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CAROLINA HURRICANES

NEWS CLIPPINGS • February 20, 2019

Tom Dundon talks Canes, Don Cherry, the Alliance of American Football

By Chip Alexander

Raleigh

Tom Dundon flew into Raleigh on Tuesday with a lot to talk about.

A fledgling football league that he’s now funding with $250 million.

A hot hockey team, the Carolina Hurricanes.

The comments of a certain Canadian TV personality, bombastic Don Cherry.

The hottest selling T-shirt in the area, the new “Bunch of Jerks” collection.

It was announced Tuesday that Dundon would be chairman of the Alliance of American Football. The Canes owner arrived at PNC Arena with Charlie Ebersol, a TV and film producer who founded the league with former NFL general manager Bill Polian.

Why football? Why this league?

“People like football, people watch football,” Dundon said. “These guys did a really good job that first week and it looked like quality football and people watched it. So it was easy to do.”

Just like that, it was done. Dundon agreed to put in the $250 million for the eight-team developmental league, which began play Feb. 9 and will have 10 regular-season games, followed by two playoff rounds and the Alliance Championship game in Las Vegas.

An easy question was whether Dundon being chairman of the league will quickly pave the way for an AAF team in Raleigh, playing at N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium.

“It’s certainly something we’re talking about, absolutely,” Ebersol said.

Dundon said no preliminary discussions have been held with NCSU about the use of the stadium. The Wolfpack has named Boo Corrigan to replace athletic director Debbie Yow, who is retiring. Corrigan begins his job May 1 and Dundon said, “If they want it we’ll talk about it.”

Turning to hockey, Dundon was asked his reaction to hearing Cherry, the Hockey Night in Canada icon, refer to

the Hurricanes players as a “bunch of jerks” for their postgame celebrations and histrionics at PNC Arena after home-ice wins.

“I enjoyed it,” Dundon said, smiling. “I think he’s interesting. I like the fact that he has an opinion.

“What I try to do, when you hear that, is I try to look at and think do I agree? Is there something malicious, is there something that is treating other people the wrong way when you do it? It never crossed my mind that it was disrespectful in any way. Now that I’ve thought it through I just disagree with him. I don’t think it has anything to do with anybody else but us.

“The fact he brought some attention to us and probably made it better for us, I appreciate what he did.”

Dundon said he did not want or expect any kind of apology or retraction from Cherry.

“I don’t want an apology,” Dundon said. “He can say what he wants to say. I should thank him. It was good for us.”

Cherry’s comments were made Saturday, a day after the Canes celebrated a 3-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers with Warren Foegele’s “walkoff homer” off Dougie Hamilton. Cherry’s “bunch of jerks” comment quickly exploded on social media and the Canes’ social media people soon were trolling Cherry.

“Bunch of jerks” have become part of the team’s marketing lexicon and T-shirts were made with “Bunch of Jerks” on them. Orders were taken online and the T-shirts -- about 3,000 -- were on sale Tuesday in The Eye, the team store at PNC Arena. A long line of fans waited before the game against the New You Rangers.

Less than a week before the NHL trade deadline, Dundon wasn’t tipping his hand or that of Canes management. While the Canes have played their best hockey since the calendar flipped to 2019, he noted the outcome of the three games before the Monday deadline could have a bearing on the Canes’ decisions.

“We’re looking at all the options,” Dundon said. “We’re pretty happy with where we are but we’re always listening.”

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‘Jerks’ denied celebration as Rangers top Canes 2-1

By Chip Alexander

Raleigh

There would be no celebration for the “Jerks” this night.

The New York Rangers would not allow the Carolina Hurricanes to stage one Tuesday, combining the timely stops and 43 saves of goalie Henrik Lundqvist with goals by Vladislav Namestnikov and Connor Brickley to take a 2-1 win at PNC Arena.

For a few days, the talk around the Canes -- and NHL -- had centered on comments made by Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada. Cherry. Angered by the Canes’ postgame activities, Cherry called it unprofessional and labeled the Canes a “bunch of jerks.”

But the Rangers found another way to prevent it -- win the game. Let Lundqvist vex the Canes again, as he has so many times.

For the Canes, it was a damaging loss. With the fight so tight for playoff positions in the Eastern Conference, any regulation loss the rest of the way figures to be a dagger and this one was for Carolina (31-23-6), who remained one point out of a wild-card playoff spot.

“Tough loss because we played well enough, played a good 60 minutes and couldn’t score,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “I thought it was our best game we’ve probably played in seven or eight and it just didn’t work out. You come with that mindset and play that hard and I think we’ll be where we want to be at the end of the year.”

That remains to be seen. The Canes have not been in the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2009. A year ago, they were in a similar position after 60 games under former coach Bill Peters and didn’t make it.

“We certainly don’t have the luxury of letting them slip away like we did tonight,” Canes captain Justin Williams said.

Namestnikov’s goal, which gave the Rangers the 2-1 lead, came at 6:10 of the third just after the Canes had first killed

off a 5-on-3 power play by New York, then the second penalty on Brock McGinn. Finding the puck loose in the slot off a rebound, Namestnikov eluded Canes forward Saku Maenalanen and slapped it past goalie Curtis McElhinney.

The Canes had their chances to tie it in the final minutes of regulation. Williams, who had 10 shots on net in the game, got off two rapid-fire attempts in close with less than two minutes left that Lundqvist stopped.

“He was good,” Williams said. “We couldn’t get anything past him and when we did his posts were there.”

The Canes did take a 1-0 lead on Jordan Martinook’s 13th of the season at 9:53 of the second. The Canes were 23-5-2 this season when scoring first but the Rangers quickly countered when Connor Brickley tied it.

Brickley’s goal initially was waved off as the forward crashed the net. The ruling: Brickley batted the puck into the net. But after review, it was determined the puck hit his chest and was not batted -- good goal.

Brickley, playing just his third game for the Rangers, has a connection to the Canes. Carolina acquired him in an October 2016 trade and he played in the AHL in 2016-17 with the Charlotte Checkers. When the Vegas Golden Knights made their expansion-draft selections in June 2017, they took Brickley from the Canes.

The Canes shut out the Rangers 3-0 on Feb. 8, ending a 16-game losing streak at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Goalie Petr Mrazek had the shutout -- on a night when the Rangers honored their 1994 Stanley Cup champions -- and also shut out the Dallas Stars this past Saturday, but Brind’Amour went with McElhinney on Tuesday.

“I think this is the way the rest of the season is going to be,” McElhinney said. “It’s going to be tight hockey and it’s going to come down to some bounces. We had some good looks tonight. It’s nothing to hang your head about. It’s a tough loss but you move on.”

The King keeps these jerks quiet for a night

By Luke DeCock

Raleigh

The gentleman generally believed to be past his prime who so rankled the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday was not, for a change, Brian Burke or Don Cherry. He is only 36 and certainly much more in touch with the wider world around him than either of those filibustering bloviators. Henrik Lundqvist may not be the supremely elite goalie he once was, but he still has his moments.

Tuesday was one of them, a vintage performance from the King at a royally bad time for the Hurricanes, who soundly outplayed the New York Rangers only to end up with a 2-1 loss. Turnabout being fair play and all, the Hurricanes scraped through wins over the Edmonton Oilers and Dallas

Stars thanks to goalies Curtis McElhinney and Petr Mrazek respectively, then produced a better performance than either of those two games only to be stymied by Lundqvist. Maybe better than anything in a while.

“That was the best game we’ve played probably in the last seven or eight,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “It just didn’t work out.”

Justin Williams, scorer of many big goals recently, had the best chance to tie the score with the Carolina net empty during a wild late sequence, but couldn’t sneak the puck near-side between Lundqvist and his right post.

With that save, and 42 others, Lundqvist did a better job putting a damper on the Hurricanes’ postgame celebrations than either Burke or Cherry, the latter’s flatulent “bunch of

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jerks” rant on Canadian TV on Saturday in keeping with the retrograde xenophobia and phony macho tough-guy nonsense he has been spewing, enabled and unabated, for decades. Generally speaking, if professional grumps like Burke and Cherry think you’re wrong, you’re probably right. It’s a good rule of thumb.

The Hurricanes’ nimble pivot to selling “bunch of jerks” T-shirts reflects not only a team with increasingly strong social-media instincts but one with the cultural nous to recognize Cherry’s obsolescence made his blather ripe for ironic appropriation. It may not be “Whatever It Takes,” the postseason motto Peter Laviolette chose for the 2006 Hurricanes, but “Bunch of Jerks” will actually do nicely for a team that is increasingly lacking in jerks thanks to the ongoing purge of the dressing room.

Of course, it’s only a good postseason motto if you make the postseason, and your celebrations can only irritate easily irritated people if you win. The result Tuesday was frustrating on both fronts, although perhaps not as frustrating what goal-scorer Jordan Martinook revealed during a radio interview

Monday night: The Hurricanes had a themed “Storm Surge” celebration in the hopper on Star Wars night. What art was lost to humankind with that loss?

One imagines Tuesday’s pre-choreographed celebration can be recycled after the next home win, which would be no earlier than next Tuesday against the also-ran Los Angeles Kings, but the real concern is over the two points dropped against another team looking up at the Hurricanes in the standings. This team has no margin for error, no cushion, and these are the games that deliver the retrospective sting if and when the season ends early.

“We have 22 games left,” Williams said. “We certainly don’t have the luxury of letting them slip away like we did tonight.”

Continuing to win, and continuing to celebrate afterward, would be an even better response to the critics than making T-shirts, but there’s not much the Hurricanes can do about Lundqvist at this point. He closed the jerk store early Tuesday night.

Hurricanes trade deadline primer: Buyers and sellers and bears, oh my

By Sara Civian

Two paths are about to diverge in a wood, and whichever Don Waddell takes might reveal more about his philosophy than anything else he’s done in his first year as Hurricanes general manager.

Before we get into that, we have to be real about that trade before the season started.

I’m not going to sit here and act like every single one of Jeff Skinner’s 36 goals as a Sabre haven’t been tough to watch. It doesn’t help at all that the No. 2 goal scorer in the league only yielded the return of three draft picks and Cliff Pu, who is currently in the ECHL. It would be a complete joke to ignore any of this in an evaluation of the new brass’ tenure so far, but when you look at the full context you know they had their hands tied.

For one, any assumption that the Canes’ front office didn’t know what they had in him is false. The situation stings, but it wasn’t at all born out of stupidity. They knew he was capable of doing what he’s doing, and they still felt they had to trade him: 1) before he became a free agent and 2) when they felt they could yield the biggest return.

So why was the return that low? (No offense to Pu or any of the picks. And hey, maybe the 2020 sixth-rounder will pull a Pavel Datsyuk …)

That wasn’t anything stupid, either. People in the know have told The Athletic that there just wasn’t much interest in Skinner around the league for whatever reason. Surely he’s made 29 teams (and then some) regret that now, but it was the reality at the time.

The other reality was that the Canes couldn’t “lose him for nothing.” As infuriating as that thought process can be, a

rebuilding, small-market team doesn’t have a choice sometimes. To me, the Skinner trade says more about the state of the team at the time than it does about Tom Dundon as an owner or Waddell as a general manager.

A reassuring thought I’m sure many have entertained lately is that it won’t always be like this for the Hurricanes.

The state of the team has already changed for the better — largely due to Waddell controlling what he can control after dealing with ghosts of front offices past. After going 3-8-1 in December, the Hurricanes have the best record in the NHL since New Year’s Eve (16-5-1) as of this writing on Feb. 17. They’ve also scored the most goals with 82. (They’ve also played the most games, but I’m not here to be a wet blanket.)

You were super aware of Dundon and Waddell’s impact after the Canes beat the Oilers on Friday night. Journeyman Curtis McElhinney, snagged off waivers during Scott Darling’s early-season injury and kept ever since, stopped 40 shots on the way to the 3-1 victory. Nino Niederreiter, acquired from the Wild on Jan. 17 for Victor Rask, scored the first and last goal. He’s been doing that a lot lately.

Waddell is bringing in these guys then head coach Rod Brind’Amour is putting them in positions to succeed.

“It’s super rewarding,” Brind’Amour said of watching the newcomers succeed. “The new guys that come in and get an opportunity, Nino especially, he’s been lights out since he arrived. That’s been a big, big boost for our group.”

The boost was big enough to put the Hurricanes in a playoff spot after their win over Dallas on Saturday night. Not anymore, but that was a great 12 hours. The real chance of playoffs creates a good problem for Hurricanes management — buyers or sellers? Both? Neither?

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Salary cap situation

According to CapFriendly.com, the Hurricanes have the most deadline cap space to work with in the league: $76,273,341.

The number is jarring compared to the Ducks’ $522,500, the Sharks’ $5,328,621 etc., but it’s typical of a small-market team to have an internal budget closer to the cap floor than the ceiling. It’s not like Canes fans need me to explain that.

Dundon’s already shown he’s less afraid to spend (acquisition of Niederreiter) than Canes management of seasons past might’ve been, but he’s not going to blow it all up at the deadline just to prove a point.

Anyway, the Canes extended Teuvo Teravainen and Jordan Martinook on appropriate deals before the deadline, but they still have a lot to take care of.

My understanding is that the Hurricanes and pending RFA Sebastian Aho’s camp had always intended to wait until the end of the season to strike a deal. He’s only increased his value as a well-rounded first-line center since. Folks, he is getting paid.

Other pending free agents to keep in mind, including both goalies:

UFAs: Justin Williams, Micheal Ferland, Greg McKegg, Petr Mrazek, Curtis McElhinney

RFAs: Sebastian Aho, Saku Maenalanen, Brock McGinn, Haydn Fleury

The Canes technically have the cap freedom to go after whomever their heart desires if the right player becomes available for their playoff hopes. Barring a too-good-to-be-true scenario, though, it probably makes more sense to make a self-pass and keep Ferland as their own rental for a playoff push. Especially with the possibility of a fat goalie contract to sign in the near future.

What are the Canes’ biggest needs?

It’s

(puts on sunglasses)

wild

(removes sunglasses)

how different the answer to this question became after El Nino stormed through, but he’s provided more of a scoring threat than the Canes could’ve hoped for. You can’t ever score too many goals (and the Canes are all set on defense for the next decade), so another scoring threat would obviously still be welcome.

It might behoove them to look at strengthening the roster down the center, though. We’ve seen how hard the Canes are struggling on the face-off dot without Jordan Staal, Jordan Martinook was forced to slide to center, and of course, the Canes traded Victor Rask, who they once thought would solve the center depth issue. Staal’s return is going to help, Martin Necas (who told me he prefers center and would much rather play center than wing) will be in the NHL next season, but if we’re talking needs right now, it’s at the top of the list.

There’s also the need to sign a goaltender for next season, but that sounds like a problem for the offseason.

What are the Canes most tradable assets?

Oprah voice: “You get a Micheal Ferland, and you get a Micheal Ferland, everybody gets a Micheal Ferland!”

Next to Wayne Simmonds, Ferland has been the most popular name on the rental market this trade deadline season. It makes sense — his contract has a $1.75M cap hit, he has playoff experience, he has the rare combination of physicality and killer scoring instinct.

That’s … uh … exactly why the Canes needed him so badly, but the acquisition of Niederreiter would make it easier to let Ferland go if the Canes weren’t on the playoff bubble.

But they are.

Last I heard (months ago) the Canes and Ferland were very far apart in contract negotiations, so the Canes were preparing to trade him at the deadline for a decent return instead of letting him walk in free agency (the initial ask was a first and a prospect). Since then, Niederreiter came to the Canes, Ferland dealt with an injury and a bit of a cold streak (potentially lowering value in what is already a buyer’s market), and the Canes are hovering around a playoff spot. Barring a ridiculous return, it doesn’t seem like they are going to trade him if they think they can make the playoffs.

Recent reports from The Athletic‘s Pierre LeBrun confirm this notion.

“Now, I’m not ready to say 100 percent he won’t be traded. The Canes are still listening when teams call,” LeBrun wrote Tuesday. “It will really depend at the end of the day on the quality of the offer versus the value the team sees in him staying put for a few more months. Might end up being one of those 2:59 p.m. ET decisions come Monday.”

There are also about 200 defensemen with name-recognition the Hurricanes could trade for the right return. Dougie Hamilton, Justin Faulk, Haydn Fleury, the rights to Adam Fox (can’t see that happening), Trevor van Riemsdyk, Brett Pesce (bad idea).

Something’s gotta give. Almost anything but Pesce or Jaccob Slavin.

That’s another thing the Canes might deal with in the offseason when there could be a better return. We shall see.

Who might the Canes target?

It’s looking like no one right now unless there’s an offer they simply can’t refuse.

“We’re looking at all the options,” Dundon said pre-game Tuesday. “It’s reasonable to think (we’ll do) whatever we can do to get better, just like we’ve done up to now. I think Rod’s pretty happy with the team he’s got and the players, so it would take something unique. It would take someone really good to be better than what we’ve got. But we’re always looking.”

I want to say Maple Leafs center Nazem Kadri would be a great option, but again, that’d be an offseason acquisition.

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Unless Kyle Dubas was at that one Hurricanes game months back for the long con …

At the trade deadline, there is a certain top-six center that would make sense if the Canes are really going for it — Matt Duchene. I know this is a hot take, and I know some people are about to be extremely upset in the comments, but bear with me. Word on the street is Duchene is looking to sign an eight-year deal with the team he signs with, so he wouldn’t necessarily be a luxury the Canes can’t afford.

He would require first-round picks among other things, no doubt, and the Canes aren’t going to compromise their future

for a first-round exit. They’ve made it clear that this is a process that they feel really good about. But we’re dreaming big here, people, and this is the same universe in which Victor Rask was traded for Nino Niederreiter. So I’m sure Duchene is on the Hurricanes’ radar on the off chance lightning strikes twice.

Unless a GM is feeling extra generous, though, the Canes tend to like their group of jerks and can use Ferland as their own rental. Or they could trade him if things go south.

Gear up for a telling few days.

An abridged history of recent Hurricanes outrage

The team has taken famed Canadian commentator Don Cherry’s “bunch of jerks” comment and spun it into a rallying cry

Cory Lavalette

RALEIGH — The Carolina Hurricanes have ridden the outrage train right into the Stanley Cup Playoff race.

At 32-22-6 with 68 points heading into Tuesday night’s home game against the New York Rangers, the Hurricanes are just outside the playoff picture and buzzworthy for the first time in a long time.

“We’re done losing. It’s time to climb the ladder and get relevant.” Justin Williams memorably said back in July 2017 after returning as a free agent to the city where he won his first Stanley Cup in 2006.

Williams has had to wait. Last season’s dual-captaincy — which didn’t include Williams wearing any letter — was not what the veteran, deemed “Mr. Game 7,” signed up for when he inked a two-year deal to come back to the Hurricanes.

But here we are less than a week away from the NHL’s trade deadline, and the Hurricanes — while not rental buyers — aren’t being mined for every contending team for the playoff push.

They’re in the hunt and in the news thanks to the latest chastising from north of the border.

CBC’s Don Cherry laid into the Hurricanes for their postgame “Storm Surge” celebrations on his “Coach’s Corner” segment on Saturday’s “Hockey Night in Canada,” adding the “bunch of jerks” label to Sportnet resident curmudgeon Brian Burke’s “peewee garbage” assessment of the team’s antics.

The team parlayed Cherry’s comments into a positive and profit, quickly turning around a “Bunch of Jerks” shirt that, despite being $35, sold out immediately. A second wave is

now available, and the shirts were expected to be available at Tuesday’s game — where they will no doubt will fly off the shelves.

Such is the news cycle of the new-look Hurricanes.

Ever since Tom Dundon bought the team last January, pundits, fans, players and everyone in between have found some reason to be outraged about what Carolina is doing.

The foundation of fan frustration is the nine-year playoff drought — goodwill from a Stanley Cup can only last so long — and some lingering supporters were further shaken by the dismissal of franchise icon Ron Francis as GM last March. His new role as president of hockey operations was terminated a month later.

More significantly, it rattled the hockey establishment — most of which are in Canada, with many more than willing to look down their nose at a Sunbelt team — who rushed to defend Francis while bashing Dundon and the team.

The ensuing search for Francis’ replacement played out like George W. Bush’s search for a running mate, with the man leading the search (Don Waddell) eventually taking the job.

Again, Dundon was in the crosshairs — both for lowballing potential candidates and for picking the man who struggled with the now-defunct Thrashers in his last GM gig.

Next came the offseason. The Hurricanes did hit the jackpot by landing the second overall pick in the NHL Draft lottery — some, of course, called the outcome fixed — and drafting future star Andrei Svechnikov.

Then Waddell swung his first major trade, dealing two former fifth overall picks, Noah Hanifin and Elias Lindholm, to Calgary for Dougie Hamilton, Micheal Ferland and Adam Fox. (Lindholm would later mock the PNC Arena fans with a

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Skol clap of his own after the Flames beat the Hurricanes in Raleigh on Feb. 3.)

Some called Dundon “cheap” for refusing to cave to the two outgoing players’ contract demands, but many saw it as a hockey trade that could work for both teams.

The next trade was widely panned. Former face of the franchise Jeff Skinner was shipped to Buffalo in August for second-, third- and sixth-round picks, along with prospect Cliff Pu. Fast forward a few months, and Skinner made it look even worse by scoring a combined 20 goals in October and November.

On Dec. 23, there was more outrage when the team’s previously banished aesthetic history was fully embraced with Whalers Night, angering many of the Hartford faithful. (The next Whalers Night, in Boston on March 5, will surely reopen these wounds again.)

Then in more uniform news, the Hurricanes began requesting to wear their red home sweaters on the road — Dundon allegedly hates the team’s white sweaters — and several teams obliged. More anger.

And now the “bunch of jerks” saga. The Hurricanes seemed to have curried favor with the masses over this — and really had the support of most with their varied takes on the Storm Surge anyway — by leaning into Cherry’s beanball.

Coach Rod Brind’Amour, the epitome of modern-day old-school hockey, defended the team’s new interactive postgame tradition as misunderstood.

“It’s not about everyone else; they’re missing the point,” Brind’Amour said Monday after practice, reluctantly addressing the latest viral controversy. “It’s about our players engaging our fans and thanking them for sticking with us and being there and trying to provide a little levity to a pretty serious game.”

Dundon further made news Tuesday when it was announced he was investing $250 million in the Alliance of American Football and would be named the league’s chairman.

It was just another log on the fire in what has been a memorable 13 months under the new owner.

You could even say they’re relevant again.

Gold: Hurricanes crowned by The King

By Adam Gold radio host 99.9 the Fan

$250 million can buy you a football league, but I’m not sure it would have bought a third period goal against Hall of Fame goalie Henrik Lundvist. That's why they call him "The King", I guess.

On the same night when Carolina Hurricanes majority owner Tom Dundon was announced as the largest investor and Chairman of the Board of the fledgling Alliance of American Football -- a developmental, spring, professional football league -- his hockey team was held out of the win column by one of the best netminders of his generation. Carolina played well, maybe their best game in the last week or so, but couldn’t solve their longtime nemesis. Lundqvist ran his career record to 30-12-1 over the Hurricanes with a 43-save performance that left the Hurricanes on the short end of a 2-1 decision. In three starts against Carolina this year, Lunqvist has yielded just four goals on 111 shots for a pretty tidy .964 save percentage. That Carolina actually WON one of those games is a borderline miracle.

Curtis McElhinney also played well for the Hurricanes, making 24 stops in seeing a personal 4-game winning streak come to an end. The loss ended Carolina's run at 3 wins in a row, leaving the Canes with 22 games left — two prior to next Monday’s trade deadline.

The Hurricanes scored first, with Jordan Martinook pouncing on his own rebound midway through the second period. The carrer-best 13th goal of the year for Martinook finished off a

great sequence that featured a slick give-and-go between Dougie Hamilton and Andrei Svechnikov, who ended up with assists on the play. Unfortunately, less than a minute later, the game was tied as a rebound of a Filip Chytil shot caromed off a charging Connor Brickley and through McElhinney for New York's first goal of the night.

Then, in the 3rd, after the Hurricanes had killed off more than 3:00 of a New York power play -- including almost 45 seconds of a 5-on-3 -- Vladislav Namestnikov got to a bouncing puck in the slot and fired in the eventual game-winner. The Hurricanes pushed hard, they peppered Lundqvist with 18 shots in the third, but they just couldn't find the mark.

After two games of getting outplayed and managing victories, tonight was tough for the Hurricanes to swallow. Two Posts, countless scrums and a trio of third period penalties later, the Canes will be forced to regroup Thursday night in Florida.

Sports can be funny at times. Head Coach Rod Brind’Amour didn’t like the way his team played over the weekend. But, it worked out when Curtis McElhinney and Petr Mrazek were spectacular. Tuesday night, it was Carolina‘s turn to feel that pain. Hurricanes captain Justin Williams registered a team-high 10 shots at Lundqvist but was reluctant to tip his proverbial cap to a future Hall of Famer. “I never want to do that”, he said while probably thinking about a late, dazzling save from the side of the goal. “But we certainly couldn’t get any past him. And when we did the posts were there.”

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Sometimes you play well and still lose. That’s sports.

The Hurricanes are now 31-23-6 on the year, with 68 points, still just one point out of Wild Card position. The Penguins beat the Devils, while the Canadiens beat Columbus leaving the Canes still one point behind the Blue Jackets for the second Wild Card. Montreal is three points ahead while Pittsburgh jumped past the Jackets into 3rd place in the Metropolitan Division.

Sebastian Aho has gone eight games without a goal, though it's not like he's not been productive. He's had seven assists in that stretch. But, tonight was kept off the score sheet in spite of a season high 26:25 TOI.

Williams' 10 shots was the most he's had in a game this year, topping the eight he pumped at Islanders netminder Thomas Greiss in a November loss. His 21:26 TOI was also the third most he's played all year -- all of those games coming in the last two weeks.

Even with the loss, the Hurricanes' record through 60 games is the best since the 2005-06 season.

Carolina lost for just the 6th time (in regulation) when scoring first (23-6-2).

Two of Jordan Martinook's career best 13 goals this year have come against the Rangers.

Andrei Svechnikov has four points (2g2a) in four games against New York.

There are no scoreboard watching opportunities for the Canes on Wednesday, but Thursday night will be a busy one with the Canes skating in Florida against the Panthers who have won three straight -- including Tuesday's 4-2 win over Buffalo. The Capitals will play at Toronto, Pittsburgh hosts San Jose and the Canadiens are at home against the Flyers.

Hurricanes' owner Tom Dundon makes $250 million investment AAF, will become league's new chairman

By Lauren Brownlow, WRALSportsFan reporter/columnist and Joe Ovies, 99.9FM The Fan

In need of more cash and fast, the Alliance of American Football (AAF) has found a benefactor in the form of Carolina Hurricanes' majority owner Tom Dundon.

He will serve as chairman of The Alliance’s board of directors, effective immediately. Dundon, who purchased the Hurricanes in January 2018, will continue as owner of the Hurricanes. In an interview on 99.9 The Fan, Dundon insisted his commitment to the hockey franchise is still his top priority and his relationship to the AAF should be viewed as an investment. Dundon explained to 99.9FM The Fan that the AAF approached him Feb. 13th, and the $250 million infusion was completed on Valentine's Day.

In other words, Dundon showed the fledging football league some love.

"The numbers for everything were great, it was just the way [the AAF] raised their capital and the timing of it," said Dundon. "My investment will keep this thing for years and years to come. It's not a viability issue, it's just how good can it be now."

The AAF has eight teams in Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Orlando, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego and Tempe. It has become home to former NFL coaches and players and former college players that never latched on with an NFL team.

At issue was the AAF's financial commitments versus actual funding. Charlie Ebersol, who founded the developmental football league with enough investment runway to theoretically last a few years in an effort to establish itself, apparently didn't have enough actual funding come through at a time when it was needed. This was not an issue for Dundon.

"My money is in my bank," said Dundon. "I'm sure of it."

As for the future of the AAF, Dundon is looking to make the league a viable stand-alone product.

"I don't build things with the idea to sell them, I build them with the idea to make them the best they can be," Dundon explained to 99.9FM The Fan. "The NFL doesn't have a development league, for whatever reason, so to the extent that we can give players, coaches, referees, you know all the different pieces that go into professional football, if we can give an opportunity to test these things out then that's what we should do. If that helps NFL, great. But, you know, the NFL is doing pretty great."

A source told The Atlantic's David Glenn that Raleigh could be in the running for an AAF franchise, but that wouldn't happen until 2020 at the earliest.

"I don't know why we wouldn't have a really good chance, I know who to talk to," Dundon joked on 99.9FM The Fan.

After the announcement, Hurricanes General Manager Don Waddell said:

“This was a terrific opportunity for Tom to expand his investment in the sports world. The AAF is off to an exciting start as a league and was founded on some truly unique and groundbreaking concepts.

“Tom is excited about the direction of the Carolina Hurricanes and remains fully committed to this franchise’s current and future success in Raleigh.”

As for concerns he might be overextending his bank account between the AAF and the Carolina Hurricanes, Dundon made it clear he's got the cash flow to make it all work.

"That's probably true, there's finite resources, but [mine are] well in excess in what it takes to do these two things," said Dundon. "It will have no impact at all, I wouldn't have done it. [The Canes] are the most important thing to me."

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Recap: Canes Edged by Rangers

Lundqvist, Rangers snap Canes' three-game winning streak

by Michael Smith

The Carolina Hurricanes had their three-game winning streak halted in a 2-1 loss to the New York Rangers.

Vladislav Namestnikov's third-period goal pushed the Rangers over the top, and Henrik Lundqvist made 43 saves on 44 shots.

Here are five takeaways from this Metropolitan Division match-up.

One

In the last two weeks, the Hurricanes have had four-game stretches in which they've won three straight and then lost a game. The losses hurt, of course - every loss does, especially at this time of the year and especially considering both opponents are below the Canes in the standings.

But, looking at the bigger picture, the Canes have played two four-game segments in which they've snagged six of a possible eight points. Playing at that pace in the remaining 22 games of the regular season will lead to good things for this club come early April.

"At this time of year, you've just got to push that one aside and keep moving forward. Every game is so huge for us right now," Jordan Martinook said. "Every point is so big for us right now, and everything matters so much. The losses hurt a little more right now."

Two

This one stings a little more, too, because the Hurricanes arguably played their best game of this three-game homestand. Go figure, then, that after winning 3-1 and 3-0 on Friday and Saturday, respectively, the Canes could only tally once in what was their best of those three games.

"It wasn't bad," Justin Williams said. "It wasn't good enough, though."

"We worry about one day at a time, one game. That's all we've done. We're not going to change," head coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "That was our best game we've probably played in seven or eight. It just didn't work out. If we come with that mindset and play that hard, I think we'll be where we want to be at the end of the year."

Three

Just as the difference in the Hurricanes' two wins over the weekend was their goaltending, so too was goaltending the difference for the Rangers tonight.

Lundqvist stopped 43 of the 44 shots he saw, including the flurry of 18 that came his way in the final period.

The Canes hit a couple posts, one on a power play in the third period off a point shot from Justin Faulk, and Lundqvist didn't let anything else past him. With the extra attacker on late in regulation, Williams had a glorious look when Dougie Hamilton fed him with a cross-ice pass down low. Lundqvist lunged over with the blocker to keep the initial shot out and then scrambled to cover the rebound.

"[Lundqvist] was good. Our guy was good. Both goalies went at. He made a few more saves, especially at the end," Brind'Amour said. "It's a tough loss because we played well enough, a good 60 minutes, but we just didn't score."

"We had a good mindset going into the third period. … It just didn't happen. We hit a couple posts tonight. It just didn't go our way," Williams said. "We had a lot of chances to win, that's for certain. It didn't go our way. That was a big one we let slip away."

Four

Martinook opened the game's scoring in the second period, when he smacked in his own rebound. The goal, his 13th of the season, continues to build on his career year.

"We had a good shift in the O-zone. Dougie came down, and him and Svech played give-and-go. I thought Dougie was going to shoot it, and I was just trying to beat my guy to the net," Martinook said. "When he passed it to me, I missed on the first one and got the second one there."

The Rangers answered just 47 seconds later, when a rebound off a shot from Filip Chytil deflected in off Connor Brickley, who was crashing the net. The goal was initially waved off by referee Wes McCauley, but a quick review with Toronto settled the dispute.

New York scored what held as the game-winning goal in the third period when Namestnikov hopped on what was a second rebound in the slot just as Brock McGinn was exiting the penalty box.

"Just unfortunate bounces there," Brind'Amour said. "Hockey's random like that sometimes."

Five

Jaccob Slavin had a monster game in New York City almost two weeks ago, as he prevented at least two, if not three goals from being scored in what ended up being Petr Mrazek's second shutout of the season.

He saved another would-be goal early in tonight's game when a shot eluded Curtis McElhinney underneath him.

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Slavin alertly whacked the loose puck out of the crease to prevent the Rangers from snagging an early advantage.

In the third period, with the Rangers working with 42 seconds of a two-man advantage, Slavin got in a shooting lane and blocked New York's only good look. Some strong work along the near boards by Martinook then resulted in a zone clear.

Up Next

The Hurricanes will head out on their annual Mentors' Trip, which will take the team and their dads through Florida and Dallas on Thursday and Saturday, respectively.

"We'll go on the road with the fathers, have a good time and show them a couple wins hopefully," Williams said.

Projected Lineup: Rangers vs. Hurricanes

McElhinney in net against New York

by Michael Smith

The Carolina Hurricanes and New York Rangers bring closure to their four-game season series tonight.

Curtis McElhinney, who made 40 saves on 41 shots against Edmonton on Friday, will get the start in net for the Canes, who are 2-1-0 against the Rangers this season.

Here is the projected lineup for the Hurricanes.

Forwards

Niederreiter-Aho-Williams Ferland-Wallmark-Teravainen

Svechnikov-Martinook-McGinn Foegele-McKegg-Maenalanen

Defense

Slavin-Hamilton Pesce-Faulk de Haan-van Riemsdyk

Goalies

McElhinney Mrazek

Scratches: Staal (upper body; injured reserve)

Note: Lineup subject to change prior to opening faceoff.

Lundqvist makes 43 saves, Rangers end Hurricanes winning streak

Namestnikov breaks tie in third, denies Carolina fourth straight victory

by Kurt Dusterberg

Lundqvist keeps Rangers ahead

Henrik Lundqvist makes a pair of saves on Justin Williams to preserve the Rangers' one-goal lead late in the 3rd period

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Henrik Lundqvist made 43 saves, and Vladislav Namestnikov broke a tie in the third period in the New York Rangers' 2-1 win against the Carolina Hurricanes at PNC Arena on Tuesday.

Conner Brickley also scored for New York (26-25-8), which pulled within nine points of the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Eastern Conference.

"Tough building, division rival, and we knew that it was going to be tough but we got it done," Rangers center Mika

Zibanejad said. "We did enough. We got that (first) goal and I think we shut it down."

Jordan Martinook scored for Carolina (31-23-6), which was denied a fourth straight win and remained one point behind the Columbus Blue Jackets for the second wild card in the East. Curtis McElhinney made 24 saves.

"That was our best game we've probably played in (the past) seven or eight," Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "It just didn't work out. So if we come with that mindset and we play that hard, I think we will be where we want to be at the end of the year."

Namestnikov scored on the rebound of Jimmy Vesey's shot to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead at 6:10 of the third period. It was Namestnikov's third goal in his past three games, and it came two seconds after a tripping penalty on Hurricanes forward Brock McGinn expired.

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"It's tough when you're in a 1-1 game; you don't want to get into any penalty trouble," McElhinney said. "It was unfortunate that it maybe took (away) a little momentum."

Martinook gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead at 9:53 of the second period when he redirected Dougie Hamilton's pass from the right circle before putting in his own rebound.

"I thought Dougie was going to shoot it, and I was just trying to beat my guy to the net," Martinook said. "I missed on the first one and luckily got the second one."

Brickley's first goal of the season tied the game 1-1 at 10:40. McElhinney made an initial save on Filip Chytil's shot, but the rebound went in off Brickley while he drove to the net.

"I'm just keeping things simple," Brickley said. "Just north-south hockey, trying to play physical and bring high energy and see what happens."

Lundqvist preserved the win when he made a back door save against Justin Williams with 1:37 remaining.

"I had to improvise a little bit," said Lundqvist, who is 30-12-1 all-time against Carolina. "I was caught. I didn't feel like I had time to get a good push, so I kind of went down, then up with the blocker. It worked."

Williams had a game-high 10 shots on goal.

"I just tried to catch it and get it up high," Williams said. "I think a defenseman got a stick on it, but [Lundqvist] was right there and I wasn't able to get to the rebound on it. We certainly had a lot of chances to win."

They said it

"Some teams, the matchup just works for you for some reason. I have some teams (where) it works the other way. It's hard to explain sometimes how it works for you as a group and personally. The big thing is not to overthink it, good or bad." -- Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist on his success against the Hurricanes

"[Lundqvist] was good, [McElhinney] was good, but [Lundqvist] made a few more saves especially at the end. It was a tough loss because we played well enough. A good 60 minutes, but we just didn't score." -- Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour

Need to know

The Rangers are 6-0-1 in the games following their past seven regulation losses. They are 27-6-0 in their past 33 games against the Hurricanes. … Lundqvist has allowed two goals or fewer in his past eight games against Carolina. … The Hurricanes have outshot opponents in 120 of 180 regulation periods this season. … McElhinney and Petr Mrazek have combined for a 1.19 goals-against average and a .960 save percentage over the past six games.

What's next

Rangers: Host the Minnesota Wild on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; MSG, FS-N, FS-WI, NHL.TV)

Hurricanes: At the Florida Panthers on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; FS-F, FS-SE, NHL.TV)

Lundqvist, Namestnikov help Rangers beat Hurricanes 2-1

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Henrik Lundqvist is at his best against the Carolina Hurricanes.

The veteran goalie was at it again as he stopped 43 shots to help the New York Rangers beat the Hurricanes 2-1 on Tuesday night. It was Lundqvist’s 21st win in his last 25 starts against Carolina.

“Some teams, the matchup just works for you for some reason,” Lundqvist said. “I have some teams where it works the other way. It’s hard to explain sometimes. I think the big thing is to not overthink it, good or bad.”

Vladislav Namestnikov got the tiebreaking goal early in the third period, and fourth-line forward Connor Brickley also scored for the Rangers, who split a four-game trip.

The Hurricanes, who are 16-6-1 since Dec. 31, got a second-period goal from Jordan Martinook and peppered Lundqvist with 18 shots in the third period but couldn’t get anything past him. He had a spectacular pad save on Carolina captain Justin Williams with 1:37 left from point-blank range.

“We survived and he was a big piece of it,” Rangers coach David Quinn said of Lundqvist. “Boy, he had a real good night.”

Curtis McElhinney finished with 24 saves for the Hurricanes, who had won six of their last seven games. They outshot the Rangers 44-26 and were in control much of the game.

“It was the best game we’ve played, probably of the last seven or eight,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “it just didn’t work out.”

The Hurricanes weren’t exactly thrilled with the quality of their scoring chances on Lundqvist.

“He played well but I don’t know if we did enough to get anything by him,” Martinook said.

After a scoreless first period, Martinook gave Carolina a 1-0 lead at 9:53 in the second. He was able to gather a rebound of Dougie Hamilton’s shot and beat Lundqvist.

Just 47 seconds later, the Rangers tied the game on Brickley’s first goal of the season. Filip Chytil flipped a backhand shot at McElhinney and the puck bounced off the

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goalie’s right shoulder. Brickley was charging the net and it caromed off of his upper body and in. The goal was originally ruled no good on the ice but overturned on video replay.

The Hurricanes had killed off a two-man advantage by the Rangers but Namestikov scored just 2 seconds after the second penalty expired at 6:10 in the third period. McElhinney stopped the first shot by defenseman Tony DeAngelo and the rebound effort by right wing Pavel Buchnevich but couldn’t deny Namestikov.

The Hurricanes have been the talk of the NHL this week for the attention, and criticism, they’ve drawn for their postgame celebrations.

But Lundqvist made sure there wasn’t any reason to celebrate with another win over the Hurricanes.

“It was a fun game to win, the way we battled,” Lundqvist said.

NOTES: The Hurricanes ended a 16-game losing streak at New York on Feb. 8. It was their first win on the Rangers’ home ice since Oct. 2010. It didn’t take the Rangers long to return the favor. ... Carolina C Jordan Staal returned to practice this week but sat out his 26th straight game with a concussion. Staal has 11 points in 29 games and hasn’t played since Dec. 22. ... New York D Brady Skjel returned to the lineup after missing one game with a lower-body injury.

UP NEXT

Rangers: Host Minnesota on Thursday night.

Hurricanes: At Florida on Thursday night.

Hurricanes owner Dundon invests $250 million in Alliance

By BARRY WILNER

FILE - In this May 9, 2018, file photo, Carolina Hurricanes owner and CEO Tom Dundon takes questions during an NHL hockey news conference in Raleigh, N.C. Dundon is investing $250 million in the Alliance of American Football. Dundon also will serve as chairman of the fledgling eight-team league that began play on Feb. 9. His involvement came together in a matter of days last week, according to Dundon and Alliance co-founder Charlie Ebersol, though Dundon had been monitoring the AAF's development and debut. Ebersol dismissed reports Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019, that the Alliance was getting a financial bailout from Dundon.(AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)

Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon is investing $250 million in the Alliance of American Football.

