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Big development regarding Matthew Knies.

Steven Ellis/Daily Faceoff

There have been a series of major developments regarding Toronto Maple Leafs top prospect Matthew Knies, all of which point to the fact that he is set to join the team ahead of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.

News first broke when ESPN’s John Buccigross reported that Knies was on his way to Florida, a move that coincided with a road trip from the Maple Leafs who are set to play the Florida Panthers this week. Many suspected that Knies would join the Leafs following the conclusion of the NCAA’s Frozen Four, and the report from Buccigross certainly lent credibility to those rumors.

Those are rumors no more however given that National Hockey League insider Elliotte Friedman has now confirmed that Knies will in fact be signing his deal with the Maple Leafs, a deal believed to be valued at $925,000 per season in terms of his average annual value and salary cap hit.

Acquiring a player at such a low cap hit is always going to be a boon for any team in the National Hockey League, but it is especially valuable for a team like the Maple Leafs that has constantly been dealing with salary cap issues since the cap has stagnated thanks in large part to hockey revenues lost to the pandemic.

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Logan Couture praises the Oilers… but dunks on the Coyotes.

Robert Edwards/USA TODAY Sports

The Edmonton Oilers and their staff earned high praise from the captain of an opposing team in the National Hockey League over the weekend, but that praise came at the expense of another NHL franchise.

The Oilers played the San Jose Sharks on Saturday and during the game, Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft pulled off a move that surprised many. Woodcraft made the decision to inject veteran defenseman Jason Demers into the lineup, this in spite of the fact that Demers had not played an NHL game all season.

The move was designed to give Demers his 700th career game in the National Hockey League, and Woodcroft made it happen against one of his former teams in the San Jose Sharks no less so he could celebrate with some former teammates.

Following the game, Sharks captain Logan Couture was asked about the classy gesture from Woodcraft and he sang the praises of the Oilers coach for caring about his players. Couture though also took the opportunity to rip into the team that had put Demers in a position where he could have potentially never had the chance to play his 700th game at all, the Arizona Coyotes.

“Just the name brings a smile to a few guys here that were fortunate to play with JD,” said Couture on Saturday. “Character. Just a great glue guy in the locker room. Great sense of humor. He was a big part of a lot of those teams that we had.”

“Happy to see him get a chance to play 700 games. I talked to him after he was done in Arizona, and he has a little upset about the way that ended. I think they scratched him a few times near the end of the season at 699 when they were out of the playoffs. As a fellow player, that didn’t sit too well with a lot of guys.”

“But good on Edmonton and [Jay Woodcroft] to bring him up and play in this building for 700. I think that speaks about the type of person that Woody is over there behind the bench.”

It seems likely that Couture is far from the only player that took issue with how the Coyotes handled that situation behind the scenes, and that will be just one more knock against the Coyotes when it comes to potentially recruiting from the pool of free agent players in the future.

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Bench clearing brawl at Women’s Hockey World Championship leads to 554 penalty minutes!

A very one sided women’s hockey game this weekend devolved into total chaos.

A chippy game contested between Bulgaria and Romania turned into a full on bench clearing brawl after the host team, Romania, had what can only be described as an offensive explosion of 7 goals in the game’s third period.

The game was a 4th place decider, so there wasn’t even a medal on the line, but it would result in a whopping total of 554 penalty minutes between both teams, including a pair of misconducts for the Bulgarian women prior to the brawl.

In total 19 players on the ice were awarded 25 minute penalties each, Romania was awarded a 20 minute penalty for abuse of officials, and we will have to wait and see if the International Ice Hockey Federation feels further discipline is warranted for this incident.

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Bruins set a single-season NHL record on Sunday night.

Eric Canha/CSM/Zuma

The 2022-23 Boston Bruins can legitimately make a case that they are the greatest regular season team in the history of the National Hockey League.

On Sunday night, the Bruins entered a game against the Philadelphia Flyers in a 3-way tie for the most wins in regular season history with 62. That record was shared with the 1995-96 Detroit Red Wings and the 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning, but with a win over the Flyers on Sunday the Bruins earned their 63rd win of the season and claimed the record for themselves.

The Bruins now stand alone atop the mountain having achieved a feat that no other team in the history of the NHL has managed to do and doing so while playing in the Atlantic Division, considered by many to be among the toughest divisions in the league.

Perhaps even more impressive than the record itself though is the fact that the Bruins still have room to extend it. With two more games this week, Tuesday against the Washington Capitals and Thursday against the Montreal Canadiens, the Bruins could eclipse the record previously established by the Red Wings and Lightning.

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Noel Acciari tells the tale of the time he showed up to a game a bloody mess.

Youtube

Hockey players are known for their legendary toughness but sometimes they can be too tough for their own good, and that very much appears to be the case when it comes to Toronto Maple Leafs forward Noel Acciari.

