After two Los Angeles Kings dropped F-bombs on him after their Stanley Cup win last season and Andrew Shaw dropped another after Game 1 of the 2013 Stanley Cup Final last week, it was Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask who had a slip on NBC Sports Network after his Game 3 shutout.

One can imagine how tough it is when the ice gets so [poopie] between periods. Plenty of wipeouts as players log minutes.

As an aside, we’re more interested than ever in learning more about Finnish television.

“He’s a key player. But no excuses this time of year,” said captain Jonathan Toews.

But the fact is that Hossa is tied for the team lead in points, and the Chicago offense was punchless – especially on the power play, where Hossa ranks fourth in average ice time.

His loss was significant; the timing of that loss made things downright chaotic.

The Blackhawks were aware that Hossa may not play earlier on Monday, although the star winger participated in practice. He took warmups before Game 3, but was a late scratch.

But despite knowing Hossa was questionable for Game 3, it wasn’t Smith in warmups before the game. Jamal Mayers, a scratch in every playoff game for the Blackhawks, took the warmup.

Why? Speculation is that Quenneville might have been mulling another lineup change. But when Hossa went down, he called a huge audible and opted for Smith, a sparkplug player who can bring some offense.

Smith was told he’d be playing about 20 minutes before the puck dropped.

“I didn’t really know what was going on. I was ready to ride the bike and work out, as we do in the first,” he said.

“It was a scramble to get ready and get warm.”

Smith played 10:23 and was a minus-1. The Blackhawks went 0-for-5 on the power play, and are now 0-for-11 with the man advantage.

So what happened to Hossa? Initial reports that he was injured taking a shot, or being hit with one, in warmups were erroneous. Coach Joel Quenneville said it’s an “upper-body injury” for Hossa.

“We'll say day-to-day. We're hopeful he'll be ready for the next game. It was a game-time decision after the warm-up there. That's when we made the call, after warm-up,” he said.

Even if there was a chance it could happen, the Blackhawks were left scrambling when it did happen. Why choose a player to fill Hossa’s role that didn’t even skate the warmup?

“Benny, he can play both sides of the puck, brings a responsible game. That's what we're looking for,” said Quenneville.

Coach Claude Julien of the Bruins watched the odd drama play out.

“I was surprised as anybody else,” he said. “I can definitely tell you they lost a pretty important player on their roster, but that doesn't mean we change our game. I think it's important we stick with what we believe in.”

The Bruins did, and are up 2-1. The Blackhawks, meanwhile, felt the blow of losing arguably their most consistent forward this postseason, and scrambled to fill the hole.

“It’s happens sometimes when you’re missing one of your best players, but you have find a way to play without him,” said Toews.

Brian Bickell lives my nightmare.

No. 1 Star: Tuukka Rask, Boston Bruins

Rask was nigh unbeatable in Game 2. He was just regular old unbeatable in Game 3, stopping 28 shots for the shutout as the Bruins took the first game at TD Garden by a score of 2-0. There are two ways of looking at his performance: on one hand, the Blackhawks didn't really seem to challenge him. But on the other hand, that might just be because he's in the zone right now and nothing challenges him. Rask has been the story of this series so far.

No. 2 Star: Patrice Bergeron, Boston Bruins

Bergeron got the insurance marker midway through the second, and he had a game-high seven shots. The Bruins' centre also went 24-for-28 in the faceoff circle, winning 8 of 8 versus Michal Handzus and 8 of 10 versus Jonathan Toews.

No. 3 Star: Daniel Paille, Boston Bruins

Paired again with Chris Kelly and Tyler Seguin, Paille was flying in this one. His goal early in the second turned out to be the game-winner. Here it is from view of the scored-upon net:

Honourable mention: Zdeno Chara was his usual steady, excellent self in 25 minutes of icetime... Jaromir Jagr's pass on the Patrice Bergeron goal was fantastic:

Did You Know? Game 3 was just the second time this year that the Blackhawks have been shut out.

Conn Smythe Watch: 1. Tuukka Rask, Boston Bruins; 2. David Krejci, Boston Bruins; 3. Corey Crawford, Chicago Blackhawks; 4. Patrice Bergeron, Boston Bruins; 5. Andrew Shaw, Chicago Blackhawks; 6. Nathan Horton, Boston Bruins; 7. Marian Hossa, Chicago Blackhawks; 8. Zdeno Chara, Boston Bruins; 9. Patrick Kane, Chicago Blackhawks; 10. Jonathan Toews, Chicago Blackhawks.

Dishonourable mention: The Blackhawks' powerplay is abysmal -- 0-for-5 in the game, and 0-for their last 27. When Patrice Bergeron narrowly avoided a puck over glass penalty in the third, both sides breathed a sigh of relief... Chicago struggled something fierce on faceoffs in this one. They won just 16 of 56. Handzus was 0-for-10 and Dave Bollan was 1-for-8.

BOSTON -- Dave Bolland is still looking for the puck that got away.

Believing he was about to clear the puck out of the Chicago Blackhawks' zone, in came Boston Bruins forward Daniel Paille, who lifted Bolland's stick, spun around and fired a shot over Corey Crawford's glove for a 1-0 lead. Patrice Bergeron would add a power play tally 12 minutes later as the Bruins shut out the Blackhawks 2-0 to take a 2-1 series lead in the Stanley Cup Final.

Since Bruins' head coach Claude Julien's "hunch" in Game 2 to put Paille with Chris Kelly and Tyler Seguin, the line has played a role in three of Boston's last four goals. After Paille's overtime winner in Game 2, his goal Monday night put the Blackhawks on their heels.

It was a typical Bruins playoff game: They shutdown Chicago's top stars and Tuukka Rask wasn't challenged by any of the Blackhawks' 27 shots to earn his third shutout of the playoffs. There was no traffic in front. No screens, and plenty of pucks shot directly into the logo on Rask's chest.

Chicago's power play also continued to struggle going 0-for-5. They've failed to score in their last 20 opportunities with the extra man.

Chicago also failed to win the face-off battle, conceding 39 out of 55 draws to the Bruins, with Bergeron winning 24 of 28.

Blackhawks' head coach Joel Quenneville played with his lines once again, this time putting Jonathan Toews with Michael Frolik and Marcus Kruger through the first two periods, but when that failed, the captain was placed alongside Patricks Kane and Sharp for the third period, to no avail. Not having Marian Hossa -- who was scratched after getting injured during warmups -- hurt Chicago's offensive threat, but none of their other weapons were able to step up and challenge Rask.

In the battle of patience versus impatience, patience lost in Game 3. The Blackhawks were guilty of holding onto the puck a second too long looking for better opportunities, while the Bruins -- with the Paille goal as an example -- didn't hesitate to fire away on Crawford.

Sensing that impatience was the way to go, the TD Garden crowd started a We Want the Cup chant after Bergeron's goal in the second period. It may be a bit premature for that rallying cry, but they're halfway there with Game 4 Wednesday night.

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

Elliotte Friedman of Hockey Night in Canada reported that Hossa appeared to injure himself after taking a shot during warm-ups at TD Garden. As opposed to Bruins fans, who usually injure themselves after taking shots after the game (just jokes, people).

Enter Ben Smith, the 24-year-old winger from Winston-Salem, NC, who last saw action on April 27 in a Blackhawks game at the St. Louis Blues, when he scored a goal in 18:21 of ice time. He has 20 regular-season NHL games to his credit, but played in seven Blackhawks playoff games in 2010-11, scoring three goals.

If you think Smith isn’t ready for this, well, Joel Quenneville thinks you’re wrong. From RRStar.com on the Black Aces in May:

“He’s somebody we won’t be afraid to use,” Chicago head coach Joel Quenneville said of forward Ben Smith. “At any point.”

Smith — who’s progress was slowed by hip surgery last year — most likely would have played a more prominent role with the Blackhawks this season had it not been for a broken thumb he suffered two days before the NHL lockout ended. A broken arm six weeks ago set him back as well.

Smith began the game skating with Dave Bolland and Patrick Sharp.

The Bruins and Blackhawks were tied 1-1 entering Game 3 on Monday night.

You bring the insightful thoughts on the game. We bring the funny and the Hamburger Women. That's how this works.

The Boston Bruins "player" is David Portnoy, a.k.a stoolpresidente a.k.a. the man behind the wickedly funny Barstool Sports. The Chicago Blackhawks "player" is Big Cat, the man behind Barstool Chicago. They made the rounds outside the Garden, stopping for as many photo ops as the bear wearing the "KEEP CALM AND BERGERON" T-shirt did.

Honestly, we had no idea "Big Cat" was the nom de plume of George Parros. But it does make sense, given he's a Florida Panther.

Considering Streit would have been the biggest-name defenceman on the market had he made it to July 5 unsigned, it must have taken some serious cash to get him under contract so early, right?

Oh, absolutely. It's a four-year contract, according to reports, that will pay Streit a whopping $5.25 million a season.

(Whoa! That's Dennis Wideman money!)

We remind you that Streit is 35 years old and there is no way to undo this contract -- which is north of both $5 million and reason -- once it's made official.

Someone call Paul Holmgren and remind him the cap is going down.

What makes this incredible overpayment even more incredible is that it can't be made official just yet because, in order to make room for this silliness, the Flyers have to clear other silliness from the books. From the Courier Post:

The issue comes with what can fit within the salary cap’s upper limit. Teams are still operating under the 2012-13 salary cap of $70.2 million until July 5, at which point it becomes $64.3 million. The Flyers will need to shed salary before then, because their cap payroll is $69.812 million.

When the new cap is in play, teams can go over the upper limit by 10 percent until opening night, but July 5 is also the start of free agency this summer. If the Flyers don’t come to an agreement with Streit before then, they lose exclusivity in negotiations and the 10-percent buffer does them no good with him. Also, if the Flyers extend an offer sheet to a restricted free agent or send a qualifying offer to one of their own, that also counts against the cap.

You'll recall, when the deal for Streit's rights was made, we hypothesized -- along with several others -- that this spelled the end of Ilya Bryzgalov and/or Daniel Briere in Philadelphia.

Well, you can consider their amnesty buyouts upgraded from "foreshadowed" to "necessitated". In order for the Flyers to seal this batcrap insane deal -- or do anything else, really -- they have to make a little room.

The amnesty buyout period begins 48 hours after the Stanley Cup Final.

UPDATE: GM Paul Holmgren offered this curious statement on Monday night:

"We continue to have talks with Mark's agent. Although there is nothing to report, we remain confident that we will get something done."

The Flyers need to clear out some salary before they ink Streit. Still ... curious.

For how much? Jean reports the contract will be “in the $2 million per year range,” which is a raise from his $1.8 million annual salary with the Vancouver Canucks.

It’s often said that respect in professional sports between coaches and players started decreasing once the latter began making more money than the former. In some cases, the coach earns more – see Belichick, Bill. But that’s a rarity.

Let’s go with the working theory that AV’s contract has an AAV of $2 million. How many New York Rangers will make less than their coach?

Nine players, actually, for 2013-14:

Brian Boyle ($1.8 million)
Anton Stralman ($1.8 million)
Taylor Pyatt ($1.65 million)
Derek Dorsett ($1.4 million)
Martin Biron ($1.3 million)
Darroll Powe ($1.15 million)
Arron Asham ($1 million)
Chris Kreider ($900,000)
John Moore ($810,000)

With that, we’ll ask one of our podcasting buddy Jeff Marek’s favorite questions: Should there be a salary cap hit for coaches?

• Don Cherry wears a lot of ridiculous suits. [Reddit Hockey]

• Speaking of Don Cherry, he thinks Evgeni Malkin is a loser. "I wouldn’t have that Malkin. I know he’s talented, I know. But to me, he’s a loser, as far as I’m concerned.” I agree. Apart from that all that stuff he's won, he's always losing. [WEEI]

• The Chicago Blackhawks are all about adversity. They love it. Adversity is where it's at. [CSN Chicago]

• Chris Johnston on the brotherhood of the Bruins, just one of many secret societies in New England. [Sportsnet]

• Tuukka Rask says he and Tim Thomas still talk, but refuses to dish on what they talk about. Lame. [NESN]

• Nathan MacKinnon on Zdeno Chara: "That guy probably plugs himself in a night and recharges that way." [Sporting News]

• Toronto Radio broadcaster Dean Blundell crosses the line regarding the death of Oilers' prospect Kristian Pelss. ”How much must it suck playing hockey in Edmonton when you . . . I’m not going back. I mean, you’d rather jump off a bridge in like a war-torn country in a freezing cold river than go back to Edmonton. Shame. I hope they find him. I’ve been to Edmonton. I know what that guy’s talking about.” [Edmonton Journal]

• If you want to move into the top-four at the NHL draft, it's going to be very expensive. [CBC]

• The Senators and Paul MacLean are closing in on an extension, I guess because he's good or whatever. [Ottawa Sun]

• Was Wilt Chamberlain almost traded to the Chicago Bulls for Bobby Hull? [Ball Don't Lie]

• WGN's Pat Tomasulo tries to bring a little love to the people of Boston. They ain't havin' it. [WGN TV]

• A teen hockey player was brutally beaten in a fight. Why? He snowed the goalie. [Buzzing the Net]

• The New York Islanders are trying to entice 2008 draft pick Kirill Petrov to come stateside by guaranteeing him a roster spot. [Islanders Point Blank]

• The KHL will take a 14-day break before the Sochi Olympics. [RSport]

• My takeaway from this article: if the Stanley Cup were a person, we'd all be disgusted by it. [ESPN]

• Former Kings' executive Tim Leiweke, now the president of the Toronto Maple Leafs: "L.A. is not a hockey town." [LA Times]

• Behind the scenes at an NHL arbitration hearing. Really interesting stuff from Jeff Angus here. [Angus Certified]

• Seattle mayor Mike McGinn acknowledges discussions with Gary Bettman. [King 5]

• Hey, remember when the New Jersey Devils were in dire straits financially? Yeah, that never ended. [NY Post]

• The Pittsburgh Penguins problems start with... wait for it... Sidney Crosby. [Days of Y'Orr]

• Finally, here is the 2013 Stanley Cup Final in NHL '94 form:

He scored. He hit. He was a revelation, increasing his overall output in the Final to 13 points in 17 games. Suddenly his name was being mentioned with Ryane Clowe and David Clarkson as free-agent power forwards ready to break the bank.