Dundon also will serve as chairman of the fledgling eight-team league that began play on Feb. 9. His involvement came together in a matter of days last week, according to Dundon and Alliance co-founder Charlie Ebersol, though Dundon had been monitoring the AAF’s development and debut.

Ebersol said Tuesday that reports the Alliance was short on cash and needed a bailout from Dundon in order to make payroll were untrue. He said the league had a technical glitch in its payroll system that has been fixed.

“Tom’s funds were transferred to Alliance accounts last week, and players have never been in jeopardy of not receiving their earned paychecks,” Ebersol said. “It was a clerical error and has been resolved. The two are unrelated.”

Ebersol joined with Pro Football Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian less than a year ago to create the Alliance.

“This has been an extraordinary undertaking for us,” Ebersol said. “It’s a giant challenge and opportunity, and as a startup you are constantly looking for some peace of mind. When we got out of the first week of games, we saw there was so

much interest from investors, and if we had one person who could take care of us for a very long time, that would be great.”

Dundon said the AAF won’t be seeking more investors at this time.

“We won’t bring in anybody for capital. We’re not going to take people’s money,” he said.

“It’s so early into this. We’re all in the entertainment business, so we’re just making sure to continue to do what they have done, which is put out a quality product people want to watch and consume, and hopefully we have the capital in place to take advantage of new opportunities. Things are a lot easier when you have got the capital and connections to execute.”

Dundon also is the co-founder of Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas, home of the PGA Tour’s AT&T Byron Nelson tournament; the majority owner of Employer Direct Healthcare, a health care services company; and a primary investor in Topgolf, a sports entertainment company.

The Alliance has teams in Atlanta; Phoenix; San Diego; San Antonio; Memphis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Orlando, Florida; and Salt Lake City. It will play a 10-week schedule before its playoffs, finishing on the final weekend of April.

Early response on TV — it has deals with CBS, Turner and NFL Network — and digitally was positive, Ebersol said.

He also said adding Dundon gives the league extra credibility.

“We think there will be other opportunities,” Ebersol said, “but the fact we took one of the biggest worries of any startup off the table with a partner who has proven he knows how to build businesses — and not build to sell but build to build — is huge.”

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31 Thoughts: Could a stealth suitor emerge for Matt Duchene?

NHL insider Chris Johnston joins Caroline Cameron to talk about whether or not the Ottawa Senators will trade Matt Duchene and much more.

Elliotte Friedman

I loathe the pre-deadline edition of the blog because things change incredibly quickly — making my work even less accurate than normal.

So, no wordy top. Let’s get right to it. Mostly quick hitters this week.

31 THOUGHTS

1. So, when do the Blues remove Craig Berube’s “interim” tag?

2. Barring a massive swerve, Matt Duchene will be traded. There are undoubtedly more suitors than Columbus and Nashville, but they are the two most mentioned. I’m not convinced Winnipeg is interested at this time, and if I had to pick a stealth destination, I’d choose either Calgary or the Islanders. (If GM Marc Bergevin wasn’t on record as being against rentals, Montreal would be on that list, too.) There is talk that if he ends up in Tennessee, both player and team will work to make it a long-term relationship. Let’s see if Predators GM David Poile gets any extensions done in the near future with arbitration eligibles like Ryan Hartman and Colton Sissons, or Kevin Fiala — coming out of his entry-level contract. That would give him a better idea of the cap room he’s got to play with, assuming none of those players are involved in a potential trade. (Aside: Boy, do the Predators love Sissons. They can’t say enough good things about him.)

3. Columbus’s offer for Duchene screams Alexander Wennberg as part of it. Wennberg desperately needs a new start; he’s got zero even-strength goals. I just don’t know if Ottawa would be willing to gamble on the contract, at a $4.9-million AAV through June 2023.

4. My guess on Mark Stone is the Senators came at him with bigger money at less than max term. There were rumblings of five years at $10.5 million, but it was denied. That number would put him with Patrick Kane as the highest-paid winger in the NHL, but leaves money on the table Stone would try to recoup at age 32. His decision comes in the next few days. Chris Johnston reported on Headlines he thinks Vegas won’t do it as a rental. Winnipeg is definitely there. So is Calgary. Undoubtedly, there are others.

5. I think Ryan Dzingel’s future has a lot to do with Stone’s decision. We probably won’t know about Cody Ceci until closer to the deadline. There’s also been traction on another righty, the Rangers’ Adam McQuaid.

6. One GM said last week most fanbases would gladly take Ottawa’s youth and prospect base of Drake Batherson,

Logan Brown, Thomas Chabot, Filip Chlapik, Alex Formenton, Filip Gustavsson, Christian Jaros, Josh Norris, Brady Tkachuk, Colin White, Christian Wolanin and whatever is acquired in trades — even without their upcoming first-rounder.

“There are some good bets in there,” he said. That is the Senators’ biggest challenge: overcoming the lack of faith in ownership that overshadows everything else.

7. Stealth team for Artemi Panarin: Dallas. The Stars have also checked in on Mats Zuccarello.

8. I think the teams with the best chances at signing Panarin long-term are Florida, Los Angeles, the Islanders and the Rangers. The only one that makes sense to take a shot at him for rental purposes is the Islanders. Boston hovers as a rental option, too. If the Islanders don’t get their top choices, GM Lou Lamoriello could consider old acquaintance Ilya Kovalchuk. Remember, the winger has control over his destination.

9. If the Blue Jackets don’t get Duchene, the obvious focus is Kevin Hayes. They have lots of history with the Rangers, too.

10. Sergei Bobrovsky’s situation is murky. He’s signalled he’s willing to consider certain locations, but there is no indication he’s actually put that down on paper. Writing makes it binding, and there is doubt he wants to lose that leverage. One possibility: an extension in exchange for waiving. It is also believed Columbus made its own recent extension attempt, but things don’t sound optimistic.

11. Winnipeg is going to be aggressive. There’s a limit, but the Jets have a deep pool of prospects and a willingness to move their first-rounder. Other teams were joking that Kevin Cheveldayoff was going to chain Pierre Dorion in the MTS basement until Stone was traded there.

12. Edmonton’s held firm on Jesse Puljujarvi so far, not jumping at lowball trade attempts. But the Oilers know they’ve got a very unhappy player.

13. Nick Kypreos reported Saturday that James Neal will be out awhile. Remember in 2015, when Patrick Kane returned from injury at the start of the playoffs, as the salary cap doesn’t matter in the post-season? If I were Flames GM Brad Treliving, I’d think about the possibilities.

14. Potential left-shot depth defender for Calgary: Colorado’s Patrik Nemeth. The Avalanche are trying to move Sven Andrighetto, too. Treliving is very careful when discussing his goaltending situation. He wants to bolster the confidence c of David Rittich and Mike Smith, not rattle them.

15. Don’t think Toronto’s stopped looking at right-handed defensive options. Doubt Kyle Dubas went to Vancouver/Anaheim last week for the Honda Centre’s famous pizza with fire-roasted vegetables.

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16. Zuccarello and Wayne Simmonds may have to wait until the Duchene/Stone/Panarin situations settle. A mix of similar teams looking at both: Boston, Calgary, San Jose, maybe Pittsburgh and Vegas. New Jersey GM Ray Shero was aggressive with Brian Boyle, and it sounds like he’s done the same with Marcus Johansson. I’ve heard Columbus, Edmonton, San Jose and Vancouver as teams who have checked in. Possibly Washington, too, since they know him. The Canucks are the odd fit, but they looked at Andre Burakovsky, too. So maybe they are thinking about something for the future or are trying to replace the injured Sven Baertschi.

17. The Capitals have looked around for the 2019 version of Michal Kempny.

18. With Minnesota in sell mode, would it surprise anyone if San Jose revisited Eric Fehr, who fit in very nicely with the Sharks during the 2018 playoffs? The Evander Kane/Erik Karlsson trades limit what they can do, but GM Doug Wilson will try to add a winger. If trade values drop for the secondary group because Duchene, Panarin and Stone are available, it plays into Wilson’s hands.

19. Someone is going to ask San Jose about Sasha Chmelevski, who scored five goals on Monday for OHL Ottawa in a 6–3 win over North Bay. The Sharks are going to say no. Chmelevski fell to the sixth round in the 2018 draft, and teams are already regretting it.

20. Can Carolina, one point out of the playoffs and creating some excitement in the market, really trade Micheal Ferland? Eight points in his last eight games. The Hurricanes certainly can’t send him to Pittsburgh, which has been interested.

21. I’m not sure if Minnesota would be willing to trade with Carolina again, since initial returns on the Nino Niederreiter/Victor Rask swap aren’t favourable. But if Don Waddell really wanted to whip up a frenzy, taking a run at Eric Staal would do it.

22. Speaking of Staal… Sebastian Aho is on pace for 93 points. That would be the most in Whalers/Hurricanes history since Staal had 100 in the Stanley Cup season of 2005-06. Only three others have ever scored more than that in one year for this organization — Ron Francis (twice), Mike Rogers (twice) and Blaine Stoughton.

23. Last year, Detroit GM Ken Holland waited everyone out and got three picks for Tomas Tatar. Tatar had term, unlike many of the Red Wings trade options this time around, but Holland’s using a similar playbook. He’s patient, creating the impression he’s happy to keep guys rather than deal them. Chris Johnston did report the Red Wings asked Gustav Nyquist if there was a list of teams he’d consider. Martin Frk, who just cleared waivers, might get a new home, too.

24. Carl Hagelin’s only got eight points in 38 games, but a lower price tag may tempt someone for a competitive guy with a good playoff history. Buffalo looked at it.

25. Before the season, Mike Modano admitted he was looking to get back with a team. The Athletic’s Michael Russo saw him at the Wild’s 4-0 loss to St. Louis on Sunday and surmised an organizational position beckoned. Modano’s family is looking at a move, and Minnesota makes sense. But, with four young children, he said coaching or being a manager was not realistic.

“Television, work with a team’s foundation, their minor hockey program, corporate, I’d be available for everything,” he said in September. “I’d go on the ice with prospects or go see them. I’m open to whatever’s out there.”

26. Marc-Andre Fleury has three more appearances than any other goalie. The Golden Knights would like to ease the workload, and Monday was the second start in a row for the now-healthy Malcolm Subban. He’s going to get some opportunities with Vegas all but locked in to its playoff position.

27. Ottawa and Chicago just missed giving us our first 17-goal game since Winnipeg edged Philadelphia 9–8 on Oct. 27, 2011. I’d call them slackers, but it was an entertaining evening.

28. Don’t know if Nikita Kucherov can keep up his blistering pace, but he’s currently on track for the 36th-highest-scoring season in NHL history. He’s looking at 135 points, previously done by Hall of Famers Bobby Orr (1974–75), Marcel Dionne (1980–81) and Jari Kurri (1984–85). Technically, Kucherov would rank behind them, because his projected 40-goal output is behind only Kurri (71), Dionne (58) and Orr (46). Barring a massive slowdown, he’s going to be the highest-scoring NHLer in 23 years.

29. The night before he headed to Anaheim for Scott Niedermayer’s jersey retirement, Brian Burke said he wouldn’t even let Lou Lamoriello make a trade offer for brother Rob. (Scott signed with Anaheim in July 2005, two years after Rob was traded there from Calgary.)

“You never even listened to what he’d give you?”

“Don’t you listen?” Burke replied. “It wasn’t going to happen.”

30. Andrew Agozzino. Never drafted. Never signed a one-way deal. Ten NHL games in seven professional seasons. Never quit. Given another shot Monday night, Agozzino scored his first goal. Congratulations to a guy who earned such an awesome moment.

31. Joe Thornton wouldn’t have done “it” if he scored a fourth goal against Boston, but I’m betting he would have come up with a creative substitution. What a disappointment that it didn’t happen.

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Cherry enjoys Hurricanes’ ‘Bunch of Jerks’ shirts, still against celebrations

Don Cherry doesn’t think the Carolina Hurricanes are very funny. But he admits their shirts are.

The TV hockey commentator called the Hurricanes a "bunch of jerks" on Saturday night when sharply criticizing their elaborate post-game celebrations at PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C. The next day the team started selling a shirt with the phrase emblazoned across the chest, proudly declaring in a tweet on Sunday that "the jerk store is open."

"I don’t mind it, if they want to have fun with it," said Cherry with a laugh. "I’m sure some of the players are embarrassed but when the owner (Thomas Dundon) says ‘be more entertaining,’ I guess that’s what they call entertaining."

The shirts actually remind Cherry of another time he criticized a player on his weekly Coach’s Corner segment on Hockey Night in Canada.

"I like Pavel Bure, he’s one of my favourite Russians, he slew footed Cam Neely and I called him a little weasel," Cherry recalled in a phone interview with The Canadian Press. "And they put towels out with ‘Weasel Power’ out in Vancouver."

Although he can laugh about the "Bunch of Jerks" shirts, Cherry still doesn’t see much humour in the Hurricanes’ post-win routines that have included falling down like dominoes at centre ice, doing the limbo under a hockey stick, and playing duck-duck-goose.

"We in Canada, at least most of the people I know in Canada, revere the game. I don’t think there’s any secret there," said Cherry. "I guess I’m the only guy who said it, but that’s why I said it. I mean it, I mean every word.

"We call the Stanley Cup the Holy Grail in Canada and here we have these jerks doing a pantomime after wins."

Cherry was head coach of the Boston Bruins from 1974 to 1979, leading the team to two Stanley Cup finals before coaching the Colorado Rockies for the 1979-80 season. The Rockies were a relatively new team to Denver at the time, having moved from Kansas City in 1976. To celebrate Cherry’s arrival in Denver the team used the slogan "Come to the fights and watch a Rockies game break out!" to try and drive ticket sales.

He understands the necessity of unorthodox promotional strategies in non-traditional hockey markets, but still believes that more subdued one-on-one interactions are the key to building interest.

"I think what Mitch Marner does here in Toronto, which they don’t need, going over when the kids are down near the glass, giving them pucks and hockey sticks and that sort of things, that’s great, that’s how to market it," said Cherry. "Not to do silly things like being a bowling ball at centre ice or doing the hula dance or whatever they do.

"To me, that demeans the sport. It’s like pro wrestling, almost."

Analyzing the best goal scorers available at the NHL trade deadline

On Hockey Central at Noon Colby Armstrong ponders the possibility of the Columbus Blue Jackets flat out going for it by keeping Artemi Panarin and adding Matt Duchene before the NHL trade deadline.

Andrew Berkshire

With the trade deadline fast approaching, teams have to focus on filling specific needs for the playoffs as they examine the marketplace. It’s very rare that you can land a player who truly transforms your team, although a couple of those types are available this season. Teams are more likely going to address weaknesses in certain areas of the roster.

That means you might not be trading for the best player available, because that player may not fill your team’s need. With that in mind, we decided to do a short series of articles that focus on specific skill sets and identify who the best players are in each category. The first area we’re focusing on are the best available goal scorers.

It would be easy enough to pull up a trade bait list and sort by goals scored, but that isn’t always a great predictor of goals to be scored heading forward, so we’ll dig in a little bit deeper.

Let’s look at 5-on-5 scoring first.

The key thing to note is that there is more than one way to score goals and be consistently effective at it. Obviously, the ideal that most coaches strive for is to create as many high

danger chances as possible, which makes sense because the closer you get to the net the higher your expected shooting percentage is. But sniper-type players tend to shoot from the high slot where there’s a bit more space and time, and where you’re more likely to receive a clean pass.

If what you’re looking for at the deadline is a player who gets to the dirty areas, though, look no further than the highly marketable Micheal Ferland, who has been brilliant this season for the Carolina Hurricanes. He leads the field in high danger chances and scoring chances overall, but the problem is the Hurricanes might not be as keen to sell him as they were earlier in the season. They’ve been surging lately, both in games and post-win celebrations, and are just a single point back of the Montreal Canadiens for the second wild card spot, plus Carolina has more regulation and overtime wins so the tiebreak leans their way.

Unfortunately for buyers, that means the already-lofty price for Ferland’s services is likely to be even higher. But a team that needs a net-front finisher is probably willing to pay that price if they see themselves as a legitimate contender, especially if they believe they can extend Ferland.

Artemi Panarin barely needs an explanation; he’s the best player available at the deadline, period. He’s a transition beast, scores from everywhere with a deceptive wrist shot that can beat goalies both off the rush and cycle. He’s clearly one of the best scorers available, but he’s also one of the

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few transformative players who have been available at the deadline in recent years.

Matt Duchene is probably the big surprise on the above graph. That’s not because he can score – we always knew that — but because he’s been so willing to get to the dirty areas to do it. Centres don’t often get to the net front and instead focus more on playmaking than scoring. Even shoot-first centres like Steven Stamkos usually tend to set up at the edge of the slot as snipers to finish off plays. Duchene, amidst a disaster season for the Senators, has been incredible this season, showing great versatility as a goal scorer and playmaker. His speed off the rush is apparent, as is his nose for the net once the zone has been gained.

Chris Kreider is another versatile scorer who also happens to be one of the better defensive wingers in the game today. He can attack and score with speed off the rush, and he can use his size to fight through checks to score in tight. That he’s on pace for a career year in goals may lead to Kreider being a very expensive buy at the deadline, but he’s worth it.

Gustav Nyquist is a player who seems to fly under the radar because of the extremely high expectations placed upon him after scoring 28 goals in 57 games in his first full NHL season. He’s never been able to match that 18.3 shooting percentage since — and in fact he’s scored on less than 10 per cent of his shots for the past three seasons, — but he shoots a ton at even strength and I think he’s a player who would thrive on a team with more depth than the Detroit Red Wings.

Nyquist may only be on pace for 21 goals this season, but he’s been terribly unlucky on the power play and is on pace for 19 even strength goals, which is actually quite a lot.

Though I warned against spending too much on him recently, there’s no better power play net front presence available at the deadline than Wayne Simmonds. He deflects pucks well, and his ability to win battles for loose pucks and roof rebounds is among the NHL’s elite with the man advantage.

Over the past couple of seasons the only player to get more chances in tight on the power play than Simmonds has been James van Riemsdyk, who the Flyers recently paid big money to as an unrestricted free agent. That, combined with injuries, has depressed Simmonds’ internal value a little bit, but he could be a big difference maker for someone else’s struggling power play that needs more focus on getting shots from in tight and screening goalies.

Panarin appears here again — his laser wrist shot from the high slot is a highly dangerous weapon for any team. His ability to make plays also forces defenders and goalies to be careful not to overplay his shot, which only makes it easier for him to pick an open space.

If a team misses out on Simmonds to boost their power play, the next best option is Ferland, who comes with the bonus of being a great 5-on-5 scorer as well. Ferland gets up to the same tricks on the power play that we saw above, shooting from a bit further out than Simmonds on average, but getting a higher proportion of his scoring chances on net.

Mark Stone is already having a career year in goal scoring with 28 in 59 games, and one reason why is he’s shooting a bit more dangerously on the power play. He’s not going to sit in front of the net because that would be a waste of his skill set — he’s similar to Panarin in that he forces defenders and goalies to respect his playmaking ability and give him space.

Stone has a deadly shot, with a career average shooting percentage of 16.2, and a 19.3 per cent shooting rate this season. He’s also the best defensive winger in the game, and a smart transition player. Stone isn’t quite as highly impactful as Panarin, but he’s at the same elite level that can turn a team from good to great.

Lastly we have Nyquist again, who has been putting in the work and rifling shots at the net from the slot, but only has one power play goal to show for it this season. I fully expect that anyone who acquires him would see a big uptick in scoring due to some overdue regression to the mean alone, not to mention a bit more talent around to surround him with.

Q&A: Tom Dundon on $250 million well spent, and his 'bunch of jerks'

Emily Kaplan

Greg Wyshynski

Since becoming majority owner of the Carolina Hurricanes in January 2018, Tom Dundon has been one of the NHL's most unconventional owners. Look no further than the team's choreographed victory celebrations, which have ranged from players competing in "duck, duck, goose" to human bowling.

On Tuesday, Dundon continued down an uncommon path: He invested $250 million to become chairman of the Alliance of American Football, the new eight-team spring pro league that debuted to strong ratings and reviews. The NHL told

ESPN that Dundon didn't need its permission to take on the role, nor were they concerned that the financial commitment would adversely affect the Hurricanes.

The ESPN on Ice podcast interviewed Dundon on Tuesday to discuss the AAF, whether he sees an NFL merger or takeover, as well as the state of the Hurricanes and the recent comments by Canadian hockey commentator Don Cherry about the team's victory celebrations, calling them "a bunch of jerks."

ESPN: What inspired you to get involved with the Alliance of American Football?

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Tom Dundon: I had seen the deal when they were conceptualizing the league. It wasn't something that I would do, because there were so many questions about the quality of football and all the things that come up when you try to start something new. Once it went on TV, looked great, got good ratings, I talked to people that were supportive of it. At the same time, through mutual acquaintances, I understood they had a need for someone like me to step in. It all came together on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. I wish it was more thought out than that, but it was that simple.

ESPN: There were reports of payroll issues with the league in Week 1. Did your investment directly cover those costs? How does that work, as far as where the money goes?

Dundon: It's a little sloppy to say that on the payroll side. But I provide capital, and they have bills to pay. To directly correlate one to the other might not be right, but I made my investment on Thursday and people get paid on Friday. There were other people the league was talking to and they had other commitments from investors. I can't perfectly say what would have happened if I hadn't [invested], but I know I invested on Thursday.

ESPN: This league has backing from CBS and Charlie Ebersol. It debuted to general favorable reactions, but had some financial trouble early on. What makes the AAF a solid investment?

Dundon: When startups raise capital, that's just how it is. You raise capital, hit certain milestones, you raise more capital. I would say that separating between the committed capital, and whether people were able to fund that capital, and how successful they were in quality of football and the ratings ... they have good players and coaches and good technology. It looked great on TV. I'm actually glad that there was an opportunity that was created for whatever reason, based on how their capital structure was set up.

ESPN: The football was good. It's not like when the XFL debuted and then people immediately started trashing its product. People are excited there's a spring league.

Dundon: And it's growing. It's growing.

ESPN: But to hearken back to other startups in football: You think about the USFL, and one of the goals from some owners was to eventually get absorbed into the NFL. When you get involved with the AAF, do you envision this as an endgame scenario for the league? That perhaps the NFL decides to get into the spring football business and takes the AAF over as a feeder league?

Greg Wyshynski and Emily Kaplan talk to Carolina Hurricanes Owner Tom Dundon about his recent investment in the AAF (15:20). Plus, Dundon responds to recent criticism from Hockey legend Don Cherry, regarding the "Storm Surge." With the increased focus on puck and player tracking, Jogmo CEO Martin Bachmayer explains how his company is changing the way that the NHL gathers data (37:24). Listen »

Dundon: That wasn't in anything that's crossed my mind. For whatever reason, people love American football. They watch it. There are enough good players -- about 1 percent of college players make it to the NFL. Now, with our league, maybe 2 percent of players get to play. It's viable just to be a

support or development area for players whose ultimate goal is to get to the NFL. This league only exists because of the NFL's success. If the NFL had wanted to do it, they had the wherewithal to do it. I don't think about them as someone to buy a league. I think about them this as "let's just create a league, because it was a compelling thing to do."

ESPN: Thirteen months ago, you took majority ownership of the Carolina Hurricanes. Now you're the chairman of a professional football league. What are your other aspirations in sports? Do you want to partner with the NFL one day?

Dundon: I have no idea. I didn't even think about doing this until Wednesday morning. When the next thing comes up, I'll look at it. But my favorite thing to focus on is the Hurricanes. That's enough for me right now.

ESPN: Speaking of the Hurricanes, there are people that are going to see the financial commitment to the AAF and worry about what that means for your investment in the Carolina Hurricanes. Does one correlate with the other at all?

Dundon: No. Zero. I wouldn't do anything that would affect my ability to give us the best chance to win with the Hurricanes. This has no impact, whatsoever.

ESPN: You're obviously someone with a good handle on your time management. We have to imagine you can own the Hurricanes and the AAF at the same time, yes?

Dundon: Obviously, Roddy [coach Rod Brind'Amour] doesn't need my help. Don [Waddell, the general manager] doesn't need my help. I want to help them where I can. A lot of the things we needed to do to set up the Carolina Hurricanes for success, a lot of that has been done, in no small part to who is doing the work now. I have a lot less to worry about when you have Rob Brind'Amour. I trust him so much. I trust him, I trust Don, and I've gotten familiar with many people in the organization and how things work. I spent a lot of time absorbing and understanding, to see what we could do for them to give them the best chance. We're up the learning curve pretty far now. The amount of time I've been spending on it is much less.

ESPN: We're six days from the NHL trade deadline. The Hurricanes have the longest playoff drought in the NHL. Where do you stand on the state of the team?

Dundon: They've done great. I'm happy for them, because they've all worked so hard. They deserve to have success. I'm hoping, like all our other fans, that it continues. But look: These players are not the reason for the last nine years. The last nine years had nothing to do with these people today. All they can control is today. Everybody is doing the best they can to win the next game. If they do, they do; if they don't, they don't. I'm going to be super frustrated if we lose a game or give up a goal or don't make the playoffs, but it doesn't have much to do with what happened last year or 10 years ago.

ESPN: So what about the trade deadline?

Dundon: It's an interesting time, right? We're in a spot where it can go lots of different ways. We'll take in all the information and make a good decision. We're fully committed to trying to win. Rod's really happy, he's told me repeatedly. He appreciates the effort and the people in the locker room.

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Right now, I can tell you that he doesn't need anything. He's happy with what he's got. That's our starting point. We'll have conversations in the next week and we'll see where it goes. But I don't think we have a huge incentive to do any one thing right now outside of listening.

ESPN: You have a decision coming up this summer on restricted free agent Sebastian Aho, the 21-year-old who leads your team with 67 points in 59 games. Did your life become easier or harder when the Toronto Maple Leafs signed Auston Matthews, also scheduled to become a restricted free agent, to that five-year extension?

Dundon: [Laughs] I don't really know. I know he's going to play for us. I don't know how we're going to get it done, but we're going to get it done. I think all the other teams are going to run their teams like they're going to run their teams. Whatever they do, they do.

ESPN: Finally, we have to ask about Don Cherry. The "Hockey Night in Canada" commentator has again attacked your team's postgame victory celebrations at home, claiming they're meant to embarrass opponents who aren't even on the ice at the time. When you see the clip of Cherry calling your team "a bunch of jerks," what's going through your mind?

Dundon: I actually enjoyed it. I've listened to a couple of his things. I can't say I'm totally familiar, but I've seen enough where I know that he's good for hockey and entertaining and he cares. I enjoy it. Nobody wants someone to think ill of them. But I'm not malicious, and I know that our players aren't. … I don't think that it's accurate that we're doing it and anyone's harmed. And if I did, we wouldn't do it. I think it's been great. I'm glad he's talking about us. People don't always talk about the Hurricanes, so I hope he keeps talking about us. I'll still listen to him. He gets to say whatever he wants to say.

ESPN: You're selling "Bunch of Jerks" shirts now. You're monetizing that outrage. You are Kevin Bacon and he is the town elders in "Footloose." This has got to be good for business.

Dundon: Anytime someone's talking about you, I think it's good. Look, people were critical of the Whalers Night we had, saying 'Oh, you're just doing it to sell T-shirts.' But let's be honest: You don't make a lot of money selling T-shirts and clothes. That's not how I pay the bills. I'm glad it exists. I'm glad for the opportunity. But it's not about selling the T-shirts. It's about that the people who buy those T-shirts enjoy it. They get to enjoy the Hurricanes and enjoy the sport. We don't have to control what people say about us, we just have to react.

Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon invests $250M in AAF

Emily KaplanESPN

Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon made a $250 million investment in the upstart Alliance of American Football and will become the league's new chairman.

The Athletic reported that the league was in danger of not making payroll on Friday, before Dundon's investment. AAF co-founder Charlie Ebersol dismissed reports that the league was getting a financial bailout from Dundon.

"This has been an extraordinary undertaking for us," said Ebersol, who less than a year ago partnered with Pro Football Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian to create the AAF. "It's a giant challenge and opportunity, and as a startup you are constantly looking for some peace of mind. When we got out of the first week of games, we saw there was so much interest from investors, and if we had one person who could take care of us for a very long time, that would be great."

The eight-team AAF, billed as a developmental league, kicked off the weekend following the Super Bowl. The 10-game regular season will culminate in an April 27 championship game. CBS broadcast the two opening games, and the league said more than 6 million people watched the AAF in its inaugural weekend.

Dundon said once he saw the league in action, it made his potential involvement in it an easier choice.

"I had seen the deal when they were conceptualizing the league," he said on the ESPN On Ice podcast. "It wasn't something that I would do, because there were so many questions about the quality of football and all the things that come up when you try to start something new. Once it went

on TV, looked great, got good ratings, I talked to people that were supportive of it.

"At the same time, through mutual acquaintances, I understood they had a need for someone like me to step in. It all came together on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. I wish it was more thought out than that, but it was that simple."

Ebersol said in a statement, "Tom, Bill Polian, and I will work with our great team at the Alliance to expand our football operations and technology business. Tom is a self-made American success story who brings a wealth of knowledge in the sports, entertainment and finance worlds and proven leadership to our organization."

Ebersol is largely the one who raised the financial capital to get the league started -- a vision he began three years ago, eventually bringing Polian and others on board. The AAF gave players three-year, $250,000 non-guaranteed contracts with unspecified bonuses related to incentives.

The league premiered on Feb. 9 on CBS, and 2.1 million people watched, according to ratings reports. Ratings, as expected, dipped when the league broadcast on cable channels to approximately 640,000 for the Week 1 Sunday night game on NFL Network. Ratings for Week 2 games, which appeared on TNT, NFL Network and CBS Sports Network, have not yet been released.

Some believe the NFL may one day buy the AAF, but Dundon said that wasn't on his mind when he made the investment.

"For whatever reason, people love American football," he told ESPN. "They watch it. There are enough good players ...

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about 1 percent of college players make it to the NFL. Now, with our league, maybe 2 percent of players get to play. It's viable just to be a support or development area for players whose ultimate goal is to get to the NFL.

"This league only exists because of the NFL's success. If the NFL had wanted to do it, they had the wherewithal to do it. I don't think about them as someone to buy a league. I think about them this as, 'Let's just create a league because it was a compelling thing to do.'"

The Hurricanes issued a statement from general manager Don Waddell reiterating Dundon's commitment to the NHL franchise.

"Tom is excited about the direction of the Carolina Hurricanes and remains fully committed to this franchise's current and future success in Raleigh," Waddell said.

Dundon, 47, is the former CEO of the Dallas-based lending firm Santander Consumer USA. He is the co-founder of Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas, home of the PGA Tour's AT&T Byron Nelson; the majority owner of Employer Direct

Healthcare, a healthcare services company; and a primary investor in Topgolf.

The Hurricanes have not made the playoffs since 2009 -- the longest active drought in the NHL -- and Dundon has pledged to inject a new energy into the franchise, which has manifested this season with elaborate postgame celebrations after home wins.

The Hurricanes have struggled with attendance and have been long subject to relocation rumors after moving from Hartford, Connecticut, in 1997. However, when Dundon took over as majority owner, he agreed to not apply for relocation for seven years, which is a standard part of NHL purchase agreements.

In an email, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said Dundon did not need permission from the NHL to make this investment in another sports entity. When asked whether the league was concerned that the Hurricanes would be adversely affected by an ownership pumping an investment of this size into another sports venture, Daly said: "No."

Can Hurricanes count on Mrazek, McElhinney?

By James O'Brien

Goaltending remains the question – the eternal one, really – for the Carolina Hurricanes, even as Petr Mrazek and Curtis McElhinney have provided some satisfying short-term answers.

As great an addition as Nino Niederreiter has been, the combined play of Mrazek and McElhinney has been instrumental in the Hurricanes’ success, even if those “jerks” and their celebrations have taken most of the attention.

There’s something remarkable and unlikely about each situation.

In the case of Mrazek, his numbers transform to become more impressive than when they first meet the eye. Just consider his erratic split stats.

October: .887 save percentage in seven games November: .840 in one game December: .917 save percentage in eight games January: .880 in seven GP February: .935 in five GP

While Mrazek’s overall save percentage is mediocre at .902, his even-strength mark is at .922 this season. If he can get things together on the penalty kill, his numbers could climb quite nicely.

Mrazek, 27, might be getting his career back on track – maybe – but the even more intriguing story is that of

McElhinney. With a .946 save percentage in February, Mac is even hotter than Mrazek, yet the 35-year-old has sustained that over a longer haul in 2018-19, as his save percentage is a very nice .920 in 22 games.

Not bad for a player who was claimed off of waivers, and considering his recent run, other teams who passed should be kicking themselves.

Among goalies who’ve played at least 30 games since 2016-17, McElhinney’s .923 save percentage (in 61 games) trails only that of Antti Raanta, who managed .924 in 89.

That’s impressive stuff, but it’s also a) a small sample size and b) generated by a goalie who’s, again, 35.

Really, each guy has some serious things working against him, along with some strong points. Mrazek’s shown significant athletic ability, enjoyed some high moments in Detroit, and is still in or around his prime at 27. That said, Mrazek’s also been digging out of a serious rut, which you can even see just in his total numbers being fairly pedestrian (and sometimes bad). McElhinney’s put up some nice numbers in recent years and has a strong-for-a-backup .910 save percentage during his overall career, yet he’s never carried much of a workload, and things could fall apart considering how cruel Father Time can be to older goalies.

Each goalie does have every incentive to keep this going, however, as they’re both on expiring contracts and would be UFAs. One or both of Mrazek and McElhinney could be out

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of the NHL in 2019-20, yet they’re both in a position to possibly earn more lucrative deals.

On Feb. 10, Hurricanes GM Don Waddell acknowledged that uncertainty to NHL.com’s Tom Gulitti.

“We’d look at maybe a goalie for down the road,” Waddell said. “I think this year both guys have done a good job for us to put us in our position, but they are both unrestricted at the end of the year. So you’ve got to be careful there. I don’t know what either one of their plans are, so we’ve just got to stay in tune with that …”

The longer-term questions are indeed there, but this specific playoff push should factor in, too. Can Carolina count on McElhinney and Mrazek to finally break their drought? If not, should the Hurricanes flip the script with the Flyers by trading for one of their glut of goalies as insurance? Would Waddell even go bolder if someone like Sergei Bobrovsky becomes an option?

The answers aren’t necessarily abundantly obvious, but at minimum, this sure beats the monotony of falling far short of playoff contention while squirming at the sight of a struggling Cam Ward.

Power Rankings: Bruins quietly making a move

Ryan Lambert

Hey everyone, we here at Yahoo Sports are doing real power rankings for teams Nos. 1-31. Here they are, based on only how I am feeling about these teams, meaning you can’t tell me I’m wrong because these are my feelings and feelings can’t be wrong. Please enjoy the Power Feelings.

31. Los Angeles Kings (Last week: 27)

30. Ottawa Senators (LW: 29)

29. New York Rangers (LW: 28)

When you watched that Penguins game on Sunday afternoon you saw exactly what the Rangers’ problem is: They have talent everywhere but not enough of it, and most of it is on the old side. Georgiev can have a great start or three, sure, but this team isn’t built to compete with actual good clubs for the full 82.

The good thing was that basically the only players who looked any good in that game were the ones they’re gonna trade in the next week here, so you gotta respect it.

28. Detroit Red Wings (LW: 30)

Meanwhile I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff that’s like, “Well look the Red Wings need to make trades but they shouldn’t trade the following 14 pending UFAs.” And it’s like, “The Red Wings should trade everyone who’s not Dylan Larkin, and they should be listening to offers on Larkin.” Come on.

27. Anaheim Ducks (LW: 31)

26. Edmonton Oilers (LW: 25)

25. Chicago (LW: 23)

One thing that was conveniently not-discussed much in the seven-game winning streak was that three of those wins were after regulation (vs. the Islanders, Wild, and Canucks) and three more were against non-playoff teams (Buffalo, Edmonton, and Detroit). They beat Washington 8-5 and that was the only one that was like, “Okay, not bad,” and even then it was definitively a Weird One.

Anyway, this week they played the Bruins and Blue Jackets, lost by a combined score of 11-5, but beat New Jersey. See a pattern developing here?

24. New Jersey Devils (LW: 26)

23. Arizona Coyotes (LW: 24)

22. Vancouver Canucks (LW: 20)

21. Philadelphia Flyers (LW: 22)

It’s really crazy that they have two regulation losses in the last five-plus weeks. During that stretch they’re plus-17 in goals and minus-84 in shots. Which, hey, good goaltending is something they’re not accustomed to in Philadelphia and Carter Hart might just be the first guy in half a century or something (don’t @ me on this I don’t care) to reliably provide it.

That said, don’t get tooooooooo accustomed to .930-plus goaltending because that’s not what hockey is.

20. Florida Panthers (LW: 21)

I don’t think they’re all that good, but the Sasha Barkov goal alone was enough to get them bumped up a spot.

19. Minnesota Wild (LW: 18)

Bruce Boudreau guaranteed a playoff appearance on the morning of Feb. 15. That came following two straight regulation losses. Since then, they’ve lost in regulation and lost in overtime.

Their record in the last nine games is 1-5-3. They’ve scored 22 goals (2.44 a game) and conceded 34 (3.78 a game). I wouldn’t feel too good about that guarantee if I were you.

18. Buffalo Sabres (LW: 19)

17. Colorado Avalanche (LW: 17)

16. Dallas Stars (LW: 16)

15. Montreal Canadiens (LW: 14)

The Habs are now dead even in season-long goal difference but 10 games above .500. I can tell you for sure what I think is closer to their actual skill level.

They’re still holding onto a playoff spot for now but the way Carolina is moving these days, that doesn’t feel like it’s gonna last much longer.

14. Columbus Blue Jackets (LW: 11)

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13. Pittsburgh Penguins (LW: 12)

One of the weird things with the Pens this year is that every time they go something like 2-2-1 over a five-game stretch, everyone freaks out like the team is irreparably broken and big changes need to happen ASAP. Then the team immediately goes about 3-0-2 in their next five and everyone calms down.

I think this team should be better than it is, but it’s neither blow-it-up bad nor make-a-big-add close to competing. Like, they’re probably good enough to come out of that division with this group right now today. But if they end up finishing eighth and playing Tampa, they’re not a Matt Duchene or Mark Stone away from beating them, and the winner of Boston/Toronto.

So, I dunno, feel free to make an add or two but probably don’t make it a big one because you’re just gonna end up with buyer’s remorse.

12. Carolina Hurricanes (LW: 13)

I said it in 31 Takes, but it didn’t take an incredible run of goaltending to get this team back into the playoff race in a meaningful way.

Since they began their 16-5-1 run on Dec. 31, the ‘Canes have given up 57 goals on 625 shots — about 2.6 goals on 28 shots a night, not an outrageous number. That’s a .909 save percentage. It’s league-average.

They’re definitely getting the bounces offensively, no doubt about that; they’ve scored 82 times on 699 shots, which is very high at an 11.7 percent conversion rate. But when you’re plus-74 in shots over 22 games, even league-average shooting percentages and save percentages are gonna get you where you need to go.

Call it a little bit of regression, I guess. Because before this run began, the team had a 6.6 percent shooting and .896 save percentage. Unsustainably low. Especially with their plus-371 shot difference over that stretch.

They’re good and have been good, and it’s easy to overlook because of the Storm Surge debate. Maybe it shouldn’t be… after all, you’re seeing a hell of a lot more celebrations in the last month and a half, y’know?

11. New York Islanders (LW: 10)

10. St. Louis Blues (LW: 15)

I still don’t buy Jordan Binnington, an average AHL goalie for his entire career, as the savior of the franchise but you can’t argue with the results. Winners of 10 straight, and closing on Nashville (six points back with three games in hand). This is an incredible turnaround.

9. Winnipeg Jets (LW: 9)

8. Washington Capitals (LW: 7)

7. Vegas Golden Knights (LW: 6)

6. Toronto Maple Leafs (LW: 5)

5. Boston Bruins (LW: 8)

Very very quietly, the Bruins are 7-0-3 in their last 10 games. That’s what you’re looking for, generally speaking, and while I’m not wholly convinced this is a better team than Toronto, they’re still really good. They do everything well, they have game-changing talent at every position, all that good stuff.

I still think they’d be better off finishing below Montreal just so they had an easy path to the Conference Final instead of having to go through Toronto and Tampa, but that doesn’t seem like it’s gonna happen now.

Oh well, just add Panarin I guess.

4. Nashville Predators (LW: 4)

3. Calgary Flames (LW: 3)

2. San Jose Sharks (LW: 2)

These guys went 6-3-0 without Erik Karlsson. Since the start of December, they’re also 17-5-2 with Karlsson.

Just insanely good.

1. Tampa Bay Lightning (LW: 1)

Your “absurd Tampa stat” for the week: They’ve scored at least five goals in a game 23 different times this season. That’s almost twice every five games.

