Lach in the Crease
I’ve never watched Cheers before, but I have seen the show’s final shot. Sam Malone closes up the bar, waves away a potential customer and takes one last stroll around the empty tavern, silently reminiscing about the memories made there. Here in the North Division, the Canucks and Flames will be locking up the joint. […]
I so many questions about the Montreal Canadiens that I’d like answered. Who are the Canadiens? Also, what are the Canadiens? And why are the Canadiens? No matter how you slice it, the Canadiens are a team that don’t make much sense. One week they’ll play such inspired hockey that people will call them a […]
With the Stanley Cup Playoffs just around the corner – barring any more problems with COVID-19 – the intensity within the North Division has been picking up with every passing week. And it all came to a head on Thursday and Saturday, when the Jets and Maple Leafs locked horns during a chaotic two game […]
It’s not often your weekly column is forced to take a two week hiatus. But when a massive COVID outbreak hit the Canucks and put the team out of commission, suddenly it was really hard to make funny jokes. In fact, it still kind of is. The Canucks finally returned to ice tonight against the […]
Normally this is the time of the week where my North Division Power Rankings go, a weekly bit where I crack one liners about all seven Canadian teams and how they’re doing. But there’s something important going on in Vancouver that makes it really hard to be funny. The number of positive COVID tests sweeping […]
This season has been rough on everybody. But not many have it rougher than Anton Forsberg. Forsberg had started the season off on the right foot, earning a one year, $700K deal from the Edmonton Oilers in October to join their taxi squad behind the established duo of Mike Smith and Mikko Koskinen. But what […]
When an NHL season is streaking by as quickly as this 2021 campaign has, one might need a little break from sports every now and then. A hockey palate cleanser, if you will. For me, that’s come in the form of the new Marvel television series that’ve been arriving on Disney+; starting with WandaVision, that […]
As the NHL season rounds the halfway point, the speed at which we’ve gotten here almost feels like a fever dream. Actually, considering why we’re all inside and not watching all these games live, “fever dream” is a pretty apt description. The recent stretch hasn’t been kind to many teams in the North. The Leafs […]
If a time traveler showed up in my office today and told me by the end of this wild 2021 season, every single head coach on a Canadian NHL team would be different than the bench bosses who started the year, I’d believe it. This week perfectly encapsulated what it means to be playing hockey […]
As the NHL calendar flips over the middle frame of the 2021 season, one fact has become more and more clear; the North Division is a mess. A colossal, ridiculous, beautiful mess. When experts and fans were making their playoff predictions back in January, there was always a clear sense that three major divides separated […]
Lach in the Crease