Then the Boston Bruins arrived in the Stanley Cup Final, and Bickell’s gone silent: Zero points, a demotion from the top line and a performance in Game 2 that saw him with just two shot attempts in 19:14.

Bickell was on track to be a playoff hero if the Blackhawks win the Cup, and reap the benefits. Did that added pressure weigh on him?

“No,” he said, hours before Game 3 in Boston on Monday. "I just play it game by game here. We’re going to figure out the situation at the end of the season. I’m playing on the team, playing to win.”

Playing, but pressing.

Bickell said the last round was an unbelievable run for him. “Everything I touched was hitting the back of the net,” he said.

But the Bruins are a different defensive animal, especially in their physicality, and Bickell’s still trying to find a way to adjust after being bumped from Jonathan Toews’ wing down to a line with Dave Bolland and Andrew Shaw, with whom Bickell played plenty during the season.

“I still think he has to simplify it,” said Coach Joel Quenneville. “Keep the puck going forward, put it at the net, don't have to try to make plays. When you try to make plays, the other team takes advantage of it. I think simplifying it will be more effective and efficient.”

That message was parroted by Bickell: “I need to get back to being more simple. There are times when I’m being too cute.”

There shouldn’t be anything cute about Bickell’s game. It should be the kind of raw power the Blackhawks saw in Round 3, the kind of defense-disrupting play that made life hell for the Kings.

Bickell recognizes this.

“I need to be more physical. Be harder on their D. Make them turn,” he said. “I need to bring it tonight.”

It's a Monday edition of Marek vs. Wyshynski beginning at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, and we're talking about the following and more:

Special Guest Stars: TD Garden, whose sounds you'll hear as Wysh is on site.

•  Previewing Game 3 between the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks.

• The worst votes of the NHL Awards.

• Coyotes to Seattle reaches fever pitch.

• Brendan Shanahan, Flames executive?

Question of the Day: Who is the most overrated player in the Stanley Cup Final?
Email at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or hit us on Twitter with the hashtag #MvsW to @wyshynski or @jeffmarek.

Click here for the Sportsnet live stream or click the play button above! Click here to download podcasts from the show each day. Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or Feedburner.

Two years later, and two years older, Seguin was going through another dry spell, having potted just one goal through three rounds for the Bruins. But a switch to the third line in Game 2 -- pairing him with Chris Kelly and Daniel Paille -- paid off. The line was a part of both Boston goals as they evened their series with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Bruins head coach Claude Julien said he was playing a "hunch," and that putting Seguin on the third line wasn't so much a demotion as it was just finding a way to get him going offensively.

"As long as he continues to play the way he has, I thought [Saturday night] was an excellent game for him. [He] made some good plays, was there, everywhere around the puck, second effort was there," said Julien.

One of those places Seguin found himself was along the wall in overtime to receive a pass from Johnny Boychuk. He squared up, identified an open Paille, then gave him a cross-ice feed. The play ended with the puck behind Corey Crawford for the game winner.

"We were able to come up big, and for Claude [Julien] to kind of put a guy and have him stick in there, it definitely makes us feel comfortable and confident and good about our game," said Paille.

The line found instant chemistry. It's the kind of adjustment a coach makes during a series that could swing future results. If the trio continues to contribute positively, that's another thing Blackhawks' head coach Joel Quenneville and his staff will need to gameplan against.

Getting Seguin going in the postseason has taken some time, but if Game 2 is any indication, the Bruins' depth just got a bit of rejuvenation.

"He's only a 21-year-old kid; this is his third year," said Julien. "Sometimes patience doesn't mean just for one year, patience means a little more than a year.

"As long as he's growing and getting better, I'm going to keep supporting him."

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

MORE NHL COVERAGE ON YAHOO! SPORTS:

And there probably wasn’t a beer man at yours, either.

Kate Murphy and Sean Dwyer were married on March 30 (here’s the Facebook page). She wore white with a Whalers logo on the train. Dwyer, who grew up a Whalers fan before their relocation to become the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997, wore a green tux with a Whalers logo. The bridesmaids wore Whaler blue. The groomsmen wore Whalers jerseys.

The wedding took place on the ice at Gardner Veteran's Arena in Gardner, Mass., in the presence of friends, family, a Zamboni and – ironically, considering the Whalers’ legacy – a miniature Stanley Cup.

Lest anyone believe this union is an unbalanced one – Whalers fan husband forcing his love of hockey onto his bride’s special day – understand one thing: It was Kate’s idea.

“She knew I was a die hard Whalers fan,” said Dwyer. “It was her idea. I joke with everyone that this was her way to get me commit.”

Kate soon discovered that you give a Whalers’ fan an inch, and he’ll go the extra mile for a hockey-themed wedding.

“I was like, ‘Alright, I want a mascot.’”

The wedding was in the works for about three years, as the couple tried to figure out a theme for their nuptials. Once they agreed on the Whalers, everything fell into place: The foam fingers in lieu of flowers; the Whalers players used as table numbers; the hockey-themed cake; the mascot, who tossed T-shirts into the crowd at the ceremony; and, of course, the beer man handing our suds during the wedding.

The rally towels arrived just weeks before the wedding.

The jerseys? “They’re from China,” Sean admitted.

Oh, and for the record: They walked out at the reception to “Brass Bonanza.”

Sean knew most of his friends would be down with the theme – the most common compliment after the wedding was “that’s so you” – and in fact he plays hockey with many of his guests.

The Stanley Cup at the wedding is signed by all the Whalers from a Hartford fan fest, and is awarded each year to the winning street hockey team in a tournament Sean plays in.

If you ignore the franchise’s unfortunate end in Hartford, the Whalers are an apt symbol of matrimonial bliss. They’re drenched in nostalgia. They’re something those in love with them understand, even if it doesn’t make sense to the outside world. And they’re something for which so many people remain passionate about, even if the last blasts of the “Brass Bonanza” have stopped echoing in the arena.

For Kate Murphy and Sean Dwyer, Remembering the Whale isn’t going to be difficult.

Photos by Mandy Bezio Photography, used with permission.

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

Hockey fans will absolutely hate to hear this, but here it is anyway: There's one thing baseball does way better than hockey, and to which this sport really needs to switch as soon as humanly possible.

The Baseball Writers' Association of America makes a point to publish the ballots of every person who voted for Major League Baseball's awards, and that level of accountability is generally welcomed in the sports world at large. You know exactly who voted for exactly what, and writers who made some of the more absurd picks for the MVP or Cy Young awards have to try to defend those choices as best they can.

The Professional Hockey Writers' Association, however, does not publish the individual ballots of its members, and that they don't is ludicrous. This was a debate that kicked up around the end of the regular season, when some writers, in the interest of transparency and to engender discussion, said who they voted for when it came to a number of awards and often why they did so. That they were occasionally wrong in their voting is to be expected, because no one can get everything right all the time, but at least those writers in particular had the guts to say, "No, I didn't think Sergei Bobrovsky was more valuable to his team than Jonathan Toews," no matter how ridiculous such a statement was.

But that the organization doesn't do so is ridiculous and a little cowardly.

Without this accountability, the practice outwardly it lends itself to ballots for most valuable player being filled out with votes for Eric Staal, Pascal Dupuis and Evgeni Nabokov, none of whom deserve that much recognition. Writers don't have to think about why they put who where, and if they did, they would, perhaps, be a little more judicious.

Interestingly, the Alex Ovechkin pick was the wrong one even if you're going to disqualify Sidney Crosby on the basis that he was injured for the final quarter of the season, but you can at least see why the decision was made. Sometimes guys don't always win the awards they deserve (see also: Jarome Iginla losing to Jose Theodore in 2002).

This is true of Jonas Brodin or Nail Yakupov not finishing in the top three for the Calder voting, and some (presumably Boston-based) writer considering Dougie Hamilton to be the second-best rookie in the league this season. Worse, some moron considered Sheldon Souray, who wasn't the third-best defenseman on his team, to be the fifth-best defenseman in the league this year. Hell, someone else looked at Andrei Markov's season and thought he was worthy of a first-place vote.

For best defenseman in the National Hockey League.

Someone gave Shane Doan, who was suspended for three games last season, a first-place Lady Byng vote. Perhaps most absurd of all, and I swear to you that this is a real thing that actually happened, is that Tyler Bozak received not one but TWO fifth-place votes for the Selke, which last time I checked was supposed to go to the best defensive forward in the League.

These are oversights, or outright incorrect opinions, from writers, and they should have to be answered for. Professional hockey writers, as the name of their job implies, are people who are paid money to watch and think critically about hockey. Most are at the rink every day, they talk to the players, they theoretically watch other teams on television as well.

Votes like these go beyond the traditional complaints of East Coast Bias, and moves into something more insidious: Ignorance.

No one in their right minds, or with a strong understanding of the sport about which they are paid to write, can watch a season's worth of hockey and say to themselves, "Why yes, I did think Patrick Kane was the second-best defensive forward in the league." And even if they did watch that much hockey and did think so, the due diligence of actually looking at all the relevant statistics would, one might conjecture, necessarily dictate that they'd rethink such a ludicrous position.

Which is why ballots should be made public. Every rotten one of them. This way we can tell for absolute sure who is wrong, and probably glean why as well (my guess more or less across the board: Homerism).

Publishing votes might also lead the people who arrived at such decisions to write something, or anything, justifying exactly why they thought Dan Hamhuis was No. 3 among the League's top blue liners this year, as one person did.

The argument against such a move is that it opens up writers to mockery or an avalanche of questions and criticism from their hometown fans about exactly why their ballots didn't list five players from the teams they cover. That makes sense to some extent, at least from the organization's point of view, because members have to be protected from the dumber of hockey's myriad dumb fanbases.

But at the same time, writers who usually get their ballots as wrong as that seem, in general, to also be the ones who complain the most about Internet Trolls Hiding Behind Anonymous Screen Names. It would not surprise me in the slightest if these writers filled out these ballots in their underwear, perhaps in their mother's basement. We have no way of knowing for sure, because of how cloaked in mystery and anonymity this all is, so that's really the only thing that's safe to assume.

Perhaps the good thing for the PHWA, though, is that they are not alone in this. The NHLPA votes for the Ted Lindsay award, but all we know is that Sidney Crosby won it. A whopping 18 broadcasters thought Randy Carlyle was among the three best coaches in the league, and three thought he was tops. Two NHL general managers thought Scott Howson was one of the three best people at that job this season, even though he got fired from it, and another thought Ray Emery was the league's No. 1 goaltender.

We don't know who any of those idiots are either.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: The Ducks were the 10th-oldest team in the league last season, so no matter who they get in the draft in a few weeks, they'll be addressing perhaps their most pressing organizational need: youth.

Boston Bruins: Just go ahead and give Tuukka Rask the Conn Smythe right now.

Buffalo Sabres: According to their director of amateur scouting, the Sabres are trying really hard to get the No. 1 pick from Colorado, which obviously isn't going to happen.

Calgary Flames: Big weekend of Flames news, each bit pretty important, so here they all are: They're not buying anyone out this summer, they're probably going to hire Brendan Shanahan as team president, and they tried to trade the No. 6, 22, and 28 picks for Colorado's No. 1 overall. You can't say they're not interesting, at the very least.

Carolina Hurricanes: Eric Staal plans to start skating again in August, and is still moving around with a little bit of difficulty. Man that knee-on-knee was brutal.

Chicago Blackhawks: David Bolland has been taking to mentoring Andrew Shaw on all things pest-like, and that seems like it'll be bad news for the rest of the league for years to come.

Colorado Avalanche: It's all in French but JS Giguere says new coach Patrick Roy "will make a big difference," largely because he is already talking about winning. That doesn't necessarily make him good at his job, but it does make him almost absurdly blind in his optimism.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Big-time shout out for Sergei Bobrovsky for winning the Vezina and then maybe bolting to the KHL this summer without a second thought. When asked about it following his award win, he simply said, "We'll see." Not encouraging.

Dallas Stars: Still no coach in Dallas, as Alain Vigneault is headed to New York instead. Not the hottest of starts for Jim Nill.

Detroit Red Wings presented by Amway: Henrik Zetterberg won the Foundation Player Award, an honor so prestigious I didn't know what it really was. Basically, the NHL is giving him $25,000 to start three water stations in Ethiopia, so that's pretty cool.

Edmonton Oilers: Oklahoma City Barons coach Todd Nelson says he was "very disappointed" to not be named the new Oilers' coach, but did you even hear his name mentioned as a possibility? It was all Eakins all the time. And for good reason.

Florida Panthers: Well, I guess Jonathan Huberdeau wasn't an UNdeserving Calder candidate, right?

Los Angeles Kings: Slava Voynov is close to re-signing with the Kings and boy is that contract going to be a real laugh.

Minnesota Wild: The Wild's AHL affiliate is more likely to succeed than other minor-league teams in Des Moines have in the past, because of how close to Iowa is to Minnesota. This makes perfect sense.

Montreal Canadiens: PK Subban says his little brother Jordan, who's draft-eligible this year, might be better than him. Yeah, but does he Play The Right Way? This is important. Lay off the triple low fives, kid.

Nashville Predators: The Preds are going to work with the city to build a new practice rink on the site of a former mall in Nashville. Apparently it's part of the team's lease at Bridgestone Arena that it has to build more rinks that could be used for youth hockey.

