how poorly Kekalainen’s coach and players have rewarded the Blue Jackets GM for the courage he showed at the recent trading deadline, convincing ownership to push all of their chips into the middle of the table.

It would have been an easy out, with goalie Sergei Bobrovsky and superstar winger Artemi Panarin having signaled they will test unrestricted free agency at season’s end, to deal them both off at the deadline for draft picks and prospects, and cash in another season in a city that will turn its attention to Buckeyes football any week now.

But that’s the misnomer here.

This isn’t one of those organizations that has taken the easy way out, and it’s not a fan base that would accept that. The Blue Jackets have built a good hockey culture in Ohio, and fuelled with blockbuster deals like Seth Jones for Ryan Johansen. Columbus, which will always be an Ohio State Buckeyes town and Jack Nicklaus’ hometown first, has found ample room in its sporting soul for its hockey team.

Now, it’s time for John Tortorella, Matt Duchene, and the rest of the millionaires to give back.

“We’ve talked enough,” Tortorella said after a 4-1 loss in Edmonton on Thursday. “We’ve talked about a lot of different things here and it’s not rhetoric, it’s not panic, it’s not… We just have to have some sort of sense of urgency to try to get back into this (race) here or we have no chance.”

A general manager’s work is complete after the deadline, and we can’t remember the last time a team made such an overt investment on its current roster, when the opportunity existed to opt for the long-term play. Since the Feb. 25 deadline, Kekalainen’s reward has been a 5-7-1 record — including 4-0 and 4-1 losses to Edmonton.

“We’ve just got to play better,” Blue Jackets defenseman Seth Jones told the Columbus Dispatch after the latest loss. “I mean, you look at the game tonight, (the Oilers) are playing for nothing and we’re playing for something – and that’s not what it looks like.

“Something’s got to change here.”

Kekalainen has assembled what appears to be an elite roster of players. But are they players ready to be an elite team?

Tortorella, speaking before the loss in Edmonton, belied a sense that the moment Kekalainen has presented might be too much for some of these players.

“It’s been a funky time since the deadline, as far as losing ourselves a little bit,” Tortorella admitted. “Integration of the new players, I don’t think that’s been a problem. I think some guys have added pressure on themselves, when it’s said that now they’re supposed to win some rounds.”

It’s not often that a coach will plant that seed of doubt, when it comes to how much game his key players have. But Tortorella was right: The Jackets choked in Edmonton, putting up just 20 shots on net and showing themselves unable to handle the Connor McDavid-Leon Draisaitl entry, which overwhelmed the Jackets in both losses to Edmonton.

“It’s a strange dynamic with athletes. No matter how strong-minded they need to be to play at this level, playing (under) different expectations for some guys, it sometimes affects their game,” Tortorella said. “They’re good players. These are good players. We’re down to short strokes now, with (now eight) games left. We

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can talk about scoring chances… We have to find a way to will ourselves to results here.”

The Blue Jackets have been a playoff team in each of the past two seasons, but dropped a point behind Montreal with eight games to play heading into the weekend. From above, Kekalainen must be looking down at the roster he showed such faith in, and wondering.

• How can Panarin have just one goal since the deadline?

• How can Duchene have only three goals and six points since being acquired from Ottawa 15 games ago?

• How can 64-point man Cam Atkinson go dry now, with just one assist and no goals in his past six games?

Maybe Kekalainen wasn’t just showing faith in his roster by making those deadline moves? Perhaps, by adding Ryan Dzingel, Duchene and defenceman Adam McQuaid, he fixed something that wasn’t broken?

Maybe, he simply messed up the chemistry?

“I just feel like we’ve got a piano on our back right now as a group and everyone’s kind of feeling it,” said Duchene, who has made the playoffs twice in his nine seasons while not scoring a post-season goal. “And the hardest thing is we’re not scoring, so we don’t have that confidence that we can outscore teams and come back in games. We’ve got to find that somewhere. I don’t know how we do it, but we’ve got to find it and it’s got to come ASAP.

“I mean, we don’t have any time to mess around.”


