Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.

• We love this photo from Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals. We also can't imagine how many people mistook Chad Smith of the Chili Peppers for Will Ferrell.

• Dominik Hasek, 47, would like to play in the NHL again. As a backup? As a training camp invitee? Doesn't say. But we'd love to see it happen. Preferably in Tampa Bay in a tandem with Dwayne Roloson, so he can have someone to reminisce with about the discovery of fire. [Malik]

• Steve Yzerman doesn't rule out trading for a goalie for the Tampa Bay Lightning: "My preference," Yzerman said Thursday night, "is to go with a little bit younger guy that maybe has a little less experience that can step up and play well for us now." [TB Times]

• Coveted NCAA prospect Justin Schultz is reportedly leaving Wisconsin, giving the Anaheim Ducks a 30-day window in which to negotiate exclusively with him before he joins the Leafs, errrr, becomes a free agent. [Ducks Blog]

• Rick Dudley has left the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Montreal Canadiens as an assistant GM. Tim Wharnsby of CBC on Dudley's mixed results. [CBC Sports]

• Joe Haggerty breaks down a Rick Nash the Boston Bruins scenario: "Fact: The Blue Jackets are asking for too much for Nash at this point. This hockey writer can only see the superstar winger coming to Boston if Columbus is willing to take on Krejci or Tim Thomas in exchange for their franchise cornerstone. That may or may not happen." [CSNNE]

• Glendale councilwoman calls Canadians interested in the Phoenix Coyotes' relocation "poachers." Mark Spector pounces. [Sportsnet]

• John Tortorella on Game 6: "I thought we were on our heels, and you have to give credit to Jersey, too, a little bit, for putting us on our heels. But I think as we've been going here, I think entering tonight's game we're in the right mindset and that's going to be very important for an important game." [NYDN]

Read More »

The Los Angeles Kings did some unpredictable things, statistically speaking, en route to making the Stanley Cup Final: Like going 8-0 on the road, nearly having as many shorthanded goals (5) as power-play goals (6) and beating the top three seeds in the conference.

Dustin Penner's Western Conference Final-winning goal was no exception. Pancakes scored at 17:42 of the first and only overtime, and according to the history of Stanley Cup Playoff overtime, that's an exception to the expected.

Chris Winchester, a Detroit Red Wings for 35 years and a PD reader, put together a spreadsheet that looked at when goals were scored in playoff overtimes going back to expansion in 1968. From Winchester:

I always had the feeling that most overtimes ended in the first 5 minutes or so of overtime.  After compiling the data for every playoff overtime game it turns out that over 40 percent of overtime games ended in the first five minutes of the extra period. I did not calculate the fact that the game may have ended in the 2nd or 3rd overtime, just the time the goal was scored during the extra period.

In other words, the following chart doesn't account for in which overtime the goal was scored, but rather when in that overtime it was scored.

Via Winchester, the numbers; click here for the much larger, clearer image.

Again, take a gander at the full chart here. A few thoughts on this chart …

Read More »

Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.

• Claude Giroux's beer pong adventures are rightfully getting attention on this lovely Tuesday, but it's the double-casted topless cornholing that we're sure a segment of our readership is more interested in. Playoffs leading scorer indeed. [Crossing Broad]

• In case you missed it, the Los Angeles Kings' snarky infographic about being confused with the Sacramento Kings was hilarious. [Kings]

• PK and Malcolm Subban talk race and hockey with Complex. And also, the ladies. Who "pulls the most ladies" in the Subban family? PK says: "Wow, well definitely me. I'm the oldest, I have the most experience, and I'm the best looking. I've been told that on numerous occasions, numerous. Now that doesn't take anything away from my brothers, Malcolm is good looking and Jordan's a good looking guy, too. I mean they are related to me so they get a little bit of the looks. But right now I have to say I have the most experience. I'm a veteran when it comes to that, they're still learning. They have lots of potential. They're like first-round picks right now in the game, they still have to develop." [Complex]

• Coach Bob Hartley's Zurich Lions are ready to bid him adieu as he returns to the NHL. [Swiss Habs]

• Speaking of the Lions, that's where Ryan Shannon of the Tampa Bay Lightning will be for the next three years. [SB Nation]

• What kind of grade would Ville Leino receive for his effort with the Buffalo Sabres? [Die By The Blade]

• In which Shane Doan compares the Phoenix Coyotes' plight to Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail. [Arizona Sports]

• This is so strange: An entire column written about embellishment in the playoffs and how it needs to stop, without a single mention of Mike Smith's flopping. Oh, Arizona Republic you say? Well then. [AZCentral]

• Look, we don't like to judge, but embezzling $144,000 from a Youth Hockey Association is a sort of [expletived] up. [Cap Times]

Read More »

Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.