The ENTIRE REST OF THE LEAGUE COMBINED has only done it 340 times. They score five goals or more at twice the average rate. That’s truly incredible.

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Rick Zamperin: Don Cherry goes too far in criticism of Carolina Hurricanes’ post-game theatrics

By Rick Zamperin

Carolina Hurricanes skate toward the crowd during an on ice celebration following their 2-1 win over the New Jersey Devils at an NHL hockey game, Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018, in Raleigh, N.C. Don Cherry's latest rant about the Carolina Hurricanes and their victory celebrations didn't go unnoticed by the NHL club. They've even decided to embrace his words.

It is still up in the air whether or not the Carolina Hurricanes will make the Stanley Cup playoffs this season.

But one thing is for sure: They are the champions of post-game victory celebrations.

After each home win this season — and there have been 16 of them so far — Hurricanes players have celebrated in a unique way, much to the delight of fans at PNC Arena.

It started with a thunderous clap, known as the ‘Storm Surge,’ by players who stood in a circle at centre ice and the celebrations have taken off from there to include a limbo line, paddling imaginary kayaks, a walk-off baseball home run and playing Duck Duck Goose.

But not everyone is a fan of the post-game theatrics.

Hockey commentator Don Cherry blasted the ‘Canes for their antics on Saturday, calling it “a joke,” and added, “These guys, to me, are jerks.”

‘Grapes’ also took a jab at the franchise, saying, “You never do anything like that, they’re still not drawing (fans) and they’re a bunch of jerks as far as I’m concerned.”

Carolina is 28th in NHL attendance, drawing an average of 13,950 fans a game. So Cherry has them on that one. The post-game drama has not enticed more fans to support the team.

The Hurricanes, however, are having fun with Cherry’s comments. They are now selling T-shirts that read “bunch of jerks” on the front and also changed their Twitter profile to read ‘That bunch of jerks with the fun celebrations.’

Cherry is certainly showing his old-school roots, but I don’t think the Hurricanes are disrespecting their opponent because the other team has long since left the ice by the time the post-game entertainment begins.

Leave them be, I say, and enjoy the chuckle it provides.

Cherry doesn't mind Hurricanes' T-shirts, doubles down on celebration criticism

Josh Wegman

Don Cherry called the Hurricanes "a bunch of jerks" for their post-win celebrations on Saturday, and Carolina responded with a T-shirt embracing his criticism.

Though Cherry's stance hasn't changed, he has no issue with the T-shirts.

“I don’t mind it, if they want to have fun with it,” Cherry said with a laugh, according to the National Post. “I’m sure some of the players are embarrassed but when the owner (Tom Dundon) says ‘be more entertaining,’ I guess that’s what they call entertaining.”

The Hurricanes have played duck-duck-goose, mocked a walk-off home run, and acted as bowling pins among other creative celebrations after home wins.

“We in Canada, at least most of the people I know in Canada, revere the game. I don’t think there’s any secret there,” said Cherry. “I guess I’m the only guy who said it, but that’s why I said it. I mean it, I mean every word.

“We call the Stanley Cup the Holy Grail in Canada and here we have these jerks doing a pantomime after wins.”

Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind'Amour, who Cherry called a "straight shooter," said he doesn't care what others think about his team's celebrations.

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“To me, that demeans the sport," Cherry continued. "It’s like pro wrestling, almost.”

Hurricane hubbub shows that old-dog Cherry’s limited repertoire of tricks is as fetching as ever

Cathal Kelly

TORONTO

Over the weekend, Don Cherry committed his latest sin against decency by taking on the high jinks of the Carolina Hurricanes.

When we chart the changing tides of Canadian culture in the 21st century, a key moment will be whenever it was Don Cherry went from national hero to a widely lampooned figure of fun.

Cherry hasn’t changed in any way to cause this shift. His TV shtick remains exactly as you remember it from 20 years ago – wedged shoulder-to-shoulder with Ron MacLean like they’re riding the school bus together; the Godfather collars; shouting for no good reason; worked up to a frothing lather over a bad neutral-zone transition.

Cherry was and is your slightly deranged uncle going bananas at Christmas dinner because someone mentioned they’re thinking of selling St. Finian’s and converting it to condos. That was the charm. For some of us, it still is.

But everything people used to like about Cherry – his grumpiness, his Manichean view of the NHL, his delight in violence – now counts against him. In keeping with the times, a lot of people are routinely offended by the fact that Cherry takes offence. His offence is so alarming that he ought to be shouted down whenever he tries it with equal or greater vigour.

Over the weekend, Cherry committed his latest sin against decency by taking on the high jinks of the Carolina Hurricanes.

The Hurricanes are a formerly dead-end team playing in a currently dead-end hockey town. Rather than wallow in this dead-endedness, they’ve appended a vaudeville act to the end of games.

After home wins, Carolina players come out and do something between an end-zone celebration and Disney on Ice. One time they were bowling pins and a helmet knocked them all down. Another time they played baseball with their sticks. An arenawide Viking clap makes it interactive.

Is this fun? I suppose so. I mean, once the game is over, I’d prefer they lower ropes from the roof so I could rappel into the parking lot before the rest of the crowd gets off the stairs. You stay and clap. I’ll get on a subway car that isn’t packed to the gills. Win/win.

Cherry doesn’t think it’s fun. He thinks it’s an affront to the dignity of your opponents, yourselves and the holy sanctity of the game. But worse than that.

“These guys, to me, are jerks,” Cherry said. “This is a joke. [A simpering tone] Young men expressing themselves for the joy of winning … [sudden shift to high dudgeon] You don’t do this thing in men’s professional hockey … What are these guys, jerks or something? And I’ll tell you one thing, if they do this in the playoffs, making fun of the other team … .”

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MacLean, performing his role as Cherry’s minder as well as his sideman, jumped in at this point to prevent full meltdown.

At the end, Cherry returned to his jerk thesis – “a bunch of jerks” – giving the Carolina Hurricanes a gift from the gods of merchandising. They’re already making T-shirts.

Everyone else leapt in to shower Cherry with virtual produce. As usual nowadays, the thrust of the comments boiled down to, ‘Check out this old fogey’ and a lot of snickering.

Cherry gets paid a lot of money to be polarizing. After winning the NHL TV rights, Rogers Inc. tried slowly nudging him out of the frame and was forced to think better of it. I’m sure he can take whatever comes his way. That doesn’t make it any less dispiriting.

The routine shouting down of Don Cherry has taken on the queasy tone of a schoolyard mob trapping a teacher behind the portables, and then giving him the boots.

I suppose Christopher Nolan was right – you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. Cherry is hale and hearty at 85.

The problem is that there is now only one way to think about hockey while out in public. That, like Cherry’s commentaries, it is at its core a paleolithic pastime unsuited to progressive society.

Unable to reconcile the brutality of the sport with modern values, we have instead decided that it will be okay if we never talk about violence, except to wring our hands about it.

Equally unable to square hockey’s old-timey, macho ethos with those same values (e.g. ask a player in front of the microphones what he thinks about Carolina’s bowling routine, then ask that same player the same question over a quiet beer. I suspect you’ll get different answers), people just don’t want to hear it.

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But because he is too old a dog to care about new tricks, Cherry keeps telling us anyway.

I don’t often find myself agreeing with him, but I still find Cherry delightful. His clearly genuine fury at the stupidest little thing and complete lack of filter is a lovely contrast from the way some other pundits treat hockey – like a cult they’re constantly worried they’ll be kicked out of.

I’m glad the Carolina Hurricanes and their fans are enjoying themselves. I’m also glad Cherry ripped them for it. The two things together create the end goal of professional sports – entertainment.

It’s also nice to know that in some places dinosaurs still wander the Earth, and that in those places the contrary view is tolerated. That someone still believes guys punching the hell out of each other was the right way to do it, that Canadians should think of hockey as a national inheritance, and that we ought to jealously guard our traditions.

You needn’t agree with any of it. That’s the whole point of watching sports – so that you can argue about it later.

But Don Cherry’s opinion is, for me, even more valid now because he has seen the tide shift and remains unchanged. Though his standing in the court of popular opinion has diminished, he’s still a king as far as I’m concerned.

Recap: Lundqvist, Rangers Take Down Hurricanes 2-1

The Hurricanes pressured hard late in the game but ultimately couldn’t solve Henrik Lundvqist.

By Andrew Ahr

RALEIGH — The Carolina Hurricanes have had trouble with New York area teams this season. They furthered that narrative tonight with a deflating loss to the New York Rangers in Raleigh.

Just a few minutes into the game the Rangers threw a shot on net that Curtis McElhinney stopped initially, then lost track of and left in the middle of the blue. As sticks clashed at the goal line, Jaccob Slavin’ came up with another exceptional goaltending play to keep the puck out of an all but empty net.

A few minutes later Justin Williams took a heavy cross check in the back from Brendan Smith that he was slow to get up from. A few seconds later he took another stick in the numbers from Smith before he could get to his feet.

Smith served two minutes and Slavin almost put the Hurricanes up a goal when a point slapper went off of Lundqvist’s far side post. But the Rangers escaped the odd man situation with the score still tied.

The rest of the frame was pretty quiet until the waning seconds when Teuvo Teravainen got a hold of the puck in the offensive zone and centered it to Lucas Wallmark who put a quick one-timer just wide of the cage as the period ending horn sounded. The game went into the first intermission tied at zero.

Just under halfway into the second frame Dougie Hamilton set up a beautiful goal with a give and go from Andrei Svechnikov and a beautiful centering pass to Jordan Martinook, who batted in his own rebound to break the ice in a scoreless game.

But a few minutes later the Rangers generated an odd man rush as Filip Chytil carried the puck into the zone and threw one on the net that McElhinney batted up into the air. Former Hurricanes prospect Connor Brickley crashed the net as the puck deflected off of his upper body and into the back of the net. It was initially ruled no goal but the call was ultimately reversed after a lengthy review.

Seventeen minutes into the third period, Justin Faulk went into the boards battling with Brady Skjei and got his stick up under Skjei’s left arm, taking him down into the boards. It wasn’t much, but Faulk got the gate for hooking. But the Canes killed it off nicely and even generated a scoring chance of their own thanks to noted elite penalty killer Sebastian Aho. The game went into the final break tied 1-1.

The final period started with a bang as Mats Zuccarello streaked across the goal mouth and almost put one in against the grain on McElhinney. He was somehow able to keep it out of the net and Chris Kreider would end up getting two minutes for pushing Brett Pesce into a vulnerable McElhinney.

The Canes had a productive power play that saw Faulk hit the post with a point shot. The puck wouldn’t go, and as the Hurricanes power play expired Wallmark was immediately whistled for holding.

Ninety seconds later Brock McGinn was whistled for what fit all the criteria for a trip, but didn’t quite look like one. The call would result in a Rangers goal off of Vladislav Namestikov’s stick after McElhinney made two great saves but couldn’t get in front of the third chance opportunity.

The Hurricanes kept steady pressure on Lundqvist and the Rangers through the last half of the third period and pulled McElhinney with just over two minutes to go in the period. A beautiful passing play set up again by Hamilton resulted in Williams with a golden opportunity on the one timer, but

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Lunqvist came up with a highlight reel save to deny the Hurricanes’ equalizer. The Canes lost a crucial game 2-1.

Quotes

Rod Brind’Amour

[Lundqvist] was good, our guy was good both goalies went at it and he made a few more saves, especially at the end. It’s a tough loss because we played well enough, played a good 60 minutes but just didn’t score.

On penalties:

Well they’re always tough, but the kill did a nice job. Unfortunately on the kill at the end it bounced over our stick on a clear and they just pounced on it. So it’s just unfortunate bounces there and hockey’s random like that sometimes.

On regaining momentum after a loss:

Well we always worry about just one day at a time and one game, that’s how we’ve done it here and we’re not going to change. That was our best game we’ve played in probably seven or eight, it just didn’t work out. If you come with that mindset and you play that hard I think we’ll be where we want at the end of the year.

Jordan Martinook

“Maybe a bad bounce here or there, but i think in the last three games that’s probably the best we’ve played and we come out on the other end of it. At this time of year you just kind of have to push that one aside and we’re going to keep moving forward and every game is so huge for us right now. Obviously we wish we could have got one at the end there to tie it up, trying to get two or one [point] even, but it just wasn’t there for us tonight.”

“[Lunqvist] played well, you have to give him credit. I don’t know if we could have done a better job getting in front of his

eyes or trying to get sticks on a couple of them or second opportunities, I don’t know. I’ll have to look at some clips tomorrow but I thought he played well but I don’t know if we did enough to try and get another one by him.”

Game Notes

Hockey’s a funny game. The Canes played what looked like their best system game tonight against the Rangers and ended up on the wrong end of it. I counted two pipes in that game — one off of a point shot from Slavin that Ferland got a stick on, and one later on another point blast from Faulk. If either of those go we’re looking at an entirely different outcome.

Curtis McElhinney looked fantastic tonight in net. The 35-year-old kept the Canes in the game with a couple of crucial saves in the second and third period. He was exactly what the team needed to stay in the game when the defense broke down.

Justin Faulk had a couple of really tough defensive sequences tonight. The most notable started with him caught too low in the offensive zone which generated an odd-man rush going the other way. When he regained possession in the defensive zone he sent a puck sailing over the glass for a delay of game penalty. Despite a few bad decisions on the blue line, he had some great looks on the power play that narrowly missed twine.

The Canes missed out on a needed two points tonight. But they’ve snuck out of multiple games with a pair two points that they didn’t really deserve over the past couple weeks. They still control their own destiny. The team will practice tomorrow at Raleigh Center Ice and be back in action on Thursday in the Sunshine State where they’ll visit the Panthers.

Charlotte Checkers Corner: “Last Week Took Some L’s But This Week They Bounced Back”

The Checkers break out of their slump...then end the weekend with a stinker.

By Justin Lape

Charlotte broke out of their slump this weekend by putting together a pair of wins but couldn’t complete the three game winning streak by dropping a stinker on Sunday. The Checkers, however, played three games in three nights on the road with Bojangles Coliseum invaded by NBA All-Star festivities.

Weekend Recap

Charlotte made their way to Springfield to begin the weekend and walloped the Thunderbirds 4-1. Charlotte peppered the Thunderbirds with shots, putting 37 on goalie Samuel Montembeault. Charlotte earned an early lead on the power play in the first period when Nick Schilkey scored his tenth goal of the season. Charlotte kept pouring it on and pushed their lead to three goals before Dryden Hunt broke Alex

Nedeljkovic’s late in the third period with his 19th goal of the season.

The Checkers edged out another victory with a 3-2 win over the Providence Bruins on Saturday. Charlotte saw themselves take a three-goal lead once again thanks in part to Julien Gauthier’s 15th goal of the season. Charlotte saw the lead begin to dwindle early in the third period when Providence responded with a pair of goals less than a minute apart. However, Nedeljkovic stood his ground and made timely saves down the stretch to secure the win for the Checkers.

On Sunday, a tired Checkers squad fell 7-3 to Bridgeport. Charlotte took a 2-0 lead and then things began to fall apart. Bridgeport scored six unanswered goals late in the second and into the third period to send the Checkers packing. Josh Ho-Sang scored a hat trick and The Other Sebastian Aho scored a goal against the franchise that employs his more-famous namesake.

Thought of the Week

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With Charlotte hosting NBA All-Star festivities, the city was able to prove its capable of hosting large scale sporting events. It has the infrastructure and accommodations to entertain visitors and attract return visitors.

Which raises the question: could Charlotte host the AHL All-Star Classic? It seems possible.

With the recent success of the team over the past three seasons and attendance increasing and remaining respectable, it could entice the league to host the event in the Queen City. The 2020 AHL All-Star Classic is set for Ontario, California but it makes you think about 2021 and beyond.

Player of the Week

Nick Schilkey earned this week’s player of the week honors. A reliable depth forward, Schilkey recorded four points (two goals, two assists) on the weekend. Schilkey has 25 points in 43 games this season and is shooting at a 16.67% clip.

Looking Ahead

The Checkers return to Charlotte for the beginning of their four-game homestand. Lehigh Valley visits for a pair of games on Friday and Saturday. Canes Country will have coverage of Saturday night’s game.

Hurricanes can’t solve Lundqvist in loss to Rangers

Andrew Schnittker, Sports Editor

On a night when they had a chance to cross the playoff cut line in the Eastern Conference, the Carolina Hurricanes were stymied by a hot goalie, surrendered the game winner in the third period and fell 2-1 to the New York Rangers at PNC Arena Tuesday.

Forward Jordan Martinook scored the Canes’ (31-23-6) lone goal and Curtis McElhinney stopped 24 of 26 shots in net. Carolina peppered Rangers (26-25-8) goalie Henrik Lundqvist with 44 shots, but could not find more than one tally in a frustrating loss as the team continues its playoff push.

“[Lundqvist] was good,” Canes head coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “[McElhinney] was good. Both goalies went at it; [Lundqvist] made a few more saves, especially at the end. It’s a tough loss, because we played well enough, played a good 60 minutes and just didn’t score.”

The Canes nearly took a 1-0 lead at the tail end of a power play about nine minutes in, but forward Micheal Ferland tipped a shot off the goal post.

The Canes finally broke the ice with 10:07 to play in the second period with a slick goal. Defenseman Dougie Hamilton slid down from the point after a give and go with forward Andrei Svechnikov and slid a pass to Martinook, who roofed his own rebound over Rangers goalie Lundqvist to put his team up 1-0.

The Rangers tied the game at one less than a minute later as forward Connor Brickley crashed the net and knocked a rebound past McElhinney. The tally was initially waved off by the referees on the basis that he illegally knocked it in with his body, but a lengthy review reversed the call and made it a 1-1 game.

“[There was] a bad bounce here or there,” Martinook said. “I think in our last three games that’s probably the best one we’ve played and we come out on the other end of it. This time of year you’ve just go to kind of push that one aside.

We’ve got to keep moving forward and every game is so huge for us right now.”

The Rangers crashed the net and got a puck in less than a minute into the third period, but it was waved off as Rangers forward Chris Kreider was whistled for interference for pushing Canes defenseman Brett Pesce into McElhinney. McElhinney was shaken up and checked out by a trainer, but remained in the game.

The Canes came inches from taking the lead on the ensuing power play, but defenseman Justin Faulk launched a point shot off the goal post.

“We had a good mindset going into the third period,” forward and captain Justin Williams said. “We’ve been successful in third periods and had comebacks; it just didn’t happen. We hit a couple posts tonight and it just didn’t go our way tonight which is the way it goes sometimes.”

Just after Carolina’s man advantage expired, a holding penalty to forward Lucas Wallmark and trip to forward Brock McGinn gave New York 42 seconds of a 5-on-3 power play. The Canes killed the first penalty, but Rangers forward Vladislav Namestikov knocked in a rebound to give the Blueshirts a 2-1 lead just after the second expired.

“They’re always tough when you take penalties,” Brind’Amour said. “It was a kill that we did a nice job on. Unfortunately, really, at the end of that, it bounced over our stick on a clear and they just pounced on it. So it was just unfortunate bounces there. Hockey’s random like that sometimes.”

After a noticeable shift in momentum to New York after Namestikov’s goal, the Canes got going and pressed hard for the equalizer in the last seven minutes of the game. Brind’Amour pulled McElhinney for an extra skater with 2:22 to play, but the Canes could not solve Lundqvist despite a late, point-blank chance for Williams, and missed a chance at an important two points in the standings.

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“I was just trying to catch it and get it up high,” Williams said. “I think actually a defenseman got a stick on it. But he was right there and I wasn’t able to rebound that. We certainly had a lot of chances to win, that’s for sure. It didn’t go our way. That was a big one that slipped away.”

The loss leaves the Canes three points back of the Pittsburgh Penguins for the third seed in the Metropolitan Division, but just one back of the Columbus Blue Jackets for the East’s final Wild Card spot (though Columbus has a game in hand). The team will need to move on quickly and

keep picking up points; the Canes are back in action Thursday night with a visit to the Florida Panthers.

“I don’t think we have much of an option,” Martinook said. “Every point is so big for us right now and everything matters so much. Definitely the losses hurt a little more right now. Everybody’s got to think about it for a half hour, an hour, go home and then come with the mindset tomorrow that we’re going to win our next game. Just look at the Florida game and go from there. That’s all we can do right now.”

Hurricanes win streak ends with 2-1 loss to Rangers

Carolina held in check by New York netminder Lundqvist

Peter Koutroumpis, Triangle Sports Network

RALEIGH, N.C. – A weekend of exhilarating wins carried into a deep momentum drop by Tuesday for the Carolina Hurricanes.

Winners of three straight and 8 of their last 10 games, the Hurricanes were unable to beat goaltender Henrik Lundqvist enough and suffered a 2-1 loss to the New York Rangers as a result.

Jordan Martinook was the only one who knocked a puck past Lundqvist who made 43 saves and denied Carolina a valuable two points in the chase for a wildcard playoff spot.

Connor Brickley and Vladislav Namestnikov tallied the Ranger goals as Hurricanes starter Curtis McElhinney suffered his first loss in his last five starts with a 24-save finish.

“He was good, our guy was good,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said of the two keepers’ play.

“But he (Lundqvist) made a few more saves especially at the end. It was a tough loss because we played well enough – a good 60 minutes but just didn’t score.”

No goal, good goal

Martinook’s 13th of the year came at the 9:53 mark of the second and put Carolina ahead 1-0.

It didn’t take New York long to even it up following a disputed and reviewed play that had the puck bouncing off Brickley’s body and past McElhinney.

The initial call was no goal, but upon review it was determined that Brickley’s momentum with his body toward the airborne puck was unintentional in directing it into the net.

“Yeah, we thought it was going to be a goal,” Rangers coach David Quinn said.

“We saw it clearly that it went off his chest.”

Lack of power and finish

Both teams’ power play units went scoreless throughout, the Hurricanes going 0-for-2 during the first two periods.

Carolina’s penalty trouble in the third didn’t help as the Rangers had three of their four power plays during that time.

Though unable to score with the man-advantage, Namestnikov’s seventh goal of the season put the Rangers ahead with the eventual game winner at the 6:10 mark.

“It’s always tough when you get penalties; on the kill I thought we did a nice job,” Brind’Amour said.

“Then really at the end of that (penalty kill) it bounced over our stick on the clear and they just pounced on it. Unfortunate bounces, but hockey’s random like that.”

Outshooting New York 18-10 during the final 20 minutes, Carolina was simply unable to beat Lundqvist.

Most notably, leading scorer Sebastian Aho was kept of the score sheet, now goal-less in eight straight games.

Still on the outside looking in

While the Pittsburgh Penguins and Montreal Canadiens posted wins, a loss for the Columbus Blue Jackets kept the Hurricanes sitting one point out of the wild card spot.

“Every game is so huge for us right now,” Martinook said.

“Obviously, we wish we got one there and tie it up and get two or one (point) even, but it just wasn’t there for us tonight.”

“It’s going to be one of those things with where we’re at and a few other teams, we’re gonna be in some nights, and out some nights,” McElhinney added.

“So, it’s just a matter of continuing to move on.”

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Hurricanes Let ‘Jerk’ Fans Wear Cherry’s Words

By Mark Shiver

By now, the hockey universe has heard, seen or read about Don Cherry’s rant wherein he railed against the Carolina Hurricanes’ home win celebrations. In case you missed it, The Athletic has a transcript: “This is the National Hockey League. These guys, to me, are jerks. They’re still not drawing (fans). I’ll tell you one thing, they better not do this in the playoffs,” he said. “That is absolutely ridiculous. I know all the broadcasters are afraid to say something … I know what I’m talking about. You never do anything like that. They’re still not drawing. They’re still a bunch of jerks, as far as I’m concerned.” (From “A worthy cause, a bunch of jerks and a welcome reminder that the hockey world has your back,” – Sara Civian – The Athletic – 2/18/19).

Cherry is known for being opinionated and for wearing loud jackets. The CBC commentator and former coach of the Boston Bruins is a blowhard and wears that moniker well. But, his whining about the Hurricanes’ post-game celebrations is over the top. In response, the team has “Bunch of Jerks” T-shirts available on their online shop. For $32US, you can own what is likely to be a very popular article of clothing for years to come. Cherry would look great in a “Bunch of Jerks” T-shirt.

Hurricanes Fans Bring it

The Hurricanes have been doing the ‘Storm Surge’ after home wins this season. While he took a shot at the home attendance, the Hurricanes are averaging 13,950 so far this season versus 13,920 last season, Cherry is clueless about the storm surge. He sees a “bunch of jerks” and could not be further from the truth.

First of all, the Hurricanes are a franchise that has not been to the playoffs in a long time. A miss this season will give them a decade’s worth of frustration. The fans are antsy and often voice their disappointment, but they are loyal to their team. They know what winning the Stanley Cup is like and want their team to do it again.

Hurricanes fans know how to bring the playoff atmosphere to their arena. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had this to say about that atmosphere in 2009: “For when the Hurricanes’ home crowd gets going, it’s more like being near a speaker at a rock concert where there also happens to be a jet engine operating at full throttle. ‘I think it’s probably the loudest I’ve played in,’ said Penguins forward Craig Adams, who played on the Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup-winning team in 2006.” (From “NHL Playoffs: Carolina fans to pump up the volume for Game 3” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – 5/23/09).

Of course, lots of fans will tout their home arena for being loud, but Hurricanes fans know how to bring it and support their team with unbridled enthusiasm.

The Storm Surge

The Hurricanes have a new owner, a new general manager and a new head coach. They have a bunch of young players who just want to play hard and win. And when they win at home they are giving the fans a little something extra, a reason to stick around to the final horn. Owner Tom Dundon has said he wants the fans to be entertained. The storm surge is hitting that goal, and more.

In November, I wrote that former NHL executive and Sportsnet analyst Brian Burke needed to lighten up. Like Cherry, he too slammed the storm surge, calling it “amateurish and pee wee garbage stuff.” There seems to be a trend developing, first Burke and now Cherry. Both are old-school hockey and both need to get a life. The storm surge is here to stay, at least for this season.

The “Jerks” Respond

Cherry’s use of the word “jerks” was like putting a ball on a batting tee. The Hurricanes’ marketing department and website folks responded faster than a Sebastian Aho slapper. Their Twitter bio was changed to “That bunch of jerks with the fun celebrations.”

The marketing folks made sure to have “Bunch of Jerks” T-shirts available in their online shop.

Greg Wyshinski wrote at ESPN that the shirts are hot: “How hot are those ‘Bunch of Jerks’ shirts that the Carolina Hurricanes created to goof on Don Cherry? A little more than 24 hours after they went on sale online, the Hurricanes sold 1,680 shirts. Those sales included 41 states and three countries: the U.S., the Netherlands and, of course, Canada. They go on sale in the Hurricanes team store on Tuesday.”

Knowing Dundon, there are likely ongoing conversations about how to ride the “Bunch of Jerks” wave for all it is worth. By the way, Cherry said, “they better not do this in the playoffs.” Does that mean he believes this team will make it to the playoffs? A vote of confidence from Cherry!

One thing is certain: If the Hurricanes make the playoffs, the “Jerks” will fill Raleigh’s PNC Arena and will be the loudest “Jerks” cheering on their team in the entire NHL. Get ready, Cherry, and please buy a “Bunch of Jerks” T-shirt. It will enhance your appearance and announce that you, too, are a jerk.

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Weekly Report: Feb. 19, 2019

Written by Nicholas Niedzielski

The Checkers embarked on their last big road trip of the season and came away from a busy weekend with mostly positive results.

Week in Review

Team Statistics

Overall record

34-14-7

Home record

14-6-4

Road record

20-8-3

Last week's record

2-1-0

Last 10 games

4-3-3

Division Standings

1st

Conference Standings

1st

League Standings

1st

Checkers 4, Springfield 1

The Checkers kicked off their final three-in-three of the season with a convincing win over their former head coach in Springfield. Nick Schilkey kept up his hot streak against the Thunderbirds to open the scoring, then Zach Nastasiuk and Julien Gauthier lit the lamp less than a minute apart in the middle frame to blow the game open. The home side spoiled the shutout bid for Alex Nedeljkovic with less than three minutes to play, but the netminder’s 25 saves were more than enough to pick up the win, sealed by an empty netter courtesy of Steven Lorentz to make it a 4-1 final. Full recap

Checkers 3, Providence 2

The Checkers jumped out to a similarly strong start the next night in Providence, with Nastasiuk and Gauthier scoring for the second straight game and the captain Patrick Brown netting his 11th of the season to put Charlotte ahead 3-0 after 40 minutes of play. The Bruins wouldn’t roll over,

however, as a pair of quick goals within the first five minutes of the third put the home squad back within one. Charlotte’s offense wouldn’t be able to produce anything more from that point, but the visitors stepped up defensively to keep the Bruins at bay and Nedeljkovic came away with another victory thanks to a stellar 26-save performance. Full recap

Checkers 3, Bridgeport 7

The Checkers looked to be on their way to a perfect weekend as they broke out into a 3-1 lead over Bridgeport in the second period of Sunday’s afternoon finale. NHL veteran Thomas Hickey got one back for the Sound Tigers midway through that frame, however, and it would set off a scoring frenzy for the home side. Bridgeport scored twice more before the end of the second to gain their first lead of the game, then Josh Ho-Sang added a natural hat trick in the third to give the Sound Tigers six unanswered goals en route to a big 7-3 victory. Full recap

Three Stars Of The Week

3rd Star

Zach Nastasiuk

2g, 1a

2nd Star

Nick Schilkey

2g, 2a

1st Star

Alex Nedeljkovic

2-0-0, 1.51 GAA, .944 SV%

Notables

BUSY WEEKEND

This was the Checkers’ fourth and final three-in-three set of games this season. The 2-1-0 weekend was their second-best three-in-three series of the season and gives them a 7-5-0 record in those situations this season. That .583 points percentage stands as the fourth-best season record for three-in-threes in franchise history, trailing 2012-13 (.762), 2016-17 (.666) and 2010-11 (.604).

BACK ON TRACK?

The Checkers entered the weekend mired in their worst stretch of the season, having won just twice in their previous

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10 games. They righted the ship for the first two contests, recording consecutive regulation wins for the first time since Jan. 15 and 16. The Checkers are now back above .500 in their lasts 10 games and hold an eight-point lead on both the best record in the AHL and the first-place spot in the Atlantic Division.

SCHILKEY STAYS SCORING

Nick Schilkey had himself a weekend to further elevate his career-best numbers. The forward recorded his fifth multi-point game of the season on Friday as he continued to haunt Springfield, holding five points (3g, 2a) in two games against the Thunderbirds so far. Schilkey found the scoresheet in both Saturday and Sunday’s games as well, putting him in the midst of a career-best four-game point streak. Schilkey now has 25 points (11g, 14a) through 43 games this season, more than doubling his 12-point output over his 48-game rookie campaign a year ago.

KUOKKANEN FINDS HIS GROOVE

Despite remaining near the top of the Checkers’ scoring leaders, Janne Kuokkanen entered the weekend in search of his scoring touch. Exacerbated by an injury absence, the forward had just three points in his previous eight games, but bounced back in a big way over the weekend. Playing alongside some new linemates, Kuokkanen picked up an assist in each of the three contests, pushing himself back into second among Checkers skaters this season.

NASTASIUK'S NOSE FOR THE NET

Since being recalled from the ECHL in late December Zach Nastasiuk has made himself a mainstay in the lineup, and this weekend he broke out in a big way offensively. The forward found the back of the net on Friday and Saturday for his third and fourth goals of the season, then added a helper on Sunday to run his point streak to three games, his longest of the season. A second-round pick in 2013, Nastasiuk has now tied his career high for points in an AHL season, matching his 27-game output from 2015-16 with Grand Rapids.

RENOUF DOES IT ALL

Dan Renouf continues to be a crucial pillar on the Charlotte blue line, as he exemplified over the weekend. The blue liner stepped up to fight Springfield’s Bobby Farnham in Friday’s win over the Thunderbirds and now has a team-high 105 penalty minutes, making him the first Checker to eclipse 100 since the 2015-16 season. Renouf added a pair of assists in Saturday’s win for his third multi-assist game of the season, all of which have come since Dec. 31, then lit the lamp on Sunday for his second goal of the season. That tally would set a new career high in points for the blue liner, whose 17 points through 53 games have eclipsed his 67-game total of 16 points from the 2016-17 season with Grand Rapids.

Ranks

Andrew Poturalski is tied for sixth in the AHL in scoring (49), tied for 10th in assists (31) and tied for fifth in game-winning goals (5)

Dan Renouf ranks fourth in the AHL in penalty minutes (105) and is tied for third in major penalties

Alex Nedeljkovic leads the AHL in wins (24), ranks second in minutes (2083), ranks fifth in saves (859) and ranks sixth in goals-against average (2.48)

Jake Bean ranks 10th among league defensemen, tied for 10th among all rookies, and leads all rookie defensemen in scoring (33), is tied for 10th among league defensemen, ranks seventh among league rookies and second among rookie defensemen in assists (23) and is tied for 6th among league defensemen and tied for 1st among rookie defensemen in goals (10)

Martin Necas is tied for 13th among league rookies in scoring (31)

Morgan Geekie ranks fifth among league rookies in shooting percentage

Trevor Carrick is tied for second among league defensemen in game-winning goals (4)

INJURIES

Roland McKeown - Missed one game starting 2/17

Clark Bishop - Missed two games starting 2/16

Spencer Smallman - Missed 42 games starting 11/11

Transactions

Incoming

Feb. 12: (C) Patrick Brown - Assigned from Carolina (NHL)

Outgoing

None

Coming Up

Friday, Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. - Checkers vs. Lehigh Valley

Miracle on Ice Night Presented by The Independence Fund

Checkers to wear special USA-themed jerseys to be auctioned off after the game.

Saturday, Feb. 23 at 6 p.m. - Checkers vs. Lehigh Valley

Godzilla Night

Special Godzilla-themed t-shirts for sale!

Family Night presented by Fairfield Inn and Suites - save 40 percent on groups of four tickets when purchasing online

Slap Shot Saturday - stick around after the game to take a shot on the ice

By the Numbers

CATEGORY RECORD AHL RANK

LAST WEEK

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Power play 17.5% 19th t-19th

Penalty kill 84.1% 4th 4th

Goals per game 3.18 t-15th 17th

Shots per game 29.93 16th 18th

Goals allowed per game 2.84 8th 7th

Shots allowed per game 27.51 3rd 3rd

Penalty minutes per game

13.65 9th 7th

LEADERS

CATEGORY LEADER(S)

Points Andrew Poturalski (49), Aleksi Saarela (37), Janne Kuokkanen (35)

Goals Andrew Poturalski (18), Aleksi Saarela (17), Julien Gauthier (15)

Assists Andrew Poturalski (31), Janne Kuokkanen (24), Jake Bean (23)

Power play goals

Janne Kuokkanen (6), Julien Gauthier (5), Three tied (4)

Shorthanded goals

Saku Maenalanen (3), Patrick Brown, Nicolas Roy, Michal Cajkovsky (1)

Game-winning goals

Andrew Poturalski, Nicolas Roy (5), Trevor Carrick, Aleksi Saarela (4)

Shots on goal Aleksi Saarela (141), Andrew Poturalski (128), Jake Bean (121)

Penalty minutes Dan Renouf (105), Trevor Carrick (70), Julien Gauthier (53)

Plus/minus Roland McKeown (+17), Morgan Geekie (+14), Nick Schilkey, Martin Necas (+11)

Wins Alex Nedeljkovic (24)

Goals-against average

Callum Booth (2.48)

Save percentage Alex Nedeljkovic (.909)

Shaya's 10 Thoughts: Feb. 20, 2019

Written by Nicholas Niedzielski

During the season, Checkers broadcaster Jason Shaya checks in each week with his 10 Thoughts - a series of observations about the team and the hockey world in general.

1. Nick Schilkey is one of the best Checkers players going right now. With six points in his last six games, he's made his case to stay as a top six forward for Charlotte. The rest of the team needs to start following the lead of the Ohio State product because he is one of the few players scoring consistently. 2. In the earlier months this season there were many contributors the cause. All the goal scoring, which was well documented, overshadowed the goaltending excellence of Alex Nedeljkovic. While the majority of the team has slumped lately, Nedeljkovic is only getting better. Without him, this team could literally be fighting for a playoff position rather than still on top of the Atlantic Division. 3. Hockey Night in Canada legend Don Cherry, a critic of the Hurricanes’ postgame celebration, was recently quoted saying, "We in Canada, at least most of the people I know in Canada, revere the game. I don't think there's any secret there. I guess I'm the only guy who said it, but that's why I said it. I mean it, I mean every word." It's fairly clear he's

always had an innate animus towards non-Canadian based teams. In his eyes, it's "Canada's game." The rest of the world is only borrowing what Canada gave the world. I've watched Coach's Corner since I was a kid back home in Detroit on CBC Channel 9. Sometimes I agree with him and sometimes I don't. But his reaction to this is unsurprising. Of course, there's just one glaring issue: 4. Cherry routinely dresses in loud suits styled in a fashion that you'd find on a 1970's era living room couch. Every week he pounds the desk on television and screams his opinions in front of the camera. He's a showman. He's an entertainer. You don't become a household name for 40-plus years on TV without learning how to attract attention in an effort to garner viewership. Before he lectures everyone on the dignity of the game and the professionalism players should carry themselves with, maybe he should first take off the leopard print suit jacket. I've written this dozens of times and I'm happy to do it again: We are in the entertainment business. I doubt that the many volumes of Rock'em Sock'em Hockey would've sold as well if it was a lecture series rather than a highlight reel compilation. Finally, I am not shocked at all by the number of smug hockey media members who jumped on the bandwagon with Cherry if only so they could publicly look down on North Carolina hockey fans. Pathetic.

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5. Does anyone do third jerseys better than the Charlotte Checkers? I have been around this league many times over and the answer is no. The Miracle On Ice jerseys to be worn this weekend are phenomenal and worth the price of admission on Friday. 6. Charlotte Checkers legend Chris Terry recently played his 700th professional game. At 29 years old, Terry still averages a point per game in the AHL and currently leads the Grand Rapids Griffins in scoring. He is one of the best hockey players to ever put on a Checkers sweater and he is still talked about to this day by those in the hockey staff who knew him. One thing has eluded Terry in his career and that's a Calder Cup. I'd suspect this is his best chance. Congratulations to Chris and his beautiful wife Chelsea. 7. Lehigh Valley is in town this weekend. They are currently on the outside of a playoff position. They are winless in their last two games and have to try and keep pace with the surging Hershey Bears and Providence Bruins. Bridgeport has taken points in five straight games so the Atlantic Division is going to be insanity until the last day of the season. Charlotte desperately needs to find consistency or it's going to get ugly quick. 8. Drafted by the Canes in the seventh round in 2015, Steven Lorentz has worked incredibly hard to get into the Checkers lineup. He has done everything the coaching staff has asked of him and when he got his shot, he made the most of it. Scoring a goal last Friday against Springfield was just one of the many great things he did in that game. The six-foot-three forward is a big body who skates well and has solid offensive instincts. Good for Steven, who is a terrific kid.

9. I've been calling games for a long time but I've never lost my voice until this previous week. My voice was faltering going into the Canes’ game in New Jersey but I survived. When I woke up the next day, I couldn't say a word. By the time the weekend came and I had two games to call, it was only moderately better. The worst part was that I couldn't elevate my call in big moments for the last NHL game and when I tried, it sounded pretty awful. However, calling a win for Charlotte on Friday and for Carolina on Saturday was a good consolation prize. Nevertheless, it was one of the most frustrating weeks of my professional career. 10. I think earlier this year I made the case that if the Canes make the postseason, Sebastian Aho should be in the conversation for Hart Trophy as league MVP. No one listens to me but I feel the need to reiterate myself! 11. Happy 70th birthday to Checkers owner Michael Kahn. He's been my boss for the last 12 years and in all those years, we've never had a single argument. That's mostly because when he gets mad at me, I just stand there and take it. No one wants to win more than Michael and he's unquestionably the best guy to have in your corner. The entire broadcast department wishes you many more birthdays to come. 12. Since landing home on Monday morning, the Checkers will play only four times in 18 days. All four of those games are at home. There will be no excuses but to play their best games at the Coliseum against both the Phantoms and the Devils. Broadcast begins at 6:45 p.m. this Friday night. It's good to be home.