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Sportsnet.ca / Jay Beagle loves Canucks' compete level, optimistic about future

Iain MacIntyre March 22, 2019, 4:34 PM

VANCOUVER – This time a year ago, veteran centre Jay Beagle was preparing for the Washington Capitals’ long march to the Stanley Cup. Now, he’s getting ready for another one with the Vancouver Canucks.

Insert punchline here.

No, the 33-year-old has not lost his mind over the Canucks’ surprising 4-0-1 winning streak that has made making next month’s Stanley Cup playoffs only slightly less impossible for the NHL team.

Beagle knew what he was getting into when he left the champion Capitals to sign a free-agent contract last July with the rebuilding Canucks. Through the jarring ups and downs of his first season in Vancouver, amid the blowtorch scrutiny of a desperate Canadian market that can be equally angry and adoring, Beagle hasn’t lost sight of the big picture and why he came.

"Just making the playoffs should never be the goal, never be the mindset," Beagle told Sportsnet. "This is about winning a Stanley Cup. And whether it’s two, three, four, six years down the road with this team, that’s the goal. That’s what you have to stay focussed on.

"You never want to look too far in the future, but that’s what you’re building towards – this team winning a Stanley Cup. Down the stretch here, that’s what has to continue to be the message: build our game as a group and as individuals for the future."

There’s an old joke on the West Coast that the only Stanley Cup the Canucks will ever see is the athletic supporter worn by former player Stan Smyl, now a senior advisor to general manager Jim Benning.

Until last week, the Canucks were as near to last place in the Western Conference as the final wild-card playoff spot and had one regulation win in 17 games. Stanley Cup? How about they play .500 hockey first?

But you can sort of understand Beagle’s optimism.

With Elias Pettersson, Bo Horvat and Brock Boeser, the Canucks have three foundational forwards who are driving the attack now and should continue to get better. Another potential cornerstone, dynamic defenceman Quinn Hughes, has been medically cleared to start skating after arriving last week from the University of Michigan with a bone bruise in his foot.

Goalie Jacob Markstrom has been one of the NHL’s best the last 3 ½ months and looks capable of one day taking the Canucks on a playoff run. But there are still missing pieces, especially on defence and the wings.

"It’s not like I was coming into this unprepared," Beagle said of joining the Canucks, who have soldiered through slumps of 1-10-2 and 4-10-3. "I knew that. Management and coaching staff were very honest with me when I was meeting with them (last summer) about where this team is at. To tell you the truth, I’ve had a lot of fun. It’s been a great year with the guys and the way we compete every game.

"The results of this year were nothing I was really looking at. Obviously, I want to win every game I can. We’re all competitors, all want to win every single game. It’s hard to fall asleep after a loss. It’s not easy, but what I’ve learned throughout my career is that it’s in those difficult moments when you can go either one way or the other. You let it get you down and your game deteriorates, or you grow from it and continue to build your game from that adversity."

Ryan Dixon and Rory Boylen go deep on pucks with a mix of facts and fun, leaning on a varied group of hockey voices to give their take on the country’s most beloved game.

Based on the last five games, the Canucks are still growing. If they can extend their points streak this weekend, through difficult back-to-back home games against the Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue Jackets, there can be a more serious discussion about the playoffs.

As of Friday’s practice at the University of B.C., the Canucks were four points out with eight games remaining and four teams to pass for the final playoff spot. And they don’t hold the tie-breaker on anyone.

But what Beagle loves, what he said he saw from the first month of the season, is how his team competes.

"I love that we have a real will to win," he said. "We’re still learning how to win and what it takes to win, especially in hard moments and at hard times. But the will is there. That’s a hard thing to have. It is. I’ve been on great teams that were still learning about that. But with this team, we have that will to win. So it’s a matter of finding out how to win. That comes with experience."

The Canucks are getting that, too.

"Jay’s been really good for us," Benning said. "He’s done a lot of stuff nobody sees, working with our young players and setting an example in the dressing room. Our team hasn’t quit all year. We went through a couple of bad stretches. But there weren’t many games where I could say our players didn’t work hard and compete."


