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Dylan Larkin, Riley Sheahan and Luke Glendening scored, and the Detroit Red Wings held on for a 3-2 victory against the Buffalo Sabres on Monday night. Detroit desperately needed the two points to boost its chances of extending the franchise's postseason streak to 25. Detroit is tied with Philadelphia for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference, but the Flyers have one more game to earn at least a point. Continue to Article

March 28, 2016 10:33:pm EST

Claude Giroux scored at 4:46 of overtime, and the Philadelphia Flyers beat the Winnipeg Jets 3-2 on Monday night for a crucial win for playoff positioning. Giroux also had an assist and Wayne Simmonds and Mark Streit scored in regulation for the Flyers, who began play tied with Detroit for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Flyers blew a two-goal lead and appeared to be headed for a shootout before Giroux's clutch play. Continue to Article

March 28, 2016 10:17:pm EST

The NHL’s Bill Masterton Trophy nominations are trickling out on Monday. And if the reaction tells you anything, the Buffalo chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association had theirs trickle down their legs.  Ryan O’Reilly is the Buffalo Sabres nominee for the Masterton Trophy, given annually “to the National Hockey League player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey.” And really, what better exemplifies dedication to your standing as a professional athlete than drunkenly crashing your vintage truck into a Tim Hortons and then fleeing the scene? Once more, with feeling: The Buffalo chapter nominated a 24-year-old athlete whose impaired driving trial will take place roughly two weeks after the NHL Awards this summer for an award that usually reserved for players who overcome catastrophic injury, life-threatening illness or, perhaps most admirably, journeyman goalies. Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News was tasked with writing the nomination story in the Buffalo News: In his first season with the team after a blockbuster draft-night trade with Colorado, O'Reilly leads all NHL forwards in ice time (21:48 per game). He has 17 goals and leads the Sabres in assists (35), points (52) and faceoff percentage (56.6). O'Reilly was also Buffalo's lone representative to the All-Star Game in Nashville in January. But more than just the numbers, O'Reilly has become a de facto captain in the locker room and on the ice. In what General Manager Tim Murray has dubbed "The O'Reilly Practices," the 25-year-old routinely stays on the ice after the club's regular workouts and leads many of his teammates in more extra skills drills after the coaches have left. Pylons, sticks and other barriers fill the ice as the pucks fly, often for another 30-45 minutes. Only when O’Reilly is satisfied with the progress do the others call it a day. Clearly, the Mark Messier Leadership Award’s cloudy future forced the nomination of O’Reilly for the Masterton for doing “de facto captain” things. The nomination has earned quick criticism  and bafflement  and mockery.  And rightfully so. Look, we get that the Sabres don’t exactly have a deep bench of potential nominees, and that’s when you have to stretch logic to lasso one in. Like, for example, when the Winnipeg media gave theirs to a goalie who lost his job to a rookie, listened to advice and wasn’t a big meanie to reporters. Winger Marcus Foligno finished second in the balloting and goaltender Robin Lehner finished third. Maybe you kick it over to Brian Gionta or David Legwand as the venerable “old guy” nominee, seeing as how neither have pending impaired driving trials on their dockets. But the Buffalo PHWAers clearly feel they’ve made the right call, backlashed be damned. The award clause "dedication to hockey" certainly seals nomination. https://t.co/RIcBwX8ol3 — John Vogl (@BuffNewsVogl) March 28, 2016 Official notice: I'm done with Twitter today if you're not from Buffalo. I'm done with the clueless trolls from out of town. That's it. — Mike Harrington (@BNHarrington) March 28, 2016 While we respect the defiant streak, it’s unfortunate that a player with such recent off-ice infamy would be nominated for an award that essentially honors the NHL’s greatest role models.  And with that said, let’s all exhale emphatically and applaud the Chicago chapter for making Michal Rozsival their Masterton nominee this season ... -- Greg Wyshynski  is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at  puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com  or  find him on Twitter.  His book,  TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK , is  available on Amazon  and wherever books are sold. MORE FROM YAHOO HOCKEY Continue to Article

March 28, 2016 12:00:pm EST

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.) The Nashville Predators weren't looking so hot headed into the All-Star Break. They were 24-18-8, with 56 points, and sitting just fifth in the Central Division, seventh in the West overall. One of the things you could point to at that point as being the primary reason they were not exactly looking like a juggernaut was the fact that Pekka Rinne was arguably the least-deserving All-Star in a game featuring John Scott, The team had a .924 save percentage at 5-on-5 at the time, 20th in the NHL. That's only about league average, which isn't good at all for a clear No. 1 goaltender who costs $7 million. More worrying, though, was the fact that Rinne couldn't make a stop on the PK, with an .832 shorthanded save percentage, the worst of anyone who had played at least 35 games by that time of the season by nearly 20 points. It was tied for the highest number of goals allowed in the league. That was torpedoing what was otherwise an incredibly praiseworthy season. The Predators were the second-best possession team in the league (53.7 percent CF), one that wasn't generating a ton of high-quality chances, but was the best in the league at shutting them down. At 5-on-5, their shots-for per 60 was eighth in the league, in the class of a Chicago or Winnipeg. Their shots-against per 60 was first, in a class by itself. But regardless of what was happening then, what's happening now, eight weeks or so later, tells a pretty interesting tale: Nashville isn't much better off in terms of where they currently sit in the standings, but has posted 35 points in its last 25 games. That's tied for the second-best points total in the Western Conference, behind Anaheim and even with divisional opponent St. Louis. It's also 12 more than Chicago, which now sits just four points ahead of the Preds. So why the turnaround? Would you believe that a guy who has consistently been one of the best goalies in the league when healthy finally started playing like it again, while the rest of the team continued to be dominant? While Rinne hasn't improved much at 5-on-5, his ability to stop pucks while his team is shorthanded has swung significantly in the other direction, and that's made all the difference. Before the break, Rinne was a .906 goalie in all situations. Sad! Since then, he's .920. And wouldn't you know it he entered the year as a .919 goaltender for his nearly 400-game career? Shocking. The Preds entered the All-Star break with a penalty kill running at just 79.1 percent, ahead of only Philly, Winnipeg, Arizona, Calgary and Ottawa. The Flyers are a decent enough team but the other four have been awful basically front-to-back this year. The Panthers were giving up a little more than three power plays a game at that point, and conceded the seventh-most power play goals as a result of their poor percentage. Giving up 32 in 50 may not seem like a lot, but the difference between that and league-average probably cost them two points in the standings. Since then, the Preds have been taking slightly fewer penalties (a drop of about 0.22 per game) and Rinne has tightened things up to the point that they've carried the ninth-best PK in the league. This despite the quality of play in front of him actually getting quite a bit worse. Continue to Article

March 28, 2016 10:59:am EST