Community Picks: Philadelphia Flyers 0% vs Washington Capitals 0%

No. 1 Star: Derick Brassard, New York Rangers Brassard set a career high with five points as the Rangers beat the Buffalo Sabres 6-3. Four of his five points came in the third period as he scored twice and assisted on two others as New York earned their eighth straight win over the Sabres. No. 2 Star: Cam Atkinson, Columbus Blue Jackets Atkinson recorded his third career hat trick and earned a young fan a dog as the Blue Jackets downed the Montreal Canadiens 5-2. Brandon Saad tallied a pair and Brandon Dubinsky and Booner Jenner each recorded three assists. No. 3 Star: Louis Domingue, Arizona Coyotes The Coyotes netminder made 34 saves in regulation and overtime and didn’t allow a goal in the shootout during a 2-1 win over the Minnesota Wild. Down 1-0 with 1:13 left in regulation, Antoine Vermette took advantage of a Devan Dubnyk braincramp and tied the game with a shorthanded goal: Vermette SHG pic.twitter.com/dzeKyQcveF — Stephanie (@myregularface) January 26, 2016 Honorable Mention : Behind Petr Mrazek’s 27 saves and goals from Justin Abdelkader, Danny DeKeyser, Luke Glendening and Brad Richards, the Detroit Red Wings doubled up the New York Islanders 4-2 … P.K. Subban scored his fourth of the season after shooting from center ice … Brett Connolly’s goal with 1:54 left in the third period snapped a 2-2 tie and helped give the Boston Bruins a 3-2 win over the Philadelphia Flyers. Tuukka Rask made 34 saves as Boston won for the fifth time in their last six games. Brad Marchand tallied his 20th of the season and has now scored in five straight games … Jamie Benn and Jason Spezza scored 80 seconds apart in the second period as the Dallas Stars edged the Calgary Flames 2-1. Benn’s 28th of the season came in gorgeous fashion:  Did You Know?   Shane Doan ( @ArizonaCoyotes ) is playing his 1,433rd career game, passing Mike Gartner (1,432 GP) for 25th on NHL’s all-time list. #ARIvsMIN — NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) January 26, 2016 Dishonorable Mention : The Islanders’ streak of 22 consecutive power plays killed off came to an end … Philadelphia has dropped three in a row … The Flames failed on all five of their power play chances … The Wild fell to 1-9 in overtime and shootouts this season … Michael Stone thought he scored the overtime winner for the Coyotes, but the goal was waived off and a review deemed there was “incidental contact” made with Dubnyk:  MORE FROM YAHOO HOCKEY : Continue to Article