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Sportsnet.ca / Deadline pickups have helped Julien bring balance to Canadiens

Eric Engels March 22, 2019, 3:35 PM

MONTREAL — It wasn’t immediately obvious in the aftermath of the NHL’s trade deadline what the value was in adding a few fourth-liners to a Montreal Canadiens team that was lacking in premiere talent, but it’s abundantly clear now it was about achieving balance.

Canadiens coach Claude Julien has had an easier time finding it with Nate Thompson and Jordan Weal than he did before they arrived in Montreal. And though it took some time for that to be the case, both players settling onto a line with two-time, 20-goal scorer Paul Byron has helped Julien spread the minutes around on offence over the team’s last three games.

On Friday, the coach explained why that approach has led to two convincing wins over the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Islanders after a hard-fought loss to the Chicago Blackhawks.

“I think we’ve said all year [that] in order for us to have success, we need everybody going,” Julien said. “We’re not a team that can lean on three, four players and say, ‘They’ll carry us.’ We don’t have that. We’re all aware of that. We all know that. We all respect that part of it. That doesn’t make us a bad hockey club and it doesn’t make them bad hockey players.

“By having balance, it’s allowed us, the last couple of games, to really play well on both sides of the puck. And we’ve been able to score, we’ve been able to keep the puck out of our own net, so right now that’s working.”

The versatility both Weal and Thompson have brought to the table has helped make it possible. The former has shown he can contribute on the power play, the latter has been dynamic on the penalty kill, and both players are well above 50 per cent in the faceoff circle this season.

A weekly deep dive into the biggest hockey news in the world with hosts Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek. New episodes every Thursday.

Weal has managed two goals and four points in eight games since coming over from the Arizona Coyotes on deadline day, while Thompson has recorded four assists and helped the Canadiens kill off 41 of 48 penalties since being traded from the Los Angeles Kings for a 2019 fourth-round pick 18 games ago.

With Byron, they form a line Julien can trust at even strength against just about anyone.

“There’s a little bit of everything there,” said Julien after the Canadiens beat the Islanders 4-0 on Thursday. “There’s experience, there’s speed, there’s skill and on faceoffs, you have a righty and a lefty.”

On Friday, Julien expanded on the thought and said, “They’re giving us good performances. They have good scoring chances every game. They’re spending a lot of time in the offensive zone. Those players — one of them is on the power play, the others are on the penalty kill — all three of those players are very useful. They’re a good fourth line, if you want to call them that. For me, I give them more credit than being just a fourth line. When you see the ice time, you can see we have good balance on offence.”

Looking at the breakdown from Thursday’s game, there was very little variance in even-strength ice time among Canadiens forwards. The line of Jonathan Drouin, Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Joel Armia, which produced two of the team’s goals, was used the least — with

Drouin and Armia playing 10:51 and 10:57, respectively, and Kotkaniemi playing 11:51 — and the line of Artturi Lehkonen, Max Domi and Andrew Shaw topped out at roughly 14:30. Meanwhile, there was less than a minute’s difference in usage of the Canadiens’ top line of Tomas Tatar, Phillip Danault and Brendan Gallagher, and their fourth line.

The hope, as Julien explained it, is that it translates into the team being able to maintain its speed-game and its energy as it attempts to close out back-to-back weekend games against the Buffalo Sabres and Carolina Hurricanes with wins.

“I need to be in a position to use all my players,” said Julien. “I think over the last couple of games the team played well as a whole and I didn’t have much reason to cut down on anyone’s ice time. It helps us to be able to use all four lines and all six defenceman — especially when we have three games in four nights. By the third game that’s where it becomes that much more important.”

That third game, against a Hurricanes team that’s only two points ahead of the Canadiens and resting in the first wild-card position in the Eastern Conference, is the most monumental of Montreal’s season. It’s one they seem better-suited to compete in with the depth they acquired in the lead up to the deadline and the balance they’ve achieved of late.


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Sportsnet.ca / Leafs' Babcock, Dubas still growing their relationship

Chris Johnston | March 22, 2019, 3:56 PM

TORONTO — Mike Babcock could watch a tornado rip through his neighbourhood and see it as a chance to build something better and stronger in its place.

Metaphorically, at least, that’s how the veteran head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs is approaching the sudden interest in the state of his relationship with rookie general manager Kyle Dubas.

The cyclone started with a series of Babcock’s recent comments to reporters — some that could be interpreted as public shots at Dubas — and developed into a fierce media storm after my colleague Elliotte Friedman delved into the topic in his popular “31 Thoughts” blog this week, asking: “…is anyone else wondering if this marriage is in trouble?”

Babcock met the issue head-on following Friday’s practice, not entirely pouring cold water on the premise that he and Dubas could have a better working relationship, but also clarifying that he wasn’t second-guessing his boss when discussing the organization’s need for better depth or a more balanced set of right- and left-shot defencemen.

“You’d like to say everything perfect and sometimes maybe you don’t. But the intent,” said Babcock, trailing off. “You know, Dubie and my relationship isn’t as good now as it’s going to be four years from now. Mine with Ken Holland wasn’t as good in my first year as it was in my 10th year, or Bryan Murray my first wasn’t as [good as] my third, or Lou [Lamoriello].

“It takes awhile just to keep building your relationship. This right here, this little opportunity has been provided for me and it will just make us better.”

Now Babcock is no dummy.

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He arrived in Toronto on the richest coaching contract in NHL history, but he knows it will be up to Dubas to determine how much of the remaining four years after this one he gets to continue pulling the levers from behind the Leafs bench.

The team’s growth and performance, first and foremost, will inform that decision. But intangibles, such as his willingness to execute the front office’s vision, could ultimately come in to play as well.

On “Wednesday Night Hockey,” my colleague Brian Burke asserted that Babcock’s comment about a lack of organizational depth bordered on insubordination. The coach insists he meant nothing more than to point out that the Leafs have a ways to go before catching up with Tampa, the “model” franchise in that regard.

“I know Dubie and I talk all the time, we’ve talked about this since this happened,” said Babcock. “If any of my comments in any way — because then I read the article and I don’t read it like that, at all — but if any of my comments in any way hurt anybody [it wasn’t intended].

“We talked about this the other day with our players, when I come to talk to you people, if anybody’s wife’s reading it the next day and they feel hurt then you’ve done the wrong thing. That’s not my intent.”

Babcock speaks to reporters about 250 times each season — twice on game days, and again after each practice — producing roughly 50 hours of recorded answers in the process.

During his Friday afternoon session, there seemed to be some acknowledgement that he occasionally wades into territory beyond his purview. This is nothing new, of course. He was famous for poking his head in to player personnel decisions during his days with Holland in Detroit and, while working under Lamoriello last season, he’d repeatedly point out when opposing teams had more centre depth than the Leafs.

To some degree, it’s all part and parcel with employing one of the game’s top coaches. The man is hard-wired to push and push and push everyone around him. Even though his objectives aren’t any different than those of Dubas or Brendan Shanahan or other key members of the front office, he won’t always share a vision for how they can be best achieved.

Sportsnet NOW gives you access to over 500 NHL games this season, blackout-free, including Hockey Night in Canada, Rogers Hometown Hockey, Scotiabank Wednesday Night Hockey, the entire 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs and more.

However, Babcock also remembers an important lesson imparted on him while coaching the Anaheim Mighty Ducks more than 15 years ago.

“My first general manager in the National Hockey League was a gentleman named Bryan Murray and one of the first things he told me is, he says: ‘As a coach and a general manager, never let anyone get in between you and if you do you’re going to be in trouble,”’ said Babcock. “So that relationship’s so important.”

In order to build more trust with a boss 22 years his junior, it might be best to keep some of the internal debates internal. The path to smoothing over any suspected cracks in the Leafs’ foundation starts with a more unified front from the daily voice of the team.

“I think [internal debate is] real important to have,” said Babcock. “I think people got to think different ways. But I also think publicly that’s not the idea. Publicly, you know what, every year — or a couple times a year — I go to the media, I don’t know, twice a day, sometimes three times a day it seems like.

“There’s going to be a shit storm once and awhile, there just is.”

This one, too, shall pass.

But what gets left in its wake is what’s truly important here.


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TSN.CA / Babcock addresses rumours of rift with Dubas

Kristen Shilton

TSN Toronto reporter Kristen Shilton checks in daily with news and notes on the Maple Leafs. The team held an 11 a.m. practice at MasterCard Centre on Friday.

Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock didn’t know there were theories mounting in the media about a rift between him and general manager Kyle Dubas until someone else alerted him to the news earlier this week.

That's how Babcock discovered that his comments from last week about the Leafs’ lack of depth compared to the NHL’s top teams like Tampa helped fuel the speculation. He did his best to diffuse the perceived issue on Friday

“Whatever people speculate or think, I don’t think that’s the case,” Babcock said after the Leafs practice. “I know Dubie and I talk all the time. We’ve talked about this since this happened. That relationship is so important. There’s going to be a [expletive] storm once in a while. There just is. You’d like to say everything perfect and maybe sometimes you don’t, but the intent [matters].”

Babcock never expressly denied tension with Dubas over the course of lengthy answers on the topic, but wanted to be clear he wasn’t trying to attack any one person in his reflection on the Leafs’ personnel.

“If there was any slap at anyone [in what I said], it sure wasn’t intended. That’s not what I meant to say,” Babcock said. “We have to keep improving our depth. That’s what Dubie is trying to do, that’s what [senior director of player evaluation] Jimmy Paliafito is doing, our pro scouts, myself, [Toronto Marlies’ head coach] Sheldon [Keefe] developing players [in the AHL]; we’re all trying to do it so we can get to be like these [other] teams.”

This is the first season Babcock and Dubas have worked together in their current roles, since Dubas took over for Lou Lamoriello in May. Babcock hasn’t always eased the first-time NHL GM into the fire.

When Dubas acquired left-shot defenceman Jake Muzzin from the Los Angeles Kings in January, at a time when the Leafs already had five left-shot defencemen and really needed a right-handed shooter, Babcock said, “It’s not perfect. It’s what we got. It’s what was available and we’re going to make it work.”

It takes time, according to Babcock, before a coach and GM get into a good rhythm. While the Leafs’ tandem may not be there yet, the coach isn’t letting this blip distract from building a better rapport for the future.

“Dubie and my relationship isn’t as good now as it’s going to be four years from now,” Babcock explained. “Mine with [Detroit GM] Ken Holland wasn’t as good my first year as it was in my 10th year, [Anaheim GM] Bryan Murray in the first as it was in my third. It’ll just make [Dubas and I] better.”

Babcock addresses his relationship with Dubas

As the Maple Leafs try to emerge from a low point, rumours have emerged of a rift between head coach Mike Babcock and general manager Kyle Dubas. Babcock addressed those rumours on Friday. Kristen Shilton has more.

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Slowly but surely, the Leafs’ most important injured bodies are getting closer to a return.

Travis Dermott participated in his first practice on Friday since injuring his shoulder on Feb. 27, while Jake Gardiner took part in an on-ice session with Leafs’ skills coach Darryl Belfry. Joined by Dermott for the first half of that workout prior to the Leafs’ team practice, it was the first time the media had seen Gardiner go through a lengthy 40-minute session since being ruled out with a back injury, also on Feb. 27.

“That’s a huge deal for us,” Babcock said of their progress. “On the backend, there’s no question, those guys are both good puck movers, good players, and we miss them. In the National Hockey League, we talk about all these positions we want, you need a goalie, but you need a D.”

Dermott had been training for over a week on his own and with skating consultant Barb Underhill before getting clearance to return to practice. He was wearing a red non-contact sweater throughout on Friday, but didn’t shy away from getting involved along the boards and taking a few bumps.

He said afterwards that, at least conditioning-wise, he couldn’t ask to feel much better than he does now.

“I feel really good,” he said. “The trainers here have been working me pretty hard in the gym. I was out there skating and felt a lot better than I would in a regular practice, so I don’t know if I’m in better shape or just excited to be back with the guys, but I feel good.”

The 23-year-old declined to get into the specifics of what occurred when Edmonton Oilers’ forward Brad Malone flattened him with the injury-causing hit back in February, but said he isn’t harbouring any ill will.