TODAY’S LINKS

https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article226490600.html#storylink=cpy https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article226493285.html#storylink=cpy

https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/luke-decock/article226497025.html#storylink=cpy https://theathletic.com/821032/2019/02/20/hurricanes-trade-deadline-primer-buyers-and-sellers-and-bears-oh-my/

http://nsjonline.com/article/2019/02/an-abridged-history-of-recent-hurricanes-outrage/ https://www.wralsportsfan.com/gold-hurricanes-crowned-by-the-king/18203995/

https://www.wralsportsfan.com/hurricanes-owner-tom-dundon-makes-250-million-investment-aaf-will-become-league-s-new-chairman/18202215/ https://www.nhl.com/hurricanes/news/recap-canes-edged-by-rangers/c-305002392

https://www.nhl.com/hurricanes/news/projected-lineup-new-york-rangers-carolina-hurricanes/c-304984502 https://www.nhl.com/news/new-york-rangers-carolina-hurricanes-game-recap/c-304995314

https://apnews.com/c936452336a44d14b3472d562072021d https://apnews.com/32b24cf5072b4f1487a117d283359448

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/31-thoughts-stealth-suitor-emerge-matt-duchene/ https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/cherry-enjoys-hurricanes-bunch-jerks-shirts-still-celebrations/

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/analyzing-best-goal-scorers-available-nhl-trade-deadline/ http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/26033326/qa-tom-dundon-250-million-well-spent-bunch-jerks http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/26030221/hurricanes-owner-tom-dundon-invests-250m-aaf

https://nhl.nbcsports.com/2019/02/19/can-hurricanes-count-on-mrazek-mcelhinney/ https://sports.yahoo.com/power-rankings-bruins-quietly-making-move-164639601.html

https://globalnews.ca/news/4972767/don-cherry-hurricanes-jerks/ https://www.thescore.com/nhl/news/1719955/cherry-doesnt-mind-hurricanes-t-shirts-doubles-down-on-celebration-criticism

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/article-hurricane-hubbub-shows-that-old-dog-cherrys-limited-repertoire-of/ https://www.canescountry.com/2019/2/19/18232538/carolina-hurricanes-game-recap-henrik-lundqvist-new-york-rangers-justin-williams-curtis-

mcelhinney https://www.canescountry.com/2019/2/19/18230124/charlotte-checkers-corner-ahl-springfield-thunderbirds-nick-schilkey-julien-gauthier

http://www.technicianonline.com/sports/article_9ead4b9e-34be-11e9-b161-5b06b1cb8a62.html http://trianglesportsnet.com/carolina-hurricanes/hurricanes-win-streak-ends-with-2-1-loss-to-rangers/

https://thehockeywriters.com/carolina-hurricanes-cherry-whine-jerks-shirts/ http://gocheckers.com/articles/features/weekly-report-feb-19-2019

http://gocheckers.com/articles/features/shayas-10-thoughts-feb-20-2019

CAROLINA HURRICANES


1131681 Carolina Hurricanes

Rangers deny Canes a postgame celebration with 2-1 win

BY CHIP ALEXANDER

FEBRUARY 19, 2019 09:48 PM

RALEIGH

There would be no celebration for the “Jerks” this night.

The New York Rangers would not allow the Carolina Hurricanes to stage

another one Tuesday, combining the timely stops and 43 saves of goalie Henrik Lundqvist with goals by Vladislav Namestnikov and Connor

Brickley to take a 2-1 win at PNC Arena.

For a few days, the talk around the Canes -- and NHL -- had centered on

comments made by Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada. Cherry, angered by the Canes’ postgame activities, called it unprofessional and labeled the Canes a “bunch of jerks.”

But the Rangers found another way to stop it -- win the game.

For the Canes, it was a damaging loss. With the fight so tight for playoff positions in the Eastern Conference, any regulation loss the rest of the way figures to be a dagger and this one was for Carolina (31-23-6).

Carolina Hurricanes’ Nino Niederreiter (21) of Switzerland battles the New York Rangers’ Adam McQuaid (54) and Mika Zibanejad (93) of Sweden for the puck during the second period of an NHL hockey game in

Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019.

“Tough loss because we played well enough, played a good 60 minutes

and couldn’t score,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “I thought it was our best game we’ve probably played in seven or eight and it just didn’t

work out. You come with that mindset and play that hard and I think we’ll be where we want to be at the end of the year.”

That remains to be seen. The Canes have not been in the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2009. A year ago, they were in a similar position after 60 games under former coach Bill Peters and didn’t make it.

“We certainly don’t have the luxury of letting them slip away like we did tonight,” Canes captain Justin Williams said.

Namestnikov’s goal, which gave the Rangers the 2-1 lead, came at 6:10 of the third just after the Canes had first killed off a 5-on-3 power play by New York, then the second penalty on Brock McGinn. Finding the puck loose in the slot, Namestnikov eluded Canes forward Saku Maenalanen and slapped it past goalie Curtis McElhinney.

The Canes had their chances to tie it in the final minutes of regulation. Williams, who had 10 shots on net in the game, got off two rapid-fire

attempts in close with less than two minutes left that Lundqvist stopped.

“He was good,” Williams said. “We couldn’t get anything past him and

when we did his posts were there.”

The Canes did take a 1-0 lead on Jordan Martinook’s 13th of the season

at 9:53 of the second. The Canes were 23-5-2 this season when scoring first but the Rangers quickly countered when Connor Brickley tied it.

Brickley’s goal initially was waved off as the forward crashed the net. The ruling: Brickley batted the puck into the net. But after review, it was

determined the puck hit his chest and was not batted -- good goal.

Brickley, playing just his third game for the Rangers, has a connection to the Canes. Carolina acquired him in an October 2016 trade and he played 69 games in 2016-17 in the American Hockey League with the Charlotte Checkers. When the Vegas Golden Knights made their expansion selections in June 2017, they took Brickley from the Canes.

The Canes shut out the Rangers 3-0 on Feb. 8, ending a 16-game losing streak at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Goalie Petr Mrazek had the shutout -- on a night when the Rangers honored their 1994 Stanley Cup champions -- and also shut out the Dallas Stars this past Saturday,

but Brind’Amour went with McElhinney on Tuesday.

“I think this is the way the rest of the season is going to be,” McElhinney

said. “It’s going to be tight hockey and it’s going to come down to some bounces. We had some good looks tonight. It’s nothing to hang your

head about. It’s a tough loss but you move on.”

News Observer LOADED: 02.20.2019


Tom Dundon talks Canes, Don Cherry, the Alliance of American Football

BY CHIP ALEXANDER

FEBRUARY 19, 2019 08:38 PM

RALEIGH

Tom Dundon flew into Raleigh on Tuesday with a lot to talk about.

A fledgling football league that he’s now funding with $250 million.

A hot hockey team, the Carolina Hurricanes.

The comments of a certain Canadian TV personality, bombastic Don

Cherry.

The hottest selling T-shirt in the area, the new “Bunch of Jerks”

collection.

It was announced Tuesday that Dundon would be chairman of the

Alliance of American Football. The Canes owner arrived at PNC Arena with Charlie Ebersol, a TV and film producer who founded the league with former NFL general manager Bill Polian.

Why football? Why this league?

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“People like football, people watch football,” Dundon said. “These guys did a really good job that first week and it looked like quality football and people watched it. So it was easy to do.”

Just like that, it was done. Dundon agreed to put in the $250 million for the eight-team developmental league, which began play Feb. 9 and will have 10 regular-season games, followed by two playoff rounds and the Alliance Championship game in Las Vegas.

An easy question was whether Dundon being chairman of the league will quickly pave the way for an AAF team in Raleigh, playing at N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium.

“It’s certainly something we’re talking about, absolutely,” Ebersol said.

Dundon said no preliminary discussions have been held with NCSU

about the use of the stadium. The Wolfpack has named Boo Corrigan to replace athletic director Debbie Yow, who is retiring. Corrigan begins his

job May 1 and Dundon said, “If they want it we’ll talk about it.”

Turning to hockey, Dundon was asked his reaction to hearing Cherry, the

Hockey Night in Canada icon, refer to the Hurricanes players as a “bunch of jerks” for their postgame celebrations and histrionics at PNC Arena

after home-ice wins.

“I enjoyed it,” Dundon said, smiling. “I think he’s interesting. I like the fact that he has an opinion.

“What I try to do, when you hear that, is I try to look at and think do I agree? Is there something malicious, is there something that is treating other people the wrong way when you do it? It never crossed my mind that it was disrespectful in any way. Now that I’ve thought it through I just disagree with him. I don’t think it has anything to do with anybody else but us.

“The fact he brought some attention to us and probably made it better for

us, I appreciate what he did.”

Dundon said he did not want or expect any kind of apology from Cherry.

“I don’t want an apology,” Dundon said. “He can say what he wants to say. I should thank him. It was good for us.”

Cherry’s comments were made Saturday, a day after the Canes celebrated a 3-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers with Warren Foegele’s “walkoff homer” off Dougie Hamilton. Cherry’s “bunch of jerks” comment quickly exploded on social media and the Canes’ social media people soon were trolling Cherry.

“Bunch of jerks” have become part of the team lexicon and T-shirts have been made with “Bunch of Jerks” on them. Orders were taken online and the T-shirts -- about 3,000 -- were on sale Tuesday in The Eye, the team store at PNC Arena. A long line of fans patiently waited before the game against the New You Rangers.

Less than a week before the NHL trade deadline, Dundon wasn’t tipping his hand or that of Canes’ management. While the Canes have played

their best hockey since the calendar flipped to 2019, he noted the outcome of the three games before the Monday deadline could have a

bearing on the Canes’ decisions.

“We’re looking at all the options,” Dundon said. “We’re pretty happy with

where we are but we’re always listening.”



Hurricanes owner Dundon takes over new football league

BY LUKE DECOCK

FEBRUARY 19, 2019 08:43 AM

Not content merely with owning a professional team, Tom Dundon is buying a professional league.

The Carolina Hurricanes owner was named chairman of the new Alliance of American Football on Tuesday after stepping in with a $250 million

investment to become the league’s primary investor, and the question most pressing in this market has nothing to do with football: How will it

affect the Hurricanes?

“It won’t at all,” Dundon said. “Although I talk to (general manager) Don Waddell and I’m involved, I don’t have a day-to-day responsibility and therefore I have lots of excess time. If I didn’t do this, I was going to go buy a company and start running a company again. I needed more to do. I feel like the Hurricanes are in good hands, the business is running well. It’s still something I love and have conversations about and want to keep

improving, but it’s not a full-time job. It never really was. It definitely isn’t at this point.”

While that may slightly downplay Dundon’s role in the hockey team’s decision-making process, where he has the final say on just about everything and is in near-constant communication with Waddell and the rest of the front-office staff, only he knows just how much spare time he has. Dundon said he had initially passed on investing in the AAF, but reconsidered after seeing the first-weekend ratings when it ran into financing issues. With football guidance from Dallas friends Tony Romo and Troy Aikman, Dundon stepped in to take control of the single-entity league, which owns all eight teams and assigns all players, much like MLS did at its inception.

While not affiliated with the NFL, the developmental league started play two weeks ago with the idea of grooming talent for the NFL in the

offseason while experimenting with new technology and rule changes. Former Wake Forest quarterback John Wolford, with the Arizona

Hotshots, has been one of the league’s breakout stars over the opening two games.

Atlanta Legends coach Kevin Coyle, left, chats with Orlando Apollos coach Steve Spurrier on the field before an AAF football game Saturday, Feb. 9, 2019, in Orlando, Fla.

Founded by TV producer Charlie Ebersol and longtime NFL executive Bill Polian, the AAF has an interactive app that allows fans to predict plays as they watch, television deals with CBS and the CBS Sports Network, TNT and the NFL Network, and a maximum player salary of $70,000, all of which were attractive to Dundon.

“The play here is to have a great football league in the offseason that gives opportunity to players, coaches, referees and technology and

innovation,” Dundon said. “To me, our job is to give an opportunity to people to work on their craft. Obviously football is pretty popular. This

keeps football around for the people who want more football. It’s not replacing the NFL.”

Meanwhile, the Hurricanes woke up Tuesday morning one point out of a playoff spot in both the Metropolitan Division and the Eastern Conference

wild-card race with 23 games to play and 15-5-1 in 2019 going into Tuesday night’s game against the New York Rangers.

There’s still a long list of decisions to be made with that team, from what to do at the trade deadline – mainly, whether to trade impending free agent Micheal Ferland or let him play out his contract – to what figures to be a gargantuan contract extension for Sebastian Aho, negotiations that have been pushed back to the offseason at this point.

Despite the money added in the Nino Niederreiter trade and the contract extensions for Teuvo Teravainen and Jordan Martinook, Dundon knows he’s going to hear about the investment in the football league the next time the Hurricanes decide not to re-sign a popular player (like Ferland).

CAROLINA HURRICANES


“The Hurricanes are still the most important thing in my life outside my family,” Dundon said. “I want the Hurricanes to win more than anything. The difference in this league is I just want the league to win. I was at the San Antonio game Sunday and it was really nice not to care about who won.”



Hurricanes Let ‘Jerk’ Fans Wear Cherry’s Words

BY MARK SHIVER

FEBRUARY 19TH, 2019

By now, the hockey universe has heard, seen or read about Don Cherry’s rant wherein he railed against the Carolina Hurricanes’ home win celebrations. In case you missed it, The Athletic has a transcript: “This is the National Hockey League. These guys, to me, are jerks.

They’re still not drawing (fans). I’ll tell you one thing, they better not do this in the playoffs,” he said. “That is absolutely ridiculous. I know all the

broadcasters are afraid to say something … I know what I’m talking about. You never do anything like that. They’re still not drawing. They’re

still a bunch of jerks, as far as I’m concerned.” (From “A worthy cause, a bunch of jerks and a welcome reminder that the hockey world has your

back,” – Sara Civian – The Athletic – 2/18/19).

Cherry is known for being opinionated and for wearing loud jackets. The

CBC commentator and former coach of the Boston Bruins is a blowhard and wears that moniker well. But, his whining about the Hurricanes’ post-game celebrations is over the top. In response, the team has “Bunch of Jerks” T-shirts available on their online shop. For $32US, you can own what is likely to be a very popular article of clothing for years to come. Cherry would look great in a “Bunch of Jerks” T-shirt.

Hurricanes Fans Bring it

The Hurricanes have been doing the ‘Storm Surge’ after home wins this

season. While he took a shot at the home attendance, the Hurricanes are averaging 13,950 so far this season versus 13,920 last season, Cherry is

clueless about the storm surge. He sees a “bunch of jerks” and could not be further from the truth.

First of all, the Hurricanes are a franchise that has not been to the playoffs in a long time. A miss this season will give them a decade’s

worth of frustration. The fans are antsy and often voice their disappointment, but they are loyal to their team. They know what winning

the Stanley Cup is like and want their team to do it again.

Hurricanes fans know how to bring the playoff atmosphere to their arena. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had this to say about that atmosphere in 2009: “For when the Hurricanes’ home crowd gets going, it’s more like being near a speaker at a rock concert where there also happens to be a jet engine operating at full throttle. ‘I think it’s probably the loudest I’ve played in,’ said Penguins forward Craig Adams, who played on the Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup-winning team in 2006.” (From “NHL Playoffs: Carolina fans to pump up the volume for Game 3” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – 5/23/09).

Of course, lots of fans will tout their home arena for being loud, but Hurricanes fans know how to bring it and support their team with unbridled enthusiasm.

The Storm Surge

The Hurricanes have a new owner, a new general manager and a new head coach. They have a bunch of young players who just want to play hard and win. And when they win at home they are giving the fans a little something extra, a reason to stick around to the final horn. Owner Tom Dundon has said he wants the fans to be entertained. The storm surge is hitting that goal, and more.

Carolina Hurricanes players celebrate

In November, I wrote that former NHL executive and Sportsnet analyst Brian Burke needed to lighten up. Like Cherry, he too slammed the storm surge, calling it “amateurish and pee wee garbage stuff.” There seems to

be a trend developing, first Burke and now Cherry. Both are old-school hockey and both need to get a life. The storm surge is here to stay, at

least for this season.

The “Jerks” Respond

Cherry’s use of the word “jerks” was like putting a ball on a batting tee. The Hurricanes’ marketing department and website folks responded

faster than a Sebastian Aho slapper. Their Twitter bio was changed to “That bunch of jerks with the fun celebrations.”

The marketing folks made sure to have “Bunch of Jerks” T-shirts available in their online shop.

The jerk store called…we are now taking orders!

Greg Wyshinski wrote at ESPN that the shirts are hot: “How hot are those ‘Bunch of Jerks’ shirts that the Carolina Hurricanes created to goof on Don Cherry? A little more than 24 hours after they went on sale online, the Hurricanes sold 1,680 shirts. Those sales included 41 states and three countries: the U.S., the Netherlands and, of course, Canada. They go on sale in the Hurricanes team store on Tuesday.”

Knowing Dundon, there are likely ongoing conversations about how to

ride the “Bunch of Jerks” wave for all it is worth. By the way, Cherry said, “they better not do this in the playoffs.” Does that mean he believes this

team will make it to the playoffs? A vote of confidence from Cherry!

One thing is certain: If the Hurricanes make the playoffs, the “Jerks” will

fill Raleigh’s PNC Arena and will be the loudest “Jerks” cheering on their team in the entire NHL. Get ready, Cherry, and please buy a “Bunch of

Jerks” T-shirt. It will enhance your appearance and announce that you, too, are a jerk.

The Hockey Writers LOADED: 02.20.2019


Cherry Blasts Hurricanes as ‘Jerks’ – Canes Make a T-shirt

Staff Report

BY THE CANADIAN PRESS

FEBRUARY 18TH, 2019

TORONTO — Don Cherry’s latest rant about the Carolina Hurricanes and their victory celebrations didn’t go unnoticed by the NHL club.

The Hurricanes even decided to embrace his words.

Cherry blasted the Hurricanes on Saturday during his weekly Coach’s Corner television segment for the team going beyond the traditional

raised-stick salute to their fans after home wins, saying that: “These guys, to me, are jerks.”

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Shortly after the segment, Carolina’s Twitter account tweeted: “Wait, was he talking about us?,” and changed its Twitter bio to read: “That bunch of jerks with the fun celebrations.”

Then the club followed up on Sunday by announcing that they are now selling “Bunch of Jerks” T-shirts available on their online shop.

“The jerk store called…we are now taking orders!,” the Hurricanes tweeted along with a picture of the shirt and a link to where you can purchase it for $US32.

“We’re a bunch of jerks and we have the shirts to prove it,” they added.

Starting with a thunderous clap at centre ice — what’s come to be known as the “Storm Surge” — the Hurricanes players have celebrated victories at PNC Arena in various, evolving ways since the beginning of the

season.

Players have jumped into the boards, paddled imaginary kayaks, played games of ‘Duck Duck Goose,’ simulated a walk-off home run and recently ran a limbo line.

Cherry made it clear on Saturday that he wasn’t a fan of any of it.

“This is a joke.” said Cherry. “Young men expressing themselves for joy and winning. You don’t do this in professional hockey. What are these guys, jerks or something?

“That is absolutely ridiculous, they’re jerks doing it … You never do

anything like that, they’re still not drawing (fans) and they’re a bunch of jerks as far as I’m concerned.”

The Hockey Writers LOADED: 02.20.2019

1131768 NHL

Players brace for moves as NHL trade deadline approaches

By JOHN WAWROW

The Associated Press

Thomas Vanek remembers waking up in Edmonton, Alberta, and turning

on the TV in his hotel room to find out where he was heading.

It was March 5, 2014, the NHL’s trade deadline day, and Vanek’s bags were packed. He knew he had played his final game a few days earlier for the New York Islanders after rejecting the team’s bid to sign the pending free agent to a contract extension.

It wasn’t until the deadline passed when Vanek’s phone started ringing. It wasn’t his agent, the Islanders nor some other team’s general manager.

“I got a message from a reporter saying, ‘The Montreal media wants to talk to you,” Vanek said in recalling how he found out he had been traded to the Canadiens. “That was probably the hardest one because it was my

first trade deadline deal.”

It wouldn’t be his last.

The 35-year-old Vanek, now in his second stint with Detroit, has been dealt twice more at the deadline. Red Wings GM Ken Holland informed

Vanek he was being traded to Florida on March 1, 2017. And he learned through a friend’s text message that Vancouver had sent him to

Columbus last Feb. 26.

Though the one-year contract he signed with Detroit last summer

includes a no-trade clause, there remains a chance he will be moving once again before this season’s deadline on Monday.

“There’s a reason I came back to Detroit because I like it here,” he said. “But at the same time, who knows what’s going to happen? Kenny’s always talking. So if something comes up that makes complete sense, then we’ll take a look at it.”

The trading has already begun, with the most notable featuring Toronto’s acquisition of defenseman Jake Muzzin in a deal with Los Angeles on Jan. 28.

Otherwise, the trade market remains bottled up with more prospective buyers than sellers. Of the 31 teams, 24 are either in contention or within six points of their conference’s eighth and final playoff spot entering play

Tuesday.

Among the more notable players considered to be on the market are

forwards Artemi Panarin (Columbus), Derick Brassard (Florida), Gustav Nyquist (Detroit), New York Rangers Kevin Hayes and Mats Zuccarello,

and Columbus goalie Sergei Bobrovsky. And then there’s the Ottawa Senators, who are attempting to determine the trade status of forwards

Matt Duchene, Mark Stone and Ryan Dzingel, all of whom are eligible to become free agents this summer.

Last year’s deadline featured 18 trades involving 37 players, including the Sabres dealing Evander Kane to San Jose, St. Louis sending Paul Stastny to Winnipeg and the Rangers moving Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller to Tampa Bay.

Few of the deals made an impact in their team’s’ respective playoff runs. The Lightning reached the Eastern Conference finals, but they were defeated by the eventual Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals, whose most notable late-season addition was defenseman Michal Kempny (acquired in a trade with Chicago a week before the deadline).

The expansion Vegas Golden Knights reached the Stanley Cup Final

despite getting limited production from trade-deadline addition Tomas Tatar. San Jose made it to the second round before being eliminated, but

was able to re-sign Kane.

None of the deals came close to matching what’s considered the NHL’s

gold standard on March 10, 1980. That’s when the Islanders acquired Butch Goring from Los Angeles to spark what became New York’s run of

winning four consecutive championships. Goring wasn’t happy about the deal that also sent forward Billy Harris and defenseman Dave Lewis to the Kings.

“It was very upsetting because I was on the second year of a six-year contract, and had made a commitment to basically spend my entire career in L.A.,” Goring recalled.

It didn’t take long to get over the shock for the then-30-year-old, who had scored 20 or more goals nine times during his 10-plus seasons with the Kings.

With Goring, the Islanders closed the season going 8-0-4 and lost just six

times in the playoffs in winning the Final in six games over Philadelphia. The following year, Goring was named the playoff MVP.

He called the adjustment to joining a star-packed Islanders team as being less intimidating than it might have been had he been younger.

“I came into that dressing room and I didn’t have anything to prove. I had a pretty strong reputation about who I was and what I couldn’t do,”

Goring said. “I wasn’t taking Bryan Trottier’s job. I was there to be who I was.”

Now an Islanders broadcaster, Goring refers to the trade as the “icing on the cake” of his career.

“Nobody knew much about Butch Goring, as I played all those years in L.A. There was no exposure,” he said. “And now everyone remembers who you are. The great thing about the trade deadline is everybody talks about Butch Goring.”

DEADLINE DAY

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Vanek wondered if the deadline falls too late in the season for players to become comfortable with their new surroundings.

“The only thing you can control is being a good person, being a good teammate,” he said. “But at the same time, the team that gets you, they want you to be productive. And that’s the hard part.”

Goring doesn’t think so, noting the trade deadline used to be 26 days before the end of the season, and is now 40.

“If you’re going to acquire a player that’s going to be a difference maker, he’s going to adapt in a hurry,” Goring said.

Red Wings GM Holland backs the current deadline.

“For those teams that are buyers, you still have 20 games to get that player acclimated to your system. For the teams that aren’t sure if they’re buyers or sellers, it gives them more time,” Holland said.

Ryan Hartman won’t soon forget what happened to him upon being traded by Chicago to Nashville at last year’s deadline.

With a stop-over in Toronto, it took him eight hours to fly from Chicago to Winnipeg, where he would join the Predators. And that was after beginning the day contending with a flat tire. He used Uber to get to the Blackhawks practice, and then had to use it again — this time with all his equipment — to return home and pack before heading to the airport.

“I had an issue with it all year and someone told me at the beginning of

the year, ‘You’re going to end up getting a flat tire at the worst time possible,'” Hartman said. “Sure enough.”

LEADERS (through Monday)

Points: Nikita Kucherov (Tampa Bay), 99; Goals: Alexander Ovechkin

(Washington), 42; Longest point streak: Patrick Kane (Chicago) 18 games (Jan. 3 to present); Rookie points: Elias Petterson (Vancouver),

54; Wins: Marc-Andre Fleury (Vegas) 29.

Seattle Times LOADED: 02.20.2019

1131722 Florida Panthers

Panthers scratch out a win against Sabres

BY WALTER VILLA MIAMI HERALD WRITER

FEBRUARY 19, 2019 10:22 PM

This time, Jonathan Huberdeau had the highlight-reel goal.

One game after Aleksander Barkov had a goal for the ages, Huberdeau scored twice as the the Panthers rallied to defeat the Buffalo Sabres 4-2 on Tuesday night at BB&T Center.

Trailing 1-0 in the third period, Huberdeau, Jayce Hawryluk and Barkov

scored 2:35 apart to get things going.

Huberdeau then scored again, this one a spectacular goal with 3:15 left

in the third, deking All-Star Jeff Skinner and then making another move, this one on Sabres goalie Linus Ullmark.

Panthers goalie James Reimer made 32 saves and won his third start in a row, and that coincides with Florida’s three-game win streak.

Buffalo got an early goal from Jack Eichel, his 19th of the season and his first in 14 career games against the Panthers. Buffalo’s Vladimir Sobotka

scored with eight seconds left and the game virtually decided.

Ullmark, who made 37 saves, was working on a possible shutout before giving up that barrage of goals in the third.

The Sabres have lost three games in a row and have been slipping ever since their 10-game win streak was snapped on Nov. 29. Since that date, the Sabres are 11-18-5.

Barkov’s goal was his 23rd of the season, and he added two assists. Barkov, who has seven points in his past six periods, leads the Panthers with 60 points this season.

Buffalo was victimized by Florida’s top line of Barkov, Huberdeau and Frank Vatrano. They combined for eight points on the night, all in the

third period.

Neither team scored during a first-period in which Florida had 12 of the

18 shots on goal. However, the Panthers went 0 for 2 on their power play.

Buffalo opened the scoring on a power-play goal with 5:19 expired in the second period. Eichel took a perfect pass from Sam Reinhart and scored

from point-blank range on a redirection. The goal was set up when Vatrano was called for holding Buffalo’s Rasmus Ristolainen.

The Panthers tied the score with 3:07 gone in the third period as Vatrano’s pass freed Huberdeau for a breakaway. Huberdeau then slipped the puck in between Ullmark’s pads.

The Panthers took a 2-1 lead just 43 seconds later. Vincent Trocheck’s shot hit the right post, and the puck bounced out and then back in off the body of a charging Hawryluk. The Sabres challenged the call, but the goal stood.

Barkov’s goal with 5:42 expired in the third period gave the Panthers a 3-1 advantage.

Eichel appeared to score again, this time with 12:53 gone in the third. But

the Panthers won a video challenge when it was ruled that the Sabres were offsides.

Immediately following the review, the Panthers killed off a penalty, and Huberdeau’s goal iced Florida’s victory.

THIS AND THAT

▪ Skinner, who had scored four goals in three previous games against the Panthers this season, was finally shut down. It was the first time this

season the Panthers had held Skinner without a goal.

Still, in his past nine games against the Panthers, Skinner has scored

eight goals and has added three assists.

Skinner started the night tied for second in the NHL with 36 goals.

▪ Panthers defenseman Mike Matheson left the ice during the first period because of a lower-body injury. He did not return.

▪ Panthers goalie Roberto Luongo, who was on the bereavement list for the previous game due to a death in the family, returned to the roster as

Reimer’s backup.

▪ Barkov’s between-the-legs goal was “SportsCenter’s” Play of the Night on Sunday.

▪ Barkov drew two more penalties on Tuesday. He leads the NHL in the margin between penalties drawn and penalties taken.

▪ The Panthers released fourth-line forward Micheal Haley, a 32-year-old enforcer who was on the final season of his contract.

▪ Florida’s Keith Yandle leads all NHL defensemen with 28 power-play points.

▪ The last time the Panthers had five 20-goal scorers was in 2015-2016.

They have four 20-goal scorers already this season, and Huberdeau (14 goals, including one on Tuesday) could get there with a hot finish.

CAROLINA HURRICANES


▪ There are two games left on this home stretch: Thursday against the Carolina Hurricanes and Saturday vs. the Los Angeles Kings. After the Kings leave, the Panthers will have played 11 of their previous 12 games at home. From there, 13 of Florida’s final 22 regular-season games will be on the road.

Miami Herald LOADED: 02.20.2019

1131723 Florida Panthers

Barkov, Huberdeau, Panthers blast past Sabres in third period

Paul Gereffi

The Associated Press

The Florida Panthers are playing their best hockey of the season now. They're hoping it's not too late.

Jonathan Huberdeau scored two goals and had an assist to lead the Panthers to a 4-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night.

Aleksander Barkov had a goal and two assists, Jayce Hawryluk also scored and Frank Vatrano had two assists for the Panthers. James Reimer made 32 saves for his third straight win.

Florida won its third straight to improve to 9-4-0 in its last 13 games, and now trails Columbus by nine points for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference.

"Win every game," Huberdeau said. "I don't think it matters whatever game, how many games. You've just got to win every game now."

The Panthers had a late-season surge last season, winning 25 of their

last 35 games, but missed the playoffs despite finishing with 96 points.

"We feel good about the way we've been playing and the recipe for

success that's been working for us," coach Bob Boughner said. "It's not over till it's over. Now you have to scoreboard watch and worry about

other teams."

Jack Eichel and Vladimir Sobotka scored for the Sabres and Linus

Ullmark stopped 37 shots. Buffalo has lost three straight games and is six points behind Columbus.

"I think right now we're a fragile group for sure," Eichel said. "It's been a tough stretch for us, without a doubt. It just seems like things are going the opposite way they were. It's an uphill climb for us right now."

Trailing 1-0, the Panthers scored three goals in 2:35 of the third.

Huberdeau tied it when his shot from the low slot went between Ullmark's pads at 3:07. Florida went ahead after Vincent Trocheck's shot caromed off the post and bounced off Hawryluk and into the net at 3:50. Barkov tucked the puck from in close behind Ullmark at 5:42 to make it 3-1.

"We can't give up that third goal. That was a tough one. And then we're chasing it again," Sabres coach Phil Housley said. "(We) just got to keep

believing and keep fighting. Keep pushing forward."

Huberdeau's second goal with 3:25 left stretched the lead to 4-1.

Sobotka poked in the puck with 7.9 seconds left for the final margin.

The Sabres had a goal disallowed with 7:07 left when it was ruled they

were offsides after the Panthers challenged.

"It's bang-bang, it's pretty close," Eichel said. "It's tough. Maybe it's a

turning point in the game for us, maybe it's not. I'm not sure."

The Sabres took a 1-0 lead on a power-play goal by Eichel, who redirected a pass from Sam Reinhart into the net at 5:14 of the second.

Panthers D Mike Matheson left the game in the first period with a lower-body injury and did not return. ... G Roberto Luongo returned from bereavement leave and backed up Reimer.k ... C Mike Hoffman played in his 400th NHL game.

Sun Sentinel LOADED: 02.20.2019

1131704 Dallas Stars

Momentum might not be on Stars' side, but here's why the playoffs are still almost certainly within reach

Tim Cowlishaw

With their willingness to trade off 80 percent of their starting lineup in pursuit of some sort of European dream team for 2020, there's no doubt the Mavericks are the local team that has created the most buzz lately.

This is just a reminder that it's the other AAC tenant, the Dallas Stars, that's actually headed to the playoffs this spring.

I typed that paragraph early Tuesday evening, fully aware that the Stars had extended their own scoreless streak to seven periods following

shutouts in Tampa Bay and Carolina and a zero in the first period against Nashville. Jason Spezza ended the latest drought early in the second

period and then all hell broke loose. Or at least a bunch of scoring happened at each end of the ice, although the Predators put the final

puck in the net for a 5-3 victory, the first regulation win for Nashville in five tries this season against Dallas.

With three straight defeats, it's admittedly not a great time to be touting the Stars.

Playoffs? You kiddin' me, playoffs?

Momentum isn't exactly on the Stars' side these days, but the numbers certainly are. If you can't follow the money, at least follow the math. Even after a rather dismal 1-3-1 road stretch before Tuesday's home defeat,

the Stars benefit by calling the Western Conference home. The Eastern Conference has 13 teams over .500. The West has seven, and Dallas --

29-25-5 -- is one of them.

Barring the kind of skid that hasn't been seen around here since, well,

OK, technically we saw one a year ago that cost Ken Hitchcock his job, but forget that. Put the collapse possibility out of your head, at least for

now. Even with its scoring deficiencies, the club's standard of play and its record suggests the Stars will be playing games in late April. A wild-card

invite might not be the ultimate goal around here, but for a franchise that has missed eight of the last 10 postseasons, it's a fresh start.

The NHL's trade deadline is Monday, and the Stars are part of a large group hoping to add the right piece prior to the final stretch of the season. There are more interested buyers than sellers, so this is more of a prayer than a sure thing for the club right now.

As things stand, Dallas would be the first wild card in the West, drawing Winnipeg in the opening round. That's not the worst thing, given the Stars' 2-1 record against the Jets, but I wouldn't exactly label Dallas as "the team no one wants to face" or anything of that nature.

The Stars would be the lowest-scoring of 16 playoff teams since only Anaheim and Los Angeles, well below the .500 level that stands for

mediocrity in a league that hands out points for overtime defeats, have found the net less frequently than Dallas.

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Feels like an unpleasant trend around here. The Cowboys were easily the lowest-scoring team to qualify for the NFL playoffs in January.

If the Stars fail to land scoring help next week, there's no reason help can't arrive from within. You may recall that captain Jamie Benn led the league in scoring four seasons ago. He entered play Tuesday tied for 98th in scoring with 39 points and failed to add to that total.

Tyler Seguin has done a better job of righting his personal ship since the two were called out by team management in December, producing 55 points in 59 games. That included the go-ahead goal Tuesday night before the Predators answered with two more. Still, Seguin's point total

barely cracks the top 40 in a league where scoring is up this season and where Tampa Bay's Nikita Kucherov has 99 points.

"We don't to be in this skid right now,'' Stars forward Jason Dickinson said. "Teams behind us can catch up quickly.''

The Stars have 12 home games remaining, including a big one against red-hot St. Louis Thursday. Only Winnipeg has lost fewer games on its

home ice than Dallas in the Central Division, and the Stars anticipate getting goaltender Ben Bishop back by Saturday to relieve his overtaxed

but sturdy backup, Anton Khudobin.

In other words, in one form or another, help is on the way. The Stars should find it useful even if the standings say they're still OK.

Dallas Morning News LOADED: 02.20.2019


Stars notebook: Dallas, Jason Spezza both end lengthy scoring droughts

during loss to Nashville

Matthew DeFranks

The Stars offense reappeared during Tuesday night's 5-3 loss to Nashville, scoring three goals and snapping a goalless drought that spanned a week and 145 minutes, and 43 seconds of game time.

Jason Spezza, Esa Lindell and Tyler Seguin scored for the Stars, who

lost their third straight game.

Before Tuesday's loss, Stars coach Jim Montgomery talked about the

offense, which had been shut out in back-to-back games. The chances were there, the finish wasn't. But it's the balance between offense and

defense that Montgomery looks at.

"Both games, we probably created more chances than we usually do,"

Montgomery said. "The fact that we didn't score, two goalies played great. We look at the other side of the puck more. We gave up more odd-

man rushes than we usually do, which gave open looks."

Montgomery wasn't pleased with how the Stars turned the puck over in the offensive zone, which does two things: prevents your own goal-scoring, and gifts opportunities going the other way. He talked about not vacating the middle of the ice and better communication.

Montgomery's often talked about good defense leading to offense. And the Stars also need it to swing the other way, too. Good offense can keep from ever playing defense.

"I'm never going to discourage players from trying to make plays," Montgomery said. "What we do is when they don't have time and space

through the neutral zone, then they turn it over trying to go through the middle, which happened a couple times that game, but didn't hurt us.

Ones that hurt us were guys trying to make plays. You always want guys trying to make plays, or else you're never going to score."

Hintz of belonging: Forward Roope Hintz had another standout game Tuesday night, notching a primary assist on Seguin's goal after he carried the puck into the offensive zone and set up Seguin's shot past a flailing Pekka Rinne.

Hintz now has three assists in his last five games, and nine points overall in 35 NHL games.

"I thought Roope was outstanding tonight, and I thought he was out most dangerous forward in Carolina," Montgomery said. "This is something

that he's continuing to do. He had a great play in Florida. He's just someone that's adding to our being a more dynamic offensive team and

he's very responsible defensively. His speed and his strength on pucks right now is very impressive."

Hintz has spent this season yo-yoing between AHL affiliate Texas and Dallas, but might be in the NHL to stay with his recent performances.

"I think he's a confident player that he knows that he belongs here," Montgomery said. "I don't think you'll be seeing him go down anymore.

That's my own personal opinion. I can't it, because he's just playing like he not only belongs in the league, but that he's an impact player right now."

Spezza snaps skid: Stars forward Jason Spezza scored for the first time since Dec. 29, when he whipped a second-period wrist shot past Pekka Rinne. The goal snapped a 19-game goalless streak for Spezza, and was his seventh goal of the season.

"I've scored lots of goals before, so you want to make a habit of it, and not worry too much about it," Spezza said. "Obviously, I've been in drought. Felt good. You want to contribute this time of year. This is when

I feel like I've played my best hockey, and want to do that down the stretch."

Spezza also assisted on Lindell's goal, and the two-point night was Spezza's fifth multi-point game of the season. Spezza is in the final year

of his contract that carries a $7.5 million cap hit.

Injury updates: Both goaltender Ben Bishop and forward Blake Comeau

skated Tuesday morning, but not with the rest of the team. Both missed the Nashville game with upper-body injuries and could return as soon as Thursday against St. Louis.

Bishop has now missed the last six games, and Montgomery previously labeled him as questionable against the Blues. On Tuesday, Montgomery said Bishop's skate went well.

"It's the best he's felt, so very positive steps for us," Montgomery said.

Comeau has missed three games, and was on the ice Tuesday morning for the first time since he was a late scratch against Tampa Bay on Thursday.

"We have better expectations that he could be a player Thursday night," Montgomery said.

-- Tuesday night was the Stars' You Can Play Night, as part of the NHL's Hockey is for Everyone initiative. Some Stars used pride-themed tape on

their sticks during warmup, and select sticks will be auctioned to benefit the You Can Play project, which promotes inclusion in sports.



Stars developed a pattern in loss to Predators as much-needed aspect of Dallas' game has disappeared

CAROLINA HURRICANES


By , Sports Reporter Contact Matthew DeFranks on Twitter: @MDeFranks

Once was an anomaly, twice a trend, but three times? Three times is a

pattern, and it's an unwelcome one for the sinking Stars.

During a 5-3 loss to the Predators on Tuesday, the Stars defense -- the

trademark in another offensively-challenged season -- went missing again, surrendering 47 shots. That resulted in the Stars' fifth loss in the

last six games. Dallas has allowed 14 goals in its last three games, all losses.

"We're getting away from what our identity is," Stars coach Jim Montgomery said. "We were a little too loose in our own end. We're not defending our house, especially right in front of the net and hash marks, well enough. We're giving them too many opportunities from that area, especially tonight. That ultimately is costing us."

The Stars have relied on their defense all season to make up for a lackluster offense that ranks among the league's worst three units. Anton Khudobin and Ben Bishop have combined to keep Dallas in the playoff picture in the crowded and stunningly mediocre Western Conference. Defensemen pushed shots to the perimeter, and minimized high-danger scoring chances.

That part of the Stars' game has disappeared.

On Tuesday night, the Stars gave up four goals below the hash marks, although Rocco Grimaldi's came on a breakaway. Brian Boyle scored on a rebound, as did Filip Forsberg. And Roman Josi's game-winning goal was a deflected shot that looped over Khudobin in net. The Predators were getting to where they wanted Tuesday night, and the Stars were

helpless to stop it.

"Obviously, there's something we need to tighten up," Stars defenseman

Esa Lindell said. "Been giving up too many goals, mostly in front of the net, so it's something we can easily clean up. We got to battle harder,

take the sticks out, make it easier for our goalies."

By multiple measures, Tuesday's loss was the worst defensive

performance of the year. According to stats site Natural Stat Trick, at 5-on-5, the Stars gave up 41 shots on goal, 40 scoring chances and 19 high-danger scoring chances. All were season highs.

Dallas even conceded a power-play goal to Nashville's league-worst power play. The Stars also quickly gave up their lead in the second period. Following two Dallas goals in 26 seconds by Esa Lindell and Tyler Seguin, Forsberg's tally 21 seconds later tied the score and stole a lead the Stars wouldn't regain.

"We got to get back to who we are if we want to close out games," Montgomery said. "We can't give up momentum. Once we go up 3-2,

can't give up that goal right away."

The Stars have played 59 games this season and established that

playing good defense was their way to winning games and cracking the postseason for the first time since 2015-16. Now, their pillar has

crumbled at an unfortunate time during a playoff push.

So is it surprising to see the Stars defense fade at a point in the season

when goals should be tougher to come by?

"Yes, you'd like us to be better at it because we talked about it today, and

showed some video on it," Montgomery said. "But Nashville's a good offensive hockey team and they come at you in waves, and their D corps creates problems you don't see every night. Yes and no because of that. Sometimes, the other team does a really good job of generating in different ways than previous games."

