🏒 From the Sportsnet website: “NHL Sent Warning to Panthers, Lightning Prior to Saturday’s Game.” This laughable “warning” was apparently deemed necessary based on an October pre-season game that saw more than 300 penalty minutes doled out. So one might ask: what was the NHL’s warning supposed to accomplish? How high—or how low—would the penalty-minutes bar be set? Was as much as a single fight a no-no? Two fights? Two fights and a hooking penalty? The December 27 Battle of Florida didn’t reach the 300-minute threshold again, but the two teams did combine for 136 minutes of stupidity, including endless face-washing, non-stop pushy-shovey, head-squashing attacks from behind, two-on-one wrestling sequences, and even some real punches. Apparently, slashing and high-sticking are on the naughty list: Tampa’s Scott Sabourin was fined $2,018.23 for slashing Florida’s Niko Mikkola, while Anton Lundell was hit with a $5,000 fine for high-sticking Tampa Bay’s Jake Guentzel. Based on the two players’ salaries, it’s the equivalent of fining people like us $2.00. Obviously, everything else that went down is more than acceptable in the NHL.
🏒 As is the case every December, the Spengler Cup is up for grabs once again and available for viewing thanks to TSN’s excellent coverage. The tournament’s unique oddities include the fabulous Vaillant Arena, with its iconic wooden beams and roofing; an energetic crowd complete with soccer-style chants; players covered in promotional logos from head to toe in race-car fashion; a massive ice surface that never seems to lose its shine; an equally massive outdoor pleasure-skating pad adjacent to the once-roofless stadium (enclosed back in 1981); a grueling six-day tournament that occasionally requires a slow-starting team to play five games during that stretch; and mic’d-up referees who spew their accent-heavy English instructions with great regularity. Most importantly, it doesn’t matter what the matchups are—every game is wide-open and totally entertaining.
🏒 Regardless of the ice quality at the upcoming Olympic hockey tournament, it’s possible that multiple NHL GMs will be furious to see one—or more—of their top players injured while AWOL pursuing a medal attached to a ribbon. With the already condensed NHL schedule about to become even more compressed following the tournament, the National Parity League’s race for a playoff spot will see at least one legitimate contender golfing instead of skating this spring. Back in October, we posted an article (“Gary Bettman’s Playoff Mess”) ridiculing the NHL’s insistence on divisional matchups every year. This idiocy looks even worse when you consider the three best teams in the Western Conference—Colorado, Dallas, and Minnesota—all play in the same division, ensuring that only one of them will survive the second round. Stupid? Yes.
🏒 Unfortunately, the NHL doesn’t officially track players hitting goal posts and crossbars, but Yahoo Sports posted an article indicating that during the 2023–24 season, Auston Matthews was the most prolific when it came to striking the iron instead of the mesh. Matthews dinged the goalpost 15 times and the crossbar five times that year. According to a Dobber Hockey report, Matthews subsequently retained his crown by hitting a combined 21 posts and crossbars during the 2024–25 season, despite missing 15 games due to injury. All of this came to mind during a recent Toronto–Detroit overtime showdown (December 28), when Matthews ripped a howitzer snapshot off the crossbar mere seconds before Detroit traveled the length of the ice to pop in the winner.