New Jersey Devils: The Devils' arena finally reached a revenue-sharing deal with the city of Newark and its Housing Authority last week, which has been a major pain in the ass for all parties since about 2006. Oh but those sniper battles were fun while they lasted.

New York Islanders: How will the Islanders get prospect Kirill Petrov over to North America? By guaranteeing him a roster spot. How very Islanders-y.

New York Rangers: Hmm maybe Larry Brooks is right that a guy with literally no pro coaching experience ever wouldn't have been the right fit for a team that has designs on winning a Stanley Cup in the near future. Maybe.

Ottawa Senators: Daniel Alfredsson has yet to make a decision on what he'll do next season but the Senators aren't about to pressure him, likely because they're still wrapping up the Karlsson/Cooke investigation.

Philadelphia Flyers: "Sources: Flyers consider buyout for Bryzgalov." These sources, while unnamed, are likely Steve Logic and Will Common-Sense who both work in the team's No Kidding Operations wing.

Phoenix Coyotes: Today is Day No. 311 since Jude LaCava of Fox 10 in Arizona said Greg Jamison would have the deal for the Coyotes sewn up within the next five days. But don't worry, even despite all those Seattle plans, the team has a "framework" for the lease agreement with another new ownership group. At some point someone is going to get the team solely on the basis of their being the one-millionth group to submit a bid.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Wouldn't it be nice if Mario Lemieux also pledged his undying devotion to and love for Marc-Andre Fleury? Can't wait until the point we eventually need gubernatorial, presidential and papal proclamations that he's the starter now and forever.

San Jose Sharks: The Sharks fired two executive vice presidents and their chief financial officer late last week, and the team has had a number of front office shakeups in the last several months. On the ice, though? No changes (yet). Weird.

St. Louis Blues: How will the Blues improve next season? Sit around and let their many younger players get better. Why haven't the Oilers thought of that? Oh, wait.

Tampa Bay Lightning: Martin St. Louis has won the Lady Byng in three of the last four seasons. He probably slashed Brian Campbell's tires last year.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Pretty good rundown of the most recent dumb decisions Dave Nonis has made as the GM of the Leafs. It's amazing that an organization is being run like this in 2013.

Vancouver Canucks: Oh will the Canucks and John Tortorella just go ahead and kiss already?

Washington Capitals: Adam Oates wants to be the Bill Belichick of the NHL. Insofar as he doesn't want to scream or make a big scene to be noticed as a coach. So, essentially, Oates wants the world to see him as a quiet jerk.

Winnipeg Jets: "Did the Winnipeg Jets' coaching staff optimize their goaltenders?" Let's have a look at Ondrej Pavelec's stats here and just s… Ohhhh, no they did not.

Play of the Weekend

Overtime hero Danny Paille has an odd ring to it, but damn if that wasn't a nice shot.

Gold Star Award

Tuukka Rask is just killing it in these playoffs. It's quite unbelievable.

Minus of the Weekend

Here's a free tip for Kaspars Daugavins: Don't try to sit on your goalie.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User "superhenderson13" has it figured out.

Letang

for

[Evander] Kane

Not like the Penguins need defensive help anyway, right? I can't believe there's not an overweight, embattled defenseman who might be a better fit instead.

Signoff
Now, I think you might like this next show, The X-Files. I always thought it was some kind of porno, on account of the title, but turns out it's all about two young people who don't have sex.

Ryan Lambert publishes hockey awesomeness almost never over at The Two-Line Pass. Check it out, why don’t you? Or you can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter if you so desire.

Jettisoned by the Philadelphia Flyers just under a year ago, Sergei Bobrovsky completed his campaign to make them instantly regret it on Saturday night when he finalized his transformation from "expendable goaltender" to "Russian Henrik Lundqvist", edging the New York Rangers' netminder for the 2013 Vezina trophy and the unofficial award for hockey's best-dressed goaltender.

Look at that stud and his bowtie. Sharp.

Bobrovsky's first-career Vezina is now his most notable achievement, topping his previous claim to fame: the way Sportscentre's Jay Onrait shouts his name like a police chief taking his loose-cannon detective to task for reckless crime-busting. "Bobrovsky! You're off the case!" It's one of Onrait's best running bits, and if you've not had the chance to experience it (or even if you have), there's never been a more appropriate time for this "best of" compilation:

I love Nick Foligno getting into it at the end.

As for Bobrovsky's future, while this is a proud moment for the Blue Jackets' franchise, it's also something of a headache for them. Bobrovsky isn't just a goaltender in need of a new contract this summer anymore. Now he's a Vezina winner in need of a new contract. From the Columbus Dispatch:

Next is a contract.

“We’ll look at all the different options — short-term, long-term, arbitration … who knows?” Davidson said. “We think we’ll get him signed.”

Paul Theofanous, Bobrovsky’s agent, is due to visit Columbus later this week. He has a great deal of leverage with a client who is a restricted free agent, who may well get a fat offer sheet from another NHL team — or a fatter offer from a team in Russia’s Continental Hockey League.

“I’m sure it’s all going to work out,” Bobrovsky said on a conference call, “(but) now is the time to celebrate.”

Here's hoping Columbus can get it done. We'd hate to see Bobrovsky go to Russia, since it would likely mean the end of a great running gag.

Follow Harrison Mooney on Twitter at @HarrisonMooney

The game of hockey features a lot of passing.

Like, a lot of passing. So if it's your job to describe the game as it's happening, it would be wise to build up a storehouse of synonyms for the word "pass".

Hall of Fame broadcaster Doc Emrick has tons of them, and during Wednesday night's Game 1 on NBC, one fan armed himself with a pen and a pad and decided to catch 'em all. It couldn't have been a better night for it. Game 1 lasted forever, so Emrick was forced to reach deep into his bag. The final result, via Reddit, is great:

It reads like a Boggle sheet!

The verbs Emrick used in place of "pass": spirit, slide, fiddle, rattle, fork, shovel, chip, poke, jam, ricochet, knife, tap, skip, bank, throw, punch, push, flip, drag, soccer, paddle, fire, blast, spear, steer, scale, lead, rifle, careen, direct, hoist, pitch, pop, swat, finesse, wand, bang, hand, force, swipe, plunge, lob, nudge, jab, drub, brush, wedge, squib, stash, brush, muscle, and filter.

I'm not sure what's more impressive: that there are so many, or that "give" is nowhere to be found. Doc Emrick is synonymizing at an elite level, although "soccered" gives me some pause. Was it a kick?

Anyway. This is more than enough words for Doc Emrick pass bingo, so I made that. Print it out and play at home on Monday night, otherwise I wasted my whole morning.

During CBC's Hockey Night in Canada Hotstove segment Saturday, the future plans of the Coyotes became a bit clearer, with a report that Plan B for the franchise to a move to Seattle.

According to Elliotte Friedman, the Vancouver Canucks, who announced on Friday that their AHL team was moving to Utica, N.Y., originally had planned to put it in Seattle in KeyArena. Turns out, they were told "it was not available for hockey," reported Friedman.

In a twist, turns out it is available for hockey: NHL hockey, that is. Plan B for the NHL and Coyotes, if the latest candidate doesn't go through with the purchase, is to sell the team to investors Ray Bartoszek and Anthony Lanza, who previously engaged in discussions to purchase a 49-percent stake in the New York Mets in 2011, for $220 million. According to Glenn Healy, if those two do not get what they want by July 2 from the city of Glendale, then they would move the team to The Emerald City. Part of the new ownership group would be former NHLer and current NBC analyst Jeremy Roenick, who would help run the hockey operations department.

KeyArena would be a temporary home until a new facility is built, something Chris Hansen has been working on in his quest to bring basketball back to Seattle.

It appears that the Coyotes saga will come to an end one way or another before next season. We've come a long way since Jim Balsillie, haven't we?

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

The deeper teams go into the NHL playoffs, the more that team's iconography tends to take over its city. By the time a club has reached the Stanley Cup Final, you can expect to see car flags and decals in abundance, storefronts done up with promotions in team colours and logos, and, my personal favourite, the town's statues wearing jerseys and other team apparel.

Now, Boston and Chicago already have hockey statues, as you can see above. Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull greet visitors to the United Center, and Bobby Orr soars at the entrance of the TD Garden.

But, as the Blackhawks and Bruins vie for Stanley Cup supremacy, other statues have been temporarily renovated to show their support.

Mikita and Hull aren't the only athletes with a statue on the east side of the United Center. Michael Jordan's out there too, mid-dunk, and until the Final is over, he'll be dunking in a jersey with sleeves:

Meanwhile, over at the Field Museum of Natural History, the brachiosaurus has been outfitted with a jersey as well.

That one took some doing. The jersey was built around the dinosaur in late April. You can see a gallery of the sweaterization in progress here.

And the Field isn't the only Chicago museum that's showing its colours. Over at the Art Institute of Chicago, Edward Kemeys' bronze lions have been redonned the helmets they wore in 2010.

Impressive that statues erected in 1893 would opt for a visor, let alone a helmet. You'd think they'd be more old-school.

But Boston has statues too, and no way are their fans about to be outdone in the creative statue renovation department without a fight.

Here's George Washington in a Bruins jersey.

Painter John Singleton Copley, one of America's greatest portrait artists, sports a Bruins jersey as well.

What I wouldn't give to see this guy do Brad Marchand in oil or pastels. Sadly, the only member of the Bruins' organization he ever did was Cam Neely.

And finally, my personal favourite from 2011, brought back for the 2013 run: here's Mrs. Mallard and her children, the stars of classic children's book Make Way for Ducklings that have been immortalized in a statue at the Boston Public Garden, bedecked in Boston garb.

No longer are they a family of eight ducks. Now they're a typically bungled Bruins line change, and considering the size discrepancy at play here, we can assume the first duck is Zdeno Chara.

“They scored more goals than the Blackhawks!”

Well, yeah, but there are reasons why the Boston Bruins won Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final over the Chicago Blackhawks, 2-1 in overtime, to even the series at 1-1. Here are five:

1. The Bruins’ Worst Was Their First

If you’re going to completely suck in a Stanley Cup Playoff game, better it’s the first period on the road than, say, overtime. The Blackhawks embarrassed the Bruins in the opening frame, outshooting them 19-4 and taking a 1-0 lead on Patrick Sharp’s goal. As Jaromir Jagr said after the game: "If someone watched the first period they would say 'Give (Chicago) the Cup right now."'

But the Bruins leveled the ice in the second period, and arguably outplayed the Hawks in the last 33:48 of the game before Daniel Paille’s goal ended it.

2. Tuukka Time

Rask kept the Bruins in the game when the Blackhawks were dominating, and didn’t make a misstep after the first. Corey Crawford was flashier, but Rask was solid in evening the series.

3. The Kill Is Still Killin’ It

The Blackhawks were 0-for-3 on the power play in Game 2 and are now 0-for-6 for the series. The Bruins previously held the Pittsburgh Penguins to 0-for-15 in the conference final, so their PK is red hot. We expected the special teams battle to be a wash; if it is, that benefits the Boston Bruins, the best team 5-on-5 in the postseason.

4. The Break

What if Chicago had gone up 2-0 in the first period? Had the quick whistle that wiped out what could have been a Marian Hossa goal in at 12:32 not sounded, it could have been a different game.

5. The Grunts Won

It was the reverse of Game 1: Patrick Sharp, handsome superstar, scored for the Blackhawks. Chris Kelly and Daniel Paille, blue-collar Bruins grunts, accounted for the goals in Game 2. Paille set up Kelly for the game-tying goal, and buried the game-winner on a perfect feed from Tyler Seguin off a Blackhawks turnover. Who turned it over? Brandon Bollig, a grunt.

No. 1 Star: Tuukka Rask, Boston Bruins

If you watched the first half of this game, you know the Bruins had no business being in it, let alone winning it. But Rask was outstanding in a first period where the Blackhawks outshot the Bruins 19-4, holding Chicago to just one goal, and when Boston finally got on the board, suddenly they were in a tie game. Rask made 33 saves in the Bruins' 2-1 win and is far and away the biggest reason this series is tied at one game apiece heading back to Boston.

No. 2 Star: Daniel Paille

It was a big night for Paille, who was in on both Boston goals, assisting on Chris Kelly's game-tying marker and ending the affair in overtime by beating Corey Crawford with a sweet shot. Here's that goal again, from the perspective of the net cam:

No. 3 Star: Patrick Sharp, Chicago Blackhawks

It was a great night for Sharp, who had a game-high seven shots on goal and a team-high one shot in goal.

Honourable Mention: 7 shots and a game-high even-strength Corsi rating of plus-11 for Marian Hossa... Rich Peverley went 9-for-11 on faceoffs... I enjoyed the sneaky play by Niklas Hjalmarsson at the beginning of this clip, when he avoids a pokecheck by picking up the blade of David Krejci's stick and throwing it up against the glass:

Did You Know? Through two games, the Blackhawks and Bruins have now played 185:56. It's like you got a bonus game in there! Slowly but surely, they're making up for the lockout.

Conn Smythe Watch: 1. David Krejci, Boston Bruins; 2. Tuukka Rask, Boston Bruins; 3. Corey Crawford, Chicago Blackhawks 4. Patrice Bergeron, Boston Bruins; 5. Andrew Shaw, Chicago Blackhawks; 6. Nathan Horton, Boston Bruins; 7. Marian Hossa, Chicago Blackhawks; 8. Zdeno Chara, Boston Bruins; 9. Patrick Kane, Chicago Blackhawks; 10. Jonathan Toews, Chicago Blackhawks.

Dishonourable mention: Marian Hossa scored a goal in this game, only to have it waived off due to a blown whistle. That one probably should have counted... While he had 10 hits, Milan Lucic didn't register a single shot on goal. The only other Bruins to do that were Kaspars Daugavins, Shawn Thornton, and Adam McQuaid.

Daniel Paille has been one of the Boston Bruins’ unsung heroes throughout the postseason, giving them strong minutes as a member of their checking line and a surprising amount of offense.