St. Louis has already passed Dallas in the Central Division by winning 11 straight games. The Stars have been gifted a cushion by Minnesota's

futility in losing nine out of 10. But the Blues come to American Airlines Center, and the red-hot Hurricanes visit Saturday night.

At least the Stars offense snapped out of a scoreless streak than spanned more than 145 minutes. Jason Spezza, Lindell and Seguin scored for the Stars, the first goals Dallas scored in a week.



Stars 20/20: Goals finally show up, but losing streak continues in setback against Predators

By Sean Shapiro

Feb 19, 2019

The Dallas Stars’ scoring drought came to an end, but their losing streak continued in a 5-3 setback against the Nashville Predators.

1. It’s a good thing the Stars are in the Western Conference.

Dallas has lost three straight games and five of their last six, yet they still have a three-point cushion above the pack for the conference’s first wild-card spot.

With 63 points, the Stars would be six points outside the Eastern Conference playoff picture. But in the not-so-wild west, the Stars and the imploding Minnesota Wild are still sitting in those vaunted positions.

2. The Stars focus on themselves, but it’s impossible to ignore the standings and how things have played out.

Players know the situation, and so do coaches. In some ways it’s a

chance to be thankful, as their struggles haven’t truly been punished, but it also serves as a frustrating reality. The Stars haven’t been able to take

advantage of what should have been a golden opportunity.

“It is a race but I guess we can look at it and that’s a positive, right, that

we still have that cushion. But we’re focused on ourselves, we’re focused on our team game,” Stars coach Jim Montgomery said. “Our team

game’s good, we just got to start finishing games and finishing games differently than the beginning of the year. (The) beginning of the year was more of a mentality of hoping to win. We’re going out to win hockey games right now.”

3. Defining this Stars team can lead to a descent into madness.

For much of the season, they’ve been a staunch defensive team, one of the best in the league. But as we near one of the most crucial days of the season, the NHL trade deadline, they’ve been re-defined as a group that has gotten away from their defensive details and allowed 14 goals in the past three games.

“Not ideal,” Montgomery said. “Again, we played with a lot of effort, we were doing a lot of good things. We’re getting away from what our

identity is, though. We’re a little too loose in our own end, we’re not defending our house — and especially right in front of the net and hashmarks — well enough, and we’re giving too many opportunities from that area, especially tonight. That, ultimately, is costing us.”

4. Nashville’s game-winning goal was a bit fluky and took an odd bounce to get past Anton Khudobin.

However, it came on a four-on-four situation where the Predators outworked the Stars and won all of the battles. Like most of the night, the

CAROLINA HURRICANES


slot was open and the Predators’ captain was able to get there rather easily before bouncing home the weird finish.

5. Several scoring droughts came to an end in Tuesday’s second period.

Dallas scored for the first time in seven periods, ending a shutout streak that began last week, and Jason Spezza scored for the first time in 2019.

Spezza beat Rinne with a wrist shot between the circles for his first goal since Dec. 29 against the Detroit Red Wings, ending a 19-game streak without a goal.

“Felt good,” Spezza said. “I’ve scored lots of goals before so you want to

make a habit of it and not worry too much about it but obviously I’ve been in a drought so it felt good. You want to contribute this time of year. These are when I feel like I’ve played my best hockey and want to do that

down the stretch.”

6. Spezza’s goal was the prelude to a thrilling 46-second stretch later in the period where the teams traded goals and ended up with a 3-3 tie before the second intermission.

Esa Lindell sniped home a goal on the power play to tie the game at 2-2 and Tyler Seguin then gave Dallas a 3-2 lead on a feed from Roope Hintz 26 seconds later.

Nashville responded 21 seconds later with a finish by Filip Forsberg to make the score 3-3.

7. Forsberg is a fun player to watch.

He nearly had a goal for the highlight reel earlier in the second period

when he tried the “Michigan Move” behind the Dallas net.

8. When the Predators traded for Brian Boyle they were looking for shifts

like the one that gave Nashville a 1-0 lead on Tuesday.

Late in the power play, Tyler Seguin had a shorthanded chance and was

then cleaned out behind the Predators’ net by Boyle. One rush and about 185 feet later Boyle went to the net and scored by being in the right place at the right time.

9. The Stars’ lack of finishing ability was on display in the first period as they out-chanced the Predators but couldn’t put a puck past Rinne.

Early in the game, the Stars had a three-on-one rush that ended with Alexander Radulov not getting off a shot. Andrew Cogliano was near the end of a rush with Jamie Benn and Radek Faksa, but missed the net.

Faksa and Mattias Janmark also had a two-on-one that failed to materialize into anything.

“Odd man rushes are something that when we do create them, it comes from good defense and that’s what usually happened on those. But we’ve

got to get better at having more of a killer instinct,” Montgomery said. “I think we’re looking to make the pretty play instead of just putting the puck

and trying to shoot it through the goalie and getting after rebounds.”

10. Since the calendar has turned to 2019, Benn has eight points in 18

games.

He’s making $13 million this season and is the NHL’s fourth-highest-paid player.

11. The Stars started with this lineup:

Roope Hintz – Tyler Seguin – Alexander Radulov

Jamie Benn – Radek Faksa – Andrew Cogliano

Mattias Janmark – Jason Dickinson – Jason Spezza

Valeri Nichushkin – Joel L’Esperance – Brett Ritchie

Esa Lindell – John Klingberg

Miro Heiskanen – Roman Polak

Jamie Oleksiak – Taylor Fedun

12. Blake Comeau missed another game with an upper-body injury but skated on Tuesday morning for the first time in four days.

Ben Bishop also took part in the optional morning skate as he continues to battle an undisclosed upper-body injury. Bishop has been labeled as questionable for Thursday and probable for Saturday. We’ll wait and see what happens.

13. Khudobin has played well in his de-facto starter’s role during Bishop’s injury and was once against stellar against the Predators, turning away 42 of 46 shots and reaching into the grab bag of miraculous saves a couple of times.

The Stars also need to think about giving Khudobin a break. While Landon Bow has never started an NHL game, the Stars should consider

playing him this weekend if Bishop is still unavailable; they play back-to-back afternoon games against Carolina and Chicago.

14. Hintz was arguably the Stars’ best forward on Tuesday and based off this comment, he might be looking for more than a short-term lease in

Dallas after the trade deadline.

“I think it’s confidence. I think he’s a confident player, that he knows he

belongs here and I don’t think we’ll see him going down anymore,” Montgomery said. “That’s my own personal opinion. I can’t see it, because he’s just playing like he not only belongs in the league but that he’s an impact player right now, especially for us right now. Credit to him and he’s just got to keep it going, he just can’t get satisfied.”

15. L’Esperance continued to find his niche in his second career NHL game and has looked comfortable, even if his contributions came in limited minutes.

On Tuesday he had a scoring chance and drew a penalty on Boyle in the first period.

16. The St. Louis Blues come to town on Thursday after winning their 11th straight game on Tuesday in overtime.

Early this season the Blues were the worst team in the NHL. They have now surged into a divisional playoff spot and are playing better than any

other team in the league.

It’s another big challenge for a Stars team that needs to kick things into

gear before another team catches fire and overcomes them in the wild-card race.

17. The Stars hosted their “You Can Play” Night on Tuesday as part of the NHL’s Hockey is For Everyone initiative.

During warmups, some of the Stars players applied rainbow pride tape to their sticks. I counted 13 from the press box. Ashley Cain and Timothy Leduc dropped the ceremonial faceoff. Cain and Leduc are local figure skaters who recently won the U.S. Pairs Title and qualified for the World Championships in Japan.

Cain and Leduc were honored for their contributions to the You Can Play

project, which focuses on inclusion and working to eradicate homophobia in sports. The Stars also highlighted in a video that the Dallas Stars

Foundation recently spent time volunteering at the Resource Center, which offers many LGBTQ services to the DFW community and operates

one of the largest LGBTQ Community Centers in the United States.

18. Former Dallas Stars winger Jere Lehtinen is in town this week and

will watch the three games before playing in the alumni game on Saturday evening after the Stars take on Carolina.

Lehtinen, who serves as the GM of Team Finland, spent time catching up with the Stars’ contingent of Finnish players after morning skate. Both Lindell and Heiskanen said that Lehtinen’s connection with the Stars and their home country has been beneficial to them and the transition to the NHL in their careers.

19. There were scouts from the St. Louis Blues, New York Rangers, and Buffalo Sabres in attendance on Tuesday.

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The Stars play the Blues on Thursday and the Predators next week. The Predators don’t play the Rangers and Predators any time soon, but both teams play the Stars within the next month.

20. Here is how the Stars did in the various elements of Montgomery’s Process:

Win 56 percent of faceoffs: Failed. The Predators won 54 percent of the draws.

Zero undisciplined penalties: Failed.

Three or fewer odd-man rushes: Failed.

Win net-front battle: Failed.

Win special teams: Passed.

The Athletic LOADED: 02.20.2019

1131724 Los Angeles Kings

Kings hopeful they can get well again on the road

By ROBERT MORALES | [email protected] | Press Telegram

PUBLISHED: February 19, 2019 at 2:47 pm | UPDATED: February 19, 2019 at 4:23 PM

Records show the Kings have roughly the same record at home as on the road. They are 12-15-2 at Staples Center, 11-15-4 away from it. Each mark is good for 26 points.

But after going 3-2-1 on their most recent trip, the Kings just finished a homestand in which they went 0-2-1.

After the Kings dropped a 3-2 decision to the Stanley Cup-champion

Washington Capitals on Monday night at Staples Center, rookie forward Austin Wagner talked about the lack of success in their friendly confines.

He wasn’t smiling.

“Yeah, I don’t know what to say about that,” he said. “I guess we’ve just

got to figure things out, I guess. We go back on the road this week, so we have to find our groove there and then bring it back home again.”

Overall, the Kings have lost five consecutive games, going 0-3-2 during that span. They leave Wednesday morning for a four-game trip. They will play Thursday at Nashville, Saturday at Florida, Monday at Tampa Bay and Feb. 26 at Carolina.

The Kings (23-30-6) were eight points out of the Western Conference’s final playoff berth with 23 games to play ahead of Tuesday’s slate of games.

Second-year forward Alex Iafallo on Monday was discussing the ways he is going about trying to score more goals. One of them was “driving the net a little late and trying to fit the puck in the net.”

That’s exactly what he did when he scored a goal at 8:20 of the third period Monday. The assists went Dustin Brown and Paul LaDue.

“I’m always talking out there and making sure we’re on the same page,” he said, referring to him and linemate Brown. “For that goal I just really

(tried) hard to drive the net and touch it in; we made a great play. You know, we’ve just got to drive the net more and get those chances.”

Iafallo, 25, has 13 goals and 13 assists (26 points).

This and that

When Brown assisted on Iafallo’s goal, he became the eighth player in franchise history to score at least 600 points. … Forward Anze Kopitar has 13 points (4 goals, 9 assists) over his past 11 games. Still, his team-high 44 points (17 goals, 27 assists) are way off his pace from last season when he had a career-best 92 points (35 goals, 57 assists).

Orange County Register: LOADED: 02.20.2019


WAKING UP WITH THE KINGS: FEBRUARY 19

JON ROSEN

FEBRUARY 19, 2019

GAME STORY

This is a really difficult spot of the season the LA Kings are in. They’ve traded their best player this season, another player entrenched in the top four on defense is injured, top-six players are in extended skids and/or

recovering from injury, and they’re lacking detail and losing important moments of the game during a stretch in the schedule in which they’ve

played the defending champions and Boston twice during an 0-3-2 skid, and will now head out on the road to play some difficult games against

the likes of Nashville and Tampa Bay. It would’ve been important for them to hold on to their game against Vancouver to boost the aura and

atmosphere one week before the trade deadline, but right now it just seems that the team is regularly paying for the mistakes they’re making

during these important moments. They’re not even playing that poorly overall. They controlled the game against Vancouver, hung tough for 56 minutes against Boston and jumped out to an energetic start against Washington but were not able to score. And then, the other way, Capitalization. Two stick infractions drawn by Jakub Vrana led to Alex Ovechkin power play goals – the first a work of hockey art in its simplicity, execution and powerful finish. Another critical moment was lost in the ensuing shift as Brett Connolly and Lars Eller gained inside

position on Jeff Carter and Dion Phaneuf after some slick around-the-world puck protection by Connolly went plushly unchecked. In a homestand in which they lost a number of these important minutes amidst stretches of encouraging play, they failed to match the hard-earned resilience developed on the recent trip.

It’s shocking how a defensive identity that leaned so hard on penalty killing success has, from one year to the next, fallen from first in the league to 30th and will open Thursday’s game operating at 75%. This isn’t on Dave Lowry, who with John Stevens helped maintain the

traditionally airtight shorthanded play instilled under Terry Murray and reinforced under Darryl Sutter and is among the most detail-driven and

prepared special teams coaches in the league. This team won the Jennings Trophy last year; the team’s next coaching staff starts from a

position of advantage if he is on it. Some of the fall-off is based on personnel: Tanner Pearson was traded, and his replacement, Carl

Hagelin, was injured, as was Trevor Lewis. Jake Muzzin was traded. Alec Martinez is injured. Ovechkin’s power play bomb was scored with Oscar

Fantenberg and Paul LaDue on the ice. But the numbers don’t immediately depict how profoundly the year-over-year results have fallen short: the team’s 4×5 save percentage is low, Derek Forbort doesn’t have great penalty killing metrics, Jeff Carter and Tyler Tyler Toffoli’s goals-against rates are very high while shorthanded, but other than that, this just looks like a symptom of the overall hit the team’s detail and defensive-minded game has taken this season. Of all the quandaries this season, this might be the biggest.

CAROLINA HURRICANES


LA Kings Insider: LOADED: 02.20.2019


FEBRUARY 18 RAPID REACTION (FEAT. ALEX OVECHKIN):

CAPITALS 3, KINGS 2

JON ROSEN

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

Willie Desjardins, on whether it was “deflating” allowing two goals in 20 seconds:

Well, it’s tough. I thought we did start well. I thought we played pretty good throughout the game, but they have a good power play. They just capitalized on two power plays, and that was the difference, and then they got the tip. We had stuff going to the net – we could’ve had our tips, we just didn’t get ‘em tonight.

Desjardins, on whether Alex Ovechkin is “unstoppable” when afforded time and space:

Well, he is hard. He shoots the puck well and if he hits it right, it’s going to go in. He got all of it a couple times and he made good shots.

Desjardins, on whether it was a difficult match-up for Jack Campbell:

Yeah, for sure, but he’s faced that before. Jack’s a good goaltender. Ovechkin, however many he’s got, 40-something this year, he can shoot the puck, so it doesn’t matter who’s in net, but he can score.

Desjardins, on whether Jonathan Quick could’ve started, or whether he was at the “tail end of the bug”:

He’s at the tail end of it. There was no reason. Jack’s playing good, too.

He was good enough to back up but probably not ready to start.

Jack Campbell, on taking “bullets” from Ovechkin:

When they’re on the power play and we’re on the penalty kill, those are the shots that I’m supposed to take so those are just two saves I expect

myself to make. It doesn’t matter who’s in that spot. It’s just not acceptable.

Campbell, on Ovechkin’s ability to score from the faceoff dot:

I mean he’s a special player, but I still expect myself to save them every time. Like, you know, when we drop to penalty kill, that’s my one shot that I’m supposed to have. I’ve got to have it, so there’s no excuse.

Campbell, on Ovechkin’s second goal:

The second one went right between my legs, so yeah, I wasn’t happy about either one.

Campbell, on getting back-to-back starts for the first time since November:

It’s nice to get the opportunity to play. It’s all about winning right now

though, so not acceptable to not get any points in the last two games, so I feel like I just need to make some more saves and we’ll get the job

done.

Alex Iafallo, on his goal off of Brown’s feed:

Just talking out there and making sure we’re on the same page. For that goal I just really had to drive the net and touch it and he made a great

play. I’ve just got to drive the net more and get those chances.

Iafallo, on recovering from tonight’s loss:

Very emotional, but we’ve got to stick together and in times like this we’ve got to stick together and keep striving to get better as a team and individually we’ve got to get better every day. That goes a long way and staying positive.

Iafallo, on decreasing the deficit to one goal:

We ran out of time and it sucks and you hate to lose. You want to win those games and got to have a full 60 minutes there. But the comeback, that’s pulling the goalie at the end, that’s what we were trying to do was just get pucks to the net and fortunately one went in, but we came up short.

Iafallo, on Ovechkin’s ability to score on the power play:

Obviously his shot from the side there is pretty stellar, so we’re trying to

take that lane away, but obviously it’s going to get over there at some point. Yeah, that’s a tough goal.

Iafallo, on how critical each loss is at this point in the season:

They’re huge and we come to the rink every day trying to get those points and striving to win, but we don’t get them, so it’s an emotional toll on us, but at the end of the day we’ve got to stick together and make sure we come to the rink every day preparing to win the next game.

Iafallo, on whether he is happy with his game compared to this point last season:

Oh yeah, always getting better. I’m just trying sure I’m getting to the net more. Always pretty easy playing with those guys, I just have to drive the net and put it in like that play there. I’m just going to keep trying to get to those areas and keep trying to help the team produce and get some wins here.

Iafallo, on the team getting a day off yesterday:

It’s just how it goes. At this point in the season sometimes you’ve got to rest, sometimes you’ve got to go in. I’m still learning as I’m going, so things like that, you’ve just got to keep your head on straight and stick to your own routine.

Austin Wagner, on the last few games feeling different than the most recent road trip:

Yeah, I don’t know what to say to that. Just got to figure things out I guess. We’re back on the road this week, so we’ve got to find our groove

this week and then bring it back home again.

Post-game Notes

–With the loss, Los Angeles fell to 60-37-15 all-time against Washington, a record that includes a home mark of 35-15-7. Prior to Monday’s loss,

the Kings had won eight straight home games in the series, dating back to a 3-2 loss at Staples Center on December 14, 2005. Los Angeles was

swept in a season series of at least two games by Washington for the first time since 1993-94 and for only the fourth time since the Capitals

entered the league in 1974-75.

–With the loss, the Kings fell to 9-15-3 against the Eastern Conference, 7-7-1 against the Metropolitan Division, 11-5-6 in one-goal games, 7-26-5 when their opponent scores first, 3-18-2 when trailing after one period, 1-24-1 when trailing after two periods and 9-12-2 when outshooting their opponent.

–Since killing off 13 consecutive power plays, Los Angeles’ penalty kill is 6-for-11.

–With two power play goals, leading NHL goal scorer Alex Ovechkin has 42 goals in 59 games, putting him on pace for 57 goals this season. He’s

reached 57 goals once, scoring 65 in 2007-08. In 19 career games against the Kings, he has eight goals and 18 points.

–By assisting on Alex Iafallo’s goal, Dustin Brown (0-1=1) registered his 600th NHL point. He is the eighth player in Los Angeles history to reach

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the 600 points with the team (also Marcel Dionne, Luc Robitaille, Dave Taylor, Wayne Gretzky, Anze Kopitar, Bernie Nicholls, Butch Goring).

–Brown, who scored eight goals in his first 15 games, has four in his last 34. His last five-on-five goal was scored on December 27, a span of 22 games.

–With his third period goal, Alex Iafallo reached 26 points on the season (13-13=26), surpassing his career-high of 25 (9-16=25), set in his rookie season last year.

–The Kings attempted 55 shots (28 on goal, 16 blocked, 11 missed). The Capitals attempted 37 shots (21 on goal, 6 blocked, 10 missed). Alex

Iafallo finished with a game-high four shots on goal.

–Los Angeles won 27-of-40 faceoffs (68%). Adrian Kempe won 2-of-6,

Anze Kopitar won 14-of-18, Trevor Lewis won 5-of-5 and Jeff Carter won 6-of-11.



CAMPBELL STARTS; WALKER STITCHED UP; ALUM ELIK GROWING BEIJING JR. KINGS

JON ROSEN

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

INSIDERS. A good afternoon to you from El Segundo. The LA Kings face the Washington Capitals at 7:30 p.m. tonight (FOX Sports West / FOX Sports app / LA Kings Audio Network) and are projected to align as such:

Iafallo-Kopitar-Brown

Leipsic-Carter-Toffoli

Hagelin-Kempe-Kovalchuk

Clifford-Lewis-Wagner

Forbort-Doughty

Fantenberg-LaDue

Phaneuf-Roy

Notes!

–The vitals: Jack Campbell was the first goalie to leave the ice and is projected to start in net against Washington, whom he has never faced in his career. Jonathan Quick, who became ill prior to his scheduled Saturday start and had to leave Staples Center early, was also on the ice but remained on for extra work with Michael Amadio and Sean Walker. He’s feeling better. “He’ll be good. He could probably go tonight if we wanted him,” said Willie Desjardins, who acknowledged the bug passed quickly through his goaltender. “24-48 [hours], somewhere in that area.”

Tonight’s game follows an unscheduled Sunday day off influenced by the conclusion of Saturday’s game. “You have to come back after that loss

the next day, the tempers would still be running pretty high,” Desjardins said. “Like, it was just a hard loss to take, the last two. I just thought we

were better off to get away and regroup and get our energy and come back and be ready to play today.”

Desjardins liked the life he saw Monday morning. “The mood’s there. That’s the sign of pros, is that they move on.”

–Their vitals: Washington is coming off a 5-2 loss to Anaheim last night in which Braden Holtby allowed five goals on 39 shots, so don’t be surprised if Pheonix Copley makes his second start against Los Angeles in as many Mondays. He earned the win in the 6-4 win at Capital One Arena on February 11. TJ Oshie suffered an upper-body injury last night and is “questionable” to play today. Per Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post, the Caps don’t believe it’s a long-term issue. Your (now annual) reminder that the Capitals have lost eight straight games in downtown Los Angeles since a 3-2 win on December 14, 2005 in Alex Ovechkin’s first Staples Center visit. Goal scorers in that game were Eric

Belanger, Sean Avery, Jamie Heward (x2) and Brian Sutherby. The only players still in the NHL from that game are Dustin Brown and Ovechkin.

Here is a photo from that night:

–Sean Walker estimates the puck that ramped up off his stick and into

his face required 20-25 stitches above his lip to sew up. This was more complex than a typical NHL stitch job.

“Because it was so deep, they had to do two layers, and then the top layer,” he said. Fortunately there was no fracture and no concussion, so

there’s no long-term scare. After skating this morning in a full face shield, he spoke to reporters with a disposition less damaged than his swollen right eye.

“Once I sat down in the chair [after the injury], I couldn’t really tell [how bad the injury was],” he said. “I couldn’t feel it, so I said, ‘what’s going on? Is it my nose or is it my lip?’ and they said ‘it’s just your lip.’ Once they stitched that up and then they felt around to see if there were any fractures or any more pain, it was all good. I was really fortunate.”

Had the Kings been shorthanded, he’d probably have played. It might have required the type of scenario experienced in February, 2015, when

a food poisoning-weakened Robyn Regehr played nearly 24 minutes during a win in Columbus because the Kings only had six healthy defensemen and Derek Forbort’s flight out of Boston was snowed in. But such fortitude was not required today, and by the time he plays next, the full face shield may be off altogether.

“He’s good. I think he’d be ready if we called upon him,” Desjardins said. “I think whenever you play with a shield, it’s not something you want to

play with. You’re better off without it I think, but right now he needs the shield.”

Walker noted that Alec Martinez had informed him of the gruesome facial fractures he suffered by taking a slapshot to the face while playing in

Finland during the 2012-13 work stoppage. Fortunately no surgery was required for Walker, alleviating the worry back in the Walker household.

“I think only my dad was still awake. He was the only one who saw it,” Walker said. “He texted me right away just making sure I was alright. I’m

sure he was pretty worried.”

Ironically, Walker was on the other end of a puck that deflected off a stick five days prior. In Boston, his shot caught John Moore’s stick, ramping into the Bruin defenseman’s face. Moore was more fortunate, with the puck catching most of his visor.

–Walker’s absence will give the Kings another opportunity to get a look at Matt Roy, who logged 11:32 in his NHL debut on Saturday. “It gives him a better chance, maybe a second or third game, of finding out where he’s at,” Desjardins said.

Roy said the “moment” came when he was standing on the bench during

the national anthem, and he was able to find the time appreciate the surroundings of his first career NHL game. “It was nice to get the first

shift out of the way, and after that I kind of settled in and played my game, so it was good,” he said.

There may be another “moment” today: as a right defenseman, he’ll be aligned on the same side of the ice as left wing Alex Ovechkin.

“It’s crazy to me,” he said. “I know watching him growing up, he’s got a super hard shot obviously and he likes to get that off, so I’m just going to

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try to take the body on him and play as simple as I can and hopefully limit his chance.”

–Tonight’s officials are referees Steve Kozari and Garret Rank and linesmen James Tobias and Lonnie Cameron. Staff Seargeant Quartrail Tucker of the U.S. Army will sing the National Anthem. Let’s talk from Staples, Insiders. Enjoy your Presidents Day.

Earlier this week, the Beijing Jr Kings, led by Head Coach and Kings alum Todd Elik, took the Toyota Sports Center ice after a Kings practice. An update on where the grassroots efforts to grow the game in China stand:

Todd Elik, on the thrust towards organizing and orchestrating the Beijing Junior Kings:

The first thing is getting bodies. If we don’t have bodies, we don’t have teams. The younger ones, we have four or five first-timers, so just

fundamentals, strides, skating, stopping. With the U-10s, they’re more advanced, so we’re teaching more skill stuff, systems stuff and just more

hockey-related stuff.

Elik, on how to create a wider player pool in China:

Marketing is not a huge thing over there. We do a lot on WeChat and we’ve got branding, but it’s mostly word of mouth about your program, how you run it. We run it really different – we run it North American where hockey is a team game. There, they do a lot of private lessons, so again, hockey is more of a team game. You have to teach ‘em how to pass the puck and how to be teammates. [Reporter: There’s also a massive scope – and isn’t the government also looking to build 300 rinks in advance of the Winter Olympics?] It’s now 500 rinks. The government gave $500-million as well.

Elik, on the hockey infrastructure in advance of the Beijing Games:

It’s tough. We do have some skilled players. I think the whole goal of the government is to get as many out as they can, because you might have a

diamond in the rough. And that’s what we’re trying to find. We have 30 kids registered. 10 that come off privately, and we want to get to 100, and

hopefully we just keep growing that way. [Reporter: And Beijing, with more of a winter climate, is more of a hockey town, isn’t it?] It is. More

than Shanghai. That’s what we found out as well.

Elik, on teaching young Chinese players:

It’s different than here, the mentality. We try and instill passion and emotion about the game, and that’s what we have to instill in the program. That’s it. Get them out, show them, be hungry, be early, punctual, eager, passionate – stuff like that. … We evaluate them. By looking at them, probably the first 10 minutes, what kind of skill they have. Some need work, obviously with skating, and some are more advanced. We kind of pair them with each other – the better players and the developing players.


1131842 Websites

The Athletic / Do left-shot defencemen produce less on their weak side?

By Tyler Dellow Feb 19, 2019

Editor Mirtle and I kick a lot of stuff around and one of the things he’s been after me to write about is defencemen who are playing on their

weak side. (In other words, right shots on the left side or, the more common situation, left shots playing on the right side.) It’s an issue that

has popped up again in Toronto, as Mike Babcock searches for a way to incorporate his five left-shooting defencemen into the lineup. Colleague Siegel was all over it last week after Babcock returned Morgan Rielly to the left side in Toronto’s win over Colorado. The critical point made in Jonas’ piece that I want to explore here is this:

After he bumped the 24-year-old back to the left against the Avalanche, Babcock said Rielly should be there because he “provides way more offence, way more shots and he’s a better player over there. It’s important to have your best guys play in their best spots.”

Chris Johnston had some more context from Babcock over on Sportsnet.

Babcock said the following a little earlier in Toronto’s post-Muzzin transition to a team that features five left shots in their top six

defencemen.

“There was a guy, I think he won seven Norrises, his name was Nick

[Lidstrom] and he always would say to me ‘Why wouldn’t you put the guy who makes all the plays on his forehand?”’ Babcock said then. “It’s a

great question.”

It sounds compelling. But what if instead, you heard the following

statement said in the same rural Canadian Prairie accent:

“So look, everyone on the ice is going to have to touch the puck, make plays with the puck. It’s harder on your weak side. So when you’re choosing who’s going to have the harder job, why wouldn’t you want the guy who’s better with the puck doing it?

That sounds compelling to me too. It’s the opposite of what Babcock’s said but you can see some intuitive sense in it.

Before I get into the minutiae of this, I want to make two points.

In the big picture, there’s support for Babcock’s preference for left/right pairs. In the four years between 2014-15 and 2017-18, pairs with two left-

shot defencemen scored 49.3 percent of the goals on 49.1 percent of the shot attempts. Pairs with a left and a right shot player scored 50.3

percent of the goals on 50.4 percent of the shot attempts. Pairs with two right shot players (the unicorns of the hockey world) scored 52.2 percent

of the goals on 49.7 percent of the shot attempts. We should note that the amount of time played by pairs with two right shot players was awfully

small: just four percent of all 5-on-5 time in that period. I wonder a bit if there are advantages to right shot defencemen beyond simply being mirrors of the left shots but that’s a question for another day. The key point here is that there’s lots of data in support of Babcock’s preference for right/left pairs.

Second, there’s not going to be a definitive answer. The data that we have available to us doesn’t support a definitive answer. Even if there was a definitive answer, it would be a general one and coaches are forced to deal with specific cases. Furthermore, coaches aren’t just trying to maximize the results of a specific pair; they’re trying to maximize the

results of an entire team, which might mean making decisions that are sub-optimal if you were just focusing on maximizing the results of a

specific pair.

Babcock’s effectively saying that the best offensive player on the pair

shouldn’t be the one playing on the weak side. In order to dig into this a little bit, I built a database of defence pairs in the four years between

2014-15 and 2017-18. In doing this, I drew an inference as to which side of the ice each player in the pairing was playing. I did this by looking at the NHL’s shot coordinates and, if a guy’s average attempt position was

to the left of his partner, he’d be the left side defenceman. If it was to the right, he’d be the right side defenceman. There’s a little bit that gets

screened out here – 5-on-5 situations with something other than two defencemen on the ice and pairs where one or both partners didn’t have

any shot attempts (or, more rarely, where they both had the same average y-coordinate and I couldn’t infer who was on what side).

This approach seems to work pretty well. It gives me 1704 pairs who played at least 60 minutes together in a given season. Given what we know about NHL hockey, if the approach is working, it should do a pretty good job of assigning the left defenceman to the left side and right

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defenceman to the right side when left/right pairs are involved. One thousand, one hundred and eighty-two left/right pairs are in the sample; 1179 of those do what we’d expect as far as assigning defencemen to a side of the ice. The three pairs that don’t are all fairly low TOI pairs and the difference tends to be small. I’m fairly comfortable that this approach works and that the three pairs that seem to be incorrect are just a bit of noise in the data.

Morgan Rielly is the jumping off point here, so let’s start with him and look at how he’s done in this window playing on the right side versus playing on the left side when paired with another lefty. He’s actually put

up points at a higher rate when he’s classified as a right-sided defenceman, although I’m a little leery of that conclusion because it

depends to an extent on Rielly’s time with Travis Dermott last year. It wasn’t very much ice time, which means that there isn’t a lot of data for

classifying his side. Watching the video of the four points he put up, he looks like the left defenceman on a few of them, although honestly,

there’s also a lot of switching sides going on. (An indicator that maybe we worry a little too much about who is officially on what side anyway.)

In the aggregate, I would be pretty comfortable saying that this approach will work well; in individual cases or particularly when dealing with pairs that have a small sample, I’m less comfortable.

To find an approach that would possibly satisfy my comfort level, I created a group of players who played on both their strong and weak sides in the same year.

I put together a group of left-shot defencemen who played at least 180 minutes on both the left and right side in the same year, for the same team from 2014-18 and it resulted in a list of 122 defencemen. As a group, they did shoot the puck slightly more often and put more of those

shots on net when they were on their strong side. This was particularly true when they were playing with a right-handed partner. The shot attempts/60 moved from 9.3 per 60 with a right shot partner, to 8.9 per 60 with a left shot partner, to 8.3 per 60 with a left shot partner and playing on the weak side. Shots followed the same pattern, moving from 4.2 to 3.9 shots per 60 to 3.7 shots per 60.

Now – here’s a wrinkle. The left-shot defencemen in this group shot for a

considerably higher percentage when playing on their weak side. On their strong side, with a right-handed partner, they shot 3.4 percent. That

bumped to 3.8 percent when playing their strong side with a left-handed partner. And it went up again when they were playing their weak side

with a left-handed partner. Even though they’re shooting somewhat less frequently, more pucks are going in. In fact, left-shot defencemen in this

group scored more goals when they were playing on the right side with a left-handed partner. It’s not a very big difference – an extra 0.02 goals

per 60 minutes – but it underlines how the higher shooting percentage makes up for the reduced shot volume.

The assist rates are pretty similar but, as a result of the slight goal difference, defencemen on the left ended up scoring slightly more points per 60 than they did on the right. As a preliminary point, I’d suggest that there’s not a lot of evidence in support of a conclusion that either option is better. Although there’s a difference, it’s miniscule.

Another way of looking at Babcock’s point is looking at whether the left-handed player on his strong side tends to accumulate more points than the left-handed player on the weak side of the pairing. This is a subtly

different question than the one we were looking at above – instead of asking how players do on each side, we’re asking whether the better

offensive player (at least in terms of points) does tend to be on the left. Again, there doesn’t really seem to be much of a difference – each side

of the pairing tends to be within a few hundredths of a point per 60 minutes. There are a number of left-handed defencemen who’ve put up

high point rates playing on the right side. Looking over a list, Dmitry Orlov, TJ Brodie, Shayne Gostisbehere, Nate Schmidt, Mark Streit, Alex Goligoski and Lubomir Visnovsky all jump out as players who’ve done well from a points perspective on the right side in a pairing with a left-handed partner.

Having gone through this leaves me with a few thoughts about it.

1) What we really need is data that enables us to look at how a team functions with a given player on the left as compared to the right. The Maple Leafs presumably subscribe to SportLogiq (and have access to god knows what else); SportLogiq produces enhanced play-by-play files that would permit a better look at this question. This may well have informed Babcock’s thinking;

2) There are players who produce points just fine on their weak side; and

3) Rielly’s history doesn’t really support a conclusion that he falls apart on his weak side.

Does this mean Babcock’s wrong? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that; I’d

only say that I don’t think it’s as cut and dry as “You want your best players on their forehand.” I mean, that may well be true, but it’s a

principle that has limits and the principle itself doesn’t help you identify those limits. Even if you accept it as true, one of the things I’ll be

interested to see is whether the needs of the moment dictate different approaches for the Maple Leafs. If you’re less concerned about creating

offence, do you worry more about getting your best defencemen on the ice and less about what side of the ice they’re on? Unless Kyle Dubas

makes Babcock’s life much easier by airlifting in a right-handed defenceman or two over the next week, it’s an issue that Babcock will have to grapple with into the spring.


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The Athletic / How the salary cap could affect trade deadline moves of teams trying to win now

By Katie Strang Feb 19, 2019

The NHL trade deadline market is its own ever-changing ecosystem, evolving daily with the fluctuations of teams’ performances and their respective spots in the playoff standings. Traditionally, teams are grouped into two groups — buyers and sellers — but there are subcategories that are emerging with less than a week before Monday’s

3 p.m. ET cutoff.

Even among the buyers and sellers, there are different thresholds of risk

and a varying appetite for upgrades.

And beyond the immediate considerations — what teams need to do in

the short-term to go from a playoff team to a legitimate postseason contender — there are long-term organizational goals to keep in mind as

well.

If you’re a general manager, you must assess whether to stand pat,

make minor upgrades or push all the chips to the center of the table. Do you feel comfortable with the team that you have now or do you need to add more depth? Do you want to preserve your prospect pipeline or mortgage your future to win now? And if you’re facing a number of tough decisions this summer, do you keep those in mind with any move you make, or go for it and worry about the rest later?

It is with this latter question in mind that we examine one of the more interesting subcategories of buyers in the hectic 2019 trade market: teams trying to win now that are facing a significant salary cap crunch for the 2019-20 season, like the Tampa Bay Lightning, Winnipeg Jets and Toronto Maple Leafs.

How will that affect their decision-making process over the next six days? Will they be more aggressive or more conservative as a result?

“I try to win now, because winners gain more trust and have more rope to

make better long-term decisions,” said one Eastern Conference

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executive, pointing to the NFL’s New England Patriots as a franchise that embodies this philosophy, often convincing players to take less with the allure of a winning pedigree. “The hardest thing to do is to win. … It’s a game where you have to worry about winning now and worry about the future later.”

Another consideration to keep in mind: For each buying team trying to calibrate their plans to accommodate both their long and short-term needs, there are potential trade partners assessing how to optimize the return on their players given the situation.

Just as fellow GMs are intimately aware of when teams are trying to

become compliant in the final few weeks of training camp in September, they are equally aware of when the salary cap might heighten a team’s

desire to take advantage when a winning window is narrowing.

“We all look at who’s at the cap (for next year) and who’s crunched,” said

one NHL general manager.

Below we examine the three teams listed above and offer up our best

guess on how next year’s salary cap situation (figures are derived from CapFriendly.com) may affect their plans at the trade deadline and what

could happen over the next few days. Keep in mind that next year’s cap is expected to increase to $83 million.

Tampa Bay Lightning

2019-2020 Salary Cap Outlook: $73.1 million committed to 16 players

Unrestricted Free Agents in 2019: D Anton Stralman, D Braydon Coburn, D Dan Girardi

Players due for a big raise: Brayden Point

Current Place in the standings: First in Eastern Conference, First in Atlantic Division (94 points)

Tampa Bay is the class of the NHL, riding a six-game winning streak, boasting a gaudy plus-77 point differential and cruising along at a clip that has them poised to possibly reach the 100-point benchmark before the trade deadline. That’s crazy. The closest team to them, the Calgary Flames (79 points), is still 15 points back. So it should be no surprise that

they are the clear front-runners when people are making Stanley Cup predictions come June.

Recently, the Bolts have been linked as a logical landing spot for gritty forward Wayne Simmonds, who is emerging as one of the most enticing trade targets on the market. But, Tampa has been so good that some wonder whether they even need to re-tool their roster. At all.

Last season, they pulled off a blockbuster deal to acquire defenseman Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller from the Rangers, sending back a trio of prospects, a first-round pick and a conditional second-round pick (which may still become a first if the Bolts win the Cup this year). They could take a similar approach this year, riding the hot hand and going all in.

But, keep in mind, the Lightning have some difficult decisions coming

soon, chief among them restricted free agent Brayden Point, who is in the midst of a stellar 2018-19 season that has him at 35 goals and 78

points through 59 games. Suffice it to say that Tampa was probably watching the William Nylander situation play out with rapt attention.

General manager Julien BriseBois acknowledged these cap concerns when he spoke about the team’s payroll situation back in December,

talking about a crunch of salary raises that are “inevitable,” not just in 2019-20 but in the years that follow.

“How mindful am I of it? Very,” BriseBois said in an interview with The Athletic’s Joe Smith.

“I don’t know what I’m going to have to pay Brayden Point, and he’s obviously going to be a priority in the coming offseason. And (Andrei) Vasilevskiy is a year out (from being an RFA in the summer of 2020-21), but he’s going to be due for a raise,” BriseBois continued. “There’s going to be others. If you project out, (Anthony) Cirelli’s going to get one, (Erik) Cernak, (Mathieu) Joseph, (Mikhail) Sergachev, Adam Erne. All these

good young players will eventually have rights under the CBA to them getting substantial raises.”

That said, the Lightning also have some players performing well at the American League level who could potentially slot into key roles in the future, players like Alex Barre-Boulet, Taylor Raddysh and Cal Foote, but it’s hard to project any concrete timeline for their development and, ultimately, how they will perform at the highest level.

“They probably feel like they can win with the lineup they have right now,” said one NHL scout. “That’s the test — do we win with this lineup and stick with what we’ve got or add players by giving up assets and draft

picks?”

The scout said if it were him, he’d err on the side of the former, believing

that the past few years of heartbreak — getting so close but ultimately falling short — would set them up for success this time around.

Others find that approach too conservative and the allure of the Bolts’ success this season too enticing to pass up making the ultimate play,

with one Eastern Conference executive predicting that BriseBois “wants to win now and will figure out anything else out later.”

Another NHL front office member feels the Bolts rely too heavily on their power play, which isn’t nearly as big of a factor in the postseason, and wonders whether they can be more than a regular season team with their existing defense corps, citing the need for a strong puck-moving right-handed defenseman.

Augmenting the chances of Tampa going big, he said, is the fact that they probably have the prospects to pull off another major deal.

Prediction: Tampa Bay goes big, upgrading on defense and reshaping other areas of the roster, adding a bit of a harder/heavier presence to their team.

Winnipeg Jets

2019-202 Salary Cap Outlook: $56.3 million committed to 12 players.

Pending Unrestricted Free Agents: Brandon Tanev; D Tyler Myers, Ben Chiarot

Players due for a big raise: Patrik Laine, Kyle Connor, Jacob Trouba

Current Place in the standings: Third in Western Conference; First in Central Division (76 points)

The Winnipeg Jets are in a very similar situation as the Lightning — a really good team with a legitimate chance to contend this season,

coupled with some painful choices ahead this summer — but the organization operates under a different economic model.

The small-market team has often spurned the splashy moves and instead opted for the more subtle, shrewd ones that are cost-conscious.

They have been prudent in their process of augmenting and building out their roster, taking a slow and deliberate approach. The Jets are also a

team well aware that, in order to beat the market in say, Years 3 through 6 of a long-term contract, they have to overpay in Years 1 and 2 to save on the aggregate.

But with Laine and Connor both set to cash in on a large payday, and potentially poised to sit until they get one, it begs the question of whether GM Kevin Cheveldayoff will be more inclined to make the big move in hopes of making a push this season, with the team reportedly interested

in both Mark Stone and Matt Duchene.

Adding fuel to the fire is a recent closed-door meeting between Cheveldayoff and Senators GM Pierre Dorion in Cheveldayoff’s private suite at the MTS Center during the second intermission that was observed by the Winnipeg Free Press.

Perhaps they were discussing what some have identified as an obvious need for the Jets: a second-line center, someone to provide a solid 1-2 punch down the middle with Mark Scheifele and allow Bryan Little to slot in on the third line. Combine that with a fourth line that has some serious

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jam and that’s a daunting scenario for any opponent. Or maybe they were discussing another marquee forward to fortify their lineup.

If the Jets feel that Duchene is the premier-type of center they need or that Stone is the type of impact forward that spells the difference between them and a Stanley Cup, and they can get either player at a reduced cost as a rental because they know he wants to go to free agency, they may be willing to go big-game hunting. If the price is too high, they could go after a less-sought-after but still valuable center like Florida’s Derick Brassard, whose name has surfaced in connection with the Jets for some time now, or a legitimate second-line pivot option like

New York’s Kevin Hayes.

“They’re a very market conscious team that tries to strikes when a team

needs to get off certain guys,” one NHL assistant general manager said. “They’re opportunistic.”

The question is whether a move for a player like Brassard represents a significant enough upgrade or whether they feel they need a

Stone/Duchene-type to bolster their chances.

Prediction: Chevy also swings for the fences to significantly upgrade the

roster and improve depth down the middle, with an impact player like Stone, Duchene, or Hayes.

Toronto Maple Leafs

2019-20 Salary Cap Outlook: Approximately $71.9 million committed to 14 players

Pending Unrestricted Free Agents: Par Lindholm, Tyler Ennis; D Jake Gardiner, D Ron Hainsey

Players due for a big raise: Mitch Marner, Kasperi Kapanen, Andreas Johnsson

Current place in the standings: Fourth in Eastern Conference; Third in

Atlantic Division (75 points)

The Leafs’ cap situation has been well documented, particularly with the protracted contract standoff with restricted free agent William Nylander, which stretched into the season and wasn’t consummated until the 11th

hour, when the team and the player came to an agreement on a six-year, $45 million contract extension just before the Dec. 1 deadline.

It was a resolution that got one of their better young players back in the lineup and pushed some of their long-term cap issues off into the future. Since then, Toronto got Auston Matthews under contract as well on a five-year, $58 million deal. But the Leafs are still bracing for what could be a difficult offseason negotiation with RFA Marner, knowing that both Kapanen and Johnsson are also due for a raise.

All of this combines to paint a multi-dimensional picture for a Leafs team aiming to capitalize on a narrow window in which they can fit all of their young talented stars under the cap. At some point, salary is going to need to be shipped out. Whether that means parting ways with one of

those talents or significantly paring down the roster around them (the latter of which would force them to rely heavily on their top four or five

players), there’s no easy or ideal situation.

“At some point it’s going to become untenable,” said one NHL assistant

general manager, citing the worst-case scenario if things go sideways. “They’re gonna become Chicago without the Cups.”

And there are some that feel that the Leafs aren’t there yet to risk going all in; looking at Stanley Cup winners of years past, many of those teams

boasted ample experience going deep into the playoffs in the years prior. The heartbreak was the precursor to success, and the Leafs haven’t had to endure anything quite like that yet, with last year’s first-round exit a disappointing one.

One scout feels that Dubas’ goal at the deadline should be to set his team up to go deep in the postseason without severely handcuffing the team’s maneuverability in the future. Already, the Leafs added a much-needed defenseman in one of the first moves of the NHL trade season,

acquiring Jake Muzzin from the Kings in exchange for a pair of prospects and a first-round pick in 2019, though he could still use a right-handed shot.

Another practical depth move may be the preferred route anyway, mused one Western Conference executive, who noted that, at the time, Washington’s acquisition of Michal Kempny last year was far from the sexiest and yet it had arguably the biggest impact on the Capitals’ Cup run.

“How many times is the big move the right move?” the executive pointed out.

Prediction: The Leafs make no big splashes, but a depth move or two, particularly on D. Think an Adam McQuaid type.


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The Athletic / Wheeler: An early look at the top 20 prospects for the 2020 NHL draft

By Scott Wheeler Feb 19, 2019

When I released my midseason ranking of the top 62 prospects for the 2o19 NHL draft, it highlighted the strength of this year’s WHL and USDP

eligibles — and the relative weakness of the OHL, QMJHL and Swedish (SHL/SuperElit) crops of prospects.

But I also tried to insist that it’s not indicative of much more than an off year and that these things are cyclical and tend not to be part of a larger

trend.

The 2020 draft is a perfect case study in that. I like USA Hockey’s Lucas Tuch, Thomas Bordeleau, Tyler Kleven and Dylan Peterson but none of them will be represented at the top of the 2020 draft like the U18 team’s top players will be in 2019. The same is true for the WHL’s Connor McLennon and Kaiden Guhle, who are good prospects but won’t rise to the level that Dylan Cozens, Kirby Dach, Peyton Krebs and Bowen Byram have in 2019.

Below is an exhaustive (though early) look, broken down into tiers, at my top-20 prospects, as well as my top-ranked goalie, for the 2020 draft.

And while the above-mentioned WHLers and USDPers were considered, none of them made this list. Instead, there are a ton of Swedes and OHL

products, as well as a kid from the QMJHL who projects as the first-overall pick.

Before I jump into my evaluations and some video analysis on the top-20 prospects, here are some other names to keep an eye on who didn’t

make the list: Czech Republic’s Jaromir Pytlik and Jan Mysak, Switzerland’s Noah Delemont, the QMJHL’s Mavrik Bourque and Dawson Mercer and former Vaughan Kings teammates Tyler Tullio and Ryan O’Rourke.

Overall, my early evaluation pegs 2020 as a strong draft class (I’d be tempted to call it even more than that if more of the top players were centres and defencemen, rather than wingers, but there are some elite skill sets at the top).

Note: The top 20 is broken down into five tiers (1, 2-3, 4-9, 10-19, plus a sleeper). Due to the early nature of these evaluations, players ranked

within the same tier are not listed in any discernible order.

First overall

Alexis Lafreniere: LW, Rimouski Oceanic, 6-foot-1

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There are only two knocks on Lafreniere. They are:

He’s one of the older players in the 2020 class (Lafreniere is roughly a month away from eligibility for this year’s draft, where he would have been in the same conversation as Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko at the top).

He’s a winger (most teams would much prefer a centre first overall).

But both of those things (age and position) are either out of his control or close to it. And what Lafreniere is — a soon-to-be 100-point play in the QMJHL, last year’s 80-point CHL rookie of the year and QMJHL First Team All-Star — just can’t be ignored. He’s the kid who threw down 11

points in five games at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup. While he didn’t blow anyone away at the world juniors, he wasn’t given a significant role on

the team and that manifested itself in his play as the youngest player on the team by more than 16 months to Barrett Hayton. While Lafreniere

and his agency (Momentum Hockey) explored playing his draft year professionally in Europe next year ala Auston Matthews, a decision has

been reached for him to stay with Rimouski next season.

With that context in mind, I don’t think it’s out of the question for

Lafreniere to put up the best age-relative QMJHL production of the last decade next season, which would require him to play at a two points per game clip (Jonathan Drouin, Nikolaj Ehlers and Jonathan Huberdeau have challenged or surpassed that in the last 10 years). His current 1.84 points per game is already the sixth-best under-19 season of that timespan, ahead of Nathan MacKinnon’s 1.70, Sean Couturier’s 1.66, Pierre-Luc Dubois’ 1.60 and Nico Hischier’s 1.51.

Lafreniere isn’t a particularly explosive player but there’s also no identifiable flaw in his game. He can handle the puck and make plays off his backhand just as comfortably as his forehand, he can score with a

deke or a variety of shots, he can play with power or finesse and he knows exactly when to use his skill to take a risk or make the safer play.

He’s the complete package.

A first overall sleeper or two?

While I fully expect Lafreniere will be the first-overall pick next year, if something were to happen, there are two players who are the odds-on

favourites for second and third overall that are well-positioned to rise to the top.

Alexander Holtz: RW/LW, Djurgardens IF, 6-foot-0

Holtz is one of those pure goal scorers who can finish in any way he wants, whenever he wants (or it seems like that anyway). His wrister, from a standstill or in transition, is deadly, as is his one-timer. They’re both accurate and hard. And he has the lateral agility and puck handling skills to be able to create the spacing he needs to get that release off by cutting in and out of lanes to change angles and cleanly beat goalies. I’d like to see him involve his linemates a little more but when the skill gap is

what it is for him at the SuperElit level, attacking the slot is often the best available play. That has carried over in best-on-best competitions too.

Holtz has torched international competition to date.

Lucas Raymond: RW/LW, Frolunda HC, 5-foot-10

Raymond and Holtz would have to work really hard to be much more different than they already are. Raymond is the playmaker while Holtz is

the scorer. Raymond’s got a level of creativity and unpredictability that Holtz lacks. Raymond’s also a better skater than Holtz. Ultimately, he’s

the more versatile player in that he has the talent and finishing ability to be the scorer on his line (we saw that at U17s and the Hlinka Gretzky Cup) but he’s also usually the best passer on the ice … or on his team … or in his league. And he does all of this while lacking strength.

Raymond will drive the net without getting touched and then set up a teammate within the same sequence:

Or he’ll use his technique to rip a shot far side off the rush:

Or he’ll support the play at one end, use his speed to create an entry at the other, get open and use his handling to deke to his backhand to score in a different way:

If he can grow an inch and add 10-15 pounds (both are quite likely), he’ll be a terrifying offensive threat.

Top-five contenders

Five players with the potential to round out the final two top-five spots.

Quinton Byfield: C, Sudbury Wolves, 6-foot-4

Byfield’s skill set is quickly playing catch-up to an athletic ability that

allowed him to challenge historic production levels in minor hockey. Unlike a lot of these other players, he’s going to need to watch how and where he adds muscle in order to maintain his foot speed. At 16, he’s already Sudbury’s best offensive player. I’ve really been impressed with the growth of his skill set too. Byfield relied on his puck protection skills and power to drive the net and score in minor hockey and he has shown some impressive ability to get his teammates involved as a passer this

season. Anytime a prospect has first-line centre upside with size, he never lasts long. That will be true of Byfield next year too.

More: Meet Quinton Byfield, hockey’s latest and least likely 15-year-old sensation

Jamie Drysdale: RHD, Erie Otters, 5-foot-11

The first and youngest of the two defencemen in this tier, Drysdale is a skinny but mobile offensive defenceman who uses his skating to escape trouble and close in on loose pucks in order to reduce the number of one-on-one battles he has to engage in. He’s an excellent four-way skater and a supremely gifted transition player who can control the rush as a carrier or dictate it with an outlet pass by leading his forwards into time and space. While there’s no question he needs to get a bit stronger in

order to improve defensively, I like his blend of pace, recoverability and calculated decision making. Drysdale is a modern NHL prospect in the

truest sense.

Justin Barron: RHD, Halifax Mooseheads, 6-foot-2

One of the older players on this list, Barron’s age matches the maturity I’ve seen in his game. He was outstanding as Canada’s youngest

defenceman at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup and has followed that up with an impressive — though unspectacular — second QMJHL season. While Barron has all of the tools (the offensive instincts, the size and skating ability, the shot) to be a high-end defenceman at the next level, I’ll be looking for him to take a more aggressive upward trajectory along his developmental curve over the next year than he has over the previous season. He can get caught trying to do too much, so I’d like to see him start to be a little more selective and make better decisions.

Noel Gunler: RW/LW, Lulea HF, 6-foot-1

Gunler’s progression this season from a decent prospect with a lot of

good but unremarkable tools, to a borderline elite prospect who took that versatility and built on it in nearly every facet has been astonishing to

watch.

He (No. 8 in all of the below clips) is always driving the middle, even if it

means going into traffic for a tough play:

Even at the pro level, he’s not afraid to take the puck down that centre

lane:

And when he’s tightly checked, he has already shown the dexterity to

stick with it against men and still make his play:

That Lulea has already trusted him to run the power play from the wall as both a one-time threat (he loves to shoot it) and a distributor, speaks volumes too. We seldom see prospects a year and a half out from their draft as primary options on an SHL power play — nevermind executing:

He certainly doesn’t lack confidence as a shooter, either:

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He has the smarts to be able to turn off defenders and into open space in the offensive zone too. And that’s leading to scoring chances:

In time, all of these things are going to turn Gunler into a dominant SHL forward. And if he keeps getting the kind of opportunity Lulea has afforded him, he’ll remain a step ahead of many of his peers in the 2020 class, especially with the way Gunler stays involved. When he’s not on the puck, he’s pursuing it:

Needless to say, there’s a lot to like about Gunler’s game.

Marco Rossi: C, Ottawa 67’s, 5-foot-9

The most criminally underrated prospect in this draft due in large part to his height (which ignores how heavy and strong on the puck he is) and his age (Rossi is days away from 2019 eligibility), I have tried to vouch

for Rossi in scouting circles, where most have him as a late first-rounder and I have him as a top-10 pick with upside even higher than that. Did I

live with the kid and his two families (billet and birth) for a week? Yes. Does that impact my opinion of him? Absolutely. But knowledge is power

and everything about this kid off the ice supports, more importantly, his game on it. Rossi was unstoppable before an elbow injury derailed him

and he has been unstoppable ever since, playing primarily with veteran forwards Tye Felhaber and Austen Keating on one of the best lines in the OHL. His numbers are one thing (we seldom see rookies produce in and around 1.4 points per game in the OHL) but it’s his skill set that fascinates me. Rossi has an excellent wrist shot, high-end hands, on-ice puck smarts beyond his years and an outstanding two-way game that will allow him to remain a centre once he turns pro. If he were an inch or two taller, he’d be considered a surefire top-10 pick in this draft. He’s legit.

Rossi sees passes most other players don’t and this lateral half-drop pass is a perfect example of that (most players shoot that from the high

slot):

Plus there’s just raw talent and athleticism that you can’t teach within his

game. This out-of-mid-air chip under the bar stands out in that way:

More: Hockey’s home away from home: Three days inside the life of a

billet mom and her superstar new son

Cole Perfetti: C, Saginaw Spirit, 5-foot-10

After a brilliant minor-hockey career, Perfetti took no time to immediately become an impact forward in the OHL. He has enough skill to be both the scorer and the playmaker on a line, which allows him to carry inferior linemates. That he’s already the driving force on a team for long stretches in games speaks to the potential first-line upside that exists in his game. Wherever he has gone or played, he has always been the best player. It makes him just a ton of fun to watch because every time he touches the puck there’s the potential for something really exciting to happen. Love his game off the puck too. If he can get a little faster at his top speed and quicker from a standstill, there’s nothing preventing him

from becoming the driving force on an NHL line someday.

Top-10 potential

Mid-first talents with the upside for more.

Theo Rochette: C, Chicoutimi Sagueneens, 5-foot-10

Rochette has the offensive gifts needed to be a dynamic player in the QMJHL. I’ve left viewings of him in awe of it. But I have also seen him

disappear against better teams and tougher matchups. The latter is driven by how weak he is both on the puck as a carrier and in battles.

Rochette just desperately needs to get stronger. He gets pushed around too much and it results in him passively spending a lot of time on the perimeter. He’s blessed with high-end vision and playmaking ability, which helps him impact a game from the outside, but he’ll need to get stronger to become the dominant force I believe he can be.

Anton Lundell: C/LW, HIFK, 6-foot-1

I have watched a lot of Lundell this season and he continues to impress me as a player who is already having an impact in Liiga and played well above his age for Finland’s gold medal-winning world junior team.

I love his speed off the rush. Lundell has a hunch to his stride that defies typical technique but he comes at opposing teams fast and he doesn’t slow down:

That skating allows him to get out in transition and get behind defenders. And it complements a nifty release that has virtually no drawback or toe-to-heel curl:

He also gets bonus points for routinely shooting low (something that far

too few young players prioritize):

Lundell is also creative without ever getting much credit for it. Watch

below for the little behind-the-back pass play he executes for a primary assist:

More than that though, he’s also aware off the puck. It’s Lundell who comes up with the steal at the top of the offensive zone ahead of this

secondary assist:

Put all of those things together and you get consistent offensive zone shifts that begin with an entry driving the middle and end with a retrieval (in this case with a shot on goal in between):

Daniil Gushchin: LW/RW, Muskegon Lumberjacks, 5-foot-8

Gushchin has blown me away in international play, where he has toyed with some pretty talented teams and defencemen. A couple of weeks removed from his 17th birthday he’s also having an excellent age-relative year in the USHL, where he leads all U17-eligible skaters in points (28), goals (13) and points per game (0.72). Despite his size, Gushchin plays a fearless, net-driven game. He’s both fast at his top speed and light on his edges in tight — and both of those things match an always-in-motion

approach that makes him hard to track in the offensive zone or stick with when he burns wide off the rush.

Jean-Luc Foudy: C, Windsor Spitfires, 5-foot-11

The son of an Olympic sprinter and former CFL defensive back, and the

brother to one of the fastest players on the planet, Foudy is a lot of things his brother isn’t (I have never been all that high on Liam and thought the

Blue Jackets using the 18th-overall pick on him was a big stretch). Foudy has the straightaway acceleration of his brother but he’s considerably further ahead in terms of skill. While Foudy is a playmaker above all else, his blend of work ethic, cross-ice vision and the ability of his hands to keep up with his feet make him a darn good one. If he can add some strength and improve his shot, there’s a serious NHL package there. Plus, his May 2002 birthdate gives him a longer runway than most.

Kasper Simontaival: RW/LW, Tappara/Leki, 5-foot-9

Simontaival is a sneaky little guy. He’s a guy you don’t notice until he slides down the right-wing wall and spins into a puck, tapping it to his

teammate for a primary assist:

He’s fast but he lurks on the perimeter so his speed usually comes in

little bursts to loose pucks or dashes to get open and cut into space. One of the better passers in his age group, Simontaival is also sneaky-strong

on the puck, which allows him to shed checks and find the open man with a quick pass. It’s crazy impressive that at his age and height he’s already

a decent pro player in Europe. Loved his game at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup and he hasn’t really slowed down ever since.

Dylan Holloway: C/LW, Okotoks Oilers, 6-foot-1

It’s hard to build out a data-driven comparable for Holloway because the numbers he’s putting up in the AJHL have entered uncharted territory. The only NHL graduate to have challenged Holloway’s near 1.8 points per game clip as an under-18 player in the AJHL in the last 20 or so years is Joe Colborne, who went 16th overall after playing to 1.64 points per game in his draft year. While Holloway has done this a year earlier than that, in theory, he also has a September 2001 birthdate, making him

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only narrowly eligible for the 2020 class instead of 2019. On the merits of his skill, Holloway plays a high-energy, physical pro game that relies on excellent skating to get into spots where he can use above-average offensive tools to make plays. Due to his age, Holloway is eligible to play at Wisconsin in his draft year too.

Jacob Perreault: RW, Sarnia Sting, 5-foot-11

Given the fact that he’s still 16 and he’s well on his way to becoming a 30-goal scorer as a rookie, I can forgive Perreault for some of the well-documented issues in his game (he’s too heavy for his size and he doesn’t use his teammates enough because he’s too focused on the

shot). Perreault is one of those kids who is unlikely to ever drive a line but should thrive with playmakers alongside him. Like his old man (yes,

his dad is Yanic, he of more than 900 NHL games and 500 NHL points), Jacob is also responsible off the puck, anticipates the play well and flat

out works hard. He grew up playing centre, so that’s not out of the question for him at some point either.

Antonio Stranges: C/LW, London Knights, 5-foot-10

Stranges has grabbed the hockey world’s attention with his heel-to-heel

skating ability and shootout magic, but there’s more to his game than that. In a depth role on yet another strong Knights team, Stranges has continued to produce and create plays all season. He can be frustrating to watch because he cheats for offence and he doesn’t support the play particularly well but that’s the give-and-take you have to be willing to accept with a player like Stranges. I expect he’ll have a big draft year next season if a more prominent role. And while there will be his fair share of turnovers, there will also be some highlight reels along the way. He’s one of the bigger boom-or-bust prospects in his age group.

Jake Sanderson: LHD, USDP, 6-foot-1

Sanderson isn’t the blow-you-away type but he plays an effective, smooth, patient, calm two-way game that usually results in positive

outcomes. He’s also one of the younger players I considered for this list, which gives him more than enough time to become a little more

assertive. He is far and away the best D prospect in his age group with the national program and that will result in ample opportunity and the

minutes needed to continue to progress. He’s a bit of a long-term project and that’s fine, given his commitment to North Dakota.

Hendrix Lapierre: C, Chicoutimi Sagueneens, 6-foot-0

Lapierre missed a chunk of this season (a month to be exact) with an injury before going scoreless to close out November in his first six games after returning. Otherwise, the QMJHL’s 2018 first-overall pick has been absolutely brilliant for the lowly Sagueneens, playing above a point per game and carrying his line’s offensive load. Lapierre is an outstanding passer who uses subtle fakes and hesitations to draw attention and open up passing lanes. Because his head is always up and on a swivel, Lapierre is also able to use those skills to look one way and send a pass another, having already identified where his options are on the ice. He will routinely catch teams by surprise with the plays he makes. While he will always be a playmaker before he’s a scorer, a little strength could help him become a more dynamic offensive threat.

A sleeper to keep an eye on

Tim Stutzle: C/LW, Jungadler Mannheim, 5-foot-11

The only player on this list that I haven’t watched a full game of (though

the clips I’ve been sent suggest he can really wheel), Stutzle is a kid I have asked around on and have heard only good things. Taken 52nd overall in the USHL futures draft, Stutzle has spent the last two seasons putting up astonishing numbers in Germany’s junior ranks. Last year, at 15 and 16, his 47 points in 25 DNL games shattered the production of

other recent top prospects at the same age (his 1.88 points per game towered over Dominik Bokk’s 0.88 points per game at the same age).

That play hasn’t relented, ether. This year, after the DNL moved from an under-19 league to an under-20 league in an effort to improve its quality, he’s playing above a goal-per-game pace. I’ll be interested to see where

he decides to play his draft year. Committed to New Hampshire, it’s only a matter of time before he comes to North America one way or another.

The top goaltender

Yaroslav Askarov: G, SKA-Varyagi, 6-foot-2

It seems like every few years we get a Russian goaltender with first-

round upside. In 2015, it was Ilya Samsonov. In 2012, it was Andrei Vasilevskiy. In 2020, Askarov has all of the tools to be the next in line. He will play the entirety of this season as a 16-year-old due to his June birthday which makes his play in the MHL that much more impressive this season. While the MHL is a league that tends to be low-scoring with

high save percentages, Asakarov’s stellar play has continued in 13 international games across all three major tournaments this season too.

He’s not an explosive post-to-post goalie but his game is remarkably sound from a technical standpoint for his age and a little more strength

will come with time.


1131845 Websites

The Athletic / LeBrun Notebook: Detailing Matt Duchene’s options and the latest on Marcus Johansson and Micheal Ferland

By Pierre LeBrun Feb 19, 2019

As trade interest ramps up on Matt Duchene and Mark Stone this week,

what will be fascinating to see if they don’t re-sign with the Ottawa Senators is whether they sign with their new teams or wait until after the

season to figure all that out.

I made the point on Twitter last week to clarify the rules governing the maximum eight-year contracts and the role the trade deadline plays into it.

To recap: A player must be on that club’s reserve list at the trade deadline in order to be able to sign a maximum deal. So for example, because Erik Karlsson remained a Senator through the deadline last year (although he was nearly a Vegas Golden Knight on deadline day), when

the San Jose Sharks traded for him in September the CBA would not allow them to sign him to an eight-year extension right away. They would

have to wait until they carried him on their reserve list past this upcoming trade deadline before they can attempt to do sign him to an eight-year

deal.

It is also why John Tavares signed a seven-year deal in Toronto, and not

the max eight, because he was on the Islanders’ reserve list, of course, last trade deadline.

But, and here’s why I’m bringing all this up, it almost came to pass that Tavares ended up on an eight-year deal with Toronto. How, you ask? Once Tavares agonizingly, finally decided he was leaving the Islanders for his hometown Leafs, there was only about 24-48 hours before July 1 depending on which account you believe. Either way, it left a very tight window for the Leafs and Islanders to contemplate a sign-and-trade involving Tavares, but it was in fact contemplated. I’m told Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello and Leafs GM Kyle Dubas did have a short exchange about which asset Toronto would be willing to pay to get the Islanders to sign Tavares to eight years for them before flipping him to the Leafs. But whether the asset in question was too meagre to interest Lamoriello or whether they just ran out of time, it never came to pass.

(As an aside, I quoted Lamoriello at the draft in Dallas the week before saying he wouldn’t do a sign-and-trade but assumed, and apparently correctly, that was smart, calculated posturing to ensure the Islanders

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kept their leverage until the last possible moment that only they could give him eight years and nobody else).

So now agent Pat Brisson is handling Duchene’s situation he will want to move heaven and earth to try to get him the maximum eight years. Which could come in three different ways:

1. Re-signing with Ottawa, which by the hour is becoming less and less likely. The Senators are taking trade calls on him and those offers are getting increasingly serious as next Monday’s trade deadline approaches. Perhaps another contract offer comes their way which gives them pause but you just don’t get the feeling he’s signing.

2. Traded to a new team before Monday’s deadline and signing an extension with that new club either on the spot or after the season before

July 1. Because Duchene would be on that team’s reserve list before 3 p.m. ET Monday, it ensures he can sign for the max. Nashville would be

a potential example of this if the Predators do end up with Duchene. There could be interest that goes beyond this season in that scenario.

3. Go as a rental to a team but then hit the market. I think of Columbus here as an example that fits this description. Or Winnipeg. Those would

be rental-only situations, the Jets because of their salary cap issues beyond this season and the Jackets because I don’t know that Duchene would be interested in signing there although you never know once you get there, maybe he gets to like it after all. In any case, under this rental-only scenario, once Duchene picks his new team during the UFA speaking window in late June, Brisson can try to orchestrate a sign-and-trade between his rental team and the new team, that’s the only way to access the eight years.

Otherwise, if he simply signs with a new team on July 1, his max is seven years. And I really do think the eighth year matters here for Duchene at

his age (just turned 28). He should age gracefully enough given what a naturally gifted skater he is, but the bottom line is that given how teams

are more and more reluctant to invest top dollar in players in their 30s, now is the time to max out.

Now, where the Senators end up in all of this will be interesting as well. Clearly, GM Pierre Dorion will need to protect himself in a Duchene trade

ensuring there’s a conditional asset attached to any deal in case the player re-signs there. Ditto with a Stone trade. Think of the Evander Kane deal between Buffalo and San Jose last year.

Lots to manage in less than a week, for both the team and the agents, but here we are.

Marcus Johansson

I really believe pending UFA forward Marcus Johansson will be one of those sneaky trade deadline pickups. Because of injuries over the past few years in New Jersey, his stock has slipped. But he’s healthy now and producing of late. He looks more the part of the consistent 20-goal scorer

he was in Washington.

He has a five-team, no-trade list but I’m told it won’t be a factor at all in

terms of the deadline.

I would also keep an eye on Ray Shero; the Devils GM doesn’t like to

wait until deadline day if at all possible. Sometimes he has no choice but he’s already moved Brian Boyle and in years past he’s acted beforehand

as well, trading for Chris Kunitz years ago five days before the deadline, and there are other examples in his history. So if a team steps up this

week, he won’t hesitate and he won’t wait.

But he’s also not going to just dump a player. The Devils really like Johansson, he’s a great example for the younger players on the team. If their price is met, the Devils will deal him but if teams are bargain hunting, I think Shero is more than happy to keep him and perhaps sign him later.

Micheal Ferland

It is crazy to think but three weeks ago had a team offered a first-round

pick for Micheal Ferland it is almost a guarantee the Carolina Hurricanes

would have moved the pending UFA winger. Now because of the team’s torrid run and the playoffs being a real possibility, there’s a strong chance he stays put as the team’s own-rental.

He’d be an own rental because while there were conversations last week between GM Don Waddell and the player’s agent, Jason Davidson, it sounds like status quo as far as the player wanting to explore the July 1 market which is certainly his right.

Now, I’m not ready to say 100 percent he won’t be traded. The Canes are still listening when teams call. It will really depend at the end of the day on the quality of the offer versus the value the team sees in him

staying put for a few more months. Might end up being one of those 2:59 p.m. ET decisions come Monday.


1131846 Websites

The Athletic / What really happened to Ray Emery?

By Dan Robson

Standing on the edge, Ray Emery measured out the space between

where he was and where he planned to be.

A full-moon night had become dawn and soft light fell across the Royal

Hamilton Yacht Club on Hamilton Harbour, a bay off the western end of Lake Ontario. The surface was still, but the water beneath was murky,

tinged by the nearby steel mills.

Emery had stripped off his clothes – a leather-trimmed, zip-up sweatshirt

and a palm-tree print tank-top – down to his boxers. His frame revealed tattoos across his body. “PSAN,” the first initials of his four family members down the side of his torso. “Anger is a gift,” a personal mantra, on one arm. And, on both sides of his chest, Images of phoenixes rising.

He slipped off his Stanley Cup ring, engraved with the Chicago Blackhawks logo, and placed it next to his Louis Vuitton wallet on a table at the stern of the boat where he’d spent the early hours laughing and drinking with friends.

The challenge was nothing new. Emery boasted of his swimming abilities many times. A family video showed him crossing six lengths of a

backyard pool underwater on a single breath. He regularly pushed himself to faraway targets at the cottages he rented – including once

recently, when he came up short, gasping for air.

For Emery, every marked failure was a step on the course to victory. As

with the challenges he’d faced before, he bet he’d find his way through this one.

The other dock was at least 100 feet away. He told a friend wading in the water to move to the left, marking the spot where he’d angle his path beneath the surface.

“I’m coming for you,” he said.

On a full day without sleep, after playing his first hockey game in more than a year and a night out that hit the morning, he took a breath and dove out.

Emery drowned on July 15, 2018, at 35-years-old. The mysterious tragedy capped a fractured narrative, one that followed him throughout his life.

His NHL career had been defined by constant adversity, much of which seemed self-inflicted in his early years. Later, he overcame near-

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impossible odds to carve out a respectable run as a backup goalie and won the Stanley Cup in 2013.

But Emery struggled to adjust to life after retiring. He grappled with who he was without the game, just as he had while he was in it. He feared growing old and made choices that concerned his family and friends. And, once again, his lowest moments made headlines.

Those who knew Emery – who grew up with him, who played with him, who loved him – say there was much more to him than the headlines suggested. And they believed Emery was rising again, just as he always had before.

This time, however, he couldn’t.

Ray Emery, as a toddler, fishing. (Courtesy of Sharlene Emery)

In a small, snow-covered bungalow, next to a lake in Fenelon Falls, Ont., Sharlene Emery has decorated for the holidays as best she can. The tree in the living room is full of unique ornaments, the kind of decals that piece together stories a family carries through the years. Sharlene found it hard

to place the memories on the branches.

Christmas was her eldest son’s favourite time of year.

The Emery home is lined with photos that reflect a close-knit family: memories of long summer days by the lake, of cold winter nights warmed by heated board games, and the laughter of three raucous brothers.

Sharlene points to an album, opened to a picture of Ray as a toddler on a dock, fishing with a line tied to a branch.

“He loved fishing. He loved the water,” Sharlene says. “That’s why when Ray passed away in the water, it was like, how did that happen? Ray

always swam.”

Sharlene picks up a scrapbook filled with careful handwriting, chronicling

the small details of the earliest days of a boy named Raymond Robert Nichols. A trip to the shopping mall, where he rode a mechanical elephant. His first visit to Canada’s Wonderland.

It tells the story of a young, single mother determined to make life work for her infant son. And of a man who came along and loved them both.

Ray Emery’s unique life began just east of where it ended. Three-and-a-half decades ago, along the edge of the same harbour mentioned above, Sharlene Nichols had maneuvered an overhead crane, transporting coils,

in the belching smoke and fire of the Dofasco steel mill.

It wasn’t the job she’d dreamed of. But it was secure and steady.

Little came as planned in those early years of adulthood, ever since Sharlene learned she was pregnant at 20. It wasn’t a serious

relationship, and the man made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her or the child. He told her to have an abortion. She refused, certain the

pregnancy happened for a reason.

On Sept. 28, 1982, Raymond Nichols was born. Sharlene held her baby

in her arms and knew she was right: He was the greatest love of her life.

Sharlene left college and went on government support. She found a small apartment and navigated the new reality of their young lives together. She felt the eyes that followed her in the grocery store, watching her as she pushed her child with dark skin and curly hair. It seemed novel to the gawkers that her son was biracial. At first, it made Sharlene angry – but she learned to smile back and match the curiosity with kindness.

Her father, George, was not quite as forgiving. When a Dofasco co-worker made a joke about his white, unwed daughter having a black

child, George went over the lunchroom table and pummelled the man.

George landed his daughter the job at the mill. It was tough, gritty work,

but Sharlene was up for it. She rode her bike to the foundry each day while her grandmother cared for the little boy at home. She worked the

tin mill section, moving steel through the heat for hours, until she could pedal back to that small apartment and her son.

When Raymond turned two, Sharlene brought him to a children’s skating school put on by Dofasco. He wore trainer blades, and they shuffled around the company ice together. In an environment that could be crass and rough, Sharlene became friends with another crane operator who was funny, kind and caring.

At first, it was just friendship. Then just a little more.

Paul Emery was a year younger than Sharlene but seemed more mature and loving than any man she’d met. Eventually, they were attaching love

letters to the hooks on their cranes and swinging them across the mill until they could reach out and grab them.

When Sharlene first introduced Paul to her son, the toddler bit him hard in the butt. Through those first few months, whenever they sat close or

tried to hold hands, Raymond would wedge himself between the young couple. With time, however, Raymond grew fond of the man who hung

around, squirting water guns and playing sports with him. The four-and-a-half-year-old beamed in his grey suit, a little more than a year later, as he

walked down the aisle of Sharlene and Paul’s wedding, carrying their rings.

A few months later, Paul legally adopted him. Raymond Nichols became Ray Emery.

For the first time, he had a Dad.

A family at last: Sharlene, Ray, and Paul. (Courtesy of Sharlene Emery)

In the weeks that followed their son’s death, Sharlene and Paul Emery took the difficult drive to his house in Ancaster, just outside of Hamilton, to sort through items he’d collected throughout his life. Sharlene was touched by the realization her son had held on to so many items from his

past.

“He kept everything,” she said.

Many artifacts chronicled the family’s life in Cayuga, Ont., a small town a half hour from Hamilton. Sharlene and Paul had two more sons, Andy

and Nick, who were six and nine years younger than Ray. She quit the steel mill to raise their family while they relied on Paul’s lone income.

There was little to do in Cayuga’s country confines, so sports were a standard outlet. As one of the few black children in the community, Ray later told those close to him that in his youth he struggled with feelings of isolation and, at times, faced ridicule for being different.

But his talent set him apart: He was exceptional at every sport he played.

On the ice, he switched from defence to goal at nine-years-old, and his natural athleticism was impossible to ignore. Word of his talent spread, and he quickly graduated to the highest levels of minor hockey. Sharlene and George became staples at the old wooden barn that the Welland Tigers AAA team played in. As they stood at the railings and loudly

expressed their feelings during Ray’s games, mild-mannered Paul sat politely in the stands.

But it was Paul who would wake up at 4 a.m., nudge his son awake and drive him through the cold to practice. After those frigid, predawn skates,

they’d rush back to drop Ray off at school, and Paul would head to work.

It was a grind, but Paul never regretted a trip. He and Sharlene did

everything they could to give Ray a chance to excel in the game. They sent him to Kenesky’s goalie school in Hamilton each summer, where he

spent his days learning the finer points of the position. Unable to afford expensive upgrades to goalie gear, Paul did constant repairs himself, welding broken points in the cage of his son’s helmet and gluing in pieces of rubber when padding fell out.

A unique bond grew between Ray and Paul in those years. Sharlene sometimes wondered if her son would ever want to learn more about his biological father. The man had spent some time in jail, she says, but she didn’t know where he was — and she didn’t want his influence in her

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son’s life. Still, it worried Sharlene when she learned Ray had been telling people his biological father was dead. She told him she couldn’t be sure if he was alive, but that if he ever wanted to, she’d understand if he went looking for him. Ray told her he didn’t care to.

Years later, he wondered about his own DNA and what he described as an inner “fire” he couldn’t comprehend. But Ray resisted tracking down his biological father.

Paul was the most important man in his life, he’d say — the only father he needed.

When Ray was old enough to play junior hockey, he and Paul drove from

camp to camp trying to find a spot. But Ray was cut from seven different teams. The constant rejection stung, and, at 16, he told his parents he

wanted to quit. They encouraged him to stick with it. Finally, after the season started, he landed a spot with the Dunnville Terriers, a Junior C

team in a league that was short on talent but heavy on brawls.

The Terriers were terrible. Ray often faced more than 60 shots a game.

They won three games the entire season and Ray posted a 6.36 goals-against average. That summer, despite his less than stellar numbers,

Emery was invited to a prospects camp put on by player agent J.P. Barry.

Barry was impressed by Emery’s drive. Even though he needed work on the technical side of his game, the veteran NHL agent believed Emery had enough potential to make it.

The Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds selected Emery in the fifth round of the OHL draft that year. The following spring, he carried them to the conference finals. The next season, he was named the Greyhounds’ MVP.

Even with his rising success, the weight of OHL hockey was sometimes

hard. Relentlessly competitive, Emery didn’t handle slumps well. And in some rinks, fans fired racists taunts at him. During a game in North Bay,

one shouted: “Put the black kid in – he sucks!” Emery found the incident amusing.

But he also faced racism on the ice, as players sought to provoke him. One opponent was suspended four games when a referee heard him call

Emery a monkey.

Emery wasn’t expected to be selected in the first round of the 2001 NHL draft, but he made sure he was at the event in Sunrise, Fla. He believed he’d hear his name. His mother and father, Grandpa George, and brother Nick made the trip, too. As each selection passed without Emery’s name being called, they grew more concerned that he might not be picked.

Finally, in the fourth round, 99th overall, the Ottawa Senators selected him. The kid from Cayuga, who’d been overlooked by seven junior teams, was going to the NHL.

Just like he said.

At his Ancaster home, Emery kept a collection of his old masks in glass cases. Most carried his nickname, Razor, and were painted with his

favourite designs – like the one with the image of boxers Marvin Hagler and Jack Johnson. He also kept discs with old television interviews and

articles that told the story of his rollercoaster of an NHL career. There are action shots that chronicle his rising fame, including several of him mid-

fight, like his infamous scrap with Sabres goalie Martin Biron.

Emery often smiled as he fought, seeming to enjoy the sport of it. He told

friends about the motivation that anger provided when harnessed.

Emery was a rising talent in Ottawa. It was clear early he had the potential to be an NHL starter. He helped the team to the Stanley Cup final in 2007, his second NHL season, and was rewarded with a three-year, $9.5-million contract that summer.

At the same time, Emery’s behaviour off the ice created tension with the team and headlines in the press. He hung out with friends he later admitted were a bad influence. Rumours of partying and substance

abuse swirled. He was late for practices. He clashed with coaches. He was called out publicly by teammates, including Daniel Alfredsson. Management asked Emery if he had an issue with drugs. Barry cut him as a client after the embattled goalie repeatedly ignored his calls.

A year after signing his lucrative contract, Emery was bought out. He was out of the league.

It was a long way to fall, which only made his eventual return more spectacular. This seemed to be where Emery thrived, on the edge of losing everything he’d worked for. After being released from the Senators, Emery admitted that he’d lost track of his priorities. He went to

counselling. He apologized to Barry, and the agent agreed to represent him again.

Emery spent the next season in the KHL, which was one of the loneliest experiences of his life. But he returned to the NHL the following season,

on a one-year, $1.5-million contract with the Philadelphia Flyers. That winter, just when it seemed like he’d fought his way back, Emery was

diagnosed with avascular necrosis, a degenerative hip disorder that not only threatened his career but also his ability to walk.

Emery underwent controversial surgery, in which a piece of his fibula was grafted to his femur to reintroduce blood supply to his hip.