• You're probably seen Zdeno Chara's tribute to Pavel Demitra by now, but here's Slovakia's Branko Radivojevic rocking a tribute T-shirt after their semifinal win over the Czech Republic at the Hockey World Championship in Helsinki.

• NBC audiences were down over the weekend for the conference finals. Lepore: "Saturday's Rangers-Devils game drew a 1.3 overnight rating, down 13% from last year's Game 4 between Boston and Tampa Bay. It may have been hurt by the early timeslot, or the fact that there was a huge dip in ratings in the lone local market, New York. Game 3 drew a 4.2 in the Big Apple, well down from the 6.2 for Game 1 on the NBC Sports Network.  Sunday's Game 4 between the Coyotes and Kings drew a 1.1 overnight, down 15% from last year's Game 4 between the Canucks and Sharks, which was a 2-1 series, as opposed to the 3-0 lead the Kings had heading in. The game drew a series high 2.7 in Los Angeles." [Puck The Media]

• Henrik Lundqvist on the New York Rangers fans that invade the Rock: "We always have played there in Newark. It's one of the things that makes it special to play these types of games, play New York teams.  We have a lot of support, and talked about
it earlier, a couple days ago, when you see the way that the fans react to things that happen during the game or even the results, it's exciting." [Rangers Rants]

• Looks like Stu Bickel will move up to forward to replace the suspended Brandon Prust. [Slap Shot]

• Larry Brooks believes the hate-o-meter is slowly seeing the needled move on the Rangers and New Jersey Devils. [NY Post]

• Sports Business Journal is reporting that the Detroit Red Wings have settled on a designer for a new 18,000-seat arena to replace the Joe. [Detroit News]

• Jim Rutherford, President and General Manager of the National Hockey League's Carolina Hurricanes, today announced that the team has agreed to terms with defenseman Jamie McBain on a two-year contract. The deal will pay McBain $1.7 million in 2012-13, and $1.9 million in 2013-14. [Hurricanes]

• They signed Bobby Sanguinetti and forward Nicolas Blanchard to two-way contracts, too. [Canes Country]

• Zach Parise is a free agent … risk? "It is very likely that he will elevate whichever team signs him in the short run, but as teams weigh the idea of making him an offer, they need to keep in mind the distinct possibility that he will underperform this contract in the near future and eventually become an anchor on the team's salary cap finances." [NHL Numbers]

• Bear killin' David Booth has a friend in Ted Nugent. [PITB]

Read More »

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.

It's possibly the greatest bit of investigative journalism conducted since Woodward and Bernstein brought down Richard Nixon.

This exemplary, collective effort of sleuth work is currently ongoing in Los Angeles, Calif., where an entire media market has unearthed the NHL's shocking secret:

The city has a professional hockey team.

Over the past week or so here at Puck Daddy, we've tried to document every startling discovery made by the intrepid Los Angeles media, like how to properly pronounce Anze Kopitar's name (it's hard because he's from Bosnia or something), the real name of this Drew Doughty character (it's actually Brad!) and that hockey is in fact not played with a ball, but rather a little piece of rubber known as a "puck." That last one makes me pretty uncomfortable because of the word it rhymes with. ("Duck" — sorry, I just don't trust 'em; they have weird beaks).

Just how villainous is this team, operating as a sort of sporting sleeper cell? They got all the way to the Western Conference Finals without one local noticing. That takes real criminal talent. And not only that, but, the NHL had the diabolical idea to hide it right under the Los Angelinos' noses, by having their home games played at the Staples Center. You know, where the Lakers play. Further, they named the team the Kings to intentionally confuse even the savviest media organization into thinking they are the NBA's Sacramento Kings.

Astonishingly devious stuff. More twists and turns than the Da Vinci Code, which I've read three times just to make sure I understood it all.

The best bit of this journalism on this pressing issue comes, of course, from the city's paper of record, the Los Angeles Times, winner of 44 Pulitzer Prizes since 1942, including three in 2012. It was for that towering beacon of journalistic excellence that columnist Chris Erskine successfully scruted several of the team and sport's most inscrutable mysteries.

