Brady Tkachuk and Nikita Kucherov lead the 2026 NHL playoffs all-bust team

The NHL playoffs have been going on for over a month now, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we’re very disappointed.

Not over everything, because a lot of this year’s postseason has been pretty fun. But we’re hockey fans, and we like to be cranky. And like every season, the playoffs give us plenty of opportunity to single out individual players for a disapproving head-shake or two.

Today, we’re making a team out of those guys. We’ll be building a full 21-man roster, which is to say 12 forwards, six blueliners and three goalies, because bad teams always need an extra option in net. As always, we’ll work with two key rules. First, no team can have more than three players, because we want to spread the love resentment. And second, all 16 playoff teams need to have at least one rep.

And yes, that rule also applies to the four teams that are still alive, meaning we’re virtually guaranteed to pick at least one player who immediately blows up and causes a flood of “this aged well” comments to come our way. That’s the risk we’re willing to take, because we do not learn from past mistakes around here.

Like all great teams, we’ll build from the net out.

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Who wins Game 7 tonight, the Sabres or Canadiens? Yes, obviously, and here's why

We’ve got a winner-take-all showdown tonight in Buffalo, as the most entertaining series of the second round concludes with a Game 7 that’s felt inevitable all along. The eyes of the hockey world will be focused on the KeyBank Center tonight, as fans feel the weight of suspense over who’ll win.

But they shouldn’t be. Because it’s pretty obvious.

I mean, the hockey gods aren’t even really trying to disguise the ending here. If you’ve been paying attention to this series, you know who’s going to win.

We’ll lay that case out today, although you should probably skip this post if you prefer to avoid spoilers. I’ll give you five reasons why the winner is so obvious, and by the end you may not even want to bother watching the game.

One small point of order: Because of our commitment to covering both sides of every story, it wouldn’t be fair to only list reasons for one team. So we’ll do both, if only out of an abundance of journalistic ethics. But it goes without saying that I only mean it for one team, and it should be obvious which one that is. (If you’re not sure, check with me after the game is over and I’ll be happy to tell you which side I was really on all along.)

Five reasons why the Habs are definitely winning tonight. And five more for the Sabres. The right answer is definitely in here somewhere.

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Building each team's best lineup of players who never won a Cup with them

It’s Friday, the second round is almost over, and there’s no hockey tonight. Let’s keep it simple with a time-killing roster game.

This one comes up surprisingly often from readers: Which team could build the best all-time lineup of players who never won a Cup for them?

Easy. Maybe a little too easy, since some teams are going to be a lot tougher than others. So today, we’ll tackle this question in three parts, nudging of the difficulty as we go.

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A brief history of the Maruk Trophy, a fake award for the MVP of early eliminations

Has a player from your favorite team ever won the Conn Smythe?

Probably not, because your team never wins anything, and the Conn Smythe is very much an award for winners. Even in those rare years where it goes to a player from the team that loses in the final, like Connor McDavid a few seasons ago, you’re still talking about somebody from a team that’s won three rounds. That’s a lot of winning. And since the Conn Smythe is the only playoff-specific award the NHL has, that means anyone whose team doesn’t win goes home empty-handed.

Until today. We’re adding a new award to our fake trophy case.

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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