Author: Dose

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Top-5 : Columbus fans sing happy birthday to Johnny Gaudreau Junior

The National Hockey League was back in action yesterday, with 14 regular season games on the schedule throughout the day.

Although we didn’t get to see games as exciting as the Four Nations Tournament, several highlights caught our attention.

Here’s a recap.

1. Columbus fans sing happy birthday to Johnny Gaudreau Junior

The death of brothers Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau is a tragic event that has completely stunned the hockey world and still shocks NHL fans.

Johnny Gaudreau was not only one of the best players in the NHL, but also a loving and caring family man.

Last night, at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Johnny Gaudreau’s son, Johnny Gaudreau Junior, was present for the Columbus Blue Jackets’ game against the Chicago Blackhawks.

The young Gaudreau was also celebrating his first birthday, and the Columbus crowd took the opportunity to sing happy birthday to him when he appeared on the big screen.

This led to a very beautiful moment.

Johnny Junior may only be one year old and may not remember this moment, but for the rest of the family, it’s a wonderful dose of love and support.

Additionally, the young Gaudreau got to watch a full game, as the Blue Jackets won 5-1 against the Blackhawks.

With the two points, Columbus is now tied with the Ottawa Senators and the Detroit Red Wings for the last playoff spot.

2. Horrible night for Rangers fans

After seeing their American players make a poor impression at the Four Nations Tournament, New York Rangers fans were at least expecting a strong return to the NHL.

Well, it was quite the opposite, as they got humiliated 8-2 by the struggling Buffalo Sabres.

Yes, by the Sabres from Buffalo.

It was a thrashing that saw Igor Shesterkin pulled from the game after allowing five goals on 16 shots.

In short, Rangers fans suffered last night, and to make matters worse, while they were getting dominated by the Sabres, Kaapo Kakko scored his 10th goal of the season for the Seattle Kraken.

3. Three points for Matvei Michkov

Although he’s no longer in the running for the Calder Trophy, awarded to the best rookie in the NHL, Michkov is having a great season.

Despite some ups and downs, the young Russian prodigy is one of the best players for the Philadelphia Flyers.

Last night, for the NHL’s return, Michkov scored three points, including the first goal of the game, in a 6-3 win for the Philadelphia Flyers over the Edmonton Oilers.

He also made a great pass to Sean Couturier for his 200th NHL goal.

Michkov now has 17 goals and 22 assists for a total of 39 points in 56 games.

4. Justin Barron scores his third goal in a Predators uniform

No one in Montreal is missing Justin Barron right now, given the stability and excellent play of Alexandre Carrier.

However, even if the Montreal Canadiens won the trade (for now), Barron seems to have finally found his place with the Nashville Predators.

In fact, last night, he scored his third goal in a Predators uniform in a 2-1 win over the Colorado Avalanche.

This gives him six points in 19 games with the Predators.

5. Ninth consecutive win for the Jets

The Winnipeg Jets set a franchise record last night, earning their ninth consecutive win, this time beating the St. Louis Blues 4-3 in a shootout.

This is quite an achievement for the Jets, and it once again shows how well they’re doing this season.

In fact, they’re the first team to reach 40 wins this season.

Overtime

– What a great feat for Marc-André Fleury.

– Here are the results from last night.

– Here are the top scorers from last night.

(Credit: NHL.com)

– Today’s schedule in the NHL: 12 games.

(Credit: Google/NHL)
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Victory of the Canadian on return from the break

After a break of several days due to the Four Nations tournament, the Canadian team finally resumed action.

On this occasion, they were visiting the Canadian capital, Ottawa.

Here are the lineups for the two teams.

No Brady Tkachuk, Shane Pinto, or Josh Norris for the Sens.

The home team played with 11 forwards and seven defensemen.

The Canadian team took advantage of these absences to start the game strong. First, Brendan Gallagher took advantage of a turnaround to score his 15th goal of the season. Not to mention, he is the team’s second-best scorer – tied with Nick Suzuki.

And a few moments later, Cole Caufield – the team’s top scorer – doubled the lead.

