All 12 Stanley Cup finals matchups left in play, ranked purely on narratives

You know what they say: When it comes to a hockey playoff series, all that matters is what happens on the ice. You wave away the distractions and noise and just focus on the games being played.

That’s what they say, because they are fools. It’s the playoffs. It’s all about the narrative, baby.

OK, I’ll acknowledge the slight possibility that my media background is shining through here, and not everyone cares about pre-built storylines quite as much as I’ve been trained to. But it’s my column, so today we’re doing narratives.

Specifically, we’re looking ahead to the various possible matchups we could see in the final. With the Flyers out, we’re down to 12 possible combinations of teams, and please don’t ask me long it took to figure that math out on my own without asking Dom.

Let’s look ahead to what June could bring, ranked from the least to the most enticing, based purely on the narratives that people like me will beat into the ground.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

NHL draft lottery hindsight fun: The games that we now know changed the outcome

The NHL draft lottery was this week, and the results were met with unanimous praise and approval. But what if things had been different?

Specifically, what if one game, or even one moment, from the 2025-26 season had played out just slightly differently? As it turns out, that can change everything. Because of the way the process works, and how the league hands out combinations to specific spots in the standings, any result that shifted those standings would also have ended up changing the lottery outcomes.

That’s the theory, at least. And it’s one we’ve had some fun with over the years, like the time that Patrik Stefan’s infamous open-net blooper ended up sending Patrick Kane to Chicago instead of Edmonton. Last year, we discovered that a random Sabres/Islanders game nobody even remembered ended up sending Matthew Schaefer to New York instead of Buffalo. That might turn out to be important someday.

We can’t do this every year, because sometimes the gaps between teams are wide enough that there’s no single game that works. For example, if the Canucks had won the lottery this year, we wouldn’t have been able to find a game that swung the (checks notes) 14-point gap between them and the next team.

But as you may have heard, the Canucks did not win the lottery. Instead, the lucky numbers belonged to the 28th-place Maple Leafs and the 24th-place Sharks. Bad news for Vancouver, but good news for us in the hindsight business, because it gives us plenty to work with.

As always, if you’re the sort of person who’s going to be bothered by the premise here, and think you might feel tempted to wade into the comments section and rant about butterfly effects and the concept of rational determinism, kindly go be a wet blanket somewhere else. For the rest of us, let’s find some moments that changed history.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

Your lottery team knows where their pick is now. Here’s why they should trade it

Last night saw the hockey world settle in to watch the NHL draft lottery, an annual event in which a collection of ping pong balls reward whichever franchise and its fans are found to be the most noble and pure of heart.

So now we know the NHL’s order for this June’s draft, pending any trades. And it really feels like we’re only saying that last part to be polite. It’s exceedingly rare to see a team trade a pick in the first half of the first round, at least once the lottery has come and gone and the pick order is locked in. And that’s especially true if you ignore trades where teams move up or down a few spots, like the Flyers moving up to 12th last year in a minor draft floor deal with the Penguins. As far as anything bigger, we might see a move every year or two, like last year’s Noah Dobson trade, or the Senators getting Alex DeBrincat in 2022. But it’s rare.

And that's a shame, because every lottery team should be open to trading their pick. Yes, all of them.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

NHL Draft Lottery power rankings: Who needs it, who deserves it, who passes the Leafs?

The draft lottery is tonight, with 15 teams vying to move up the order and the Canucks hoping to stay put in the one-spot. With separate lotteries for each of the first two picks, there are a number of ways this could all play out. Let’s dig into some of the possibilities, in our annual draft lottery power rankings.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

A brief history of the playoff penalty shot, suddenly the NHL's hottest new trend

Something weird happened in the NHL last week. And for a change, it was something fun.

Specifically, it happened four times: In Game 2 between the Flyers and Penguins last Monday, later that same night in Game 2 between Carolina and Ottawa, the next night in Game 2 between the Kings and Avalanche, and then again two nights later in Game 3 between the Sabres and Bruins.

Each of those games featured a penalty shot. That’s relatively rare in the playoffs. There have been only 94 postseason penalty shots in NHL history, an average of less than one per season. To have four in the same week? Almost unprecedented.

For you kids out there, a penalty shot used to be a big deal. Back in the days before the shootout came long and ruined everything diminished the play's novelty somewhat, a penalty shot would be big news. I still remember Peter Ing stopping Wayne Gretzky at Maple Leaf Gardens, which was the Leaf fan equivalent of Buster Douglas KOing Mike Tyson. If you’d ever held a stick, you knew what your penalty shot move would be. And you only had one, because they were so rare that that’s probably all you’d ever need.

To get the chance in the playoffs, with the eyes of the hockey world focused on you? Almost (but not quite) unheard of. So today, since NHL referees have apparently decided to revive the concept for this year’s postseason, let’s celebrate with a brief history of the playoff penalty shot.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic