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2025-26 NHL Miscellaneous Thread

Vegas dman Brayden McNabb has a hearing todayafter picking up an interference major on Ryan Poehling last night. It was a shoulder to shoulder hit, but it was late and Poehling’s head hit the glass.
 
Forgot to add that to my post. Got interrupted by family drama … in-laws this time, thankfully.

McNabb came across half the width of the ice at full speed to make that hit and didn’t give a single crap that Poehling was nowhere near the puck when he made contact. He deserves whatever he gets.

Also, in Montreal we got the double goal review that took like 15 minutes. No goal, goal, no goal … which is … fun? I think they got it right in the end, probably. No goal call on the ice because it was less that clear. Called a goal after review because it did cross the line. Goal waiver off for goalie interference after Frodo challenged, which seemed a little soft but also probably correct. It’s how long the whole thing took that rankles, honestly.
 
I'm leaning more toward wanting Buffalo after last night. Montreal was flopping like prime Neymar and the refs were buying it. I don't want to have to put up with that crap.
 
I mean, fully half of Buffalo’s penalties were just dumb and/or cheap. There’s a lot of immaturity in both teams’ games. But yeah, the Sabres are less structurally sound and looser with the puck. That would be my preference, but I’m cool either way.
 
I would prefer Buffalo, especially given that Tage Thompson seems to be playing through something that seems to be hindering his ability to shoot the puck. They are also a faceoff trainwreck which would help the Canes quite a bit.

Either opponent will be a difficult series.
 
I am loath to see Lindy Ruff behind the bench in an ECF just because it’s Lindy. On the other hand, Lindy has never won a playoff series against the Hurricanes, whether that was in Buffalo or in NJD. Whoever comes out on the MTL-BUF series will have been through the grinder and I like that for the Canes.
 
SlapShots said:
I am loath to see Lindy Ruff behind the bench in an ECF just because it’s Lindy. On the other hand, Lindy has never won a playoff series against the Hurricanes, whether that was in Buffalo or in NJD. Whoever comes out on the MTL-BUF series will have been through the grinder and I like that for the Canes.
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Oh, I’d absolutely LOVE to see Lindy on the visiting bench for the Conference Final. He’s not there because of his stuck in the 00s strategic acumen and is largely getting coached out of the barn by Frodo in this series.
 
Minnesota jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first and chased Blackwood, who gave up all 3 on 13 shots. The Wild only took 7 shots the rest of the way. Colorado got a goal in the 2nd, then goals by Drury at 16:27 and MacKinnon at 18:37 with the extra attacker tied it. Brett Kulak won it at 3:52 of OT to send the Avs to the Western Conference Final. Burns and Necas each had 2 assists, Necas assisted on the game winner.
 
I was in the car and saw the score- 3-0. Then heard the Burns goal making 3-1. Got home and went to bed, thinking good on MN. Woke up, saw that COL won and is going to WCF. Can’t underestimate the value of good goaltending and possession.
 
Ex-Canes all over the scoresheet for the Avs. And how did MacKinnon think, “Yeah, I can make this shot”?! Wow!!

The biggest story long term though might be the continuing saga of Makar’s shoulder. He may not survive the CF.
 
bagopux said:
Ex-Canes all over the scoresheet for the Avs. And how did MacKinnon think, “Yeah, I can make this shot”?! Wow!!

The biggest story long term though might be the continuing saga of Makar’s shoulder. He may not survive the CF.
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That seeing eye shot from MacKinnon reminded me a lot of a goal Slavin scored on the Rangers a few playoffs ago. Low angle, tiny window over the shoulder on the short side. And of course, Slavin is absolutely on par with MacKinnon as a scorer :0)
 
andyt said:
2 straight finals followed by a first round exit. A classic case of “what have you done for me lately”.
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I mean, yes. This is true. But it’s impossible to have watched that team this season and thought “you know what, this is a really well coached team.” Their systems were a mess and they made basic stuff look difficult to impossible. People talk about their goalie play a lot, but they ask far too much from their goaltenders because of their structural and system issues.
 
OK, so we got another Conference Finalist as Colorado absorbed the Wild’s best shot early and slowly reeled them in to win Game 5 in OT. The gentleman’s sweep. Nice. Not sure we learned a ton about the Avalanche, really. They’re dangerous at pace and pretty solid otherwise and when they do manage to get out of their own way on the power play, then the only way you’re beating them is if their goaltending breaks down … which it does from time to time. Makar’s should injury has to be a concern because he’s a big influence on both their power play and their transition game. He wasn’t healthy for that whole series, I suspect and I’m not sure where he goes from here. Maybe the rest will be enough, maybe not. If he’s gonna play on one wing the rest of the way, it WILL hurt them.

Post Mortem time for the Wild …

Centers, man. Same issue they had coming into this season, highlighted by the loss of Eriksson Ek for this series. Sturm and MCcarron are very good 4th line guys, but one of them got shoved into Top 9 duty and that ain’t going to work. Hartman is a decent enough player but he got 22-23 minutes a game with Eriksson Ek out and that’s a problem. I like Yurov, personally, but the coaching staff seems to hate him and he was barely playing before being shoved in as an injury replacement. No matter how good your high end talent is, if you don’t have anything much going on up the middle then you’re not beating a team like Colorado. They HAVE to address that position group this summer if they want to make any headway.

Goalies though … with Wallstedt coming good so quickly, they have the luxury of two really solid keepers. And with Gustavsson signed to a not that ridiculous long term deal, they could have a chance to flip one of them for the help they need up front.

Contracts … they’ve got one more year to talk Quinn Hughes into sticking around, but it sounds like they’ve at least made a start on that. A lot of the older guys in their bottom 6 are out of contract, and some of them are pretty expensive so there’s a chance to re-make that group and save some cash. They’ll need to figure out what to do with Zuccarello, who still triggers a lot of their power play and transition game but is out of contract and older than dirt. That will be tricky, because guys like that aren’t easy to find. On D, Bogosian and Petry are out of contract and should be jettisoned in favor of guys who can … you know … move … at all. The rest of that group is settled and quite good overall.

Cap … their biggest issue with the Cap is that they’re tight this summer. Next year really opens up for them, but they don’t really have big money this year ($13 mil and change). That’s going to make re-tooling the depth lines tricky which means they may skew old/cheap kind of like they did this year.

Bottom line … the real window for them is probably 27-28 when they can take a couple of big swings on adding skill.
 
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