His 27th of the season.

Olé Olé Olé was heard after the two goals.

But at the end of the period, Josh Anderson opened the door for the Sens by taking a penalty.

Jake Sanderson didn’t take long to make his mark on the game, having scored against Canada in the final on Thursday.

After a goal by Tim Stutzle, who created the tie, the CH also took advantage of a power play.

He too returned from the Four Nations tournament, Patrik Laine scored from his office. On the play, Lane Hutson collected an assist, his 39th of the season.

In the second period, Montreal scored two more goals.

First, Josh Anderson took a rebound shot.

Then, Juraj Slafkovsky, who played a strong game (and even fought in the third period), chased Linus Ullmark from the game.

The Swede looked weak on the sequence.

With a three-goal lead, the CH held on.

Final score: 5-2.

Martin St-Louis’ team will resume action on Tuesday against the Carolina Hurricanes.

Overtime

– Still CH fans in Ottawa.

– Error on the scoreboard.

– Rocket loss.

– Well done.

– Interesting.

– The first goal of CF Montreal belongs to Nathan Saliba. The team still lost, however.

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Juraj Slafkovsky scores a goal against Ridly Greig

Tonight against the Senators, Juraj Slafkovsky played a very good game.

Probably his best game of the season.

In the second period, he chased Linus Ullmark with the team’s fifth goal.

And in the third period, he was targeted by Ridly Greig.

And he didn’t need Arber Xhekaj to settle his scores.

Slaf only needs one pass for a Gordie Howe hat-trick.

The break did him good.

Overtime

The Canadiens-Senators game is not the same as last Saturday’s (Canada-United States), but there is still a good pace.

Moreover, to come back to last Saturday’s game, Renaud Lavoie had some news concerning one of the players behind the start of the crazy game, Matthew Tkachuk. The American could miss the rest of the season for the Panthers.

The injury to his brother is much less serious, but it’s a tournament that left its mark on many people.

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4 Nations Tournament: “I’m not sure we could do it every year”

The four-nation tournament brought us strong emotions and in the end, it was the Canadians who came out on top.

We were one goal (from the Americans) away from disaster.

Even if the tournament was a success, don’t hold your breath, we’re not likely to see it every year. After all, with the 2026 Olympics, there won’t be one next year and then we’ll have to wait until 2028 to see another World Cup. Let’s hope that by then, the Russians will be able to join in…

But anyway, with the Olympics and World Cups every two years, the four-nation tournament will cease to exist. Besides, Connor McDavid is not sure he could participate every year. “It’s not bad taxing.”

Jack Hughes went in the same vein, saying yes, it was a success, but for NHL teams, it was not optimal.

I think that with the Olympics and the World Cup, we will have enough. – Connor McDavid

Meanwhile, the Oilers’ captain, like a true leader, will play tonight even though his coach offered him a rest.

Several players got injured and even though the competition was important to them, some teams lost fairly important players.

Even if Brady Tkachuk’s injury is not serious, he’s missing tonight’s game, Shea Theodore got injured in the first game and never came back, and other guys had to take time off to heal from minor injuries.

I’m a big fan of international competitions, but having a tournament like this every year would be too much for the players, but it would also diminish the importance of the tournaments. Instead of giving it their all, because they won’t have the opportunity to represent their country for four years, players will tell themselves they can make up for it next year.

It wouldn’t work in my book.

This is one of the reasons the Olympics are held every four years; athletes know that opportunities like this don’t come often.

In rafale

– GSP visited the Raptors.

– To follow.

– Not bad.

– Happy birthday!

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The Hurricanes and Mikko Rantanen’s agent are in constant communication

Last night, Elliotte Friedman mentioned the possibility of Mikko Rantanen being traded for a second time this season.

My colleague Michael Petit summarized it here exactly.

But there is also a possibility where the Finn will re-sign in Carolina. This is the route desired by the team, which is in constant communication with his agent, Andy Scott.

In six games in Carolina, Rantanen has only two points.