Ray at the cottage while rehabbing his hip injury. (Courtesy of Keshia Chanté)

After being bedridden for more than a month in excruciating pain, Emery spent that summer at a cottage, stuck in a cast and driving around in a golf cart. Around that time, he began a relationship with Canadian pop singer Keshia Chanté.

She visited him at the cottage and was struck by how fun and dynamic Emery was, despite his pain and the uncertainty of his future. They

connected over a shared love of music. He was an expert on every genre, from country to hip hop, Chanté says. (His all-time favourite song

was “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison – and he could sing along to everything from Joss Stone to Jay Z.)

Emery even wrote his own lyrics and considered studying to become a producer.

Beyond shared interests, Chanté found they also understood each other in ways that were hard for others to comprehend.

“We related because we both didn’t really know where we belonged in the world,” Chanté says. “That happens to a lot of people who are biracial: You’re never really black enough for black people, and you never really feel like you belong in a white crowd. It’s a really weird dynamic, and it’s really difficult to understand. But he struggled with that.”

Although he didn’t like to talk about race, Emery feared not belonging, Chanté says. Because of that, he seemed to only reveal himself in fragments. He rarely gave people everything while finding a way to

seemingly belong with everyone.

“He gave everybody certain layers of himself, but nobody got to know

him fully, the way that I got to know him,” Chanté says. “With his friends, they would get the funny Ray, the macho Ray. Some people would get

Ray’s ego. They wouldn’t get Ray. His family got the family person who was really into making memories and having quality time with them. But

the Ray that I got to see, he was complicated and he was dynamic. But he was so loving. He was affectionate. He was so passionate.”

Emery also found it hard to say no. He liked to please people and wanted to include his friends in the glamorous life he’d achieved. He openly admitted that his social life and poor choices distracted him through the early part of his career, but he also expressed frustration for how he’d been portrayed in Ottawa. He felt he’d been targeted and made into something he wasn’t.

The resentment helped fuel Emery’s desire to return and prove doubters wrong. And his fiery competitiveness kept him going. Despite being told

CAROLINA HURRICANES


there was a chance he’d never walk again, Emery swore he’d make it back to the NHL – and that when he did, he wouldn’t squander it.

As soon as Emery was able to walk on his own, he contacted performance coach Matt Nichol to help him get back in playing shape. At first, Nichol wasn’t sure. Emery’s reputation was one thing. But it would be difficult to get him to a place where he could make basic movements, let alone back to a level capable of playing in the NHL.

Even if he did, it was unlikely a team would take a chance on him, given his past. When Nichol told him about his reservations, Emery stared into his eyes.

“You fix my hip,” he said. “I’ll worry about playing in the NHL.”

Emery worked in Nichol’s gym twice a day for hours at a time, doing

monotonous, repetitive, painful rehab. Slowly, he pushed through the frustration and learned how to move like a goalie again, working

alongside his friend and coach Eli Wilson. He ran through exercises in the pool. He underwent daily acupuncture. When he was able, he

practiced dance moves at the National Ballet of Canada.

Within five months, Emery signed with the Anaheim Ducks and helped

push them into the 2011 playoffs, earning a nomination for the Bill Masterton Trophy.

“I’m still not sure how he did it,” Nichol says.

After Anaheim, Emery found a home in Chicago as a second goalie with the Blackhawks. During the 2012-13 season, he stepped in to replace injured starter Corey Crawford in the second half, at one point winning 10 straight games. He backed-up Crawford throughout the playoffs as the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup.

Before the final hockey game of his life, Emery sent his family a message. It was a group text with an Instagram post promoting the

charity event he’d been invited to play in. It featured a photo of him with the Flyers, his last NHL team.

“Home town vet RAY EMERY will be between the pipes!!” Zac Rinaldo, his former teammate and organizer of the fundraiser to help fight child

hunger, had typed beneath the post.

“Wish me luck…” Emery wrote to his family. “Hope I don’t pop a hip…”

“Good luck,” his brother Andy replied, with an emoji of an old man.

The years following Emery’s final season with the Flyers had been hard. He posted a disappointing .894 save percentage in 31 games that year, as it became apparent he could no longer rely on his athleticism, especially as his hip nagged him.

As a free agent the next summer, Emery received no offers from NHL teams. That September, Emery was invited to skate with the Tampa Bay Lightning, hoping for one last shot at sticking in the league.

Chanté made the journey with him. The idea of life after the game was

difficult for Emery, she says. He hated the idea of breaking down physically and not being able to do the remarkable things that previously defined his life. He worried about his mind still working while his body

couldn’t.

The phone rang on September 28, which was Emery’s 33rd birthday. The Lightning told him there wasn’t a spot for him on the roster. As he hung up, tears welled in his eyes.

Emery then began to crisscross the continent, hoping for another path to extend his NHL career. He took a tryout contract with the AHL’s Ontario Reign. When that was done, he returned home and practiced with the OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs. He looked to Russia, signing a contract with Admiral Vladivostok of the KHL, before the deal fell through.

Just before Christmas, Toronto Marlies GM Kyle Dubas asked Emery if he would join the team on a tryout. Dubas was a teenager working for the Greyhounds when Emery had starred in Sault Ste Marie. The Marlies

were shorthanded in goal because of injuries, so it was unlikely the role would be permanent.

Emery played three games with Marlies. Then, he and Chanté moved to Europe, where he signed a deal to play with the Mannheim Eagles in the German league.

Of all the valleys Emery had been in before, the looming end of his career was the hardest. Life after hockey is often difficult for players who spend so much time in the insular culture of the game. While Emery didn’t love hockey the all-consuming way some players do, he thrived in the highs and lows of life in the show. He craved the competition. And the

physicality that helped him get rid of the “fire in his chest,” Chanté says.

Emery felt comfortable in the brotherhood. He knew he fit in a locker

room.

He tried to settle into retired life. He golfed often, returning to a sport he’d

loved since he was a teenager. He dabbled in a variety of ventures, thinking about new careers to embark on. As always, Emery hung out

with friends from all areas of his life. He was the kind of person who was as loyal to a middle-school buddy from Cayuga as he was to his closest

NHL teammates, gregarious and generous with any of them, all the same. And he was quick to add to his ever-growing circle.

Emery created a world where it seemed like he had everything under control, says Chanté. But his social life strained their relationship. His life lacked structure without the NHL, she says, even though few people saw that he was struggling. Chanté feared Emery was filling the void by staying out late with friends, indulging in questionable behaviour. She worried something might happen to him, and he might not make it home.

“You only get a year to be retired,” Chanté told Emery. “I can’t do the summer that never ends.”

Sharlene Emery worried, too. She leaned on her faith, hoping her son would find his way out of a lifestyle she didn’t agree with. But there was

little more she could do.

“You’re either going one way or you’re going to choose another way. And

for Ray, he didn’t find his own way. And he got lost. I know he got lost. He was using things that maybe he shouldn’t have,” Sharlene says. “As a

mom, as a parent, we talked about it, we had to be there for him, we had family that were trying to be there for him – and I think at times I saw glimpses of him being so successful and being content with himself. But then I saw other times where he was struggling.”

In June, 2017, Emery’s seven-year relationship with Chanté ended when she called off their wedding. Emery was devastated. It was a difficult, fiery breakup. Things got worse that fall when photos alleging to show Emery using cocaine in a hotel room were posted on a gossip website.

Then, in October, Chanté sought a restraining order against Emery, based on what she described as a series of frightening incidents and a

threatening message he left her while inebriated.

“It was very scary,” Chanté says. “I did what I needed to do to protect

myself. The goal was never for Ray to get charged, for Ray to have a record, or for Ray to never be able to work again. I was very clear – I just

wanted a restraining order.”

Hamilton police believed the evidence she provided was grounds to

charge Emery with assault with a weapon and uttering threats. He spent a night in jail. The charges were later dismissed when he completed

mandated anger management counselling, at Chanté’s request.

“It was sad that it became public,” she says, “Because it wasn’t really anyone’s business. And that added more fuel to the fire.”

In the aftermath of the breakup, the gossipy headlines, and his own behaviour, Emery found himself in another dark place. He spent time with his family. He spoke to Sharlene about concerns he was growing old. She worried about his self-esteem.

He seemed stuck, unsure of where life would take him next.

CAROLINA HURRICANES


But, as the months passed, Emery started to piece his future together. He was dating someone new — and, he told his family, was starting to feel good about where his path was heading. He made plans to move to London, Ont., where his former teammate and close friend Dave Bolland lived. He intended to study financial management and join a firm that one of his friends owned.

That November, Emery helped his parents move his brother Andy from Toronto to Ottawa, where he was setting up his legal practice. When the family gathered at Christmas, Emery joked that, at 35, he was too old for a stocking from Santa, then played a board game that slapped pie in his

face. Later that winter, Emery went ice fishing with his parents on Georgian Bay, sitting out in the hut chatting for hours. On Mother’s Day,

he agreed to go to church with Sharlene, which was something he had always avoided.

Emery and Chanté also met in Toronto and spent a day together in the spring, talking through their conflict.

“We rehashed everything in detail,” Chanté says. “It was a tough day.”

It was filled with anger, tears, and frustration. But the meeting brought

some closure to the turmoil they’d endured, and for Chanté, some hope for a reconciled future.

Ray and Keshia in happy times in 2010. (Courtesy of Keshia Chanté)

Emery woke up early on the morning of July 14, 2018, and drove to Toronto to work with a group of young goalies for a few hours. He arrived back home in Hamilton early in the afternoon.

Mark Nicholson, a 51-year-old friend known as “Worm,” had been living at Emery’s place for several weeks and was asleep on the couch. Emery met Nicholson through mutual friends in Hamilton more than a dozen years earlier. He woke Nicholson up and asked him to give him a hand

getting ready for the charity game that evening.

They searched through the cold storage room in his basement, where

Emery kept all his old gear. He settled on a pair of white pads with black trim and a mask he wore with the Flyers. He loaded his gear into his

white Dodge Ram and drove to the Gateway Ice Centre in Stoney Creek, Ont. He arrived two hours before puck drop, needing time to warm-up his

surgically-repaired hip.

In the dressing room, Emery smiled and laughed with his former NHL colleagues. Marlies veteran Rich Clune, an old teammate, snapped a photo of Emery as he tied his skates. His face was full and carried signs of his looming middle age. But in spirit, Emery seemed young and vibrant. He told his friends about the new ventures he was excited to pursue. He was looking forward to what came next.

The charity game wasn’t a defensive battle on the ice, but Emery held his own, making several big saves as the packed crowd cheered. Afterward, he sipped a beer with his pals as fans lined up to get their autographs.

The group headed out to join an after-party at another bar.

Before he left, Emery noticed a fan, maybe 12-years-old, wearing a

Hamilton minor hockey sweater with 30 – a goalie’s number – on it. He walked over and handed him his autographed game-worn sweater.

Emery shook the boy’s hand and left the arena.

The afterparty was hosted at Koi, a well-known Hamilton restaurant co-

owned by one of Emery’s close friends, Boris, who asked that his last name not be used in this story. Several players who were part of the

charity game hung out as music boomed in the background. Emery chatted through the evening, as popular as ever.

When the party died down, after last call, Boris invited Emery and Nicholson to continue the evening on a boat owned by one of his friends. They drove in Boris’ car to the marina. The four men then sat in the stern, chatting and sipping beer. Emery, who had never met Boris’ friend, struck up a conversation about the speed boat. Emery was enamoured by watercraft and had long considered buying his own.

Around 4 a.m., Boris went home. Emery and Nicholson stayed on the boat, chatting with their new friend.

“It was just a chill night,” Nicholson says, insisting that he and Emery only had two beers on the water.

As dawn approached, Nicholson says Emery made a bet that he could swim underwater to a dock at least 100 feet away. This was Emery pushing the limits and seeking thrills, like old times.

Nicholson told Emery he didn’t need to swim to the other dock, but he insisted. He was having a good time and put Nicholson in a playful headlock. “You’re my boy! You’re going in!” Nicholson remembers him

saying. At the time, the owner of the boat had walked away to do something near the gate of the marina, Nicholson says. (The man has

not commented on what happened that night, aside from speaking with police.)

The sun wasn’t up yet, but the sky was getting light. They could see across the marina. They both stripped down to their boxers. Nicholson

jumped in first, and Emery told him where to tread water, so he could dive into the path he planned to take to the other side.

Emery stood on the edge, readying himself. “I’m coming for you,” he said.

He took a breath and dove in.

Nicholson swam back to the dock, next to the boat. He climbed out and sat on the edge, facing the slip that he thought Emery swam to. It seemed to be taking a while, but Nicholson didn’t think anything of it until the owner of the boat walked back up and asked where Emery was.

They watched for a few more moments, but Emery never emerged. They panicked.

“Ray!” Nicholson yelled. “Ray?”

The water was calm.

The boat owner put on a lifejacket, jumped in and started swimming toward the other dock. Nicholson returned to the spot where Emery had gone under. He pushed himself beneath the water, kicking and swinging his arms. He couldn’t see anything in the darkness. He swam back to the surface, gasped for another breath and went back under, flailing in the water trying to find Emery. He came up, coughing.

The owner of the boat came back from the other side and said Emery

wasn’t there and that they needed to call the police. Nicholson put his jeans on and ran down the dock, looking between the boats, thinking Emery might have been playing a joke.

The police arrived at the yacht club shortly after the call went out at 6:20

a.m. As the owner went to let them in, Nicholson took his jeans off and jumped back into the water, which was about 20 feet deep. But there was no sign of Emery.

The officers yelled at Nicholson to get out, but he kept trying to dive

down. They eventually used a rescue pole to hook Nicholson and pull him back in. He yelled at the officers to get in the water. Nicholson says he was in shock and so unhinged the police threatened to restrain him.

Well over 20 minutes had passed since Emery had gone under. If he was still in the water, it was now a body recovery operation — not a rescue.

Television trucks began to arrive. The sun was up, low over the harbour. A police diving unit was called in to search for Emery’s body.

Nicholson was taken to the police station, where he was questioned for two hours as to whether he had anything to do with what happened. They asked him if they had gotten in a fight and if he had struck Emery in the

head. Nicholson was incredulous, insisting Emery was one of his closest friends. He couldn’t have hurt him.

“He just dove in the water, three feet beside me,” Nicholson says. “And he never came up.”

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Sometime between 10 and 11 a.m. that morning, a police officer arrived at Sharlene and Paul Emery’s house and told them their son was missing and presumed drowned. The police wanted to contact them before the media reported it. Sharlene ran to a neighbour’s house and collapsed at their door. Paul busied himself on the phone, dialing family and friends, weeping between each call.

It took eight hours for the marine search unit to locate Emery’s body, 68 feet from where he dove in, on a directly diagonal path from the dock.

After a brief investigation, police ruled out foul play. They called the tragedy a case of “misadventure.”

The Emery Family: Nick, Paul, Ray, Sharlene, and Andy. (Courtesy of Sharlene Emery)

A week after his death, hundreds of Emery’s friends gathered at the same restaurant he’d been at the morning he drowned. They were there

to pay tribute to a man who connected them in immeasurable ways. It was meant to be a celebration of Emery’s life, but many were still

grappling with the realization that he was gone.

Sharlene, wearing her son’s white Blackhawks sweater and Stanley Cup

champions cap, met with as many familiar faces as she could.

Jason Spezza approached Sharlene and struggled to find words. “This is hard for me,” he told her. They’d been close since he and Emery had lived with Brian McGrattan in the minors, as the trio navigated the uneasy transition from boyhood into life as professional hockey players. Emery helped loosen up Spezza, who was admittedly “not the coolest guy” coming into pro hockey. He prodded the star constantly, mocking his taste in clothes. Emery gave Spezza nicknames that he couldn’t repeat for publication more than a dozen years later.

Their profound friendship had a lasting impact.

“Razor is one of my closest friends,” Spezza said, still referring to Emery in the present tense, six months after his death. “He’s one of the most

loyal people I have in my life.”

Now in the final years of his career with the Dallas Stars, Spezza recently

thought about how nice it would be when he was done playing to be back in Ontario living close to Emery again, enjoying the memories as they

grew old.

It was a sentiment felt by many at the memorial that day. Throughout the restaurant were people from every part of Emery’s life.

There was his teenage buddy and Dunnville teammate, Joey Baird, now a Hamilton police officer — who Emery had taken out golfing at a swanky club the week before he died. “He always wanted to take care of us,” Baird says of Emery’s constant effort to share his fortune with his friends. “He was so good to us.”

And there was Paul Schonfelder, Emery’s best friend since they were teenagers working at Kenesky’s goalie school in Hamilton. They stuck

beside each other, like brothers, ever since. Schonfelder had been excited to see what his friend was about to conquer next.

“He had the brains to do anything he wanted,” he said.

A few weeks later, Sharlene and Paul unpacked the items from their

son’s house. They hung his old sweaters on a rack. They stacked his gear in the furnace room. The Jennings Trophy he won with the

Blackhawks sits beneath the stairs, near a photo of Emery with his late-friend Steve Montador resting his head on his shoulder.

Across the room, a miniature version of the Stanley Cup sits on a table, near a small cherrywood box that holds Emery’s ashes. It’s engraved with a golfer holding the arc of his swing, as his brothers wanted to remember him doing something he loved. It includes the words: “Forever in our hearts.”

Nearby, the family keeps two glass cases that display Emery’s favourite masks. Among the colourful, professional designs, there was also a plain

black one: The helmet Paul welded together and repaired while his son was finding his way in the game.

As an adult, Emery told his friends that Paul was the model for the kind of man and father he hoped to be. Although they rarely shared sappy words, Paul knew he had his son’s respect, even though he brushed it off as undeserved.

But among Emery’s things, Paul came across a piece of scrap paper on which is his son had scribbled out the words to a rap song:

“Once upon a time in a town called the Hammer

I was born to a single mother …

Other mothafucka said he didn’t want me

It was just us two til I was about 3

Ma found a guy who actually cared about me

They got married and yours truly was adopted

And right there I got the best Dad I always wanted…”

Paul’s eyes welled as he read it. He brought the paper home and scans it often, the same way he scrolls to the last text message Emery sent him, with a picture of him holding a massive pickerel he’d caught at a cottage.

Every member of Emery’s family has found their own way to preserve the

pieces that help hold the memory of him together. Nick lined his basement with Emery’s old sticks, sweaters, and masks – along with the

picture of his brother meeting Barack Obama. Andy set aside a piece of paper his brother scribbled on to congratulate him after he’d been called

to the bar. “Proud of ya Bro!!! Hopefully I don’t need your help anytime soon!” he wrote. “Big shot lawyer… Love ya, Ray.”

Emery’s grandfather, George, flips through massive scrapbooks of all the articles he’d clipped from newspapers about his grandson and shares tall

tales of limo rides with him through Manhattan, visits to high-roller casinos, and early morning coffees.

In the months that followed Emery’s death, Sharlene continued to meet with her son’s friends, even those she wasn’t familiar with. She drove to Hamilton and sat down with Nicholson, who she didn’t know. He was still badly shaken and had been having nightmares about drowning.

He told her the story of that morning, about how he’d tried to save her son and how haunted he was that he couldn’t. Sharlene told Nicholson

that she couldn’t understand why they were out that late, and why they decided to go swimming. They cried together. Sharlene gave him a vial

of her son’s ashes and asked him to take good care of them.

Sharlene often stayed up through the night on the Internet, trying to find

out how her son, such a strong swimmer, could have drowned. The most logical conclusion was that he suffered what’s known as a shallow-water

blackout, where a swimmer passes out while holding their breath too long.

But the answers yielded little comfort. Nothing could bring him back.

One day last fall, Sharlene went to the basement and picked up one of her son’s old goalie helmets from the glass case. She carefully placed the mask on her head and pulled it down. She wanted to be near him again; to be close to her son, any way she could.

She picked up an old portrait of him in his mask and stared at the image through the steel webbing of the cage.

“Why did you do what you did?” she said. “Why did this have to happen?”

Thirty-six years earlier, she believed that her unexpected pregnancy had occurred for a divine reason. Ray was a gift from God, she thought – and

looking at her son, again, she knew that she was right.

But how could he be gone so soon?

“Why?”

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Tears fell beneath the mask as she searched her son’s eyes. They were still, with no clear distance to the answers deep within them.


1131847 Websites

Sportsnet.ca / Slow start costs Maple Leafs a second point in road trip

finale

Chris Johnston | February 20, 2019

ST. LOUIS — The same game, a big Toronto Maple Leafs comeback, but two views on what ultimately became an overtime loss to the NHL’s hottest team.

"We can’t be happy with that," said Mitch Marner. "If we played the whole 60 like we did in the second and third, I thought we could have won this game. It’s nice coming back with one [point] at least but this was a game I think we could have gotten two from."

"We battled back after the first part of the game," teammate Frederik

Andersen said moments later. "I thought we weren’t really there, but we figured out that we wanted to compete with these guys… Unfortunately,

we didn’t get the last straw there in overtime, but I’m proud of the way we battled back."

Both opinions had merit after a 3-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues on a slushy Tuesday night in the Midwest. It all depended on where you stood.

This was a game the Leafs had built up internally — coming at the end of a six-game, cross-continent road trip against an opponent riding a 10-

game win streak. Mike Babcock had said: "I think it’s so important for our team to play in this game, to be involved in it."

They were, once they lost Nazem Kadri to a first-period concussion and fell behind 2-0 inside a frenzied Enterprise Center.

That forced William Nylander into the middle of a line flanked by Andreas Johnsson and Connor Brown. They played well.

The comeback came after some strong work from John Tavares and Zach Hyman — with Hyman’s centring pass accidentally being knocked

by Blues defenceman Joel Edmundson into his own goal — followed by Auston Matthews establishing position at the top of the crease to make it

2-2 on the next shift.

"A big key for us to begin with was just getting on the inside," said

Matthews. "They’re a big team, they keep you on the outside and once we did that we started to get more and more chances and scored some

goals and battled back."

This was a tough opponent for a skilled team that many observers

believe should be in the market for a rugged winger at the trade deadline. For the last 40 minutes, anyways, the Maple Leafs dispelled that working theory.

Toronto controlled 54 per cent of the even-strength shot attempts and split the scoring chances. Playing down a centre and on the road, they didn’t get pushed outside against a strong defence corps that has four players standing six-foot-four or above.

Absent a beautiful Ryan O’Reilly goal in overtime following a Marner turnover, they could have left here with two points.

"They had their way with us in the first," said Marner. "We came in [the

dressing room] and talked about how we need to be a lot better and help Fred out more and how we’ve got to get on their D-men a lot more. I think

in the second, our whole goal was making sure we’re coming back,

talking to our [defence], getting the puck in our hands as quick as possible and breaking out a lot quicker.

"As soon as we did that, I thought we had success."

It was a fair road trip, all things considered.

They finished 3-2-1 and only had one poor outing — Saturday night in

Arizona. But it’s clear this group is aiming to be more than it has been to now. We are approaching the stretch drive and the Leafs are starting to demand a little bit more from themselves.

"I mean the game’s so simple," said Babcock. "If you work hard, you get

rewarded, and if you don’t work hard enough, you don’t. When you’re playing real good teams you’ve got to be ready to go right at the start. Tonight we weren’t at their level at the start and in the end it probably

cost us a point.

"But I like a lot of things we did today. A big step for our team."

Sportsnet.ca LOADED: 02.20.2019

1131848 Websites

Sportsnet.ca / Carey Price deserves the credit for halting Canadiens' skid

Eric Engels February 20, 2019

MONTREAL — Max Domi took a lap around the ice as the first star of a game the Montreal Canadiens won 3-2 over the Columbus Blue Jackets while Carey Price sat at his stall peeling off his equipment.

Domi scored his 20th goal of the season 1:21 into the game, and before the night was over he skated 19:13, had three shots on net and won 50 per cent of his faceoffs.

Paul Byron, who had missed six games with a left-arm injury, scored his 11th goal of the season to give the Canadiens a 2-0 lead in the 18th minute of the first period. Teammate Tomas Tatar capitalized on a beautiful pass from Jordie Benn to score the game-winner with just under seven minutes remaining in the third period and he was named the third star thereafter. And Nate Thompson, who was skating in Phillip Danault’s place next to Tatar and Brendan Gallagher, greeted the media wearing

the team-awarded, player-of-the-game, Game-of-Thrones-style cape for winning 67 per cent of his faceoffs and displaying an impressive effort in

hounding the puck all over the ice.

And Price, who made 31 saves to match his jersey number, stood up and

deflected praise when it was finally his turn to speak.

“I thought the rest of our guys were doing a good job of reading [plays]…”

he said.

Without him they’d have been staring down the barrel of a fifth straight

loss. Instead they gained two more points of breathing room on the charging Carolina Hurricanes and leapt over the Blue Jackets and into the first wild-card position in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

The Canadiens came into the game with their confidence shaken by three consecutive regulation losses to the likes of the Nashville Predators, Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers. They needed someone to lead them out of their funk and Price was up to the task.

“We had a tough road trip, we had some tough games,” said Tatar. “I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t easy. We kind of knew we had to battle really hard to win this game, and you could see we didn’t have as much

confidence [to start] as in our previous home games.”

But Price’s was well intact from the second the puck dropped. The game

was barely a minute old when he made the point-blank stop on Blue

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Jackets defenceman David Savard that led to the break Domi took down the ice to open the scoring. He then made huge saves on Anthony Duclair and Oliver Bjorkstrand in the fifth minute and came flying out of his net to the top of his crease to stymie a glorious scoring chance for Seth Jones.

“He got a lot of composite on that one,” said Price. “He definitely got all of it, but I feel like from there I should be making that save.”

There were so many he made in this game that most others wouldn’t have stopped. Three of them on Josh Anderson alone—including one on a shorthanded breakaway in the second period that forced him into a full

split—were pivotal.

Earlier in the second, it was Anderson who beat Price with an

unstoppable shot on a 2-on-1 break to narrow Montreal’s lead. And in the third period, on another 2-on-1 rush, he took a shot off Price’s pad to give

Nick Foligno a rebound goal that tied the game.

But the Canadiens’ goaltender continued to turn aside quality chances,

putting the team on his back and carrying them to a crucial win.

Price hadn’t been called upon to do that through a 6-2-2 start to the

season for Montreal. In November, he struggled to be the difference for them. But since Dec. 1, he’s been otherworldly—going 16-9-1 and posting a .929 save percentage.

“He’s certainly picked up his game,” said Byron. “Everyone talks about the second half being on another level. The league tightens up, that’s when you really see how good teams are, how good players are, and he’s just taken his game to a new level. Every single night he gives us a chance to win. Every single night he’s making these highlight saves for us. We give up breakaways, 2-on-1s, and we’re able to play a little bit more aggressive because we know he’s going to make that save. He

certainly works hard for us and he’s been incredible.”

Some of Price’s best stuff of the night came after Tatar scored his goal.

There was the stop he made when Columbus’ leading goal scorer, Cam Atkinson, skated out of the corner and got a clean look from the slot.

There was another where he pivoted and gloved a perfect one-timer from Zach Werenski. And he stoned Anderson with nine seconds left in the

third period.

“That’s usually what you need to get out of something like what we were going through,” said Gallagher. “It seemed like we weren’t giving up a ton of shots but the ones we were giving up were prime, prime scoring chances. They were breakaways, 2-on-1s, chances from right in front, and he made some unbelievable saves. That’s an incredible performance from him.”

It was certainly one that deserved a bit more spotlight.


1131849 Websites

Sportsnet.ca / 31 Thoughts: Could a stealth suitor emerge for Matt Duchene?

Elliotte Friedman February 19, 2019, 10:01 AM

I loathe the pre-deadline edition of the blog because things change incredibly quickly — making my work even less accurate than normal.

So, no wordy top. Let’s get right to it. Mostly quick hitters this week.

31 THOUGHTS

1. So, when do the Blues remove Craig Berube’s “interim” tag?

2. Barring a massive swerve, Matt Duchene will be traded. There are undoubtedly more suitors than Columbus and Nashville, but they are the two most mentioned. I’m not convinced Winnipeg is interested at this time, and if I had to pick a stealth destination, I’d choose either Calgary or the Islanders. (If GM Marc Bergevin wasn’t on record as being against rentals, Montreal would be on that list, too.) There is talk that if he ends up in Tennessee, both player and team will work to make it a long-term relationship. Let’s see if Predators GM David Poile gets any extensions done in the near future with arbitration eligibles like Ryan Hartman and Colton Sissons, or Kevin Fiala — coming out of his entry-level contract.

That would give him a better idea of the cap room he’s got to play with, assuming none of those players are involved in a potential trade. (Aside:

Boy, do the Predators love Sissons. They can’t say enough good things about him.)

3. Columbus’s offer for Duchene screams Alexander Wennberg as part of it. Wennberg desperately needs a new start; he’s got zero even-

strength goals. I just don’t know if Ottawa would be willing to gamble on the contract, at a $4.9-million AAV through June 2023.

4. My guess on Mark Stone is the Senators came at him with bigger money at less than max term. There were rumblings of five years at $10.5 million, but it was denied. That number would put him with Patrick Kane as the highest-paid winger in the NHL, but leaves money on the table Stone would try to recoup at age 32. His decision comes in the next few days. Chris Johnston reported on Headlines he thinks Vegas won’t do it as a rental. Winnipeg is definitely there. So is Calgary. Undoubtedly, there are others.

5. I think Ryan Dzingel’s future has a lot to do with Stone’s decision. We probably won’t know about Cody Ceci until closer to the deadline. There’s also been traction on another righty, the Rangers’ Adam McQuaid.

6. One GM said last week most fanbases would gladly take Ottawa’s youth and prospect base of Drake Batherson, Logan Brown, Thomas Chabot, Filip Chlapik, Alex Formenton, Filip Gustavsson, Christian Jaros, Josh Norris, Brady Tkachuk, Colin White, Christian Wolanin and whatever is acquired in trades — even without their upcoming first-

rounder.

“There are some good bets in there,” he said. That is the Senators’

biggest challenge: overcoming the lack of faith in ownership that overshadows everything else.

7. Stealth team for Artemi Panarin: Dallas. The Stars have also checked in on Mats Zuccarello.

8. I think the teams with the best chances at signing Panarin long-term are Florida, Los Angeles, the Islanders and the Rangers. The only one

that makes sense to take a shot at him for rental purposes is the Islanders. Boston hovers as a rental option, too. If the Islanders don’t get their top choices, GM Lou Lamoriello could consider old acquaintance Ilya Kovalchuk. Remember, the winger has control over his destination.

9. If the Blue Jackets don’t get Duchene, the obvious focus is Kevin Hayes. They have lots of history with the Rangers, too.

10. Sergei Bobrovsky’s situation is murky. He’s signalled he’s willing to consider certain locations, but there is no indication he’s actually put that down on paper. Writing makes it binding, and there is doubt he wants to lose that leverage. One possibility: an extension in exchange for waiving.

It is also believed Columbus made its own recent extension attempt, but things don’t sound optimistic.

A weekly deep dive into the biggest hockey news in the world with hosts Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek. New episodes every Thursday.

11. Winnipeg is going to be aggressive. There’s a limit, but the Jets have a deep pool of prospects and a willingness to move their first-rounder.

Other teams were joking that Kevin Cheveldayoff was going to chain Pierre Dorion in the MTS basement until Stone was traded there.

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12. Edmonton’s held firm on Jesse Puljujarvi so far, not jumping at lowball trade attempts. But the Oilers know they’ve got a very unhappy player.

13. Nick Kypreos reported Saturday that James Neal will be out awhile. Remember in 2015, when Patrick Kane returned from injury at the start of the playoffs, as the salary cap doesn’t matter in the post-season? If I were Flames GM Brad Treliving, I’d think about the possibilities.

14. Potential left-shot depth defender for Calgary: Colorado’s Patrik Nemeth. The Avalanche are trying to move Sven Andrighetto, too. Treliving is very careful when discussing his goaltending situation. He

wants to bolster the confidence c of David Rittich and Mike Smith, not rattle them.

15. Don’t think Toronto’s stopped looking at right-handed defensive options. Doubt Kyle Dubas went to Vancouver/Anaheim last week for the

Honda Centre’s famous pizza with fire-roasted vegetables.

16. Zuccarello and Wayne Simmonds may have to wait until the

Duchene/Stone/Panarin situations settle. A mix of similar teams looking at both: Boston, Calgary, San Jose, maybe Pittsburgh and Vegas. New

Jersey GM Ray Shero was aggressive with Brian Boyle, and it sounds like he’s done the same with Marcus Johansson. I’ve heard Columbus, Edmonton, San Jose and Vancouver as teams who have checked in. Possibly Washington, too, since they know him. The Canucks are the odd fit, but they looked at Andre Burakovsky, too. So maybe they are thinking about something for the future or are trying to replace the injured Sven Baertschi.

17. The Capitals have looked around for the 2019 version of Michal Kempny.

18. With Minnesota in sell mode, would it surprise anyone if San Jose

revisited Eric Fehr, who fit in very nicely with the Sharks during the 2018 playoffs? The Evander Kane/Erik Karlsson trades limit what they can do,

but GM Doug Wilson will try to add a winger. If trade values drop for the secondary group because Duchene, Panarin and Stone are available, it

plays into Wilson’s hands.

19. Someone is going to ask San Jose about Sasha Chmelevski, who

scored five goals on Monday for OHL Ottawa in a 6–3 win over North Bay. The Sharks are going to say no. Chmelevski fell to the sixth round in the 2018 draft, and teams are already regretting it.

20. Can Carolina, one point out of the playoffs and creating some excitement in the market, really trade Micheal Ferland? Eight points in his last eight games. The Hurricanes certainly can’t send him to Pittsburgh, which has been interested.

Stream over 500 NHL games blackout-free, including the Flames, Oilers, Leafs and Canucks. Plus Hockey Night in Canada, Rogers Hometown Hockey, Scotiabank Wednesday Night Hockey and more.

21. I’m not sure if Minnesota would be willing to trade with Carolina again, since initial returns on the Nino Niederreiter/Victor Rask swap

aren’t favourable. But if Don Waddell really wanted to whip up a frenzy, taking a run at Eric Staal would do it.

22. Speaking of Staal… Sebastian Aho is on pace for 93 points. That would be the most in Whalers/Hurricanes history since Staal had 100 in

the Stanley Cup season of 2005-06. Only three others have ever scored more than that in one year for this organization — Ron Francis (twice),

Mike Rogers (twice) and Blaine Stoughton.

23. Last year, Detroit GM Ken Holland waited everyone out and got three picks for Tomas Tatar. Tatar had term, unlike many of the Red Wings trade options this time around, but Holland’s using a similar playbook. He’s patient, creating the impression he’s happy to keep guys rather than deal them. Chris Johnston did report the Red Wings asked Gustav Nyquist if there was a list of teams he’d consider. Martin Frk, who just cleared waivers, might get a new home, too.

24. Carl Hagelin’s only got eight points in 38 games, but a lower price tag may tempt someone for a competitive guy with a good playoff history. Buffalo looked at it.

25. Before the season, Mike Modano admitted he was looking to get back with a team. The Athletic’s Michael Russo saw him at the Wild’s 4-0 loss to St. Louis on Sunday and surmised an organizational position beckoned. Modano’s family is looking at a move, and Minnesota makes sense. But, with four young children, he said coaching or being a manager was not realistic.

“Television, work with a team’s foundation, their minor hockey program,

corporate, I’d be available for everything,” he said in September. “I’d go on the ice with prospects or go see them. I’m open to whatever’s out

there.”

26. Marc-Andre Fleury has three more appearances than any other

goalie. The Golden Knights would like to ease the workload, and Monday was the second start in a row for the now-healthy Malcolm Subban. He’s

going to get some opportunities with Vegas all but locked in to its playoff position.

27. Ottawa and Chicago just missed giving us our first 17-goal game since Winnipeg edged Philadelphia 9–8 on Oct. 27, 2011. I’d call them slackers, but it was an entertaining evening.

28. Don’t know if Nikita Kucherov can keep up his blistering pace, but he’s currently on track for the 36th-highest-scoring season in NHL history. He’s looking at 135 points, previously done by Hall of Famers Bobby Orr (1974–75), Marcel Dionne (1980–81) and Jari Kurri (1984–85). Technically, Kucherov would rank behind them, because his projected 40-goal output is behind only Kurri (71), Dionne (58) and Orr (46). Barring a massive slowdown, he’s going to be the highest-scoring

NHLer in 23 years.

29. The night before he headed to Anaheim for Scott Niedermayer’s

jersey retirement, Brian Burke said he wouldn’t even let Lou Lamoriello make a trade offer for brother Rob. (Scott signed with Anaheim in July

2005, two years after Rob was traded there from Calgary.)

“You never even listened to what he’d give you?”

“Don’t you listen?” Burke replied. “It wasn’t going to happen.”

30. Andrew Agozzino. Never drafted. Never signed a one-way deal. Ten NHL games in seven professional seasons. Never quit. Given another shot Monday night, Agozzino scored his first goal. Congratulations to a guy who earned such an awesome moment.

31. Joe Thornton wouldn’t have done “it” if he scored a fourth goal against Boston, but I’m betting he would have come up with a creative substitution. What a disappointment that it didn’t happen.


1131850 Websites

Sportsnet.ca / 'Underrated' Ryan Nugent-Hopkins a player Oilers can build around

Mark Spector | February 20, 2019

EDMONTON — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is the lone survivor. The last of the Mohicans.

There he was on a Tuesday night at Rogers Place against Arizona, the playoffs no less a distant mirage this February than they have been in all

but one of his eight seasons as a pro, and he’s digging right to the final buzzer.

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"I think he’s grown, even if he looks the same," chuckled Sam Gagner, who has returned to Edmonton to re-join the man that the rosy-cheeked boy has become. "If he’s not the most underrated, he’s one of the most underrated players in the league."

Gagner has gone off, watching Nugent-Hopkins from afar. He’s seen a centreman who hasn’t just leaned on the offence that got him drafted No. 1 overall in 2011, but also learned how to play the game away from the puck. A man who will be remembered as a poor man’s Pavel Datsyuk, or maybe one day Patrice Bergeron, and he does it all in a place where the playoff lights seldom shine.

"He’s played a lot of hard minutes, and he’s asked to sacrifice offence a lot," Gagner has observed. "This year he’s having a really good year

offensively… he just keeps coming to work, and doing his job."

With the goalie pulled and just 11 ticks left on the clock Tuesday night,

there was Nugent-Hopkins, deftly accepting a laser of a pass from Leon Draisaitl and rattling it past Arizona goalie Darcy Kuemper to force

overtime. The Oilers would lose 3-2 in a shootout, their sixth straight loss at home and 11th in their past 12 games.

Nugent-Hopkins was part of the rebuild that featured Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle. Was it the second rebuild here? Perhaps the third?

No matter, of all the things that have gone wrong over the years, the kid they picked out of the Burnaby Winter Club via the Red Deer Rebels has panned out. He doesn’t have the most points from that 2011 draft — Nikita Kucherov, a second-rounder, does — but Nugent-Hopkins has survived the years of losing to become an excellent defensive centre who chips in 20-25 goals. This season, a career year, he’ll approach 70 points.

On a night when Connor McDavid was a late scratch, Nugent-Hopkins

was there ‘til the final buzzer, pounding away for another meaningless February point in Edmonton.

"I’m going to be stickin’ with it," he said. "I’m going to keep doing this ‘til the end of the season. We’re going to keep working, and find our way

back into the playoff (race). We know we have to string some together, obviously. We know that. But there’s not going to be any shortage of

work ethic for the rest of the year."

Behind McDavid and Draisaitl, the Oilers have a trio of centres you could win a Cup with. How they can be trolling last place in the west is a story for another day.

For now, we’ll take a hat off to Nugent-Hopkins, who at age 25 is the longest serving Oiler, about to embark on yet another rebuild this summer.

"He just keeps fighting," said Gagner. "He’s just one of those guys who never complains, continues to do his job, and just gets better. He is very under appreciated."

Sportsnet NOW gives you access to over 500 NHL games this season, blackout-free, including Hockey Night in Canada, Rogers Hometown

Hockey, Scotiabank Wednesday Night Hockey, the entire 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs and more.

McDavid came up with the flu after a five-hour Oilers team autograph session at West Edmonton Mall on Monday, where thousands of

incredibly loyal fans lined up for hours to get apparel signed, say hello, and unfortunately for McDavid, shake hands and breathe on their heroes.

Though holes are beginning to appear in the seats here in Edmonton, and after-market tickets in the lower bowl could be bought for as low as $40 Tuesday, the under served hockey fan in Edmonton still has an incredible level of loyalty.

Game after game — year after woebegone year — Nugent-Hopkins gives that fan an honest, highly skilled effort. And on a night when McDavid called in sick, Nugent-Hopkins just dug in and played that much harder.

"He’s our leader, on the ice, in the room," Nugent-Hopkins said of McDavid. "When something like that happens that close to the game we need to step up. You’re not going to fill his shoes, but you could try to pick your game up.

"We have to take some positives out of this game, especially the third period."

They can take one positive. Whatever problems need to be fixed around here, Nugent-Hopkins is far from one of them.

No. 93 is a keeper. A guy to build around.