On Saturday night, he scored the most important goal of his season.

Paille’s tally at 13:48 of overtime gave the Bruins a 2-1 win and a 1-1 series tie with the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2013 Stanley Cup Final. He earlier assisted on Chris Kelly’s goal.

Breaking sports news video. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL highlights and more.

The Bruins had several strong chances in overtime, including Jaromir Jagr dinging off the post behind Crawford. (And his reaction was priceless.) They needed a break, and got one from Blackhawks forward Brandon Bollig.

The fourth liner coughed up the puck along the boards, and Bruins defenseman Adam McQuaid took it away. He fed it to Tyler Seguin, who whipped a perfect pass to Paille – right in front of top Blackhawks defensive pairing Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook – who rocketed a shot over Corey Crawford’s glove for the win.

Patrick Sharp got the Blackhawks on the board at 11:22 of the first period, as a scramble in front of Rask led to a goal that floated through a Michal Handzus screen for the 1-0 lead. It was a period that saw the Blackhawks dominate: 30 shot attempts to the Bruins’ five.

The domination continued into the second period, but Boston slowly began to even the ice. After 19 shots in the first, the Blackhawks managed four in the second, despite two power plays. The Bruins had eight shots on Crawford, including their first goal: Chris Kelly, on a rebound that went through the legs of Patrick Kane, popped the puck home for a 1-1 game.

The game featured one bit of controversy, as a puck crossed the line under Rask’s pads at 12:32 of the first period thanks to a push by Marian Hossa. The play was ruled “no goal” as the referee had blown the play dead.

Game 3 is Monday night in Boston.

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports
• Chicago, Boston battle for statue supremacy
• Phoenix Coyotes moving to Seattle?
• What's up, Doc! How many ways can you say 'pass'?

You bring the insightful thoughts on the game. We bring the funny and the Hamburger Women. That's how this works.

That sound you're hearing is the low moan of Marc Bergevin, who could have signed a pre-Norris Subban to a five-year, $25 million deal. Now he has a Norris winner that will need a new contract at the end of next season. That's unfortunate.

Subban narrowly beat out Ryan Suter of the Minnesota Wild, finishing with 66 first-place votes to Suter's 65, and just 36 more points overall.

The NHL, on Subban's merit:

Subban topped NHL defensemen in scoring, recording 38 points (11 goals, 27 assists) in 42 games as the Canadiens won the Northeast Division crown and posted the League's fourth-best record. The 24-year-old Toronto native also led defensemen in power-play scoring with 26 points (seven goals, 19 assists), helping Montreal post the League's fifth-best success rate with the man advantage (20.7%). Subban ranked second on the Canadiens in points, plus-minus (+12) and average ice time per game (23:14).

And here's how voting from the Professional Hockey Writers' Association shook out.

It's worth noting that, while the top three finalists just so happened to receive the most votes, the top five is rounded out by more defensive-minded defencemen Francois Beauchemin and Zdeno Chara. That's somewhat heartening.

But the most interesting thing to me here is that Andrei Markov received a first-place vote for the Norris. Somebody in the PHWA didn't even feel that Subban was the best defenceman on his team. How does that happen?

Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals won the 2012-13 Hart Memorial Trophy for regular-season MVP, his third most valuable player trophy and first since 2009.

Center Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Ovechkin and center John Tavares of the New York Islanders are the three finalists for the Hart, awarded “to the player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team,” as voted on by members of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association.

From the NHL:

Ovechkin tallied 32 goals in 48 games, including 23 in his final 23 contests, to become the first three-time winner of the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy as the NHL’s goal-scoring leader. He also finished third in the League in points (56), first in power-play goals (16), first in power-play points (27) and first in shots on goal (220), leading the Capitals to an 11-1-1 record in April and their fifth Southeast Division title in the last six years. Ovechkin recorded points in nine straight games March 17-April 2 (10-5—15), including a five-game goal streak March 17-24, and tallied his 30th goal of the year April 20, becoming the ninth player in League history to score 30 or more goals in each of his first eight seasons.

We cast our ballot for Ovechkin.

Sure, his first half was underwhelming, but his second half was outstanding enough to wipe that away. He was the reason the Capitals turned their season. If you give Corey Perry the Hart for what was essentially a torrid second half of the season two years ago, you give Ovechkin the Hart.

Here are the vote totals:

The margin of victory -- just 32 points from a record-setting 179
ballots cast -- represents the closest Hart Trophy race since Montreal's
Jose Theodore and Calgary's Jarome Iginla finished in a virtual tie in 2002.

Jonathan Huberdeau of the Florida Panthers was chosen as this year's winner. He beat out Brendan Gallagher of the Montreal Canadiens and Brandon Saad of the Chicago Blackhawks.

From the NHL:

Selected third overall by the Panthers in the 2011 NHL Draft, Huberdeau played in all 48 games for Florida and ranked second both on the team and among NHL rookies with 31 points (14-17—31). Among first-year players, he finished third in goals, fourth in assists and third in shots on goal (112). His 16:55 average time on ice also led rookie forwards, while his nine power-play points (2-7—9) placed fourth among all freshmen skaters. Huberdeau set two franchise records, becoming the first Panther to score on two penalty shots in one season (Feb. 21 at Philadelphia and March 5 vs. Carolina) and recording the most points by a teenager in team history (four more than Radek Dvorak in 1995-96).

Here's the voting breakdown:

There was a big outcry when Minnesota Wild defenseman Jonas Brodin was not named one of the three finalists. As we see, he missed the cut by 100 points, and was a clear fourth ahead of Nail Yakupov of the Edmonton Oilers.

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

That job might be with the Calgary Flames.

John Shannon of Sportsnet confirmed that Shanahan was in Calgary on Friday, previously reporting that his meeting was with owner Murray Edwards and CEO Ken King regarding a director of hockey operations gig. Bob McKenzie of TSN reports that no job offer was made to Shanahan at the meeting.

Jay Feaster remains the general manager in Calgary, although an embattled one. The Flames have missed the playoffs for four straight seasons. Adding Shanahan wouldn’t exactly be a vote of confidence; in fact, it smacks of what the Colorado Avalanche did in elevating Joe Sakic up the managerial food chain and minimizing Greg Sherman’s role. (Maybe the common denominator is Ryan O’Reilly.)

Obviously the Flames’ gain is the NHL’s loss, but Shanahan’s innovations and revisions to the Department of Player Safety – from the instructional videos to the disciplinary standards that have helped reduce concussions in the NHL during his two-year tenure – will endure through the staff he’s added, like former NHL defenseman Rob Blake.

That’s assuming he leaves the Flames. And that the NHL doesn’t tinker with what’s been a successful sheriff’s department Shanahan has built.

But a lapse in triple-OT of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final might have cost the Bruins the game. Watch Seidenberg in the corner of the ice, dropping his glove after a hit and then picking it up on Andrew Shaw’s game-winner for the Chicago Blackhawks:

Seidenberg was checked in the corner by Bryan Bickell of the Blackhawks. Shaw was his player to defend; rather than doing so, he went back to the corner to snag his missing glove. Michael Rozsival’s point shot was deflected home by Shaw, and the Blackhawks won in triple overtime.

Joe Haggerty of CSN New England noticed the play and asked Seidenberg what went wrong:

"I obviously looked at it [on video] and thought about it afterward. [I was] like ‘What did I just do?’ "

Still, he's not sure it would have changed the outcome of the play.

"Would it have mattered if I hadn’t picked it up, because I was hit and on the ground and they had me beat to the net. I don’t know if it could have changed anything, but there’s no way we’ll ever find out. So there’s no reason lose any thoughts about it, or get down on yourself.”

Was he disoriented after the hit? Simply exhausted after three overtimes?

Seidenberg said he’s thought about the play in hindsight, and it’s sure how it would have played out. But he vowed that Game 2 on Saturday night could yield a difference result for the Bruins: “We feel confident that we’re going to play a more consistent game over three periods [in Game 2 and beyond]. If we do that then we think we’re going to be fine.”

He was fired by the Vancouver Canucks after seven seasons and six playoff appearances, including a Stanley Cup Final Game 7 loss in 2011 to the Boston Bruins.

He replaces John Tortorella, another head coach fired for playoff disappointment who, as fate would have it, might swap jobs with Vigneault and take over the Canucks.

According to Katie Strang of ESPN, the Rangers interviewed Vigneault and former star Mark Messier for the head coaching spot but opted for Vigneault. He was given a lucrative offer to join the Rangers, big enough where he withdrew his name from candidacy for the Dallas Stars’ vacancy.

What does Vigneault bring to the Rangers that Tortorella did not?

Vigneault is a players’ coach of a different sort. He’s not the firebrand that Tortorella is, nor does his system seem geared toward shaping the team’s play in his own stubborn image.

He’s a coach that allows his players to find success without micromanagement, and fancied himself a “monitor” as much as a coach. Vigneault empowered the players in Vancouver to be the leaders on the team, which had its virtues and drawbacks according to the Vancouver Sun:

The group includes Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Ryan Kesler, Alex Burrows, Kevin Bieksa and Dan Hamhuis, and amid this environment the Canucks won back-to-back Presidents’ Trophies and nearly a Stanley Cup.

But this leadership model also detached Vigneault from players. He once explained that, under other circumstances, he probably would really like infuriating defenceman Shane O’Brien on a personal level, but as a coach he had to maintain his distance.

Vigneault maintained that buffer with all his players so when he crossed the hallway from his office to the dressing room at Rogers Arena in order to reprimand a player, no one should take it personally.

He’s known as a coach that gets more out of his roster than another coach might, which probably appealed to GM Glen Sather – Tortorella’s teams, outside of 2011-12, underachieved rather than overwhelmed.

He’s a winner, and a coach that is going to command respect in the room for a veteran team that still has a window for the Cup. Unlike the other candidate for the gig, he also has NHL coaching experience to back up that confidence.

Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final lasted awhile.

While the Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins came into the series expecting to enjoy two days off between the first two games, they technically only got one. Game 1 dragged on into day 2 after the Blackhawks forced extra time with a late, game-tying goal, then made like Wilson Pickett and waited 'til the midnight hour to score in double OT.

It was just the first time in these playoffs that the Bruins have lost a game they led after the first period.

[Related: Bruins' Nathan Horton to play in Game 2 against Blackhawks]

So what went wrong? Simply put, Chicago got the breaks."Two of the goals are off of shots going wide," Bruins' coach Claude Julien said, referring to the Blackhawks' game-tying and game-winning tallies. "One hit our player's skate, the other is a double tip. You attribute that to hockey breaks."

"At the same time what we did to Pittsburgh is nice. But you have to realize it was circumstances in that series, too. Doesn't mean you're going to be able to do that, hold teams to two goals-against, in a whole series."

Julien's right. Versus the Penguins, everything broke the Bruins' way. Not so in their first meeting with the Presidents' Trophy-winning Hawks.

Still, while the Blackhawks were up all night to get lucky in Game 1, there's more the Bruins can do to tip the scales of fortune in their favour in Game 2. For one thing, they need to limit Chicago's shot attempts by spending far less time in their own end of the ice.

The Blackhawks outshot the Bruins 63 to 54, which is, on its own, not all that damning a discrepancy. But those are just the shots that got through. Chicago had another 40 blocked and 29 miss the net for a total of 132 shots attempted to Boston's 85.

By this metric, they outshot the Bruins almost 2 to 1.

Do that, and things are going to work out in your favour more often than not. Chicago got the hockey breaks, there's no doubt about it, but they gave themselves 47 more opportunities to get them.

Want to win the lottery? Buy more tickets. Or, in the case of the Draft, have more balls. On Wednesday, the Blackhawks had more balls.

Julien didn't feel that the Bruins needed to make any major adjustments to reverse this trend in Game 2. They just need to make like Archie Bell and do the tighten up.

"There's a lot of areas, as I mentioned the other day," he said. "We had a couple bad line changes. Little details in games make a big difference. A lot of it is more about little details. So it's nothing major. Things that are easily correctable."

"We just have to have better focus tonight on those little details and hopefully swing the pendulum our way."

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Award winners for Hart, Calder spoiled by TSN sleuthing
• Alain Vigneault turns down Stars, likely headed to Rangers
• Slideshow: Action in Stanley Cup Final

“This is the final and Horty’s been there before and he knows how it feels when you get hurt and you can’t finish it off,” said Krejci. “He’s going to do everything he can to finish this series off.”

Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves: The Bruins have a long way to go before they can think about finishing off the Chicago Blackhawks, down 1-0 in the series heading into Saturday night’s Game 2. But having Nathan Horton flanking Krejci, the playoffs’ leading scorer, would certainly help them achieve that objective.

So, good news, Bruins: Horton said on Saturday that he’s been cleared medically and will play in Game 2.

How effective can he be? Horton’s played with a separated shoulder since it was injured in a fight with Jarome Iginla on April 20. It’s popped out and been popped in over several occasions, and he’ll likely need offseason surgery.

Despite that, he’s the second-leading scorer in the playoffs with 18 points and a massive plus-22, as the Bruins’ top like of Horton, Krejci and Milan Lucic are the top three point-getters in the postseason.

Will the Blackhawks target him? Horton expects it. But Chicago should expect more fireworks from the HuLK Line as well.

NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Bruins defensemen try to shake off stunning Game 1 collapse
• Award winners for Hart, Calder spoiled by TSN sleuthing
• Alain Vigneault turns down Stars, likely headed to Rangers

Since the awards are a complete bust as an event thanks to the lockout, leaks are a thing this season. We already know P.K. Subban of the Montreal Canadiens will win the Norris Trophy as top defenseman. Now, via TSN’s Insider Trading (s/t Kukla), we have more awards spoilers.

TSN’s Bob McKenzie has a feeling he knows who the rookie of the year is:

“The NHL had no choice but to inform players that they’d won. It’s usually a big secret: They don’t know until the envelope is pulled in Las Vegas. Can’t do that this year.”