Recently Acciari was interviewed by National Hockey League insider Elliotte Friedman and it was during that interview that Friedman asked Acciari about an infamous story from his past. As the story goes, Acciari once showed up to a game carrying his equipment on his back and bleeding from his head after a car accident, but insisted on playing in the game anyways and would in fact do so.

Not only did Acciari confirm that the story is in fact a true tale, but provided perhaps the most shocking detail of all by revealing that he was only 10 years old when the whole thing happened.

“It was a Saturday and we were driving to Bridgeport in Massachusetts for a game,” revealed Acciari on the 32 Thoughts Podcast. “We get rear ended pretty good, kind of caved in the back of the whole van and me and my brother are sitting in the back.”

As if that wasn’t crazy enough, according to Acciari the reason the accident happened in the first place was due to the fact that an inmate had escaped a local jail. This resulted in increased police presence on the streets, and the driver who collided with their van had apparently been distracted by the sheriff’s on the road.

“Apparently an inmate had gotten out so there was searches and everyone was looking over… and one car was just focused on the sheriff’s and everyone looking for whoever.”

Acciari would end up wounded as a result of the accident, splitting his head open on a TV inside of the family van, but that wasn’t going to stop him from getting to the game.

“We had the TV down the middle seat and I hit my head on the TV and cut my head a little bit, was bleeding,” said Acciari. “So we wait for the police and EMTs show up and I’m like ‘I gotta get to the game.'”

10 year old Acciari was determined to play despite his injury and even though the back of his family’s van had been caved in and could no longer be opened, he grabbed his equipment from the damaged van and took off to the arena with his gear on his back.

“You can’t open up the back of the van because the back door is caved in, so I just reached in and grabbed my bag from the backseat and pull it out and I told my parents ‘Hey the rink is right there, I’m going.'”

Unable to leave the scene of the accident, Acciari’s parents allowed him to walk to the arena where he would end up playing in the game and even scored a couple of goals to really complete the story.

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Bo Horvat apologizes for inflammatory Vancouver comments.

New York Islanders forward Bo Horvat got himself into a little hot water over the weekend when he made some public comments about his former team that were pretty inflammatory in their nature.

After the Islanders picked up a much needed win in their hunt for a playoff spot on Saturday night, Horvat participated in a post-game interview in front of the fans at UBS Arena and it was then that he made the comments. Horvat took what seemed like an entirely unprompted shot at his former team and their fans after he was asked what came off as a relatively run of the mill question during a post game interview.

Question: How does this rank for you in playoff pushes, the excitement of this building and the fans’ involvement over the last couple of games?

“It’s been unbelievable,” answered Horvat before then taking an unprompted shot at the Canucks and their fans. “It’s a lot better than Vancouver I’ll tell you that for free.”

Horvat’s comments drew widespread attention and likely cost him more than a few fans in the city of Vancouver, and on Monday morning he addressed the issue when speaking with the media. Horvat claimed that he got a little caught up in the excitement of the moment and stressed that the comments came off worse than he intended, before apologizing for the comments altogether.

“I wasn’t obviously expecting that,” said Horvat when asked about the reaction to his comments this weekend. “It was kind of a heat of the moment thing. I didn’t mean any disrespect to the fans of Vancouver or my teammates or city of Vancouver at all. It wasn’t directed at them at all. The (Islanders) fans were all excited, and I was excited to be in a playoff push. It was just kind of one of those things where my emotions got the best of me. I was just really happy to be there to be honest with you. It might have come out the wrong way to a lot of people so I apologize for that. I’m just excited to be in the position right now, to be in a playoff push, to be right there. I really enjoyed my time in Vancouver, I’m not trying to disrespect them at all. I’m sorry if it offended anybody but l’m really happy to be in this position right now. I’m really happy to be here, and I just wanted to express that. It maybe, like I said, came out the wrong way to a lot of people.”

There’s no telling if Horvat’s apology will undo any of the damage those comments made to how he is perceived in the Vancouver market.

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Eddie Olczyk appears to call out Leah Hextall for ‘imitating’ John Forslund’s goal call.

There was something of an unusual interaction on air during one of the National Hockey League broadcasts over the weekend, one that did not go unnoticed by attentive fans who caught every word of it.

Veteran NHL broadcaster Eddie Olczyk appeared to put fellow NHL broadcaster Leah Hextall on blast on Saturday, when he made some relatively vague allusions to famous calls being copied by other broadcasters. Olczyk’s tone during his comments appeared to indicate that he was clearly irritated by something, but he never called anyone out specifically or even so much as mentioned a name.

“It is the sincerest form of flattery right, is imitation?” asked a frustrated sounding Olczyk. “But if you are going to imitate somebody, like on a goal call, just make sure you give that person credit please. Ok? Right is that fair? JT that’s fair right?”