January 25, 2016 11:44:pm EST

Sometimes very good players will have an inexplicably bad year. It doesn't happen often, mind you, but when it does, people collectively lose their minds speculating about, “What's wrong with so-and-so?” The most recent example of this is Sidney Crosby, who “only” had 84 points in 77 games last season and is now on 40 in 46 this year (but also 13 in his last 10, because he's Sidney Crosby). The amount of articles churned out about whether Crosby is “done” has been perilously high for the last year-plus, and to some extent it's understandable. A lot of those articles have been shouted down as being a little short-sighted, because the puck just isn't going in for Crosby at the same rate it once did, but everything else is more or less in line with his long-demonstrated talent level. So maybe the fact that no one is writing these stories about Pekka Rinne — the All-Star with the .904 save percentage in 40 games this year — is just a sign that we're collectively getting smarter about the ways in which we evaluate performance at the NHL level, and that we've all learned to look past the randomness of goals scored and allowed, to see the process that's going on under the hood. Just kidding. No one is writing about Rinne because he's on a team that generally doesn't get a lot of attention on a national basis but is still a pretty decent club in the grand scheme of things, and because he's probably “only” the seventh- or eighth-best goalie in the world. If this were Henrik Lundqvist struggling, people would be pretty concerned about this 33-year-old goalie maybe having hit a career wall. If this were a goalie in Toronto struggling, people would be screaming in the streets about how he's the reason the Leafs are well outside the playoff picture. Moreover, the Predators spent much of the season talking about the need to upgrade the offense, which they eventually did in the Ryan Johansen trade. Johansen has nine points in eight games since the swap, and the Preds' offense has generated 16 goals in their last five games, so it looks like that problem has been sorted out. As a result, overall the Predators are seemingly okay: Two points out of a playoff spot in the toughest division in the league by a fair shout. But the problem is they're also currently carrying the second-best possession numbers in the league. But Rinne's .904 is killing them. The league average save percentage so far this season is an insane .916, meaning Rinne is pretty far below. The Predators don't give up a lot of shots on goal, so the fact that he's only faced 1,047 in 40 appearances is helpful in limiting the impact his disastrous play has had. But mathematically, that still means he's cost his team 12 goals versus the league average, which is roughly the equivalent of a little more than four points in the standings. And that also has to come with the caveat that Rinne is paid quite well ($7 million AAV) to provide a save percentage well above the league average. Again, he's clearly an elite goaltender over the course of his career (.918 in 421 games, which is a sizable enough sample that we can say it's his true talent level), and he's coming off a season in which he finished second in Vezina voting. So we have to ask what's wrong with him now. What's interesting, though, is that this is hardly an isolated incident when it comes to Rinne not being particularly good. Most of those issues, though, can be explained away on some level. He was only .902 in 2013-14, though when he missed most of the year with a very serious health issue that could have ended his career. He was also only .910 in the lockout-shortened season, but that's not terrible, and it's also a smaller sample than is really fair to evaluate. But on the whole, if you look at what he's done the last four seasons — which I think is fair because that's when he turned 30, and to some extent the ability to stay healthy is a repeatable skill — we have a sample of 4,600 shots, and he's only stopped .913. On some level, that makes the nearly Vezina-worthy season last year the outlier. It's also well below the .921 he posted across close to 7,100 shots in his 20s, and also slightly below the league average during that same stretch. However, it's not an issue where you turn 30 and someone from the NHL comes to your house to rip up your “Good Goalie Club” membership card right in front of you. Henrik Lundqvist is several months older than Rinne and still playing outstanding hockey behind a considerably worse team. Rinne himself recently noted that the team in front of him hasn't necessarily been all that great this season, and that's true to an extent, but he also acknowledged a lost ability to stop breakaways and 2-on-1s. He also used to be elite when it came to controlling rebounds, and just from watching the games you see he's giving up more goals on second chances than he used to. So it's important to take a look at the process behind why Rinne has crumbled this year, and whether there's anything that can be done by the players in front of him to help straighten things out. And right now my working theory is that it has to do with shot quality. Continue to Article

January 25, 2016 9:42:am EST

Edmonton Oilers center Connor McDavid’s recovery from a fractured clavicle is picking up steam. McDavid met with reporters Sunday and said he’s been cleared for full contact and will practice in Bakersfield of the American Hockey League during the All-Star break. McDavid, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft indicated he hoped to be back in action on Feb. 2 against the Columbus Blue Jackets. He fractured his left clavicle in early November when he crashed hard into the boards against the Philadelphia Flyers.  "The (Bakersfield) practices are a little bit more intense, with a lot of battling and all that,” McDavid said. “It will be good to be involved in that and hopefully come back feeling good and ready to go for the 2nd. Obviously, with this long break I mean eight days, it's not ideal to go and sit around for eight days and then try to come back and feel good. I think it’s a good opportunity for me to feel good and be ready to go when I come back."  McDavid said he had been “training with a little bit of contact here and there” recently. McDavid returned to practice at the start of the New Year.  On Sunday he took part in the accuracy portion of the Oilers skills competition. Snipe-show courtesy @cmcdavid97 ! 🎯 pic.twitter.com/wRZQbNa9GP — Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) January 24, 2016 Before McDavid was injured, he was starting to hit his stride. In the eight games before his injury, McDavid had 11 points. The young phenom turned 19 on Jan. 13. He has 12 points in 13 games this year.  McDavid understands that trying to get back up to speed with the rest of the NHL will be tough. “You basically have to start from scratch it’s been almost three months now so basically starting over. I don’t really know what to expect,” McDavid said. “It’s a different game than what it was when I left in November. Teams are really ramping up now, games are going to be a little bit different. You have to feel your way through the whole process again.” The Oilers have fallen far out of the playoff race. They have 43 points – worst in the Western Conference and four ahead of the Columbus Blue Jackets for the lowest amount in the NHL. MORE FROM YAHOO HOCKEY - - - - - - - Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper   Continue to Article

January 24, 2016 8:55:pm EST

(Reuters) - Three National Hockey League games scheduled to be played this weekend have been postponed because of a severe winter snowstorm wreaking havoc on the East Coast of the United States, the league announced. Record-setting tides higher than during Superstorm Sandy have already caused major flooding in New Jersey and Delaware after dumping nearly two feet (60 cm) of snow on the suburbs of Washington, D.C. The game between the Capitals and the Pittsburgh Penguins, initially set for Sunday at Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., has been rescheduled for a later date. It is the second game in as many days the Capitals have had to push back after they were unable to host their scheduled Friday encounter with the Anaheim Ducks. Continue to Article

January 23, 2016 1:46:pm EST