“[When Subban’s Norris leaked] lot of the drama was went out of it. In fact, Subban is the Norris Trophy winner. And now we’re hearing word that Jonathan Huberdeau will be in Chicago on Saturday. You can infer from that that the Florida Panther forward is going to be the rookie of the year.”

The big prize, obviously, is the Hart Trophy for regular season MVP. In the same segment, Darren Dreger noted that nominees Sidney Crosby and John Tavares won’t be in Chicago, and that Alex Ovechkin’s “acceptance speech will be via videotape.” So that would appear to be a Hart Trophy spoiler, as Dreger says he's "believed to be the winner."

Maybe you hate NHL Awards, or maybe you dig them. Either way, it’s a bummer that these moments of achievement are simply afterthoughts this season.

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Alain Vigneault turns down Stars, likely headed to Rangers
• Bruins defensemen try to shake off stunning Game 1 collapse
• Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford finally getting his due

After receiving permission to speak with Dallas Eakins for their head coaching job, the Stars' interview never came off as Eakins decided to accept an offer with the Edmonton Oilers. Now just a week after missing out on Eakins, the Stars have lost another candidate on their list of coaching prospects.

According to TSN's Aaron Ward, Alain Vigneault informed Stars general manager Jim Nill that he wishes to be removed from consideration for their head coaching gig. (UPDATE: Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News received confirmation of the news from Nill himself.) Darren Dreger reports that the Stars are believed to have had a "substantial" offer on the table for his services, but now the former Vancouver Canucks bench boss appears to be heading to the Big Apple to fill the New York Rangers vacant position.

From Larry Brooks of the New York Post:

Vigneault, who brought the Canucks within one victory of the Stanley Cup in 2011, is believed to have met with Garden owner Jim Dolan yesterday, even as Mark Messier confirmed his candidacy to succeed John Tortorella behind the Blueshirts’ bench.

The Blueshirts had not yet presented an offer to Vigneault, who impressed president/general manager Glen Sather in their meeting on Tuesday at La Quinta, Calif., as The Post reported.

But a contract proposal is expected to be forthcoming, what with Vigneault last night withdrawing his candidacy to coach the Stars, who had been keenly interested in hiring him.

News came out Friday that Mark Messier had interviewed for the Rangers' job, and the Los Angeles Kings had given NHL teams, including New York, permission to speak with assistant John Stevens. That was likely part of the process and now that Vigneault has withdrawn from consideration in Dallas, it's sped things up for the Rangers.

With Vigneault likely heading to New York, that leaves Lindy Ruff, long-rumored to be a top candidate for the Rangers, still searching for a job. He does have a relationship with Nill from working with Team Canada, so the familiarity is there.

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Bruins defensemen try to shake off stunning Game 1 collapse
• Andrew Shaw's mom absolves the Blackhawks star for dropping F-bomb
• Penguins give Evgeni Malkin huge new $76 million deal
• Slideshow: Action in Stanley Cup Final

It’s presented by Bridgestone, because someone’s getting’ paid.

Alfredsson of the Ottawa Senators, Dustin Brown of the Los Angeles Kings and Jonathan Toews of the Chicago Blackhawks are the three finalists for the award. Alfredsson is the only one of three to proclaim that his team was “probably not” going to rally for a series victory down 3-1 in the conference semifinals. Leadership!

Messier “solicits suggestions from club and League personnel and NHL fans to compile a list of potential candidates.” But the ultimate decision is left up to Messier himself.

From the NHL:

Alfredsson, the NHL’s longest-serving active captain, leads the Senators in numerous categories, including career games played, goals, assists and points. He has taken a leadership role off of the ice as well, working with the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, the Royal Ottawa Foundation for Mental Health and the Sens Foundation.

Alfredsson has supported the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa for the past 10 seasons, purchasing tickets and suites for club members to attend Senators games and serving as title sponsor of Ringside for Youth, the club’s primary fundraising event during the season. Since 2008, he also has been the spokesperson and champion for the Royal’s “You Know Who I Am” campaign, leading the way to help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues. In addition, Alfredsson has supported the Royal’s “Do It for Daron” campaign to assist in raising the profile of youth mental health issues.

Snark aside, Alfredsson deserves the spotlight for his achievements off the ice, and it’s nice to see him get one.

As expected, Josh Harding of the Minnesota Wild has won the 2013 Masterton Trophy, awarded to the NHLer who "best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey". It's a Professional Hockey Writers’ Association joint.

By now, you likely know Harding's story -- how he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but was determined to continue playing and contributing for the Wild all year, but here's the NHL on why Harding deserved the trophy:

Harding, 28 (6/18/84), went 1-1-0 with a 3.24 goals-against average, a .863 save percentage and one shutout in five regular-season games with Minnesota this year and 1-4 with a 2.94 GAA and a .911 SV% in five playoff starts for the Wild. He stopped all 24 shots faced in his first start this season in a 1-0 victory against the Dallas Stars on Jan. 20. Harding was
placed on Injured Reserved Feb. 12 and missed 33 games with the Wild as he battled multiple sclerosis, which was diagnosed last fall. He was assigned to the Houston Aeros (AHL) on a conditioning assignment April 16 and went 1-1-0, stopping 56-of-61 shots for a 3.00 GAA and .918 SV% in two starts and helped Houston clinch a spot in the Calder Cup playoffs before being recalled by Minnesota on April 22.

As pointed out by Mike Russo, Harding is the first Wild player to ever win an end-of-the-year award via vote. Jacques Lemaire won a Jack Adams in 2003, and their goaltenders won a Jennings in 2007, but Lemaire wasn't a player and the Jennings doesn't require consensus -- just the fewest goals against.

Speaking of votes, unlike the other awards announced, the league doesn't release the vote totals on the Masterton. But that's fine. We know that Harding won in a landslide.

While all of the other awards given out Friday (and Saturday) will inspire anywhere from a little to a lot of debate, Harding's Masterton win will not. Again: this is a guy that was diagnosed with MS last fall; the photo above is from a playoff game. That's unbelievable.

Heck, Harding isn't just a worthy winner. He's why this award exists.

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Award winners for Hart, Calder spoiled by TSN sleuthing
• Alain Vigneault turns down Stars, likely headed to Rangers
• Penguins give Evgeni Malkin huge new $76 million deal

Marc Bergevin of the Montreal Canadiens and Bob Murray of the Anaheim Ducks were the other nominees. Shero is the first Eastern Conference GM to win the award in its four year history.

From the NHL, on Shero:

Shero made key additions to an already-strong roster throughout the year that helped propel the Penguins (36-12-0) to a playoff berth for the seventh consecutive season, their first Atlantic Division title since 2008 and the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. He obtained C Brandon Sutter and G Tomas Vokoun in offseason trades and later brought RW Jarome Iginla, LW Brenden Morrow, C Jussi Jokinen and D Douglas Murray to Pittsburgh in deals leading up to the trade deadline. Pittsburgh reeled off 15 consecutive victories from March 2-30, the second-longest winning streak in NHL history and the League’s longest winning streak in 20 years.

Here's how the voting broke down:

No, that's not a misprint at No. 11; fired Columbus Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson did receive two third place votes despite having been let go and joining the Edmonton Oilers in February.

And Colorado's Greg Sherman getting a third place vote? Was it from Jay Feaster for matching the Ryan O'Reilly offer sheet, thereby preventing any further embarrassment, what with the whole waivers things?

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

St. Louis won the 2012-13 Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, awarded "to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability," as selected by the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association.

Right wing Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks, left wing Matt Moulson of the New York Islanders and St. Louis were up for the award.

From the NHL:

St. Louis is the Lady Byng Trophy winner for the third time in the past four seasons, having also captured the award in 2009-10 and 2010-11. He has been voted a finalist on four other occasions.

The 37-year-old native of Laval, Que., led the NHL with 43 assists and 60 points in 48 games to capture his second career Art Ross Trophy (2003-04). He averaged 1.25 points per game, becoming one of only three players in League history to achieve that mark at age 37 or older (Mario Lemieux, 2002-03; Gordie Howe, 1968-69). St. Louis also ranked second among NHL forwards in total time on ice (1,055:12), but was assessed just 14 penalty minutes.

Our vote went to Logan Couture, who had four penalty minutes in 48 games. He finished fifth.

We thought Kane would win, but apparently our peers don’t have a sense of humor.

Here’s the Lady Byng vote:

SHANE DOAN GOT A FIRST PLACE LADY BYNG VOTE? BWAHAHAHAH ...

NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Award winners for Hart, Calder spoiled by TSN sleuthing
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• Slideshow: Action in Stanley Cup Final

MacLean beat out co-nominees Bruce Boudreau and Joel Quenneville, the latter of whom will have to settle for the Mike Babcock award, which unofficially goes to "the NHL coach adjudged to have a team too good to win the Jack Adams".

So what did MacLean do to come away with coach of the year honours? As per the NHL:

MacLean guided the Senators (25-17-6) to a berth in the Stanley Cup Playoffs despite the extended absence of several key players due to injury. Defenseman Erik Karlsson, the reigning Norris Trophy winner, was limited to 17 games; defenseman Jared Cowen, the ninth overall pick in the 2009 NHL Draft, was sidelined for all but seven games; top forwards Jason Spezza and Milan Michalek played in just five and 23 contests, respectively; and starting goaltender Craig Anderson appeared in just 24 games. MacLean led a youthful Senators lineup, which included a League-high 14 rookies making at least one appearance, to the top defensive record in the Eastern Conference (2.08 goals-against per game).

In other words, he took a team that was stripped of its stars due to injury, and still managed to get them into the playoffs. Since the Jack Adams has effectively become an award for coaches that have more success than we can reasonably explain, given their roster, that'll do it.

Here's how the Walrus won the day:

It really was a two-horse race, although it's interesting to note that Therrien actually had more first-place votes than Boudreau, the third nominee.

And yes, that is Randy Carlyle in seventh place, with three first-place votes. Identify yourself, three insane voting members.

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Bruins defensemen try to shake off stunning Game 1 collapse
• Alain Vigneault turns down Stars, likely headed to Rangers
• Penguins give Evgeni Malkin huge new $76 million deal

Centers Patrice Bergeron of the Boston Bruins, Pavel Datsyuk of the Detroit Red Wings and Toews were up for the award. Bergeron won the 2012 Selke.

From the NHL, on Toews:

Toews played a leading role in helping the runaway Presidents' Trophy winners rank first overall in team defense (2.02 goals-against per game). He finished third in the NHL in plus-minus with a career-high +28 rating, including a League-leading +21 away from home; shared the overall lead in takeaways with fellow Selke finalist Pavel Datsyuk (56); placed second in the NHL in face-off winning percentage (59.9%, 559-374); and played an average of 1:25 per game on the NHL's third-ranked penalty-killing unit (87.2%). The Blackhawks captain is a Selke finalist for second time, having finished runner-up to Vancouver's Ryan Kesler in 2011.

We cast our ballot for Bergeron, and this was a bit of an upset. Consider Bergeron was on the ice for only 13 goals at even strength this season, and led the NHL in faceoff percentage with a 61.2 winning percent.

Still, there was a sense Toews was due for this, and there’s no quibbling about his defensive prowess. Ask Zach Parise and Mikko Koivu about it.

Here are the vote totals for the Selke:

Poor Boyd Gordon.

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Alain Vigneault turns down Stars, likely headed to Rangers
• Andrew Shaw's mom absolves the Blackhawks star for dropping F-bomb
• Slideshow: Action in Stanley Cup Final

Two years later, this remains one of my favourite photos in Canucks history.

With the star power, major market appeal, history, and damn fine hockey that comes pre-loaded in this Stanley Cup Final, you really couldn't ask for a better match-up than the Chicago Blackhawks versus the Boston Bruins.

That is, unless you're a Vancouver Canucks fan (forever at odds with the world, as they tend to be). Truthfully, the only thing that could make it a worse time for our friends on the West Coast would be Mark Messier as guest referee.

For Canuck fans, the NHL's dream Final is more of a torture-porn nightmare series. It's seven games of "The Human Centipede" on ice. Heck, most Vancouverites would prefer that -- yes, they would rather watch a mad scientist sewing faces to anuses than witness, say, Dave Bolland lifting the Stanley Cup again.

It probably goes without saying, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a Vancouverite that doesn't loathe the Blackhawks and Bruins something fierce.

The hatred for Chicago derives from a run of three consecutive playoff meetings, the first two of which were violent and vitriolic battles that saw Chicago advance, and the second of which saw the Blackhawks go on to win the Stanley Cup Final. The third go-round was a heated and hateful series as well, but it had a much happier ending for Vancouver fans: the Canucks finally "slayed the dragon", as it were, although I've never liked that phrase, since "slew the dragon" would have been more grammatically correct. But I digress.

Dragon slain, the Canucks continued, unimpeded, into the Stanley Cup Final, where they ran smack-dab into Boston, who spotted them two games before pummelling and humiliating them the rest of the way, breaking Vancouver's heart and leaving their citizens and city in shambles. (Sure, Vancouver did the rioting, but only because Boston made them.)

Vancouver's meetings with Chicago and Boston left such an impression on everyone involved that, even though they didn't meet again this year, neither the Blackhawks nor the Bruins could refrain from jabbing at the past. When asked about the Bruins' Cup win in 2011, Jonathan Toews said he was happy the Canucks didn't win it. When asked about the Penguins, Brad Marchand said "I think those guys will battle a lot harder than Vancouver did in the finals.”

This fire, unlike this fire, still burns strong. And now, Canuck fans are forced to watch two parties they despise going at it. It's like the Kim Kardashian sex tape, but with more "Chelsea Dagger".

How are Vancouverites feeling? Roberto Luongo, who still a Vancouverite, albeit reluctantly, said it best:

Game 1 was tough, although there was solace to be drawn from the fact that it looked like it might never end. "Good", said Canucks fans, "If no one scores, no one wins."