1131851 Websites

Sportsnet.ca / NHL's Top 12 UFAs of 2019: Latest rumours, reports

Luke Fox |February 19, 2019, 10:23 AM

Did John Tavares and his $77-million sweepstakes open his UFA followers’ eyes for what might be possible if you peek beyond the

curtain?

The summer of 2019 could deliver no shortage of star power, as a two-time Norris winner, a two-time Vezina winner, two Calder winners, and a few clubs’ top scorers are all racing toward July 1’s open market.

Big shakeups and monster paydays are on the horizon, and next week’s NHL trade deadline serves as a soft deadline for some of the decisions that must be made on the high-profile players below.

Here’s a look at the NHL’s top 12 unrestricted free agents of 2019 and the freshest rumours surrounding their futures.

1. Erik Karlsson

Age on July 1: 29

Position: Defence

2018-19 salary cap hit: $6.5 million

Bargaining chips: Two-time Norris Trophy champ (2012, 2015). Four-time NHL First All-Star Team. Under 30 years old. Olympic silver medallist

and winner of Olympic best defenceman award in 2014. Skates like a deer. Once dragged Ottawa to within a goal of the Cup Final on one ankle. On pace for his seventh 60-plus-point campaign. Looks like he just stepped out of a salon.

The latest: After weathering a sluggish start in teal, everything’s clicking for Erik Karlsson and the Sharks.

Although he’s been eligible to re-sign with San Jose since Jan. 1, Karlsson can’t ink an eight-year extension until the trade deadline passes on Feb. 25.

Agent Don Meehan and Sharks GM Doug Wilson had some preliminary

discussions regarding a potential Karlsson contract in January.

“We look at Erik much like we looked at Evander [Kane in May], as a guy

who fits now and in the future age-wise, style of game,” Wilson told NBC Sports California upon trading for him. “We’re in the mode of trying to win

right now, and I think that’s something that’s attractive to him.

“You have to make it be a place the player wants to play, filling in all of

the ingredients that they’re looking for in their decision-making process. He’s expressed that to us, that we are a place he’d like to be, and same

thing [for] us back to him. We’d love him to be here long-term.”

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Karlsson controls his destiny and, like Tavares a year ago, will be the most coveted UFA if he goes to market. Count the Lightning, Rangers, Golden Knights and Stars among a slew of teams interested in opening the coffers.

Does he pass up an opportunity that tempting?

“Tough to say,” a noncommittal Karlsson told After Hours on Feb. 16. “Right now I’m focused on getting back to my former self and getting rid of this [lower-body] injury and playing at the standard that I’m used to.”

2. Mark Stone

Age on July 1: 27

Position: Right wing


Bargaining chips: Leads all Senators in goals, points, plus/minus, game-winners, power-play points and shorthanded points. Unofficial captain of the team. On target for career-highs in goals and points. Brady Tkachuk’s landlord. Takeaway master. Has been loyal to Ottawa through troubled times.

The latest: Mark Stone’s agent, Craig Oster, and GM Pierre Dorion are engaged in serious discussions on an extension.

Stone’s trade value is sky-high, so if the Sens can’t keep him — and they should do their best to do so — they’ll have the best rental on the market.

“This is the only place I’ve ever played,” Stone said. “I’ve loved living in the city of Ottawa, I love playing for this team, so that’s all I can say to

that. I’ve loved my time here and, hopefully, it can continue.”

When I sat down with Stone at training camp, he wanted Sens fans to

know that the sides tried hard to knock out a long-term deal last summer when he was an RFA but it just couldn’t come to fruition prior to the

arbitration deadline.

Watching the Tavares saga in 2018 did get his mind churning, though.

“Every player on July 1 wonders what it’d be like to be a free agent,” Stone said. “You’d be crazy to say that on July 1 every year you don’t wonder what it’d be like to go through that. I don’t think about it during the season by any means.”

Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos reported over the weekend that structure and signing bonuses could be hurdles to re-signing here.

“We saw a guy like [Auston] Matthews get up to 94 per cent all in signing bonus,” Kypreos said on Headlines. “I don’t think [Senators owner]

Eugene Melnyk needs to go all-in there, but certainly he has to be in the ballpark of what is acceptable for these superstars in today’s market.”

OTT and Mark Stone have re-engaged in discussions over the past few days to see if there is common ground on an extension. Meanwhile,

the Senators have made Matt Duchene available, and expect those talks to heat up over the next few days.

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) February 17, 2019

3. Artemi Panarin

Age on July 1: 27

Position: Left wing

2018-19 salary cap hit: $6 million

Bargaining chips: Leads all Blue Jackets in assists, points, game-winners and power-play production. Memorably beat out Connor McDavid for the

2016 Calder Trophy. On pace for back-to-back 80-point seasons in Columbus after starting his NHL career with back-to-back 70-point seasons in Chicago. Magician on ice.

The latest: All signs point to Panarin leaving Columbus for the open market — and a bigger city with a larger Russian community — on July 1.

Having never won a playoff series, Columbus may be loathe to trade its top scorer heading into the post-season without getting a contributor to help the club now, but the Blue Jackets are at risk of losing an elite talent for nothing.

The whole city is pitching in on the “Keep Panarin” campaign. Columbus-based High Bank Distillery took out a billboard offering him free booze for life if he re-signs.

“I say it’s harder for me to keep talking about my free agency because I see how people want me to stay in Columbus, and it’s harder.” Panarin

told reporters in early February.

“But it’s my life. We only have one life and I want to, like… it’s 10 per cent

of my life, seven or eight years, you know? I want to stay happy every day and I want to see more options.”

The Bruins’ interest in the scorer has ratcheted in light of David Pastrnak’s injury, and the Florida Panthers are clearing cap space to

make a splash in July.

The Blackhawks, Rangers and Kings are also rumoured to be in the hunt.

“Seriously guys, I don’t have a team. Not one team where I want to go,” Panarin said. “But I have many teams. We’ll see what happens in the summer, but right now I don’t know what I want.

“I’m ready for that situation. I know in the summer how hard that will be for me. I’m ready. Still positive.”

As warm-ups wrapped up, Patrick Kane and Artemi Panarin shot a few pucks at each other before getting off the ice. #MyTeams stream: https://t.co/bpDQ2Mg6dh pic.twitter.com/HPFUPbjOGf

— Blackhawks Talk (@NBCSBlackhawks) February 17, 2019

4. Matt Duchene

Age on July 1: 28

Position: Centre


Bargaining chips: Best UFA centre under 30. Top pivot in Ottawa. On pace for seventh 20-goal, 50-point season. Gold medallist for Team

Canada at Winter Olympics, world championships (twice), and World Cup.

The latest: Dorion paid a handsome price to acquire Duchene in 2017, and with Ottawa amidst a rebuild, the GM cannot afford to let him walk.

He’d love to retrieve a first-rounder plus, even if it isn’t the (potentially No. 1) lottery pick he gave up to secure Duchene in the first place.

“It’s a situation of constant information-gathering whenever you’re in a contract year,” Duchene told me at training camp.

“Johnny [Tavares] is a good friend of mine. We’ve come up together: same agent, same trainer, same equipment company, same draft, same everything. It’s a guy I’m very familiar with and have a really good relationship with. I thought he handled the situation with extreme class and respect for everyone involved. I definitely took notes.”

Duchene is playing so well — on pace for his first 30-goal, 80-point campaign — that his deadline suitors will be plentiful, so it’s no surprise that Dorion is probing the market to see what kind of haul he could fetch in return.

It's absolutely ridiculous to be playing someone you know you're going

to be trading. An injury to, say, Matt Duchene, could set your "rebuild" program back years. Absolutely ridiculous #Senators

— Don Brennan (@SunDoniB) February 19, 2019

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Personally, Duchene has loved his time with Ottawa, and Kypreos reported that an eight-year, $64-million extension had been offered.

The Predators, Jets, Islanders, Bruins and Blue Jackets are said to be among the teams interested in acquiring Duchene for the playoffs.

Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston reported Monday that a Duchene trade is more a matter of when, not if.

5. Sergei Bobrovsky

Age on July 1: 30

Position: Goaltender


Bargaining chips: Two-time Vezina Trophy winner. Franchise record-holder for most wins, best GAA and save percentage in a season. Gold medallist for Team Russia at world championships. Bona fide No. 1 goalie.

The latest: “I don’t like to do any games, any mind games,” Goalie Bob, who holds a full no-move clause, said at the outset of camp. “After last season, I told the situation to the management of the Blue Jackets so they know everything. They know my plans for the season. They know my plans for the future. They know everything.”

Bobrovsky has endured an up-and-down season. At 42 games played, his save percentage (.904) was pacing for his lowest since he came to

Columbus from Philadelphia seven years ago.

In mid-December, NHL Network analyst Kevin Weekes (who shares an

agent with Bobrovsky, Paul Theofanous) labelled the situation untenable.

“Based on what I’m told from the Bobrovsky camp, and not Sergei

himself, is this relationship has really deteriorated,” Weekes said.

“So now the challenge for the Jackets is: Can they repair that? Is it

possible or is it irreparable damage at this point? Are they able to salvage that relationship? Can they find a common path going forward, or does it continue going… down the path of no return.”

The Panthers, Islanders, Flames and Hurricanes would be among the suspected teams interested if/when Bobrovsky becomes available.

Bob’s asking price come July 1 has been said to be in the ballpark of $10 million per season. A return in the fall is unlikely to impossible.

“Make an offer if you’re interested,” GM Jarmo Kekalainen told reporters

on Feb. 13.

Panarin switched agents, to Theofaneous, in the first week of February,

leading some to believe the Russian Blue Jackets could be a package deal.

6. Jeff Skinner

Age on July 1: 27

Position: Left wing


Bargaining chips: Calder winner. Set for his fourth 30-goal and third 60-

point season. Enjoying the most productive campaign and highest plus/minus rating of his career. Quick chemistry with franchise centre

Jack Eichel.

The latest: While there appears to be little financial incentive for Skinner

to sign soon — his stock is only rising — Sabres GM Jason Botterill and agent Don Meehan reportedly did touch base in January.

Buffalo finds itself on the bubble of a playoff race for the first time in years — thanks in part because the Skinner trade has worked out so well

— and would be wise to keep Skinner in the fold. The winger has noted that he enjoys being closer to home; Toronto is a two-hour highway cruise away.

The player, however, has endured eight NHL seasons in Carolina without skating in a single post-season game. Getting to July 1 means Skinner has a say in where he wants to win.

Flipping Skinner before Feb. 25 could infuriate Sabres fans and devastate the dressing room, and yet the Sabres need to get back on a roll to make the dance.

Compared to others on this list, there is a lack of urgency here. We see this one playing out in the off-season.

Leaving Jeff Skinner open in front of the net is a definite no-no. pic.twitter.com/PafjZ7zaTJ

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) February 16, 2019

7. Joe Pavelski

Age on July 1: 34

Position: Centre / Right wing


Bargaining chips: Second-most goals among all impending UFAs. One of the world’s best tippers. Equally effective as a wing or a centre. Olympic silver medallist for Team USA. Ten 20-goal seasons and running. Captain America.

The latest: After a slight production dip in 2017-18, “Little Joe” is over-delivering in his platform year, to the point where we’d have him a few

spots higher on this list if he wasn’t going to enter 2019-20 at the age of 35. Forwards are supposed to decline then, right?

That appeared to be GM Wilson’s logic when he shelled out big bucks to Evander Kane and made certain to lock up the younger Logan Couture

last summer but played the wait-and-see approach with Pavelski. In September, agent Dan Plante described extension talks as “nonexistent”

to The Athletic‘s Kevin Kurz.

Complicating matters for the captain’s future within the Sharks’ financial puzzle is that breakout forward Timo Meier will be an RFA. Ditto Joonas Donskoi and Kevin Labanc. Karlsson is the biggest fish in the UFA pond (and certainly looks like the kind of guy you want to keep). And who knows if Jumbo Joe’s knees want one more year?

Note: Pavelski and Meier are outperforming Kane, a $7-million player.

There is no reason to believe Pavelski and the Sharks wish to part ways,

but this is shaping up to be a decision best made after we see how deep San Jose goes in the playoffs.

This will be an unpopular take around these parts, but …

Patrick Marleau, then 37, was signed to 3-year deal by TOR during its

rebuild to provide leadership to their young players,

Who's to say #Canucks won't want to take same approach if Pavelski,

34, is UFA on July 1?

— Curtis Pashelka (@CurtisPashelka) February 17, 2019

8. Jake Gardiner

Age on July 1: 28

Position: Defence


Bargaining chips: The most attractive and highest-producing UFA

defenceman not named Erik Karlsson. Logs big-time minutes. Solid power-play quarterback. Excellent skater and passer. Back-to-back 50-

point seasons within reach.

The latest: Gardiner, a Minnesota native, enjoys being a Maple Leaf, and

despite his defensive lapses — which can be magnified — the Leafs are

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high on Gardiner. Coach Mike Babcock trusts him. GM Kyle Dubas has described Gardiner as “a key part” of the club.

But!

He’s due a major raise and would likely need to take a significant “hometown” discount to remain a Leaf. Extension talks are open, but with left-shot prospect Calle Rosen already earning a new deal, lefty Travis Dermott progressing well, and lefty Jake Muzzin acquired in January, it’s difficult to envision Gardiner getting properly compensated after Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews ravage the bank.

“We would like [Gardiner] to be here. It’s not as simple as it sounds,”

Dubas said. “You only have a certain amount that you can divvy up, and it’s trying to make that all work and keep our team on the right path

moving forward.”

Unless Dubas can pull a rabbit out of his hat, we’re slotting Gardiner into

the 2018 Tyler Bozak and James Van Riemsdyk category. He’s an “own rental.”

9. Kevin Hayes

Age on July 1: 27

Position: Centre


Bargaining chips: Building on 2017-18’s 25-goal campaign with another

career year. Should crack 50 points. Contributes to both special teams. Trade value may never be higher.

The latest: After signing a one-year deal in the off-season, theoretically to jack his trade worth and bide time for younger centres in the system to

develop, Hayes has excelled in all situations and taken another step in his all-around game.

Despite a nagging injury that flared up in January, Hayes’ suitors should be plentiful.

“The standard late first-rounder plus a reasonable prospect does not seem nearly enough,” writes Rangers beat man Larry Brooks, who mentions forward-starved Carolina as a potential landing spot.

“Ideally, the Rangers would be able to pick up a non-playoff team’s first-rounder plus a young player who could play in the NHL next season as either a top-nine forward or top-four defenceman, perhaps plus another

pick or player if there is enough interest.”

Hayes has zero trade protection. Winnipeg, Nashville, Boston and

Colorado should all be interested.

“I have no say in it. It’s [GM Jeff Gorton’s] ultimate decision. Whatever he

wants to do. I’m not expecting anything, but we’ll see in a couple days. That’s why I have an agent. I just play hockey,” Hayes told The Athletic

on Dec. 28.

“Gorts probably has a plan that he probably has set in stone.”

Into early February, the Rangers had not engaged Hayes in serious extension negotiations.

“If I had my choice, I’d be here,” Hayes told NHL.com. “It’s either I’ll be here for a long time or I’ll be out of here.”

10. Anders Lee

Age on July 1: 28

Position: Left wing


Bargaining chips: Coming off a career-best 40-goal, 62-point season.

Leads all Islanders in goals and shots. Strong defensively and a stud on the power play. Inherited captaincy once Tavares departed. In his prime.

The latest: The way Lee has performed this season should put to rest the faulty notion that he’s been riding Tavares’s coattails.

Do the Islanders risk losing their captain for nothing two summers in a row, or is an extension in the works?

“We’re not at a point right now where things need to be said either way. The conversations [with GM Lou Lamoriello] have been good, and I’m looking forward to continuing those and we’ll go from there.” Lee told Newsday on Dec. 29.

“There is a different feeling here and that just comes with all the changes made and the way Barry and Lou have taken over.”

Lamoriello has a number of decisions to make up front, with Jordan Eberle, Brock Nelson and Valtteri Filppula also set to hit the open market.

Lee — the top priority and currently one of the NHL’s biggest bargains — won’t be cheap.

“Things are still good,” Lee told Newsday on Feb. 17.

The player believes he will remain an Islander long-term.

“There’s nothing to be worried about at this point. It still needs to get done and all that stuff. But there’s nothing that’s worried from either side. Status quo.”

11. Anton Stralman

Age on July 1: 32

Position: Defence


Bargaining chips: Reliable, top-four defenceman with 700-plus games of experience and two trips to the Cup Final under his belt. World

championships gold medallist for Team Sweden. A minutes horse content to stay at home and kill penalties. Leads all Lightning in PK time

(roughly 3:30 per game).

The latest: Some might place Vancouver’s Alex Edler or Boston’s Zdeno Chara in this spot, but we believe Stalman’s understated talents get overshadowed by the brand names (Victor Hedman, Ryan McDonagh) on Tampa’s blue line. (Plus, he’s younger than those guys.) Stralman is a trusted, smart right shot who does all the things coaches love and plays the type of game that could age well.

He’s not getting traded ahead of a legit Cup run.

But as much as Tampa loves him, Stralman is the priciest of three Bolts’ D-men on expiring deals (Braydon Coburn and Dan Girardi), and the

cap-tight club has to pay RFA Brayden Point first and foremost.

Injuries and mediocre play have seen Stralman miss 20 games this

season, so as solid as his reputation has been, it’s leveled off in 2018-19.

12. Wayne Simmonds

Age on July 1: 30

Position: Left wing


Bargaining chips: On target for his seventh 20-goal showing. Fifty-point potential when healthy and given a prominent role. Tough as nails. Eight

hundred-plus games of experience. Power-play beast. Brings all the intangibles you want come playoff time.

The latest: When the Flyers signed James van Riemsdyk for $35 million on July 1 (another left-winger with power-play chops), it essentially

sealed Simmonds’ fate.

Not many clubs can dish out big raises to wingers when they already

have three carrying a $7-million-plus cap hit — and have an obvious need to invest more money into their goaltending and blue line.

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Now, with the Flyers wise to embrace seller status, Simmonds should fetch a nice return as a rental for a contender. The Predators, Lightning, Jets and Bruins are among those that should inquire.

Simmonds is skating through a swirl of rumours, and we’d be shocked if he’s not moved.

“Playing in the league a long time, you’ve been through it before. You bring up the trade deadline — this is my 11th year — you get used to things like this. It just is what it is,” he recently told reporters.

“You’ve just got to be a professional on and off the ice. You’ve got to come to work and do your job.”

Regardless of whatever happens, Wayne Simmonds will go down as a legendary Flyer. Always there for teammates. He’s handling this situation

like the true veteran he is.

— Anthony (@AnthonyDiGrazio) February 17, 2019

More notable UFAs of 2019: Tyler Myers, Jimmy Howard, Jordan Eberle, Eric Staal, Mats Zuccarello, Gustav Nyquist, Brock Nelson, Zdeno Chara, Alexander Edler, Micheal Ferland, Semyon Varlamov, Jakob Silfverberg, Joe Thornton, Ryan Dzingel, Brian Boyle, Jason Pominville, Nick Jensen, Joonas Donskoi, Jason Spezza, Marcus Johansson, Valtteri Filppula, Derick Brassard, Justin Williams, Ron Hainsey, Patrick Maroon, Jay Bouwmeester, Robin Lehner, Cam Talbot, Mike Smith, Marc Methot, Deryk Engelland, Thomas Vanek, Niklas Kronwall, Brett Connolly, Alex Chiasson


1131852 Websites

Sportsnet.ca / Analyzing the best goal scorers available at the NHL trade deadline

Andrew Berkshire February 19, 2019, 12:53 PM

With the trade deadline fast approaching, teams have to focus on filling specific needs for the playoffs as they examine the marketplace. It’s very rare that you can land a player who truly transforms your team, although

a couple of those types are available this season. Teams are more likely going to address weaknesses in certain areas of the roster.

That means you might not be trading for the best player available, because that player may not fill your team’s need. With that in mind, we

decided to do a short series of articles that focus on specific skill sets and identify who the best players are in each category. The first area we’re

focusing on are the best available goal scorers.

It would be easy enough to pull up a trade bait list and sort by goals

scored, but that isn’t always a great predictor of goals to be scored heading forward, so we’ll dig in a little bit deeper.

Let’s look at 5-on-5 scoring first.

The key thing to note is that there is more than one way to score goals and be consistently effective at it. Obviously, the ideal that most coaches strive for is to create as many high danger chances as possible, which makes sense because the closer you get to the net the higher your expected shooting percentage is. But sniper-type players tend to shoot from the high slot where there’s a bit more space and time, and where you’re more likely to receive a clean pass.

If what you’re looking for at the deadline is a player who gets to the dirty areas, though, look no further than the highly marketable Micheal

Ferland, who has been brilliant this season for the Carolina Hurricanes. He leads the field in high danger chances and scoring chances overall,

but the problem is the Hurricanes might not be as keen to sell him as they were earlier in the season. They’ve been surging lately, both in games and post-win celebrations, and are just a single point back of the Montreal Canadiens for the second wild card spot, plus Carolina has more regulation and overtime wins so the tiebreak leans their way.

Unfortunately for buyers, that means the already-lofty price for Ferland’s services is likely to be even higher. But a team that needs a net-front finisher is probably willing to pay that price if they see themselves as a legitimate contender, especially if they believe they can extend Ferland.

Artemi Panarin barely needs an explanation; he’s the best player

available at the deadline, period. He’s a transition beast, scores from everywhere with a deceptive wrist shot that can beat goalies both off the

rush and cycle. He’s clearly one of the best scorers available, but he’s also one of the few transformative players who have been available at

the deadline in recent years.

Matt Duchene is probably the big surprise on the above graph. That’s not

because he can score – we always knew that — but because he’s been so willing to get to the dirty areas to do it. Centres don’t often get to the

net front and instead focus more on playmaking than scoring. Even shoot-first centres like Steven Stamkos usually tend to set up at the edge of the slot as snipers to finish off plays. Duchene, amidst a disaster season for the Senators, has been incredible this season, showing great versatility as a goal scorer and playmaker. His speed off the rush is apparent, as is his nose for the net once the zone has been gained.

Chris Kreider is another versatile scorer who also happens to be one of the better defensive wingers in the game today. He can attack and score with speed off the rush, and he can use his size to fight through checks to score in tight. That he’s on pace for a career year in goals may lead to

Kreider being a very expensive buy at the deadline, but he’s worth it.

Gustav Nyquist is a player who seems to fly under the radar because of

the extremely high expectations placed upon him after scoring 28 goals in 57 games in his first full NHL season. He’s never been able to match

that 18.3 shooting percentage since — and in fact he’s scored on less than 10 per cent of his shots for the past three seasons, — but he shoots a ton at even strength and I think he’s a player who would thrive on a

team with more depth than the Detroit Red Wings.

Nyquist may only be on pace for 21 goals this season, but he’s been terribly unlucky on the power play and is on pace for 19 even strength goals, which is actually quite a lot.

Though I warned against spending too much on him recently, there’s no better power play net front presence available at the deadline than Wayne Simmonds. He deflects pucks well, and his ability to win battles for loose pucks and roof rebounds is among the NHL’s elite with the man

advantage.

Over the past couple of seasons the only player to get more chances in tight on the power play than Simmonds has been James van Riemsdyk, who the Flyers recently paid big money to as an unrestricted free agent. That, combined with injuries, has depressed Simmonds’ internal value a little bit, but he could be a big difference maker for someone else’s struggling power play that needs more focus on getting shots from in tight and screening goalies.

Panarin appears here again — his laser wrist shot from the high slot is a highly dangerous weapon for any team. His ability to make plays also

forces defenders and goalies to be careful not to overplay his shot, which only makes it easier for him to pick an open space.

Ryan Dixon and Rory Boylen go deep on pucks with a mix of facts and fun, leaning on a varied group of hockey voices to give their take on the

country’s most beloved game.

If a team misses out on Simmonds to boost their power play, the next

best option is Ferland, who comes with the bonus of being a great 5-on-5 scorer as well. Ferland gets up to the same tricks on the power play that we saw above, shooting from a bit further out than Simmonds on average, but getting a higher proportion of his scoring chances on net.

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Mark Stone is already having a career year in goal scoring with 28 in 59 games, and one reason why is he’s shooting a bit more dangerously on the power play. He’s not going to sit in front of the net because that would be a waste of his skill set — he’s similar to Panarin in that he forces defenders and goalies to respect his playmaking ability and give him space.

Stone has a deadly shot, with a career average shooting percentage of 16.2, and a 19.3 per cent shooting rate this season. He’s also the best defensive winger in the game, and a smart transition player. Stone isn’t quite as highly impactful as Panarin, but he’s at the same elite level that

can turn a team from good to great.

Lastly we have Nyquist again, who has been putting in the work and

rifling shots at the net from the slot, but only has one power play goal to show for it this season. I fully expect that anyone who acquires him would

see a big uptick in scoring due to some overdue regression to the mean alone, not to mention a bit more talent around to surround him with.


1131853 Websites

TSN.CA / Late Leafs surge pays off with road point

Kristen Shilton

At the end of six-game road swing, the Maple Leafs faced arguably their

toughest test of the trip on Tuesday against the St. Louis Blues. And it was a battle from start to finish, with Toronto overcoming a two-goal

deficit to force overtime, before falling 3-2 in the extra frame on Ryan O’Rielly's game winner. The Leafs finish their road trip with a 3-2-1 record, while sitting at 36-19-4 on the season.

TAKEAWAYS

Third period charm

Each period of Tuesday’s game in St. Louis told a different story for the Maple Leafs. In the first, they were sloppy and outmatched, evidenced by their 2-0 deficit. In the second, the Leafs played tighter, but couldn’t cut

into St. Louis’ lead. By the third, Toronto had grabbed hold of the momentum to tie the game with two goals in 31 seconds. That’s when

things really heated up.

As it was, the Blues were already the hottest team in the NHL going into

Tuesday’s tilt, not just riding a 10-game win streak but coming off three straight shutouts, and they hadn’t trailed in a game since the third period

against the Florida Panthers on Feb. 5.

St. Louis created havoc against Toronto from their first shift, while the

Leafs’ attack was far more controlled and lacking the same second chance opportunities. Part of that was Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington, who controlled rebounds and slowed things down in the offensive zone.

The other part was Toronto’s inability to contend with the Blues’ pressure and relentless forecheck, which forced the Leafs into giveaways that fed St. Louis’ game.

Jaden Schwartz finally capitalized on one such turnover, giving the Blues a 1-0 lead while capping off an unfortunate sequence by the visitors. Toronto was slow getting back in transition on the play, and Jake Muzzin

turned the puck over right before blowing a tire along the boards to leave no one on Schwartz next to Frederik Andersen as he potted the game’s

opening score.

Colton Parayko’s booming point shot made it 2-0 Blues on the power

play before the end of the first period.

Now in a multi-goal deficit, Toronto came out far better in the second, winning more puck battles and showing some fight. They were also down a man, too, with Nazem Kadri sitting out the remainder of the game with a concussion, and William Nylander compensating for the loss by moving to centre.

Binnington, though, remained the star that his recent 8-0-0 record would suggest, even as Toronto forced him into a career-high 25 saves before the end of the second.

It wasn’t until the third that St. Louis’ shutout streak finally came to a halt at 233:50, when Zach Hyman put a puck on net from below the goal line

that bounced off Binnington and in.

Just 31 seconds later, Auston Matthews was in front of the net jockeying

for position, and snuck a puck under Binnington to tie the game and turn the pressure all the way up as both teams traded chances until the end of

regulation.

O’Reilly ended overtime in a hurry, making a great defensive play at one

end and scoring off the rush at the other. The single point Toronto did get was ultimately well-earned, reflecting some adjustments made in the

second and third periods to combat St. Louis’ more suffocating physical play, but the game also showed cracks in Toronto’s ability to stand up to heavy, veteran teams.

Matthews on a mission

Even in a low-energy first period for the Leafs, Matthews had extra pep in his step against St. Louis, and was a consistent threat for Toronto in the offensive end. As the game wore on, and the Leafs had to overcome for Kadri’s absence and their own fatigue in the finale of a two-week road trip, Matthews only got better, until he began taking over in the third.

Each shift Matthews stepped on the ice for at that point was filled with

purpose, and he took advantage of every battle, shot and pass to try and eat into the Blues’ 2-0 lead. When he finally scored the equalizer, it

started with good positioning in front of Binnington, but it was the culmination of a game’s worth of determination from the 21-year-old to be

a difference-maker.

While the goal had an immediate impact for Toronto, it was also a

milestone of sorts for Matthews, marking the first point of his career against St. Louis. In five previous meetings, Matthews had failed to record a goal or assist, the only NHL team he hadn’t tallied at least one point against.

Being away from Toronto has been good for Matthews since he entered the league, though. His goal in St. Louis was the 59th he’s scored on the road going back to 2016-17, second-most in the NHL over that span.

Matthews finished Tuesday’s game even with two shots on goal.

All right, Andersen

While Binnington was standing on his head at the other end of the ice,

Andersen had to do his part to keep the circling Blues from running away with the game.

Andersen hasn’t had the best run against St. Louis of late, dropping seven straight contests going into Tuesday night. That luck didn’t

improve much in the opening period, first when Andersen was left out to dry on the great setup and execution of Schwartz’s goal, and then when

Parayko’s shot snaked through traffic and beat him high off the post.

The Blues’ third and fourth lines started the game with great pressure,

too, and Andersen barely had a moment’s rest as St. Louis registered nine shots on goal in the first six minutes of the first, and had 32 shots on net after 40 minutes.

When the Leafs’ overall game picked up in the second period, Andersen shut the door behind them with more sequences of great saves, benefiting from a few fortuitous bounces that kept pucks from getting behind him. Andersen didn’t have the same control of his rebounds that

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Binnington showed and had to fight through more heavy traffic from the Blues in front of him, making the stops more difficult.

Andersen was in solid position throughout the final two periods and especially into the third, challenging the angle of St. Louis’ shooters and limiting some of those rebounds that popped out in the first.

After two periods of strong play, Andersen was facing down a two-on-one rush, with Morgan Rielly between O’Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko, and was beat cleanly on O’Reilly’s game-winner. It was a disappointing end for Andersen, but his prior steadiness was a pillar of the Leafs’ comeback, and his efficiency and confidence was integral to Toronto

reaching overtime at all. He finished with 38 stops and a .927 save percentage.

Killer instinct

Toronto’s penalty kill has been a bright spot lately, going 8-for-8 in the

team’s last four games before Tuesday. Much of that has been a credit to the aggressiveness of the kill, chasing down loose pucks and creating

shorthanded chances.

There was more where that came from in St. Louis, and the penalty kill

was called upon late in the game to try and keep Toronto in striking distance.

While Parayko did get his shot through traffic to convert on St. Louis’ first power play, the second and third kills for Toronto, that happened at the end of the second period and to start the third, were critical in holding the Leafs’ deficit at two.

Mitch Marner was terrific on the kill in that sense, stealing pucks and winning races to keep the Blues hemmed in their own end with the extra man. Connor Brown and Kasperi Kapanen were important in that respect, too, using their speed to keep the Blues off balance and away

from quality scoring chances.

It can be difficult to quantify what swings momentum in one team’s favour

or another, but the Leafs’ kill kept Toronto’s fate within reach with two big performances when it mattered most and was a major factor in them

grabbing hold of two quick scores right after the third kill came to an end.

Man down (again)

The Leafs’ regular season continues to wind down, and still they’re waiting to see the entirety of the lineup healthy and going at full speed. Between injuries to Matthews (shoulder) and Andersen (groin), among others, and Nylander’s two-month long contract stalemate, key pieces have been missing or slowed for Toronto throughout the season.

With Andreas Johnsson back in on Tuesday after missing one game with a leg injury, and Nylander turning a clear corner the last couple of games with some high-octane play, the Leafs were close to all hands on deck against St. Louis.

And then another potential domino fell.

When Toronto came out for the second period, Kadri wasn’t on the bench, and wouldn’t return to the game for what the Leafs called

“precautionary reasons.” Later, Toronto clarified Kadri was suffering from a concussion.

It’s likely that Kadri was injured early in the first period, when Vince Dunn levelled him with a crushing hit. But whatever caused the issue, it’s how

long the concussion projects to keep Kadri out that could influence Toronto’s plans for this Monday’s trade deadline.

While Nylander can fill in at centre and has in the past, coach Mike Babcock has made no indication he wants to see more of Nylander at that position. Toronto can move Par Lindholm back to the middle and insert Tyler Ennis on the fourth line wing, setting up a tandem of Lindholm and Frederik Gauthier on the third and fourth lines respectively, but if Kadri’s injury is anything serious, the team may be persuaded to go out and acquire some more insurance at centre for the tail end of the season before it’s too late.

At the moment, the only NHL-tested centre Toronto has in the organization on a two-way contract is Josh Jooris (213 NHL games), who’s currently centring the fourth line of the American Hockey League’s Toronto Marlies.

TSN.CA LOADED: 02.20.2019

1131854 Websites

TSN.CA / Surging Blues provide perfect playoff prep for Leafs

Mark Masters

TSN Toronto reporter Mark Masters checks in daily with news and notes on the Maple Leafs. The Leafs held a team meeting at the Enterprise Center ahead of Tuesday’s game against the St. Louis Blues.

The Leafs will wrap up a season-long trip tonight in St. Louis and this is the biggest challenge of the six-game swing. The Blues are the hottest team in hockey having won 10 straight while outscoring their opponents 40-14. And yet Mike Babcock believes this is actually the perfect

opponent for his team to face right now.

“I think it’s so important for our team to play in this game, to be involved

in it,” Toronto's head coach said. “It’s the time of year you've got to get to the next level. You have to have swagger and know you can win these

games. We're excited to play them. It should be a lot of fun, there won’t be a lot of space."

The Leafs opened the trip with a win in Montreal before losing against the Rangers despite firing 56 shots on net. That was followed by impressive

wins in Colorado and Vegas before a shutout defeat in Arizona.

“We want to start preparing for playoffs and we have a chance to do that here tonight,” said defenceman Morgan Rielly. “We're not necessarily used to these long trips, but I think it’s been good. I think if we win here tonight it’s a great trip, so that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Toronto is having a great season and yet the team’s longest win streak is just five games, accomplished three times, so they have a lot of respect for what the Blues are doing.

“Yeah, it's crazy,” said centre Nazem Kadri. “You, obviously, need to be feeling it. I think in that span you probably get a little bit of luck as well

and, you know, the hockey Gods are on your side at that point. It feels good to go through a stretch like that and you feel pretty invincible, but

we got to come in here understanding we can win and having the confidence to do so.”

The Blues are now tied with the Sabres for the longest win streak this season (Nov. 8-27) and can establish a new franchise record tonight.

“We're looking to snap the streak,” Rielly said.

Getting off to a good start will be vital. The Blues haven’t played from behind since Feb. 5, eight games ago.

Babcock, meanwhile, seems to live for these types of challenges.

“I like what we have [here] because they’re 15-4-1 or something; they’re the best team in the National Hockey League since Jan. 3. It’s well-documented. You know you’re coming into a game with a good opportunity to play a good team and we’re excited to be doing that,” he said.

Babcock is actually shortchanging St. Louis by one win. The Blues are

16-4-1 in that stretch (.786), which is just ahead of the Boston Bruins (13-3-4), who have used their hot streak to pull three points in front of the

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Leafs in the Atlantic Division standings. The Leafs have played two fewer games.

Leafs Ice Chips: Surging Blues offer the perfect playoff prep

The Maple Leafs wrap-up a season-long, six-game road swing tonight in St. Louis and this is their biggest challenge of the trip. The Blues are the hottest team in hockey having won 10 in a row, including three straight shutouts. And yet Toronto believes this is actually the perfect opponent to face after a lackluster loss in the dessert.

----

The Leafs didn't simply burn the tape after that underwhelming effort against the Coyotes.

"I did my due diligence like you always do," Babcock noted. "We talked about it the other morning; we showed some clips about ourselves. We basically, what we tried to do is, the game wasn’t a good game – we know that – but there was still some detail in the game offensively and defensively that we weren’t good enough at. If we want to get to – we talk

about the next level – we have to improve in those areas."

Rielly highlighted a couple specific things that need fixing.

“We got to do a better job of breaking the puck out and playing off the cycle,” Rielly said. “When you look at the game we played in Phoenix, I don’t think we had a whole lot of speed and I don’t think we had a lot of zone time so, moving forward, we want to improve on that and that will be a focus tonight: breaking pucks out quicker and hanging onto the puck in the offensive zone longer.”

----

The Blues run is being backstopped by Jordan Binnington who is 12-1-1 with a .937 save percentage. He's gone 127 minutes and 16 seconds without allowing a goal.

“The kid here looks like a real good goaltender,” observed Babcock. “He can really handle the puck; he helps out their D, for sure. Any time a guy's feeling good, you’ve got to get on the inside and you've got to get some opportunity against him, without any question.”

Babcock impressed with Binnington's puck-handling ability

The Blues incredible run is being led by unheralded goalie Jordan Binnington who is 12-1-1 with a .937 save percentage. Most of the Leafs

aren't all that familiar with the Richmond Hill, Ont. native, but they've been impressed by what they see on film. Morgan Rielly isn't all that surprised by the goalie's rise as he was teammates with Binnington at the 2013 World Juniors in Ufa.

Most of the Leafs won't be all that familiar with the 25-year-old Richmond Hill, Ont., native. There is at least one exception, as Rielly played with Binnington on Team Canada at the 2013 World Juniors in Ufa, Russia.

What does Rielly remember about Binnington?

“Outgoing. I think the two goalies were Malcolm [Subban] and him so that would make for a dynamic duo so it was pretty fun. I mean, that’s a long time ago. We were all just enjoying the experience.”

Rielly has done his own pre-scout on his old teammate.

“I've talked to a few of his teammates about him and so we got a challenge tonight,” he said.

Kadri isn't doing any extra scouting.

“Not any more than any other goaltender,” he said. “We'll watch a few of the goals he's allowed and we've got our goaltending coach [Steve Briere] doing the pre-scout on him. There’s definitely certain things you

circle and try and pay attention to heading into the game and hopefully it pays off ... We got to get guys in front and hopefully create some

deflections or rebounds.”

So, like the play linemate William Nylander made on Saturday, which led to a disallowed goal due to a high stick?

“That was kind of cool, actually,” recalled Kadri. “That’s exactly what we’re talking about, just creating those random pucks and those are the toughest for goaltenders to stop. But, obviously, great hand-eye co-ordination and it was unfortunate that couldn’t drop, because it would’ve been a big goal for us.”

----

Asked what stands out about the big, mobile Blues blueline, Babcock highlighted another attribute.

“Well, I mean, they're long,” he said. “What people don't understand is it’s great to be mobile, it’s great to be skilled and all that, but long takes up

room and they've got a number of them. I think [GM Doug Armstrong] Army’s done a good job to build a real D corps.”

Other than the 6-foot Vince Dunn, the rest of the St. Louis defence will be 6-foot-3 or taller tonight.

Jake Muzzin and Ron Hainsey will be the tallest Leafs defencemen tonight at six-foot-three.

----

After missing Saturday's game with a left leg injury, Andreas Johnsson is trending toward a return tonight.

"That’s sure the way we're set up to go," said Babcock. "Now, we’ll know more at warm-up time."

Projected Leafs line-up for Tuesday's game:

Hyman-Tavares-Marner

Marleau-Matthews-Kapanen

Johnsson-Kadri-Nylander

Lindholm-Gauthier-Brown

Rielly-Hainsey

Muzzin-Zaitsev

Gardiner-Dermott

Andersen

Sparks

TSN.CA LOADED: 02.20.2019

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USA TODAY / Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella gives too much information on Artemi Panarin's health

Mike Brehm, USA TODAY Published 7:39 p.m. ET Feb. 19, 2019

Star forward Artemi Panarin wants to explore free agency this summer,

leaving the Columbus Blue Jackets in a quandary.

Do they hang on to him and/or fellow pending unrestricted free agent Sergei Bobrovsky for a playoff run or do they trade one or both to get assets in return?

When Panarin didn't suit up for Tuesday's game at the Montreal Canadiens, speculation that a trade was coming soon spread through the hockey world.

CAROLINA HURRICANES


Cue, coach John Tortorella, who explained, "He's sick. He's sick as a dog."

But reporters pressed, noting that Panarin played Monday night, and began trying to figure out exactly when he got sick. That led the sometimes-abrupt coach to provide way too much information to make his point and shut down the conversation.

WARNING: SALTY LANGUAGE

Columbus Blue Jackets left wing Artemi Panarin is the subject of trade rumors.

According to the Columbus Dispatch, he said, "I was told that he’s sick, not eating. He (expletive) his pants, he was puking, he was doing everything. So, enough.”

Panarin is in the final year of a two-year, $12 million contract that he signed with the Chicago Blackhawks before they traded him to the Blue Jackets in 2017.

He led the Blue Jackets in scoring last season (82 points in 81 games) and is leading them again with 67 points in 56 games.

The team would like to keep him and a local distillery even offered free vodka for life if he re-signs.

But for now, as Tortorella made abundantly clear, Panarin is sick.

The lead-up to the Feb. 25 trade deadline will be interesting.

USA TODAY LOADED: 02.20.2019

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