The Los Angeles Kings might have taken a couple games to get started in these playoffs, but last year’s Stanley Cup champs have the look of a freight train right now. After winning four straight against St. Louis to close the first round, the Kings immediately opened the second with two more wins against a good San Jose Sharks team.
The first round of the NHL playoffs had an incredible ending in Boston and an anticlimactic one in Washington, as a pair of Game 7s trimmed the field to eight teams. Today we’ll briefly recap yesterday’s games and then dive into previews of the four conference semi-final matchups , two of which begin tonight.
The second round of the NHL playoffs is three-quarters full, with Pittsburgh and Detroit moving forward this weekend, and the final two spots will be settled tonight with Game 7s in the Eastern Conference. Boston-Toronto & Washington-NY Rangers are coming down to their final battles, and it’s there that we’ll begin the overview of the first-round series that were still ongoing over the weekend.
At least one series in the first round of the NHL playoffs is going to go the distance. Anaheim and Detroit are poised for a Game 7 battle on Sunday night, and three more series are getting set for a Game 6.
All four playoff teams from the NHL’s Northeast Division are playing each other in the first round of the playoffs and both series are now on the brink of ending. The Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators each got Game 4 wins that gave them 3-1 series leads. TheSportsNotebook’s review of each NHL playoff series will begin with these two matchups
Every first-round series in the NHL playoffs has completed three games and two of them are four deep, but only might end in elimination over the course of the next two nights. That’s San Jose-Vancouver, where the Canucks stand on the verge of yet another playoff flameout. The self-induced failure of Vancouver will lead our overview of all eight first-round matchups and an assessment of where they stand.
Chicago and Pittsburgh are the heavy co-favorites for the Stanley Cup and each has responded differently in its first two games. The Blackhawks are in command, the Penguins are facing a challenge and both will be in the NBC spotlight on Sunday afternoon when the postseason’s sequence of Game 3s begins at noon EST. We’ll start with these two teams and then move through the other six NHL playoff matchups.
The St. Louis-Los Angeles series, along with Anaheim-Detroit—the only other first-round pairing to have already played two games—will lead our discussion, and we’ll then sweep through the other six matchups.
The puck drops on the drive for the Stanley Cup on Tuesday night. Our last piece of pre-playoff NHL analysis will be final predictions and a review of the betting lines.
The NHL playoffs begin Tuesday night. Today’s NHL analysis will preview the four first-round matchups in the Eastern Conference, starting with one point that summarizes each series in a nutshell and then moving into fuller analysis.
It’s time to decide who should win the Hart Memorial Trophy, awarded to the league’s MVP. A goaltender hasn’t won the trophy since 2002. I think it’s time for that streak to end this year and believe the case for Ottawa’s Craig Anderson is virtually airtight.
The Detroit Red Wings have been a playoff fixture. They’ve been in the postseason every year since 1990, a period that includes four Stanley Cup championships. But with six days left in the compressed regular season of 2013, the Red Wings are on the outside looking in, a point out of the 8-seed in the Western Conference. Today we’ll look at why