For instance, that thing I said earlier about the puck (again, yuck… oh and that's another gross word it rhymes with), I learned it from Erskine. Apparently they even freeze the thing. And that's a huge point of concern, because, "The hardest shots can reach 110 mph and tear flesh, crush bone, even kill you if you're not careful." Yikes, you guys!

(Coming Up: Rick Nash to Boston?; Tororella defends Prust; Ryan Suter faces his future; Evegni Malkin is having a pretty good season; why Lundqvist is King; why the Capitals can't win with Ovechkin; the Islanders know how to party; Canucks might keep Luongo; Ryan Miller on the CBA; Flames and Oilers coaching news; and are the Kings in trouble?)

Read More »

With Coach Dale Hunter leaving and with offensive dynamo Alex Semin apparently headed to free agency — even if he denies that's a done deal — the next significant decision for Washington Capitals GM George McPhee could be the future of defenseman Mike Green.

Green is an RFA this summer, and has been part of the Capitals' core since the lockout. (Not to mention his time modeling for Club Scarlett). He's 26 but injury prone. He's taken hits for his playoff production, but stepped up with four points in a contract postseason during 2012.

Green wants to come back to the Caps, and told Chuck Gormley of CSN Washington that he believes "we're going to win a Cup here." But as far as staying with the Caps, Gormley writes:

Under the terms of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, to retain his rights the Capitals are required to make Green a qualifying offer equal to his 2011-12 salary of $5 million. [...]

After four seasons of playing no fewer than 68 games, Green has missed 83 games the past two seasons and that could impact the term and value of his next contract. In all likelihood Green will accept only a one-year deal that will take him into unrestricted free agency at the age of 27 next year. If the Caps cannot come to an agreement with Green, they likely would receive a first-, second- and third-round draft pick, dependent on his 2012-13 salary and the rules of a new CBA.

The Capitals other RFAs include defenseman John Carlson, who is coming off his rookie deal; as well as forwards Matthieu Parreault and Jay Beagle. Along with Semin, the most significant UFA is defenseman Dennis Wideman, who stepped up into Green's role as top offensive defenseman during the regular season (23:54 TOI) but saw that time reduced during the playoffs (20:44) as Green's increased.

I've run hot and cold on Green during his time with the Capitals, but like so many of his teammates there's no question he stepped up his game in that Hunter Hockey playoff run. Unless the Capitals seek to jettison him from the core, a one-year deal seems like it's in the cards, giving him and the remaining young guns a chance at some unfinished business.

Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.

• In case you haven't heard, Colin Cowherd of ESPN insulted the entirety of the hockey media on Thursday (you can watch the video at the bottom of the post) by calling coverage amateurish and saying, "You're getting a lot of young, cheap people covering hockey and it's not like newspapers send their best people to hockey." He's of course talking about summer interns like Michael Farber of SI, Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe, Eric Duhatschek of the Globe & Mail, Kevin Allen of USA Today, Jeff Klein of the NY Times and Pat Hickey of the Gazette. Not to mention the scores of writers over the age of 40 in any hockey press box Cowherd's never been in. [Awful Announcing]

• Here are John Tortorella's 13 minutes of media time from Thursday's conference call. [NYDN]

• Mirtle makes the case that the New Jersey Devils should be embraced by Canadians: "To many, the Devils are still this no-nonsense, Scott Stevens led defensive squad that celebrated its three Cup wins in the parking lot -- even though they're now full of personality, led by Parise (who talked at length after Game 2 about how DeBoer pushes them to be aggressive in the offensive zone) and have a beautiful new rink that has a read-and-black pavilion out front to potentially parade around in." [Globe & Mail]

• Glendale's funding of the Phoenix Coyotes has partially led to 49 people losing their jobs. [Globe & Mail]

• No Adrian Aucoin for Game 3 vs. the Los Angeles Kings. [Orlesky]

• The Dino Ciccarelli Award for best postseason rookie. Has to go to Holtby, right? [Backhand Shelf]

• GM George McPhee is going to take his time before naming the next Washington Capitals coach. [Capitals Insider]

• Sad news: The Dayton Gems are folding. [Dayton Daily News]

• Big congrats to the 40 men who played hockey for 246 hours and raised $1.4 million for charity in the "world's longest hockey game." [Calgary Sun]

• Carrie Underwood totally sticks up for her man Mike Fisher during Nashville Predators games, ya'll: "When somebody trips Mike or does something dirty, I'm like: 'Are you KIDDING me?' Yeah, I get pretty heated." [Metro]

Read More »

Hockey Hugs is a feature that celebrates the best in hugging from around the NHL, because who doesn't love a good hug now and then? Seen a particularly good hug photo lately? Send it to puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or tweet @HarrisonMooney.