But here's the thing: when that game finally reached its conclusion, with the Blackhawks completing the comeback and Boston suffering the ignominy of blowing a two-goal lead in the third period, it occurred to me that Vancouverites are looking at this all wrong.

Sure, this Final is going to end with those of us in British Columbia having to stomach watching either Brad Marchand or Duncan Keith celebrate, and that will be unpleasant, undoubtedly. But nevermind that. If 2011 taught us anything, it's that there is nothing more heartbreaking than making it through three rounds of the postseason -- of being so close to the holy grail that you can feel its silvery magic coursing through you -- and then watching the other guys take it away.

Vancouver will never forget that feeling, especially since we seem to get a refresher about once every dozen years or so. It's as unpleasant, one imagines, as being "human centipeded".

And now we get to watch it happen to Chicago or Boston. Permit me to take off this hat and put on this one for a moment: I'm down with that.

Think about it, Canucks fans. Back in 2011, while Zdeno Chara was getting to first-and-a-half base with the greatest trophy in sports like it had twisted its ankle on the street outside, this is what the Canucks were doing:

Being sad. Taking a knee and trying to stomach the heartbreak of coming so close, only to come up short.

Some hung their heads; some watched through their fingers like they were witnessing Lindsay being stitched to Katsuro; Ryan Kesler bit his glove to keep from crying. For the Canucks and their fans, this hurt far, far more than what Chicago had done to them the two years prior. It was a hurt we wouldn't wish on our worst enemies.

Or would we? Yes, we would. And now we get to.

So stop your bellyaching, Vancouver. This isn't your nightmare Final. It may not be your dream Final, since your boys aren't in it, but it's close. While it's true that someone has to win, someone else has to lose.

Think about this: when all is said and done, there's a good chance that you'll get to watch Duncan Keith or Brad Marchand cry.

• From reader Diana V., do your grocery shopping at a any Jewel-Osco store on a Stanley Cup gameday and you'll get 10-percent off your total. If you're jersey-less, yes, they do sell them.

• After leaving Game 1 early with a shoulder upper-body injury, Nathan Horton was on the ice Friday afternoon with the Bruins. [@ESPNJoeyMac]

• A woman suffered a laceration on her face and two black eyes after getting hit with a puck during Game 1 Wednesday. Adding to her unfortunate situation, she didn't even get to keep the puck. [CBS Chicago]

• Five keys for the Blackhawks heading into Game 2. [Blackhawk Up]

• How multiple overtimes can affect those involved, with memories of Petr Klima's winner from 1990. [National Post]

• Bruins president Cam Neely was having flashbacks to that memorable overtime Stanley Cup game. "“You always look back and think about things you may have been able to do differently, but one of my lines I talk to myself about, and that I’ve said in the past, is 'my rearview mirror is broken.’ There's no point rehashing that because you can't change the past." [CSNNE]

• Down Goes Brown on the 25 things a fan experiences during a multiple overtime playoff hockey game: "16. The sudden development of a deep resentment for people who live on the West Coast. Wait, they get nice weather and they can watch playoff overtime without having to get up in three hours? Seriously, screw those guys." Note from Harrison: at my place, the sun had only been down for an hour when the Blackhawks scored. Nyeh nyeh. [Grantland]

• How history is in the favor of the Bruins heading into Game 2. [Boston Herald]

• "If Phil Esposito hates Boston so much, the Bruins should unretire his number." [TruTV]

• Part 1 of the NHL Awards will take place Friday night at 5pm ET on NHL Network in the U.S. and Canada when the league announces the winners of the Bill Masterton Memorial, Frank J. Selke, King Clancy and Lady Byng trophies, the Jack Adams Award, the Mark Messier NHL Leadership Award, the NHL Foundation Player Award and the NHL General Manager of the Year Award. The rest will be announced prior to Game 2 on Saturday night at 7 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Network and CBC. [NHL.com]

• A day before he finds out whether or not he'll be adding another Hart Trophy to his mantle, here's the good, the bad and the grade of Alex Ovechkin's 2013 season. [Japers' Rink]

• Next up in the New York Rangers' interview process: LA Kings assistant John Stevens. [LA Times]

• If we had a dollar every time a mystery buyer stepped into the mess that is the Phoenix Coyotes' ownership picture... [AZ Republic]

• Evander Kane and controversy? No way! [Winnipeg Free Press]

• Mike Colligan with a great comparison of Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Dan Bylsma to that of a first round pick. [The Hockey Writers]

• Why the Philadelphia Flyers are like that guy in your fantasy league who has made 75 moves in the first two months of the season and sits next to last in the standings. [The Hockey News]

• NHLers in Olympic decision be damned! The Sweden has announced the roster for their pre-Olympic camp for Sochi, which will begin in August. [SIHA]

• The Detroit Red Wings have signed forward Drew Miller to a 3-year, $4.05 million deal. [Free Press]

• Ex-NHLer Trevor Letowski is moving behind the bench to coach the OHL'a Sarnia Sting. [Buzzing the Net]

• Finally, here are the mic'd up highlights of the Conference Finals:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Andrew Shaw's mom absolves the Blackhawks star for dropping F-bomb
• Penguins give Evgeni Malkin huge new $76 million deal
• Bruins defensemen try to shake off stunning Game 1 collapse

It's a (gettin' down on) Friday edition of Marek vs. Wyshynski beginning at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, and we're talking about the following and more:

Special Guest Stars: Joe Haggerty of CSN New England joins us to break down Game 2 of the Boston Bruins/Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup Final.

• Nathan Horton was hurt in a fight with Jarome Iginla; cue 'stupidity of fighting' outrage.

• The Florida Panthers' cheap tickets.

• The "Boston Strong" controversies.

• The joke of a joke of a joke that is the Phoenix Coyotes' ownership saga.

• GAME SHOW FRIDAY!

Question of the Day: What was the first Stanley Cup Final you remember watching?
Email at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or hit us on Twitter with the hashtag #MvsW to @wyshynski or @jeffmarek.

Click here for the Sportsnet live stream or click the play button above! Click here to download podcasts from the show each day. Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or Feedburner.

But these robots aren't just stopping at regular old puck-and-stick hockey. No, they are now moving in to dominate air hockey territory.

Researchers at Japan's Chiba University's Namiki Lab have created a robot capable of destroying you in air hockey. Not just because it plays good defense, but because it's smart and changes its style of play depending on what your strategy is.

From IEEE Spectrum:

The robot is tracking the game at an insanely fast rate of 500 frames per second. Which means that, from the robot's point of view, its human opponent is moving at a laughably slow pace. It's like the robot is playing the game in a Matrix-style bullet-time frame.

To keep the game entertaining for human players, the researchers programmed the robot with a three-layer control system. The first layer is responsible for basic motion control at the hardware level. A second layer decides its short-term strategy—whether it should hit the puck, defend the goal, or stay still—to choose which motion can effectively counter the incoming trajectory of the puck. The third layer determines the machine's long-term strategy, and this is where things get interesting.

Basically, the robot observes the speed and position of the player's paddle in relation to the puck. This data can be described by what is known as a Motion Pattern Histogram (MPH). The robot uses this data to estimate whether its opponent is playing aggressively or defensively. Over the course of a game, the robot can detect these MPHs in real-time and compare them with reference patterns to help it figure out what you're doing.

The robot is not only playing against you, it's reading your actions. We are so boned.

So, if you're at the local arcade or your buddy's basement talking trash about your air hockey skills, keep an eye out for any robots in the area. Your undefeated streak may be coming to a quick end.

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

The outcry over the “Toronto Stronger” sign was considerable, but it did spark a rather sensitive debate about teams using tragedies and patriotism for the purposes of rallying a fan base or striking an emotional chord during a sporting event. When does “Boston Strong” crossover from being an essential symbol for the city’s healing into something calculated and commercial? Does it matter if it does?

Cubby Tees is a Chicago-based sports apparel company that makes some awesome gear – seriously, we must possess this Patrick Kane shirt. In honor of the Stanley Cup Final between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins, they decided to tweak the “Boston Strong” slogan on a T-shirt that read “Chicago Stronger,” featuring the team’s iconic Indian feathers. There was another design that incorporated another aspect of the Hawks' logo.

Predictably, there was backlash. Boston Sports Then & Now reported on the shirt, and the controversy spread, writing “I thought most of the people in Chicago were behind Boston after the marathon bombings, well I guess that changes when we the Stanley Cup is involved."

It wasn't just from Boston fans, either. Ted Gruber of Chicago Now wrote:

As for Cubby Tees, if you had an ounce of class or soul you would remove the shirt from your website and stop making a profit off something that could and has happened in any part of the world. Remove the shirt and have an ounce of respect for those people.

The shirt was pulled from Cubby Tees by Friday morning, citing a "good new-fashoned Twitter-lynching" and writing:

Though we: (a) are loathe to take any action that appears to bow to bullying, and; (b) had hoped that residents of the “Cradle Of Liberty” held a greater appreciation for the freedom of expression (we support you venting your opinions, not so much your threats and insistence on censorship)…we’ve nevertheless pulled the shirt in the interest of harmony between two great cities.

It was replaced with a screed about free speech and how criticism of the gear was misguided. Because they weren’t making light of the tragedy’s most recognizable slogan, but rather – and completely ironically, we imagine – those who seek to profit from it.

Here’s the description Cubby Tees said ran with the shirt on their website, before it was pulled:

From the Cubby Tees tirade in response to the Bostonian fans’ tirades over the shirts:

Anyone who believes that the shirt mocked those injured in the horrible events of Patriots’ Day regrettably missed our point and did not read/process our accompanying commentary; nowhere on the shirt’s face (or within its subtext or motivation) did we take aim at the victims or make light of the incident -- nor would we ever. The design poked fun at the embarrassing self-congratulatory branding of the tragedy, and its inappropriate adoption by SOME BOSTON FANS AS A MINIMIZING SPORTS ANTHEM, not the sad reality of that day’s mayhem.

Our hearts go out to all of those touched by the 3 fatalities and 30 serious injuries from that crime. This is not a recalcitrant statement motivated by your Tweets: like the rest of the world, we said (and felt) this right from the beginning. We love Boston, we love Bostonians. There was nothing in this shirt intended to trivialize the real losses; the design was based on the puzzling creation of a “Boston Strong” slogan in the first place, and then the use of that banner for the glory of New England pro teams.

(For the record: The site refused to donate a “nominal amount” to Boston-based charities as an act of contrition, opting to instead donate to a Chicago-based one to be determined.)

I found the “Toronto Stronger” sign nauseating, and feel the same about this. It’s a matter of perspective: Knowing people who survived 9/11, and remembering those that didn’t, my point of reference is whether another sports team using any of that iconography to mock the Yankees (I team I abjectly loathe) would have crossed the line in the wake of the attack

(And let’s not drop our pants and start comparing scope of tragedies, or explain how a city is “supposed” to feel after them. Which seems to be the thrust of the Cubby Tees argument: “Every single injury and death to an innocent is devastating to us all, but not every criminal act is a threat to our way of life. Thankfully Boston was not in the crosshairs of a coordinated international attack, but witnessed a crime by two homocidal locals.” Oh, geez, sorry. I take back all the piss I wasted in my pants living in Rockville, Maryland during the sniper shootings. Hopefully my anxiety will correctly match the threat level in hindsight during the next tragedy.)

I’m as wary as anyone about using these tragedies, and throw wars into this mix, for the sake of visceral entertainment without commentary. I don’t need to hear the National Anthem at a sporting event. I don’t need to see a soldier used as a prop during the game to get the crowd going. If the Bruins ever used a “Boston Strong” montage to fire up the fans in the third period, well, yes, that’s a bit deplorable too.

So if that truly was the aim for this shirt’s existence, it at least inches closer to “understandable but undoubtedly still misguided.”

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But in a situation drenched in irony – railing against the “frat boy” chant that “Boston Strong” has become by producing a T-shirt that’ll be seen in every frat bar in Wrigleville, for one of a dozen examples – the idea that a “Chicago Stronger” T-shirt was pulled off the market because Boston fans’ protests were that strong … well, how ‘bout them apples?

Shaw said it was a “slip of the tongue” and “I was never good at English.”

If you were wondering what his mother thought about her baby boy getting colorful on national television … well, Justin Breen of DNAinfo Chicago reached out to Darlene Shaw to find out:

"I thought, you know what, they played three overtimes of hockey, physically and mentally, he was exhausted," said Darlene Shaw, who was born and raised in Belleville and whose husband Doug played junior hockey in the city.

Darlene Shaw, who attended Game 1 but didn't know her son had scored until a Hawks fan told her, said she was used to swearing.

"I have a husband who played hockey and sons who play hockey," she said. "I don't like it, but the soap went out the door years ago."

Breen also asked His Worship Mayor Neil R. Ellis of Belleville, Ont., about Shaw’s F-bomb; Ellis absolved him, saying that "playing at that caliber and that long, you're exhausted. It wasn't anything disrespectful."

You know, in case you were worried his citizenship might be revoked.

NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Bruins defensemen try to shake off stunning Game 1 collapse
• Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford finally getting his due
• Penguins give Evgeni Malkin huge new $76 million deal

The Stanley Cup Final started Wednesday night, but the headlines both immediately before that game and on the day following were in some ways far more intriguing.

There had been a week of questions about what Pittsburgh Penguins GM Ray Shero might do, being under the whip from Mario Lemieux as he was, when it comes to making what could potentially be wholesale changes to a team that has been bounced from the playoffs in embarrassing fashion in each of the last three seasons.

And then the answer to all of them, apparently, was, "Nothing."

On Wednesday, just several hours before the puck dropped on Game 1 of the Cup Final between the team that beat his team for the best record in the regular season, and the one that swept it out of the Eastern Conference Finals with a vulgar display of dominance, Shero held a one-hour press conference that reminded the neutral observer of Muhammad al Sahhaf. "Everything in Mighty Pittsburgh is as it should be! The jackals around the league cannot hope to damage the great power of the Penguins!"