And in three games with his country in the four-nation tournament, he has only scored one goal.

Lately, he hasn’t played up to the level of the guy who had 209 points in his last two seasons in the Bettman circuit. Did Nathan MacKinnon, the MVP of the four-nation tournament, make him look better than he was? Before jumping to such a conclusion, let’s wait.

After all, it may take him a little time to get used to his new environment. Although Martin Necas (nine points in eight games) didn’t take any time, did he…

There are less than two weeks left before the trade deadline. If the Hurricanes see that discussions with the player and his agent are not progressing, he could very well leave the Canes. But until then, Eric Tulsky will do everything in his power to extend his new acquisition, which could turn out to be a failure if he had to send him elsewhere.

As for the main person involved, he has every interest in waiting until July 1st to sign a contract. Unless he really wants an eight-year deal, he has an interest in listening to offers from the other 31 teams, including the Avalanche, to drive up the price.

In a Hurry

– Note.

– To Read.

– P.K. Subban doesn’t like Kyle Dubas’ work.

– Ah well.

– Great news.

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Calder: the Flames’ coach complicates Lane Hutson’s task

After vibrating to the rhythm of the 4 Nations Confrontation for two weeks, the normal course of activities in the NHL is back today. For the Canadiens (and Emil Heineman), it’s with a game in Ottawa against the Senators tonight that it will happen.

That being said, it’s also in a context where the team’s playoff hopes are quite slim that everything will resume. The trade deadline (in two weeks) will be an important moment, but beyond March 7, the stakes will be lower for the CH.

The biggest stake, in fact, will probably be the Calder Trophy race, in which Lane Hutson is currently involved. At the moment, Hutson and Macklin Celebrini are seen as the two protagonists of a race to finish.

On the other hand, from Calgary, Flames coach Ryan Huska made an announcement that will complicate the task of the CH defender: the club will no longer limit the workload of goalkeeper Dustin Wolf.

Wolf, who is also a rookie, will therefore have the opportunity to play more… and come mix up the cards in this race.

If we talk a lot about the race between Hutson and Celebrini (and with good reason, they who are racking up points by the ton), Wolf is a name that passes a bit more under the radar. That being said, in 33 games this season, Wolf has a record of 19-11-3, an average of 2.63 goals against and an efficiency rate of 0.912.

These are very, very solid numbers for the 23-year-old goalkeeper.

In a world where Wolf continues to be dominant and brings the Flames to the playoffs, he will then become a serious contender for the Calder Trophy. And necessarily, the fact that there is more competition will complicate the task of the Canadiens defender.

And as if that weren’t enough, the two-week break seems to have done a lot of good for Matvei Michkov, who had been a bit behind in this race for a few weeks. In a 6-3 win for the Flyers over the Oilers this afternoon, the Russian scored a goal and two assists, finishing the game with a +5 differential.

If Hutson wants to win the Calder Trophy, therefore, he will have to be ready to finish the season strong. The competition will be fierce, and he will have to stand out against three other rookies who, like him, are excellent young hockey players.

This will be a very interesting race to follow.

In rafale

– Already five years since the famous performance of David Ayres.

– Emil Heineman was eager to return to the game.

– Let’s hope so.

– Too bad.

– And in the end, it contributed to changing the rule.

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Brady Tkachuk will not face the Canadiens tonight

Tonight, the Canadian faces the Senators in Ottawa. Emil Heineman will be back in the CH lineup… but the news is less good in Ottawa.

This morning, Brady Tkachuk and Jake Sanderson were not present at the morning session of the Sens…

And in Tkachuk’s case, it will translate into an absence tonight. This is what Elliotte Friedman reports.

More details to come…

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Confrontation of the 4 nations: When nationalism crashes the party

WARNING! If you are a “political atheist” as some people now proudly say, or the kind to repeat the good little catechism that “you must not mix sports and politics”, stop reading this article immediately and, I don’t know, go to BetMachinchose to bet on the chances that Taylor Swift will do the kickoff at the 1st game of the Cleveland Browns season in 2038.

Or, stay with us to dig a little deeper into the close relationship between sports and nationalism.

This has already been discussed three times on our site this week by my colleagues Max Truman, Charles-Alexis Brisebois and Kevin Vallée.

The first two opposed the creation of a Quebec team, following the motion deposited by the PQ, while Kevin Vallée went with a thorough text supporting the idea.

I could criticize my colleagues’ texts Truman and Brisebois, whom I adore and who have encouraged me to publish this text.

We are in my field! I submitted a master’s thesis on nationalism and sports in 2008, presented its conclusion in the collective work Hockey and Philosophy: The True Hardness of the Mind in 2009 and created the course Sports, Identities and Societies in college in 2020!

I will simply remind you of these few points that Kevin Vallée elaborated on in his text yesterday :

1- You must not confuse a country, a province, a territory or a region with a nation. Quebec is a recognized nation, not Ontario, not the Maritimes, not Western Canada.

2- We could easily be in favor of creating a Quebec team and support Canada against the USA, especially in the current political context! We were indeed tens of thousands to do so! As serious identity polls show, the first political identity for a large number, if not still a majority of Quebecers, is Quebec. Canada forms a second political identity for many. Quebecer first, Canadian second. For his part, the average Saskatchewanian identifies with Canada before identifying with his province… which is not a nation.

3- In what way would the “context” of the Quebec nation and a Quebec team in non-Olympic international competitions be different from the Scottish context in the soccer World Cup?

4- A sports reason, such as thinking that a Quebec team would not be good enough to win international competitions, is not a relevant and sufficient reason to oppose its creation. Only political reasons and decisions can prevent its creation.

5- In sports, even if it has already looked better on the ice, Quebec, like the Czech Republic, Finland and Slovakia, could still surprise any nation on a given evening and make those who identify first with Quebec proud, whether they want to make it a country or not…

I’ll stop here. If you want to dig deeper into Canadian and Quebec nationalism and the predominant role that hockey plays in it, go read my old stuff or re-read the excellent text that Kevin published yesterday!

Oh Canada!

So let’s get back to the Confrontation of the 4 nations and what it meant for Canada, which once again managed to use hockey to promote its national unity and “unite the country”.”

If we had doubts before the start of the hostilities, the proof has finally been made, the Confrontation of the 4 nations, proposed by the NHL in place of its traditional (and soporific) All-Star Game, has marked minds.

It did not approach the emotions, or the existential anguish, caused by the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the USSR, but still, we navigated a bit in those waters…

Because yes, it is indeed the “America” of the subtle Trump 2.0 that added a lot of spice to the competition.

Trump, who did not attend the final, is not recognized as a great hockey fan. But here is a high-level competition that opposed the United States to three countries that, in general, do not really embrace the Manichean, individualistic and authoritarian vision of the American billionaire and criminal… re-elected democratically (!!!) last November after encouraging the attack on the Capitol, the very symbol of American democracy, less than four years ago! This is not made up.

A national identity to reaffirm

Of course, the last American election did not do much to improve national unity in the land of Uncle Sam. We can guess. And a US victory this week would not have changed anything. Hockey is not as popular south of the border…

But Canadian national unity had also been flying low for a long time. In fact, we don’t think it has flown very high, with both wings at the same time, very often in its entire history, the “Canada” being at the base a somewhat vaporous idea “from one ocean to another”…

The last time the Maple Leaf was so united, the Canadian identity was so strong as in the wildest dreams of Elvis Gratton, is probably during that famous 1972 Summit Series.

Yet, national unity and identity are not that complicated, it’s a bit like powdered juice, we only need to add one ingredient.

The “us against them” is the water of national unity, it’s the substance of the feeling of identity. Especially in Canada.

Justin Trudeau reminded us of this himself recently in an interview on CNN “When they try to define their national identity [Canadians] tend to say: ‘We are not Americans’”.”

And “us against them”, the ancestral agon, the ontological conflict, Trump generates with every tweet and there were a lot of them, both on and off the ice, during the two games between Canada and the United States.

Let’s not forget that the nation is first and foremost a “spiritual principle” as Ernest Renan thought, or an “imagined community” as Benedict Anderson demonstrated, which can only exist through one form or another of nation-building, of national identity construction.

Thus, modern Canada, far beyond the “railway” of your secondary 4, is above all an idea built by a multitude of symbols and traditions conveyed and popularized from the 20th century, starting with hockey, its national sport, which has become its great pride, largely due to the broadcast of hockey on CBC starting in 1933.

Since then, Canada = hockey.

And an epic game between Canada and the United States – as was the case again in the final – can certainly mark the collective imagination for a while. It had been nine years since the best players from the two countries had not faced each other, and in the current political context, everything was magnified…

In short, Canada’s victory in this competition will not curb Trump’s expansionist leanings and ideas of greatness, nor will it solve Canada’s significant economic and political challenges, both with its neighbor and within its own borders.

But, like a spark plug, it could certainly inspire a dose of ambition and inspiration, as the exploits of Maurice Richard did for French-Canadian nationalism, the ancestor of Quebec nationalism.

It could create a climate, a mindset, an ideal momentum for Canadian national affirmation and the opportunistic unveiling of certain policies. An opportunity for Canada – its elites and population in unison – to emphasize its strength, unity, and resilience as we’ve been hearing everywhere since Thursday evening.

On the other hand, a defeat would have caused a narcissistic wound, which Trump (and his spectacle policy) would have taken great pleasure in amplifying and ridiculing with great kicks in the face.

If that were the case, the Canadian national psyche would have taken some time to recover…

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Ivan Demidov was stuck on the bench for a good part of his match today

This morning, Ivan Demidov was in action in the KHL, as SKA faced off against Kunlun Red Star. We’re not talking about a power team in the league.

That being said, Demidov’s team still managed to pull through. It started off well, with Demidov assisting Sergei Andronov’s goal to open the scoring, earning his 48th point of the season…

Until the KHL decided otherwise. This assist has been removed from Demidov’s record, as it was deemed that Pavel Akolzin had touched the puck. The Habs prospect is still at 47 points.

However, it was in the second period that things took a turn for the worse. SKA suddenly found themselves trailing 5-2… and that’s also when Demidov’s ice time started to suffer.

Throughout the entire second period, he only got three shifts and 2:46 of ice time. He was benched for long stretches, even when SKA had a 5-on-3 power play.

In the end, he still managed to get 13:36 of ice time, which is already less bad than at the start of the season… but still quite low considering he’s the team’s top scorer this season.

Maybe if he had played more, SKA could have beaten Red Star… but in the end, Roman Rotenberg’s team lost 6-4. Note that when SKA was trailing by one goal with five minutes left, Rotenberg pulled his goalie… and it backfired.

We’ll see if the Habs prospect will get back to a more normal ice time in the next games. Because the time when he was playing only ten minutes per game was not good for anyone, after all.

Rapid Fire

– Alex DeBrincat scores the first goal of this day of resumption of activities in the NHL.

– Marc-André Fleury, the 2nd goalie with the most games played in NHL history.

– They will be interesting to watch.

– Too bad.

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Emil Heineman will make a return to the game tonight

Tonight, the Canadiens are back in action after a two-week break for the 4 Nations Confrontation. Reminder: they will face the Senators, possibly without Brady Tkachuk and Jake Sanderson.

However, it’s not just the Canadiens who will be making their big return: Emil Heineman, who hasn’t played since January 11, will also be back in the game.

This is what the Tricolore has just announced.

This is obviously great news for the Canadiens. We know that before his injury (he was hit by a car while walking in Salt Lake City), Heineman was an important part of the attacking group, playing big hockey alongside Jake Evans and Joel Armia.

With these three, the team was counting on a fourth line of great quality… and which, often, was their best line during a game.

Yesterday, Brendan Gallagher noted how important Heineman was to the team. The rookie brings balance to the attacking group and his return will do good for the Canadiens.

More details to come…