Tuesday, October 22

Tag: NHL

The business of Sarah Nurse: She’s one of the faces of hockey, but her sights are set on more
2Mar By adminNo Comments
Sports

The business of Sarah Nurse: She’s one of the faces of hockey, but her sights are set on more

TORONTO — Sarah Nurse was driving home from a recent PWHL Toronto practice when she got a bit of sage advice.It wasn’t from a podcast or a friend on the phone. The advice came courtesy of a billboard on the side of the road in Canada’s most populous city, featuring her own face with the Adidas slogan “You got this.”“I was like, yeah, I do,” Nurse said with a laugh.The billboard she drove past is one of many across the country, including a massive advertisement at Yonge-Dundas Square — Toronto’s closest approximation to Times Square in New York City — that pairs Nurse with Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes and World Cup champion Lionel Messi.Nurse, 29, has had major partnerships in the past. In 2020, Tim Hortons and Mattel collaborated to make a Barbie doll in her likeness. In 2022, she was f...
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Connor Bedard, Trevor Zegras and the changing perception of lacrosse-style goals in hockey
1Jan By adminNo Comments
Sports

Connor Bedard, Trevor Zegras and the changing perception of lacrosse-style goals in hockey

Gino Cavallini knows precisely what would have happened if Connor Bedard or Trevor Zegras pulled off or even attempted a lacrosse-style shot in his day.“They would have started a line brawl,” said Cavallini, who played in the NHL in the 1980s and 1990s.Cavallini isn’t one of those old-school people shaking his fist at Bedard and Zegras. Cavallini has come around with the times. Now the club director of the Chicago Mission, a top AAA junior hockey program, he’s learned to embrace the evolution and creativity of today’s players. After Bedard and Zegras each recently executed the “Michigan” goal on the same night, Cavallini had players lining up to attempt the same in practice the next day.“It’s pretty cool,” Cavallini said. “They get it. It’s part of the game. You have to be prepared for it...
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Artemi Panarin has hat trick as Rangers beat Lightning
31Dec By adminNo Comments
Health

Artemi Panarin has hat trick as Rangers beat Lightning

Artemi Panarin scored three goals, Igor Shesterkin made 34 saves on his 28th birthday, and the NHL-leading New York Rangers beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-1 on Saturday night. Vincent Trocheck had a goal and three assists, and Chris Kreider also scored for the New York. Alexis Lafrenière had two assists, and Mika Zibanejad had an assist for a career-high 10-game point streak. The Rangers are the first team to reach 50 points for the first time since winning their last Stanley Cup in 1993-94. New York, which lost 4-3 at Florida on Friday night, is 6-0 in the second of back-to-back games this season. Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 16 shots and NHL points leader Nikita Kucherov scored his 25th goal. The Lightning’s 39 points through 37 games is one behind their total after the same n...
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No Hit League? The ‘lost art’ of body checking in the NHL
22Dec By adminNo Comments
Sports

No Hit League? The ‘lost art’ of body checking in the NHL

Seventeen years and more than 1,200 games ago, Andrew Cogliano remembers how difficult it was to traverse the state of California.The Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks were three of the biggest, heaviest teams in the league. If you had to play all three in succession? Well, good luck. Not only were those teams willing to play a punishing brand of hockey, but they were all highly skilled and generally successful, too.After a few years in Edmonton where he broke into the league, Cogliano was dealt to the Ducks as a free agent in the summer of 2011 and was part of a team that qualified for the playoffs in six straight seasons from 2012-13 through 2017-18. Those California road trips became regular intrastate battles. And they were vicious.“My first couple years in Anaheim,...
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At 51, Donald Brashear is still fighting, and we can’t look away
22Dec By adminNo Comments
Sports