Dan Bylsma, rumored to be embattled (though for silly reasons)? Re-signed for another two years.

All his assistants? Riding back into the breach at his side once again.

This seemed more than fair. The idea that the Penguins didn't beat the Bruins — and, again, were humiliated by them — had little to do with his inability to adapt to the chess game Claude Julien was playing with him from the other bench, though it certainly didn't help things. The argument could be made that the Penguins certainly had their chances, particularly in Games 3 and 4, to make the series at least somewhat interesting, but they got more or less zero bounces to go their way over the course of those four games, and that's just how hockey goes sometimes.

Firing a coaching staff whose charges finished second in the league and in the postseason's final four always seemed shortsighted, even if you might have expected an assistant or two to get shuffled out for the sake of someone's head rolling and maybe changing up, well, anything.

What didn't make sense in that press conference was that Shero, like Bylsma days before him, went to the mattresses for a guy who was the culprit in the first two of the apparently unacceptable first-round losses of the previous two postseasons, and would have been one again this year until sanity prevailed and he got his ass hot-glued to the bench in favor of a 36-year-old with limited playoff experience.

That Marc-Andre Fleury has received a vote of confidence from his coach and general manager -- using roughly the same words to describe their deep and abiding and unflagging faith in his abilities despite all evidence hollering that they should do the opposite -- comes off very much as being the talking points of an administration embroiled in scandal.

It's no secret that Sidney Crosby would prefer to have one of his best buddies around the dressing room every day, but it's also Shero and Bylsma's job to step in and say, "Enough."

The choice between keeping Crosby happy about this kind of thing, when he's signed for another dozen years and certainly not going anywhere, and giving themselves the best chance to win every year would seem an easy one, but then it appears the politics involved in the former will effect the latter unto the end of Fleury's deal two seasons now. At the very least. In the meantime, he'll be a $5 million backup goalie in a No. 1's clothes for no other reason than his having won the Cup four years ago on an all-star team.

The decision to hang onto Fleury, let alone leaving him propped up whimpering on the throne, were especially impressive mental gymnastics by Shero and Bylsma.

"It's difficult to replace 40 wins a year," Shero said in real life. "I can't replace that. I don't believe I can go out and get someone like that."

The idea that it's "concentration and belief" that are holding Fleury back in the playoffs, and not "an inability to stop shots of even moderate quality" is obviously ludicrous, but whatever Crosby wants is apparently what goes. This is the reason Chris Osgood was in Detroit forever; and Fleury is also like Osgood in that he is a sub-replacement-level goaltender.

Of course, the Fleury contract, perhaps as much as his play itself, might be something that holds the Penguins back from future postseason success.

Thursday morning, while much of the hockey world was still literally sleeping off the triple-overtime delirium and exhaustion of the night before, the Penguins announced they'd re-signed Evgeni Malkin to a deal that will pay him $9.5 million a year until he's 35.

A tidy bit of business, considering how much he could have garnered on the open market even with his relative no-show in the Conference Finals. Speculation was that he could have gotten $12 million or even $13 million if he really wanted it, and that Shero was able to avoid paying that was rather deft. It's a genuine bargain (at least for now) in an salary cap era in which fans are routinely told deals, which are anything but, qualify for such designation.

Now, Shero has the two current best players in the world locked up for a decade on average, and that's never a bad thing, even with the concern that they've both missed considerable time in the last few years. Malkin only played 216 regular-season games of Pittsburgh's 294 the last four seasons, and Crosby just 180. That's got to be at least something like a cause for concern.

But in signing both to these deals, and hanging onto Fleury for at least the final year of his deal (if Shero is to be believed about all that belief), he's putting $23.2 million worth of eggs in just three baskets. And that doesn't include Kris Letang, who is reportedly seeking anywhere between five and eight years at something like $7 million or more per season.

The chutzpah it takes to seek that kind of money and term for a defenseman who doesn't play defense and really only racks up second assists on a team that's routinely at the top of the league in offense, is considerable, undeserved Norris nomination or no.

Since 2009, Letang has 72 assists at even strength, only 37 of which were primaries(51.4 percent). By way of comparison, Shea Weber's total is 28 out of 51 (54.9 percent) in that same period, on a far worse offensive team; he can't just pass it to Brandon Yip, watch him walk through four guys and pass to Colin Wilson for a tap-in as Letang could with Crosby or Malkin.

The indications seem to be that the Penguins will at least try to meet his absurd demands, because it's not every day you find a power-play quarterback with the kind of lofty numbers Letang puts up. But even taking the low end of his asking price, the Penguins will have about $30 million tied up in four players, two of which are of questionable quality at best. Even if the salary cap rises to the levels seen this year for 2014-15, when Malkin's (and theoretically Letang's) deal goes into effect, that's still 43 percent of the limit, and that's far too much.

But again, this is Shero in damage control mode, defending the people he put into place and in whom he possibly has misplaced his ongoing trust and with whom he is rather desperately casting lot.

His votes of confidence are now flying around Pittsburgh in much the same way as the blame from others just a few days ago, and Shero is the one standing up in the fire fight and pleading for sanity.

Unfortunately for him, these early offseason moves could, and perhaps should, be the last of his career running the Penguins. There are all these people he has made exceptionally rich, and assured work for the next few seasons at least, and in whom he says he believes implicitly even after all these failures.

If they falter again next spring, Lemieux might not be so forgiving as he.

If you’ve got something for Trending Topics,holla at Lambert on Twitter or via e-mail. He’ll even credit you so you get a thousand followers in one day and you’ll become the most popular person on the Internet! You can also visit his blog if you’re so inclined.

NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Andrew Shaw's mom absolves the Blackhawks star for dropping F-bomb
• Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford finally getting his due
• Blame Jarome Iginla for Nathan Horton's Game 1 shoulder injury

We’re talking about a player with six game-winning goals and 35 points in 38 playoff appearances. He’s a money performer and an important cog on the team’s top line.

Alas, his night ended at 17:39 of the first overtime, as Horton tangled with Niklas Hjalmarsson in front of the Chicago net and left the ice in pain. He didn’t return to the game, which Boston lost, 4-3.

What happened to him? Think Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon”:

According to WEEI, Horton has a “chronic left shoulder subluxation,” with his shoulder popping out of its socket on several occasions during the playoffs. It was popped back into place in Game 1, but he didn’t return to the game and is day-to-day for Game 2, according to Coach Claude Julien. Off-season surgery is a distinct possibility for the pending unrestricted free agent.

Now, how did he suffer this injury? DJ Bean of Big Bad Blog did some sleuthing and traced it back to an April 20 fight, after which Horton missed five games. Who was that fight against? Why, almost-Bruin and target of Boston fan loathing Jarome Iginla, of course:

You know, just in case Bruins fans didn’t have enough reason to be pissed off at Jarome Iginla. More here from Bean and WEEI.

NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Andrew Shaw's mom absolves the Blackhawks star for dropping F-bomb
• Penguins give Evgeni Malkin huge new $76 million deal
• Slideshow: Action in Stanley Cup Final

By Chuck and Pants from What's Up, Ya Sieve?

The Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks are the last teams standing for the Stanley Cup in 2013.

Here’s a guide to the most memorable facial follicle features of the championship round:

The Double Trouble

Boston: Adam McQuaid - The beard. The hair. The slapshot from the point.

Bruins D-man and Foxy Friday Honoree, has got the perfect playoff combination going. Gone is his incredibly sexy mullet (yes, we called it sexy) but in its place is a haircut so fantastic that it deserves a spot on the cover of GQ, or at least a starring role in a shampoo commercial.

The beard might not be completely full but with a jawline like that, you don’t really need much. Just let it go and watch the magic happen. The whole look is just so effortlessly effortless that we can only sit back, smile and admire.

Chicago: Patrick Kane - Patrick Kane is the guy our parents warned us about.

They might be willing to overlook his oft-photographed past – they were kids once, you know - but when Kaner shows up with a curly mullet, stripe-shaved temples and a beard growing up to meet them, he’s one denim vest and a Camaro away from Dad shutting the door in his face and grounding us for life.

PK is bald where he should have hair and has hair where he should not – it’s inexplicable and unforgettable. We’ll just be upstairs, slamming doors and crying over our Official Collector’s Edition of The Outsiders.

The Weird Beard

Boston: Jaromir Jagr - Like there ever was another choice.

Much like last year’s Stanley Cup Beard, Jags has got this weird beard down to a science and we appreciate that he took the considerable time and effort to trim in up right for Media Day.

Does he look a little crazy? Sure, but do you want to tell him he can’t do that? He’s your zany old uncle who says whatever he wants and gets away with it. You simply nod, shrug and exclaim “Oh Uncle Jaromir!” (Cue sitcom tin-canned laugh track.)

Chicago: Jonathan Toews - Let us offer an educated guess: Jonathan Toews practices his staring contests in the mirror. In the process, it appears Tazer has seared the mustache right off his own face. Nothing could grow properly under those conditions. The sides and chin are not directly exposed to the gamma radiation of his gaze, so that hair continues to grow unabated.

Beware creeping toward the front, Beard. There is more serious staring to be done and Toews will win again, he always does.

The Woolly Bully

Boston: Zdeno Chara - No BeardWatch can truly be complete without mentioning Zdeno Chara, for his is a beard like no other. This is so lush, full, and mantastic that we don’t even know notice what is going on with his hairline.

This beard, much like his devastating slapshot, strikes fear into the hearts of its opponents. He’s a large black bear - you want to reach out and touch the luxurious pelt. But don’t. You might lose a hand.

Chicago: Nick Leddy - Black sheep? We love ‘em. Nick Leddy’s wearing a curly, burly skein of wool into the Final. This beard had depth and drama, it’s impenetrable by light and cold and is probably waterproof to boot.

Like the perfect playoff team, Leddy’s beard is built for the season, goes away for summer and starts fresh next year.

The Dr. Pepper 10 (The Manliest Low-Calorie Beard)

Boston: Johnny Boychuk - Get this man a tree-bark snack and a eagle perched on his shoulder STAT! This is a formidable lumberjack beard. Johnny has been out in the Yukon, working his way up and down the logging road trying to make some money to send back home to Ma and Pa.

Being so far away from civilization with nary a razor or mirror in sight, he’s let nature takes its course. The result is this grizzled, unshorn cacophony of facial hair so mighty that even his face cannot contain it.

Chicago: Brandon Saad - Brandon Saad wanted to emulate Patrick Kane’s style, but his look is too complete. By the end of this series, Brandon Saad’s wilderness beard will be ready to spend its day with the Cup in the forest, using the shiny surface to start fires for cooking fish he speared with a broken hockey stick.

It’s manly in an unkempt, devil-may-care way that both compels and repels us with promises of endless starry skies and eating lukewarm beans out of cans.

This beard could convince us of many things, except the appeal of Diet Dr. Pepper. Men can keep that crap.

The “Maybe Next Year” Beard

Boston: Tuukka Rask - Oh Tuukka.

Thank goodness you are much better at goaltending than you are a beard growing because this is an epic fail. We can’t, in good consciousness, really call it “beard.” It’s just a paltry collection of little chin hairs with no organization or purpose in life.

But wait - we just thought of something. Is your beard sparse because you’re using it to make a subtle (stubble?) statement about how few goals you’ve allowed these playoffs? Less goals allowed equals less hairs in your beard? Now this makes a lot more sense.

Chicago: Andrew Shaw - Andrew Shaw gets under opponents’ skin. What gets under his skin? Not a beard.

Shawzer is sporting what we like to call the “Scraggle Rock.” This beard doesn’t understand the concept of safety in numbers, instead opting to disperse across his face like grass on an abandoned lot.

Does it just need more time? Like triple overtime? Game winning goals trump beards, but these are the Finals, y’all.

If a beard isn’t a beard by now… maybe next year.

NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Bruins defensemen try to shake off stunning Game 1 collapse
• Andrew Shaw's mom absolves the Blackhawks star for dropping F-bomb
• Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford finally getting his due

When the Chicago Blackhawks scored to win Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final in triple overtime, Corey Crawford had played 112 minutes and 8 seconds of acrobatic playoff goaltending. He wasn’t sure who scored. Just that the game had finally ended, with a puck having crossed the goal line across the ice.

Did he have enough energy to celebrate?

“Oh, for sure, man,” he said after Game 1’s 4-3 Blackhawks win on Wednesday night.

“It was just,” he continued, rubbing his face with his hand, “so much hockey."

Crawford was the primary reason why the Blackhawks were still playing into a third overtime. He made 29 of his 51 saves for the game in the extra periods, with a little help from a post or two and strong defense in front of him.

Crawford seemed to get stronger as the game grew longer. But he was also eager for it to end.

“It was tiring, I’m not going to lie. But I kept telling myself to just keep making the next save, and that we would score on the next shot," he said.

The day after the marathon, his teammates were ready with praise for Crawford’s performance:

“Crow is so strong for us. He proved it in overtime,” said Marian Hossa, on an off-day for the Blackhawks and for the series.

“He made some really huge saves. I thought they had lots of odd-man rushes at the end. He was there for us. He won the game for us basically because could be long time over. So, you know, I think he's in his best form I ever saw him play.”

Said defenseman Brent Seabrook: “I thought his overtime periods were unbelievable. He gave us an opportunity to come back and get chances and keep us in the game.”

Crawford isn’t mentioned that often among the Blackhawks’ driving forces for success. Perhaps it’s because he shared time with Ray Emery during the season, or perhaps it’s because this is his first sustained success in the postseason. He’s still seen by many as the goalie the Blackhawks simply don’t want to have screw things up for them; the competent player whose main objective is simply not to be a liability. The Antti Niemi 2.0.

Then again, Niemi isn't seen that way anymore, as evidenced by his Vezina nod. The perception on Crawford might have changed too in the 52 minutes of extra time that saw the Blackhawks goalie equal, or outplay, Tuukka Rask.

NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

More NHL coverage from Yahoo! Sports
• Penguins give Evgeni Malkin huge new $76 million deal
• Bruins defensemen try to shake off stunning Game 1 collapse
• Slideshow: Action in Stanley Cup Final

• The Dropkick Murphys, who are diehard Bruins fans, refused to play a show last night until the game was over. When it refused to end, they had the venue play it on the projection screens. [Reddit]

• Nathan Horton's ailment appears to be a left shoulder injury that dates back to a fight with Jarome Iginla. Look, he's making a difference in the Stanley Cup Final after all! [CSNNE]

• Eric Duhatschek on the Blackhawks landing the first blow by landing the last blow in Game 1. [The Globe & Mail]

• Bruce Arthur writes nice things about Game 1 as well. [National Post]

• Facts and figures from Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. This one jumped out at me: "7 -- Losses by the Bruins in their seven overtime road games in the Stanley Cup Final." [NHL]

• Hillary Clinton throws her support behind the Blackhawks, conveniently while she's in Chicago. “I can remember listening to Blackhawks games -- on the radio -- when I was doing my homework all those years ago, and my father and brothers and I were great Blackhawks fans,” she said. “But three overtimes, really? I can imagine a sense of euphoria as well as exhaustion affecting many of our Chicago participants today, and I heartily endorse the mayor’s call of, 'Go Blackhawks.'" [Chicago Tribune]

• Marian Hossa got to bed at 3 a.m. and then was woken up by his neighbour doing some early-morning drilling. [Chicago Tribune]

• Edmonton Oilers prospect Kristians Pelss has jumped off a bridge in Latvia and reportedly drowned. [Edmonton Journal]

• Alain Vigneault is still the front-runner for the New York Rangers' coaching job, but Mark Messier remains in the weeds, and if he gets the gig, he's bringing Brian Leetch with him, because of course he is. [NY Post]

• Joe Starkey criticizes the Penguins' decision to stick with the status quo. [TribLive]

• Get your Florida Panthers' season tickets for just $7 a game. [Kukla's Korner]

• Evander Kane had successful foot surgery Thursday. His recovery time is 4-6 weeks. [True North]

• Goaltending is a question mark for Canada in Sochi. This story isn't overblown at all, by the way. [Sportsnet]

• Is it just anonymous bloggers criticizing Pierre McGuire? No. No it is not. [Awful Announcing]

• The Montreal Canadiens have signed Davis Drewiske to a two-year extension. [Canadiens]

• Shane Doan on the never-ending tumult of being a Phoenix Coyote, and his efforts to convince Mike Smith to stay in the desert. [AZ Central]

• Why John Tortorella might be just fine in Vancouver, if that happens. [PITB]

• According to multiple reports, the Tampa Bay Lightning are close to a deal with Swiss forward Reto Suri, who was a big part of the surprising Swiss team at the World Hockey Championships. [PHT]

• And finally, I don't know who Daily Grace is -- she appears to be some sort of Youtube personality -- but here she is reviewing the hotties of the Stanley Cup Final. Her reactions to Zdeno Chara and Jaromir Jagr are pretty great, and she definitely got Patrick "down to have a weird time" Kane right.

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Andrew Shaw's mom absolves the Blackhawks star for dropping F-bomb
• Penguins give Evgeni Malkin huge new $76 million deal
• Bruins defensemen try to shake off stunning Game 1 collapse

In late May, EA announced that their NHL 14 cover vote competition had come down to goaltenders Martin Brodeur and Sergei Bobrovsky. They have yet to announce which of the backstops won the gig.

At least not officially. Unofficially, however, all signs (and one very important banner) point to Brodeur. Via Jeff Bakalar, the above banner is hanging at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in LA, where EA debuted the NHL 14 trailer two days ago.

This banner surfaced on Wednesday, fuelling early speculation that Brodeur had won the vote, but @VoteBrodeur pointed out that EA had released preliminary cover art for both players:

Don't get TOO excited, Brodeur fans, because EA released preliminary cover art for both players: twitter.com/EASPORTSNHL/st…

— Vote #NHL14Brodeur (@VoteBrodeur) June 13, 2013

On Thursday, however, observant fans noticed that, while Brodeur had a banner, Sergei Bobrovsky did not. Maybe they just forgot it in the van?

If not, well, we're no detectives, but it seems like, if there was a chance Bobrovsky might be on your video game cover, you'd make sure you made him a banner. The secret might be out.

EA is expected to announce which of the two players made the cover in the next week or so. When it's Brodeur, act surprised, I guess.

It's a Thursday edition of Marek vs. Wyshynski beginning at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, and we're talking about the following and more:

Special Guest Stars: Sportsnet’s Gene Principe joins MvsW live from Chicago to talk about the Cup Final and the Oilers’ personnel changes

• Breaking down the Chicago Blackhawks' win in Game 1 over the Boston Bruins.

• The Evgeni Malkin contract and its ripples.

• The Vancouver Canucks' coaching vacancy.

• TV ratings

Question of the Day: Jeff and Greg are GOING POSTAL! Ask us anything.
Email at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or hit us on Twitter with the hashtag #MvsW to @wyshynski or @jeffmarek.

Click here for the Sportsnet live stream or click the play button above! Click here to download podcasts from the show each day. Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or Feedburner.

The last time we saw AK-46 in the NHL was May 7, 2012, as a member of the Nashville Predators in a playoff game against the Phoenix Coyotes. That was the same postseason in which he infamously broke curfew with Alexander Radulov.

As the NHL lockout began, Kostitsyn decided to take his talents to the KHL as an unrestricted free agent. He signed with Traktor Chelyabinsk, and that’s where he’s staying – inking a one-year deal to remain in the KHL next season.

From Belta:

Andrei Kostitsyn has signed a new contact with HC Traktor Chelyabinsk with which he reached the 2012/2013 Gagarin Cup final. Though the contract has not yet been officially registered in the KHL, the deal has been settled and no changes are expected, Yevgeny Tsybuk is quoted as saying to the Russian media. The details of the new one-year contract have not been revealed.

In the latest championship (the regular season and the playoff) Andrei Kostitsyn made 67 outings in the HC Traktor Chelyabinsk colors earning 31 (16+15) points. He also collected 92 penalty minutes and had the plus-minus ratio of +17

Andrei Kostitsyn, 28, could return to the National Hockey League (NHL) in which his younger brother plays. HC Florida Panthers was interested in signing the former Montreal Canadiens and Nashville Predators player.

We’re not sure if the Panthers’ interest in Andrei Kostitsyn is recent or a reference to last season’s training camp invitation. But there might have been interest in him had he decided to head back to the NHL.

One more note from that article: Kostitsyn missed some practices and was “was excluded from the Belarusian national team prior to the 2014 Sochi Olympics qualification.” Never chance, AK-46.

s/t Linda Sparks for the tip

So how big was Game 1? Here’s Paulsen of Sports Media Watch with the great news for hockey:

Game 1 of the Bruins/Blackhawks NHL Stanley Cup Final earned a 4.8 overnight rating on NBC Wednesday night, up 100% from Kings/Devils Game 1 last year (2.4), and up 50% from Bruins/Canucks Game 1 in 2011 (3.2).

The 4.8 is the highest overnight for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final since Red Wings/Flyers on FOX in 1997 (5.1), and the third-highest Game 1 overnight since the final returned to broadcast television in 1995. Only Panthers/Avalanche Game 1 in 1996 (5.2) and the aforementioned Red Wings/Flyers game earned better numbers.

It was also the highest-rated non-clinching Stanley Cup Final game since Game 5 of the 2000 Final between the Dallas Stars and the New Jersey Devils (5.3), whom you’ll recall repelled audiences with their defensive style and killed interest in the NHL. File that under “hockey myths.”

Interesting, locally in Chicago, that Game 1 vs. Boston was up 49 percent over Game 1 vs. the Philadelphia Flyers in 2011. Is that the Blackhawks’ bandwagon expanding exponentially, or the NHL’s?

Meanwhile, the man behind the NHL’s success on NBC has had enough with anonymous critics of the divisive man inside the glass, Pierre McGuire.

Sam Flood, the executive producer for NBC’s fantastic coverage of the NHL, recently spoke with Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated about the Stanley Cup Final, and was asked about McGuire being a “polarizing” broadcaster.

Said Flood:

"I consider Pierre to be the gold standard, the position of being inside the glass was created because of Pierre. His skill set is uniquely suited to telling stories on air. His knowledge of the game and background of every player on the ice is incredible. He is a huge asset. He won an Emmy Award this year for obvious reasons. The sad thing about how society is today is there are a small group of people who shout loud and hide behind blogger names and fraudulent titles and attack people. They attack Cris Collinsworth. They attack Al Michaels. They attack Pierre McGuire. They attack Mike Milbury. They attack Keith Jones. They are a bunch of chickens who hide behind their Twitter names and attack people. Shame on them. If you want to say something, say it with your name behind it. But if you want to hide behind funny little names on the Internet, be my guest. But shame on you."

(Does anyone attack Keith Jones? Seriously?)

Andrew Bucholtz of Awful Announcing, who hipped us to the story, had this take:

It's no secret that NBC hockey analyst McGuire has been the target of plenty of criticism from hockey fans over the years. However, writing that criticism off as a product of just those who "shout loud and hide behind blogger names" is insanity in 2013. Some of the most prominent criticism of McGuire has come from the hockey players he interviews, including Henrik Zetterberg rejecting his interview request, Marty Turco's 2011 mockery of him and Mike Commodore tweeting that McGuire "ruins hockey" for him. Even in the media realm, it's far from just anonymous bloggers who bash McGuire. In fact, much of the best criticism of McGuire has come from those willing to use their names.

I’m obviously one that’s put his name to criticism of McGuire, which has at times grown so zealous that I actually gave up mocking him for Lent. Other than the occasional ribbing for ribbing’s sake, I stand by every bomb I’ve tossed, and I think Flood has a deaf ear for the justifiable criticisms of his star analyst.

First off: The idea that critics of an on-air talent should be shamed because of their anonymous drive-by vitriol misses the larger point, which is that they give a damn. About McGuire. About Collinsworth. About Milbury or Roenick or anyone else whose role it is to provoke as they analyze.

Yes, some of the criticism is mean and nasty and, in Pierre’s case, phallus-obsessed. But there’s a reason Pierre is a rock star and Brian Engblom has to settle for being an incredibly smart and insightful analyst whom no one remembers, and it has everything to do with those critics, anonymous as many are.

As for this gold standard stuff ... once more, with feeling: Trivia does not equal insight.

Constantly playing favorites with certain star players undercuts the network’s evenhanded coverage.

The insatiable desire to add as many cents beyond his initial two for every situation detracts from the action and, frankly, undermines his own assets as an analyst: Take last night’s soapbox on hybrid icing during a play between the Bruins and Blackhawks that wouldn’t have qualified for no-touch icing under the proposed rule. Besides getting the situation wrong ... it’s Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final; what’s next, a passionate debate about the IIHF player transfer agreement during the second overtime?

Do I wish more of McGuire’s critics would focus on these issues rather than getting personal with him on social media and message boards? Of course. I’ve met him. He’s a good dude. We’re both Jersey. Flood’s point is taken there.

But again: There seems to be a blanket endorsement of McGuire’s approach when many, many viewers aren’t appreciative of it.

He’s not my brand of vodka, but it’s not like I want him off the air. Toning it down a little and allowing the game to take precedence? I’ll put my name to that request.

NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Blame Jarome Iginla for Nathan Horton's Game 1 shoulder injury
• Andrew Shaw's mom absolves the Blackhawks star for dropping F-bomb
• Penguins give Evgeni Malkin huge new $76 million deal

Is he making more money than Sidney Crosby?

The answer is “no,” technically, because as Rob Rossi points out Crosby is making $10.6 million on average in the first nine years of his 12-year, $104-milion contract signed last year.

So while Malkin’s $9.5 million cap hit annually eclipses that of Crosby ($8.7 million), technically Crosby’s is still the richer deal during the run of Malkin’s contract, before his salary dips to $3 million when he retires UH WE MEAN when it’s 2023.

C’mon, Ray Shero isn’t about to engage in that level of boat-rocking.

From Rossi on Malkin’s new deal:

The deal was struck late Wednesday night in general manager Ray Shero's office with J.P. Barry, Malkin's agent. Barry has been in Pittsburgh all week, quietly working on the deal. Malkin wanted the deal done before he returned to Moscow, where he spends his offseason.

Malkin's entire immediate family — parents Vladimir and Natasha, and brother Denis — were in Pittsburgh for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Malkin wanted to work out the deal while his family was in Pittsburgh, too.

The Penguins wanted a deal with Malkin, 26, done so they could turn to other offseason matters, including a possible new contract with defenseman Kris Letang and winger Pascal Dupuis.

The deal had the blessing from Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle, who obviously like the idea of the two best centers in the NHL populating their lineup for the next nine years.

There was a thought that with the salary cap going down, the Penguins would have to choose between Malkin and Letang, but Shero indicated that he intended to keep both for next season.

Beyond that? It gets tricky. From the Tribune Review:

Letang, 26, seeks at least a five-year contract with a full no-trade clause, though he prefers an eight-year term. He also wants a full no-movement clause. Compensation is trickier because Letang is the first in-his-prime defenseman set to hit the open market under the new labor deal. The Penguins believe Letang will want at least $7 million annually and closer to or above $8 million.

Do the Penguins want over $25 million in cap space tied up in three players over the next several years? They may not have a choice if they want to keep Letang.
NHL video from Yahoo! Sports:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Blackhawks outlast Bruins in bruising, breathless masterpiece
• Andrew Shaw wins Game 1, drops F-bomb on NBC for Blackhawks
• Bruins' Tuukka Rask on Game 1 loss: 'We just gave it away'