The NHL has been notorious for what has been dooped as the “sophomore slump.” Players who light up the league in their first season in the most skilled league in the World, only to fail to live up to the same levels of success they had during their first year. The latest example of this phenomenon is Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche. The 19-year-old took home the Calder Trophy last season after leading all rookies with 63 points. However, this season, like the rest of his Avs teammates
The Vancouver Canucks will be relieved to return to Rogers Arena on Saturday when they take on the New York Rangers. This comes after dropping their last three contests against three of their Canadian counterparts. The Canucks will be returning from a seven-game road trip where after winning three of the first four games, the team dropped the latter three to Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. The Nucks were sitting very comfortable towards the top of the Western Conference just over a week ago and s
The San Jose Sharks defeated the Edmonton Oilers in demanding fashion 5-2 Tuesday and the team currently is sitting in a playoff spot, so everything is going swimmingly for the team right? Not exactly. Despite earning a spot in the post-season dance so far, the Sharks find themselves in eighth place in the Western Conference, a far cry from their fourth place finish last season, all this having played more games than any other team in the conference. So despite holding a spot with 33 points and
Wayne Gretzky named him to his All-Time All-Star team and he is the highest scoring defenseman to ever dawn the Montreal Canadiens jersey, yes Larry Robinson has had quite the career. The Great Defender: My Hockey Odyssey with Kevin Shea takes readers through the life of the Hall of Fame defenseman from his days as a kid growing up on a small farm outside Ottawa. Robinsons recalls his upbringing through junior hockey, to his all-star career in the NHL, wearing the maple leafs for Team Canada, to
The Dallas Stars have lost five of their last seven games and understandably there hasn’t been much for the under-achieving team to be happy about this season. However, reminiscing about their days in junior and having the opportunity to represent their country at the IIHF World Junior Championship as teenagers does give players John Klingberg and Ales Hemsky something to smile about. “I got the opportunity to play in Buffalo and Calgary,” says Klingberg, referring to his time wearing the Sweden
If you search the league leaders on NHL.com among goaltending stats, his name might not even come up, but the best goalie in the NHL this season may very well be Martin Jones. The Los Angeles Kings back-up has only found the net seven times this season, but best believe he could very well get more starts the way his season is going. Jones might not appear among some of the league leaders in stats simply for the fact he doesn’t have many starts, but when he has had the chance to suit up, he has b
The New Jersey Devils haven’t made the playoffs since the 2011-12 when they fell to the Los Angeles King in six games and there seems to be a simple reason for that. The Devils have been absent from the post-season the last two seasons and why is that, it could simply be because they no longer have star left winger Zach Parise. It’s hard to put so much on one player and of course one player doesn’t make a team, but you have to at least consider the numbers. Here is a list of the years when Paris
The Dallas Stars made it into the playoffs last season by the skin of their teeth, edging out the Phoenix Coyotes by a single ‘w’. Being the eight seed in the West the Stars were paired up against the number-one seed Anaheim Ducks and though they made the series interesting, they ultimately fell to the Ducks in six games. So heading into the 2014-15 season, Dallas looked to improve on last season by bolstering their secondary scoring by being one of the most active teams during the summer’s free
It seems only TSN hockey analyst Aaron Ward expected the kind of start the Calgary Flames seem to be on this season. With 33 points through their first 23 games, the Flames are just one point behind for first in the West. Their red-hot start is a far cry from last season when the Flames finished 13th in the West in front of only their Alberta counterparts, the Edmonton Oilers. Though much of this season’s success can be attributed to the career year of captain Marc Giordano (who was just named N
The NHL is season is just under a quarter of the way through and already many first year players have taken on important roles with their respected NHL clubs. With that being said let’s take a look at some players who could be Calder Trophy Nominees come season’s end. Filip Forsberg, C - Nashville Predators- Drafted 11th overall in 2012 by Washington The 20 year-old Forsberg is off to a scorching start and if he keeps the pace he is on, he will without question, walk away with the Calder Trophy.
Tomas Plekanec scored his second goal of the game with just 40 seconds left in regulation to lift the Montreal Canadiens 4-3 over the Toronto Maple Leafs in the season opener Wednesday. Plekanec was the recipient of a lucky bounce that saw his winning goal deflect off the skate of Leafs rookie defenceman Stuart Percy and past Jonathan Bernier. The goal was a heartbreaker to Leafs fans affter Morgan Reilly tied the game with 2:19 left in the third on a fluky goal that got through Carey Price. Ple
The Toronto Maple Leafs and Cody Franson avoided what would have been another arbitration meeting between the two Monday. The meeting was avoided when just hours before it was scheduled to occur, both sides agreed to a one year $3.3 million dollar deal. Just days before the deal was made, a report surfaced that both sides were as much as $2.2 million dollars apart. Franson was reportedly looking for a deal in the area of $4.2 million dollars while the Maple Leafs were offering around $2 million.