Fans were quick to put two and two together given the other people in the booth with Olczyk at the time of his comments, including fellow NHL broadcaster John Forslund who is the ‘JT’ referenced above. Earlier in the week, prior to Olczyk making these comments, Leah Hextall used Forslund’s famous “hey hey what do you say” during a game between the Seattle Kraken and Arizona Coyotes this past Thursday after the Kraken scored their 4th goal of the game.

You can hear both the clip that is suspected to have led to Olczyk’s comments, as well as the comments themselves in the short video below.

Here’s an example of Forslund doing the call himself, as he has done countless times in the past:

Do you agree with Eddie Olczyk on this one, if he was indeed calling out Hextall as many believe he was, or did he perhaps go a step too far? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Rod Brind’Amour’s son drawing interest from NHL teams.

Chip Alexander/Raleigh News & Observer

There may be a little trouble brewing on the horizon for the Edmonton Oilers.

National Hockey League insider Elliotte Friedman has revealed that Skyler Brind’Amour. the son of Carolina Hurricanes head coach and former NHL player Rod Brind’Amour, is currently drawing interest from teams around the league. Skyler is fresh off of winning the NCAA’s Frozen Four as a member of the Quinnipiac University Bobcat’s, and no doubt that has played a major role in how he is being viewed by team’s around the league.

“One other thing I wanna mention about Quinnipiac is they’ve got some players.” stated Friedman on the 32 Thoughts Podcast. “Skyler Brind’Amour… Rod’s son.”

Skyler has already been drafted into the NHL and his rights are currently controlled by the Edmonton Oilers who selected him in the 6th round (177th overall) of the 2017 NHL Entry Draft, but it sounds like there may be no guarantee he will end up in Edmonton.

“The Oilers have to make a decision,” revealed Friedman. “The thing they like best about him is he’s a Brind’Amour.”

The Oilers aren’t the only ones who have to make a decision however, with Brind’Amour having the option to go to free agency later in the year if he chooses to do so. Although there hasn’t been an indication that he plans to go down this route, Friedman cautions that there may be other teams in the NHL looking to take advantage of that fact.

“Brind’Amour is gonna have to decide if Edmonton is the best path for him, because like I’ve said before the vultures are circling,” said Friedman. “The way he’s played I think there’s gonna be some teams saying ‘If you go to free agency we’re interested.'”

That leaves the Oilers in something of an unenviable position, one where Skyler Brind’Amour will wield significant negotiating power for a player that has yet to play in an NHL game. Only time will tell if his first NHL game will come as a member of the Edmonton Oilers, or some other rival team in the league.

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Sidney Crosby hits 1500 career points on Saturday.

The Pittsburgh Penguins were in a fight for their playoff hopes on Saturday against the Detroit Red Wings, and with the season on the line the organization’s most important player took center stage.

It was a milestone afternoon for Sidney Crosby, the captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins, as he put on his captain cape and willed the Penguins to victory over the Red Wings with 4 shots on goal, 2 goals and an assist for a total of 3 points on the day for the Penguins.

Not only was it a big game performance from Crosby, but it was one that would also bring him into a truly elite group of players in National Hockey League history. Thanks to his big day, Crosby reached the 1500 point plateau, becoming only the 15th player in the history of the league to do and furthermore becoming the sixth faster player in league history to reach the impressive milestone.

Here’s the goal that earned Crosby the 1500th point of his NHL career:

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Philadelphia Flyers first round pick headed to free agency.

Philadelphia Flyers/NHL

The Philadelphia Flyers are set to let one of their former first round draft selections walk away as a free agent.

On Saturday night, National Hockey League insider Elliotte Friedman reported that 2018 first round pick (19th overall) Jay O’Brien would not be signed by the Flyers after another season at Boston University, leaving O’Brien eligible to sign with any team in the NHL willing to offer him a contract.

“The Flyers and the player had to make a decision to sign and I have heard that the decision has been made,” revealed Friedman on Hockey Night in Canada. “The Flyers will not sign him and that allows O’Brien to test free agency. He’s 23 years old and he can pick which team or organization he wants to play for.”

Although typically a team that allows a player to walk to free agency gets nothing in return, that will not be the case in this particular scenario for the Flyers. As per the rules of the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement, because O’Brien was a first round pick the Flyers will be compensated with a slightly lower draft pick at the upcoming NHL draft.

“The Flyers as a result will get a second round pick in the upcoming draft,” confirmed Friedman. “But O’Brien will not be a Flyer.”

Only time will tell if O’Brien is offered an NHL contract, but perhaps the man that drafted him will be among those to show interest. It was former Flyers general manager Ron Hextall that drafted O’Brien in 2018, and as we know he now serves in the role of general manager for Flyer’s intrastate rivals the Pittsburgh Penguins.