Ok, fine. I see how it is, you poutine aficionados. I’ll start the regular season thread from down here in Texas.
Oddly, not many have a undefeated streak this year. Only Carolina and Dallas have made it this far with no losses, and they’ve only played three games each. I haven’t watched much of Carolina, but if Dallas’ defensive play stays the same, I don’t expect that to hold out for long.
Tonight seems to be the night of the underdogs. The Mammoth beat Calgary, Buffalo doubles Ottawa’s four goals, The Blackhawks (!!!) do even better by beating St. Louis 8-3, and The Red Wings beat the Panthers 4-1.
Yes, it is early, and I know that a lot of this game is luck, but this seems like an unusually lumpy start to the season. Usually someone comes out of the gate smoothly. Anyone else see anything interesting in the numbers or the tea leaves?
Someone please tell me (who doesn’t follow hockey very much) why I saw somebody say that the Buffalo Sabres’ season is already over this early. Did someone get injured or something?
It’s probably someone who was a fatalist (OK, maybe a realist) who saw they had dropped their first three games. Buffalo hasn’t had a great record recently, so it might seem that any hole they get into is automatically insurmountable. They have also had several people out injured, but no one the team can’t survive without.
All that said, I wish Ruff a lot of luck. He was a good coach for Dallas when he was here.
The Seattle Kraken started the season with 2 wins for the first time in their long, storied, four year history, which gives people hope! (I guess.) They lost their last game 5-4 to the Canadiens in overtime a couple of days ago. They play the Senators this afternoon.
I’m an extremely casual hockey fan. I love the look of the Kraken, I love having another local sports franchise, and when I occasionally watch a match it is pretty thrilling. But I’m a football fan first, baseball fan a distant second, and don’t have the energy to muster up much fandom for another team. Though I do own Kraken merch and wear it on occasion because again, I think it looks cool.
I’ll try to watch more hockey this year though. At some point. At least after baseball is done. Hockey really is pretty fun. Go Kraken!
Josh Norris, who they got from the Senators last year in the Dylan Cozens trade, got hurt and will miss eight weeks. He also only played three games for the Sabres after getting traded to them in the middle of last season before suffering an oblique injury. I believe this injury is unrelated.
So my team, the Devils, is being true to form and has already lost their starting goalie to injury. Jakob Markstrom is out several weeks after getting hurt after coming in to a game late where the Josh Allen had to leave with an injury.
I don’t think Allen’s injury is severe…
As always, injuries will determine how the Devils go. They don’t have the scoring depth needed to withstand the loss of one of the big scorers.
To add on to what others have mentioned, two of their top players are rumored to have ask for trades if things don’t improve this season. Only three games in to the season and already the home fans were chanting to fire the GM, wearing bags on their heads and throwing away Sabres merchandise onto the ice. 14 years without a playoff appearance is enough to make it feel like nothing good is ever going to happen to you.
And yet, under Lindy Ruff’s first tenure as head coach, the Sabres were doing great. They might even have won the Stanley Cup in 1999 were it not for Brett Hull’s blatantly illegal goal in the third overtime, possibly the greatest officiating screwup in NHL history. I cannot even imagine how incredibly pissed Ruff would have been.
I was watching that game and distinctly remember that (non)-goal. We all know how goal reviews work, right? The announcement is made that “the goal is under review” and there is tense silence until a decision is rendered. But that’s not what happened here. Pandemonium broke out immediately as the Dallas Stars began celebrating, swarming onto the ice with their championship caps, the ice already littered with debris. There was no immediate announcement of a goal review, and having failed to make an immediate call, NHL officials had lost control of the situation.
The purpose of the crease rule was supposedly to protect the goalie against aggressive players crashing the net. The “control of the puck” theory is widely believed to have been an after-the-fact rationalization that makes no logical sense, and was invented by the NHL to save face in one of the worst officiating decisions in that sport’s history. The next season, I believe, the stupid rule was dropped altogether, but when it existed, it should have been properly enforced.
Anyway, my Isles finally won a game! And, Schaefer seems like the real deal and has continued his point streak! Drouin handing the open netter to Horvat to get a hat trick was a nice topper.
I would start a new thread, but I think it’s an easy answer. Last night, Horvat got a PP goal, a shortie, and an open netter. He didn’t get an even strength or penalty shot goal. Has anyone gotten all five in a game? Or, four of five?
Edited to add: Maybe this is some AI glitch, but this website has:
Mario Lemieux scored 2 even-strength goals when scoring 1+ empty-net goal, scoring 1+ shorthanded goal, scoring 1+ power-play goal and scoring 1+ penalty-shot goal against the Devils on December 31, 1988.
Edited again – I found a Facebook post that has this:
“We’ll never forget when Mario Lemieux scored five goals in five different ways in the same game — an even-strength goal, a power play goal, a shorthanded goal, a penalty shot goal, and an empty-net goal”
Lemieux may have been best or second best ever, if not for his bad back.
HELL YES! I believe I’ve watched 90-95% of their games, mostly excluding the ones where I’m blacked out or they’re on NHLN which I don’t have. I’ll make it to three or four games this year, most notably the pre-Christmas socal swing where they play the Ducks on the Monday before Christmas and the Kings that Tuesday.
Tough loss last night. The sample size is small but I like what Coach Lambert has done in the offseason. Defense is tighter and the team just generally looks like they’re playing harder.
They got smothered in the last few mins of the 3rd though. Don’t know if they ran out of gas or just crumbled under pressure. That last goal stung though. I don’t love Grubauer, and I especially don’t love how Oleksiak runs out of ideas and ends up screening his own goalie by just standing in front of him.
Hell of a game by Wright though. He got that first goal and had maybe three more chances that I just can’t believe didn’t go in.