When the Boston Bruins let longtime captain Zdeno Chára walk to a division rival in free agency, the team touted its young defensemen. For Jérémy Lauzon and Jakub Zbořil to develop, Boston’s front office seemed to argue, there simply was not enough room for the now-44-year-old Chára. An entire condensed-schedule season later, and the numbers […]
neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): Well, the NHL did it — we’re (mostly) done with one of the weirdest regular seasons in hockey history, and it’s finally time to get Cup Crazy: The playoffs are every hockey fan’s favorite time of year, and now we even know when the playoffs will be, which is nice. […]
neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): With roughly two weeks left in the NHL regular season, each player is making his closing arguments in the races for the league’s various pretty trophies. So for this week’s hockey chat, we wanted to handicap those award battles — plus hand out some fictional “anti-awards” to some of the […]
After plenty of twists and turns (and game postponements), the NHL’s 2021 regular-season journey is nearly over. The average team now has just 10.6 remaining games in which to make its final case for the postseason — though in all practicality, many of those playoff spots are basically clinched already. According to our Elo-based model, […]
neil (Neil Paine, senior sportswriter): One of hockey’s annual big events came and went earlier this week, with Monday’s trade deadline. Though the deadline brought fewer players on the move than usual, it did offer some moves that ranged from “intriguing” to “borderline blockbuster.” So let’s quickly unpack what happened and then talk about what […]