“It was just kind of an awkward play where I fell on my shoulder kind of weird. It was just a hockey play,” he explained. “I got all these messages saying, ‘[Malone] should have been suspended’ and all this stuff. I don’t know. It was a weird play. I’m not going to hold any grudges on anyone. I’ve been hit way more awkwardly and nothing has happened.”

Dermott said he’ll need a couple more practices before he’s ready to get back in a game, perhaps in time for next Saturday’s tilt in Ottawa. And if all goes well, Dermott hopes Gardiner isn’t too far behind him.

“He’s moving really well,” Dermott said. “I’ve seen him progress exponentially. I’m excited to hopefully have him back not much longer after I come back.”

Frederik Gauthier (foot) also returned to practice after missing the Leafs' last two games.

Leafs Ice Chips: Gardiner, Dermott on the road to recovery

Injured Maple Leafs defenceman Jake Gardiner was back on the ice on Friday morning ahead of practice and was joined by fellow defenceman Travis Dermott. Kristen Shilton has more.

On Friday morning, Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk told radio station CFRA in Ottawa that through Toronto’s recent rebuild, “mistakes were made, because someone forgot about defence” and opined that the team will have a tough time winning a championship with their current blueline.

Member of said Leafs’ blueline aren’t sweating Melnyk’s opinion, though.

“That’s kind of funny, actually,” said Morgan Rielly. “I don’t know. I don’t have much comment on it, except that it’s pretty funny.”

Forward Zach Hyman was similarly nonplused, realizing such targeting comes with the territory of playing in Toronto.

“I didn’t even hear about it. It’s just white noise in the background,” he said. “We don’t really think about what other people say about our team. We just go out there and play our game and keep going.”

Also declining to comment was Babcock, other than to point out that, “We have an unbelievable owner here in Larry Tanenbaum and we’re blessed to have him."

William Nylander and Martin Marincin were both absent from Friday’s practice, battling the flu. While Marincin’s status for Saturday’s game against the New York Rangers wasn’t commented upon by Babcock, the coach did say he expects Nylander to play.

“He wasn’t feeling good, hadn’t been feeling good in the previous games, he played anyway,” Babcock said. “And we just felt it was best to give him the day today.”

Maple Leafs lines at practice:

Hyman-Tavares-Marner

Johnsson-Matthews-Moore

Marleau-Kadri-Kapanen

Ennis-Gauthier-Brown

Petan

Rielly-Hainsey

Muzzin-Zaitsev

Ozhiganov-Holl

Dermott

Andersen

Sparks

TSN.CA LOADED: 03.23.2019

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USA TODAY / Washington Capitals star Braden Holtby won't visit Donald Trump, White House with team

Kevin Allen, USA TODAY Published 12:58 p.m. ET March 22, 2019 | Updated 3:33 p.m. ET March 22, 2019

Goalie Braden Holtby said Friday he will not join his Washington Capitals teammates when they visit President Trump at the White House on Monday to observe last June’s Stanley Cup championship.

“I have to stay true to my values,” Holtby told reporters.

The Capitals told players that the decision on whether to attend the White House event was up to them.

Capitals forward Brett Connolly, has said publicly that he “respectfully declined” the opportunity for a tour of the White House and a private meeting with President Trump. No formal ceremony is planned.

He is skipping the event because friend and former teammate Devante Smith-Pelly, now in the American Hockey League in a salary cap move, was opposed to going.

The two Capitals are not the first NHL players to decline White House invitations. In 2012, championship Boston Bruins goalie Tim

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Thomas did not accompany his team to the White House to meet President Obama.

Holtby, a Canadian, has been an active supporter of LGBT rights.

“My family and myself, we believe in a world where humans are treated with respect regardless of your stature, what you’re born into. ... You’re asked to choose what side you’re on, and I think it’s pretty clear what side I’m on," he said.

Multiple professional championship teams haven't been invited to the White House during the Trump administration after players said

they wouldn't go. The 2017 Pittsburgh Penguins did accept Trump’s invitation.

In the week after winning the Cup, most players told The Washington Post they would visit the White House if invited.

"In the long run, it's not going to affect our team at all," Holtby said about his decision not to go. "We're a close-knit group in here and those things don't affect us a team."

USA TODAY LOADED: 03.23.2019

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