At 51, Donald Brashear is still fighting, and we can’t look away

WENDAKE, Quebec — The line reaches across the lobby to the glass door entrance 15 minutes before warmups for a hockey game in a low-level pro league just north of Quebec City. We pay $12 a ticket at a table next to the Wendake Sports Complex pro shop, where a game-worn Black Jack No. 87 jersey carries the name of the league’s most famous player: BRASHEAR.He played in 1,025 NHL games and amassed 2,635 penalty minutes during his 17-year career. He earned more than $16 million as one of the league’s most feared enforcers for the Montreal Canadiens, Vancouver Canucks, Washington Capitals, Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers.He is now almost 52 years old and we are here to see the famous fighter go another round.Donald Brashear is the marquee attraction. He is the Wendake Black Jack capta...
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What’s behind Alex Ovechkin’s scoring decline? Breaking down his offensive drop-off
20Dec By adminNo Comments
Sports

What’s behind Alex Ovechkin’s scoring decline? Breaking down his offensive drop-off

Fifteen goals. That’s all Alex Ovechkin is on pace to finish the 2023-24 season with at this rate.Ovechkin’s never finished a season with a measly 15 goals. He’s never fallen below the 20-goal marker, not even in condensed seasons. And now, for the first time in his career, he’s gone 13 straight games without a goal. The five goals he has at this point aren’t even all that impressive — only three were scored with a goaltender in net.Even if 38-year-old Ovechkin is far removed from his prime, this is a stark, unexpected decline for one of the greatest goal scorers of all time. So, what’s behind the aging superstar’s drop-off? Is this harsh reality the new normal? Is there a chance he can turn it around in the second half of the season?The elephant in the room is his age. Not every player m...
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Another national-anthem flub has us asking: Why do we play them before sporting events?
17Dec By adminNo Comments
Sports

Another national-anthem flub has us asking: Why do we play them before sporting events?

If we are ranking the worst renditions of “O Canada” ever performed in the United States, what John deCausmeaker did on Thursday night in St. Paul doesn’t top the list.That honour would comfortably fall to lounge singer Dennis Casey Park, who managed to warp Canada’s national anthem into a version of “O Christmas Tree” prior to a CFL game in Las Vegas in 1994.In deCausmeaker’s case, he simply got the lyrics wrong and repeated the phrase “from far and wide” twice in the span of 10 seconds ahead of the Wild-Flames game at Xcel Energy Center. We have an anthem fail in Minnesota tonight 😂 pic.twitter.com/PZ8BFzMiBV — Robert Munnich (@RingOfFireCGY) December 15, 2023The remarkable thing is that deCausmeaker’s rendition wasn’t even the worst performance of the Canadian anthem at an NHL game thi...
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‘For the District?’ Yeah, right; Ted Leonsis will take Wizards, Capitals angst across the river
16Dec By adminNo Comments
Sports

‘For the District?’ Yeah, right; Ted Leonsis will take Wizards, Capitals angst across the river

WASHINGTON — The Prince of Potomac Yard spoke of water.“When I first came to this site,” Ted Leonsis said Wednesday, “and stood on top of the roof of the building next door, and looked over, we forget the power of having two rivers flow right into this community. And, iconic real estate is incredibly important. We have access — you can see the Washington Monument from here, Washington, D.C., the border’s one-and-a-half miles from here.”That must be cool! So nice that the billionaire owner of the Wizards and Capitals will have a swank view of the Potomac and Anacostia confluence from his soon-to-be floor-wide offices in Alexandria, where he will center his entertainment and sports empire. It would be unfair to say he literally will be looking down upon the people who are financing his Jerr...
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Sampling the New York restaurant where Russian NHL stars find a taste of home
13Dec By adminNo Comments
Sports

Sampling the New York restaurant where Russian NHL stars find a taste of home

NEW YORK — Wild defenseman Jake Middleton was at the rink one day in November and Russian superstar Kirill Kaprizov surprised him with a question.“You ever have Russian food?” Kaprizov asked.“No,” Middleton replied.“You want to go in New York?” Kaprizov said.“Absolutely,” Middleton said.Middleton, 27, is from small-town Alberta and had no idea what to expect. He thought maybe it’d be something extravagant, perhaps even some raw fish dishes. What Middleton was introduced to on a mid-November night was a treasure trove for Russian-born NHLers looking for an authentic taste of home.Kaprizov brought Middleton and captain Jared Spurgeon to Mari Vanna.The restaurant is nestled in a quiet part of 20th Street in Manhattan. From the outside, it looks like an apartment. You could easily walk past t...
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