Welcome once again to hockey hugs, the feature that celebrates hockey's special moment after the special moment.

The image databases are full of photos like the one above right now, with members of the New York Rangers looking amorously at Henrik Lundqvist. Honestly, I could probably do a countdown exclusively featuring photos of Lundqvist's teammates giving him a romantic eye. He is beloved.

I chose the one between Lundqvist and Chris Kreider because, between Kreider's thin moustache and his creepy stare, he looks like he's moments away from love-knifing his goaltender and softly singing Gerard McMann's "Cry Little Sister" while he skates away.

Speaking of photos with a treacherous undertone, check out Ryan Carter and Travis Zajac at your right. Sure, they look to be making merry, but a closer inspection reveals some alarming details: Carter's face is beet red and Zajac's open-mouthed smile is a touch evil. I'm 79% certain Zajac is trying to crush Carter's head.

Anyway. The top 5 hockey hugs of the last two weeks are far less sinister.

Read More »

Back by popular demand, here are your Puck Previews: Spotlighting the key games in NHL action, news and views as well as general frivolity. Make sure to stop back here for the nightly Three Stars when the games are finished.

Via Lockhart Steele on Twitter: "Guy wants to sell me these for $150 each. seeing Callahan lay out Deron Williams worth it? Thoughts?" Insert your shot-blocking and/or goaltending joke here. [Deadspin, s/t @Tedislaw]

Eastern Conference Final Game 2 Preview: New Jersey Devils at New York Rangers, 8 p.m. ET. No lineup changes for the Rangers but the Devils could have a new look for Game 2: Coach Pete DeBoer reunited Zach Parise with Travis Zajac and Ilya Kovalchuk, and will have Patrik Elias skating with Petr Sykora and Dainius Zubrus. The Devils are going to try to find a way around the Rangers' shot blocking that doesn't involve maiming. By the way, that whole "keep Rangers fans out of the Rock" thing the Devils were doing? It's disappeared, and the team hasn't explained why.

Check out previews and updated scores for all of today's games on the Y! Sports NHL scores and scheds page. For tonight's starting goalies, check out Left Wing Lock.

Evening Reading

• Listen to today's Marek Vs. Wyshynski here.

• Adam Proteau presents the top 10 UFAs this summer. You know Nos. 1 and 2; did you know No. 3 was Dennis Wideman of the Washington Capitals? [THN]

Read More »

Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.

• All of this has happened before, and will happen again. (via reader Jon Ward)

• Dave Tippett on the keys to Game 2: "First and foremost, if you're not willing to jump in and win a few more one-on-one battles, then the tactical stuff you might as well throw out the window." [AZ Central]

• Alex Semin on Dale Hunter Hockey: "The whole year it was up-and-down, we win a game, we lose a game. By the time we got to playoffs, the team finally understood how to play the game he wanted, defense first, no mistakes, blocking shots, all five guys together. But during the regular season, intensity is not the same as in the playoffs. In postseason, every goal is worth its weight in gold." [Russian Machine]

• What on earth did Alex Ovechkin mean about jealousy in the Capitals' locker room? [Puck Drunk Love]

• Larry Robinson will not be heading to Montreal: "Devils assistant coach and 2000 Cup-winning head coach Larry Robinson vehemently ripped a report suggesting he is interested in joining the new Montreal regime, saying that comments attributed to an agent, whom he called a friend, were five years old and that there has been no such contact or interest." [NY Post]

• Raffi Torres will watch Gary Bettman deny his appeal on Thursday. [Sportsnet]

• Oh, it only the Coyotes had moved to Winnipeg; then it would be the Jets making this run in the Western Conference. [QMI]

• Elliotte Friedman, on Dale Hunter Hockey: "This is where I strongly disagree with statistical analysis, which mocked Hunter's system as being terrible for puck possession and, therefore, determined he was coaching a style that allowed opponents to control the game. This is one where numbers don't tell anything close to the real story. They played hard, they played together and I would've liked to see how things evolved over the offseason. If it's decided that the team must go in a different direction, there are going to be some very unhappy players. It's a delicate balance for McPhee." [CBC]

Read More »