Well it’s been almost two weeks since the NHL free agency signing period started and things have started to quiet down. The majority of the interest has now shifted from unrestricted free agents to restricted free agents and salary arbitration cases. Early last week a rumour came out of a Montreal radio station reporting that the Canadiens were prepared to offer young Boston Bruins defenceman Torey Krug an offer sheet. Though many were skeptical about the credibility of the report and some confi
NHL’s free agent frenzy kicked off Tuesday with a big bang. Though they didn’t make a number of monumental moves when the signing period began, the Toronto Maple Leafs did dabble in the action and also said farewell to other bodies. So with this the Toronto Maple Leafs are already looking to be a different group of players when they take to the ice next season. The Leafs transactions first began last Saturday when they sent defenseman Carl Gunnarsson to the St. Louis Blues for fellow tough-guy,
The 2014 NHL Entry Draft kicks off Friday night in Philadelphia and along with the excitement surrounding the new crop of young stars, comes the excitement of wheeling and dealing that is likely to occur in the coming weeks. Among the teams that early on look as though could be busy this off-season is the Chicago Blackhawks. It seems kind of interesting that the Hawks would want to make many moves after coming just a goal a way from punching their ticket to their second Stanley Cup finals in two
The newest class of inductees into the Hockey Hall of Fame was announced Monday. This November the likes of Dominik Hasek, Peter Foresberg, Rob Blake, Mike Modano, Pat Burns, and Bill McCreary will become the newest members to be enshrined in the hall. With this year’s class named, questions about who was left off this year’s card begin to swirl. The most popular name that had been receiving a lot of consideration in the days leading up to Monday’s announcement was ‘the Big E’ Eric Lindros. Howe
“If it aint broke don’t fix it.” Unfortunately, this is not a tune people were singing about the National Hockey League back in 1998. Among those people were Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Eric Reif, the authors of the influential book the Death of Hockey. In their book the authors clearly layout problems that they have noticed with hockey, problems that have plagued the NHL from standing among the other elite sports in the world. They touch on things such as the league’s overexpansion, the lack of cont
The Maple Leafs have won six of their last seven games and look to be firing on all cylinders. While the Maple Leafs have jumped back up into a respective fifth place in the Eastern conference their AHL counterparts find themselves atop their division. This is due in large part to the great play of TJ Brennan. One of the biggest reasons for the Marlies success has been the great play of defenceman T.J. Brennan. Brennan finds himself fifth in the league in scoring and number one amongst defenceme
Tuesday was the day that a lot of Canadians had marked on their calendars as it marked the announcement of the roster that will hit the ice to defend gold at the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi. Steve Yzerman and the selection committee made the announcement just before 11:00am and Yzerman and the rest believe this is the team that gives Canada the best chance to win gold. Most hockey fans have been making up their own roster of who they would take, but here is the roster that will take the ice in
The holiday season is upon us and it seems that Director of Player Safety Brenda Shanahan has been in the giving spirit, suspensions that is. Throughout the month of December Shanahan has handed out 9 suspensions. So with all these suspensions in the past few weeks a question has been looming in the NHL, is the NHL giving out too many suspensions or have their means been justified? The NHL has seen 9 suspensions with a total of 38 games given for the infractions this month. Of the 9 suspensions
On Monday Hockey Canada announced the invitees to its World Junior Camp for the upcoming 2014 World Junior Hockey Championships. After finishing a disappointing fourth place last year, Hockey Canada is taking a different approach to this year’s camp. Unlike in year’s previous where Canada would invite upwards of 40 players to camp and then make cuts accordingly, this year a roster of only 25 players was invited with the hopes of only making a few cuts and leaving more time for the team to gel an
It seems that this year has been the first year that talk about removing fighting from hockey has really resonated with people. In years previous it seems that the vast majority of hockey fans had been in favour of allowing fisticuffs in the game, but many are now singing another tune. Ever since opening night this season when Montreal Canadiens’ tough guy George Parros took a freak fall when fighting Toronto Maple Leafs’ Colton Orr, smashed his head on the ice and ultimately leaving the veteran
Ever since Monday the talk around the league has been the devastating injury to Tampa Bay Lightning superstar Steven Stamkos. Monday in their matinee game against the Boston Bruins Stamkos crashed heavily into his own net and in doing so broke his right tibia. The Stamkos injury means that he will be out of commission indefinitely. Now despite just being out of the Lightning lineup for the foreseeable future the injury also could mean that Stamkos’ participation for team Canada at the 2014 Olymp
The Toronto Maple Leafs finished off their west coast road trip last Saturday with arguably their worst effort of the season, losing 4-0 to the Vancouver Canucks . However, despite this loss the Leafs looked great picking up solid wins against the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames. These two wins can largely be credited to the outstanding play of both James Reimer and Jonathan Bernier and that is why there may be some cause for concern. In their three games each tender was forced to make ov
It was another familiar and unfortunate site for Buffalo last Wednesday night, not just because the Sabres lost again for the 9th time this season (now at 10), but because another dirty hit was committed. In their 5-2 loss to the Boston Bruins Sabres goon (to put it nicely) John Scott delivered a vicious elbow to the head of Bruins star Loui Eriksson on a delayed hit. So once again Scott has the hockey world up in arms after another dirty play. John Scott's hit on Loui Eriksson http://www.youtub
