The night the San Jose Sharks shot seven pucks past Michael DiPietro, his phone wouldn't stop pinging with messages of consolation.

The Vancouver Canucks prospect got lit up in his surprise NHL debut at age 19. Without a healthy backup goalie available, he was stranded in the crease for all 60 minutes of what became a 7-2 loss.

"You don't see many of those in the Ontario Hockey League," Sportsnet color commentator John Garrett said on the Canucks' TV broadcast after Evander Kane scored San Jose's fourth goal on a nasty top-shelf wrister.

DiPietro's family and friends were sad and sorry about the barrage to which he'd been subjected. His perspective, though, was radically different.

"I played one of the best teams in the NHL, a veteran lineup, and I had a ton of fun doing it," DiPietro says now. "It was a dream come true, and the teammates in Vancouver were absolutely phenomenal with me, keeping my spirits up and cheering me on.

"I let in seven goals, but looking back on it, those seven goals I can learn from."

It's unlikely that any player in hockey has experienced as wild a season as DiPietro, the Canucks' possible netminder of the future. In late December and early January, he endeared himself to Canada by allowing a mere five goals on 103 shots at the world junior championship in Vancouver. One of those goals, however, was an inconceivably fluky ricochet off an opponent's skate in a 2-1 quarterfinal loss to Finland.

Canucks fans were reintroduced to DiPietro on Feb. 4, when the team, beset by goalie injuries, summoned him from the OHL's Ottawa 67s to back up Jacob Markstrom. The Windsor, Ontario, native would watch and learn from the bench for a couple of weeks as Thatcher Demko nursed a sprained knee.

That was the plan - at least until Feb. 11, when Markstrom's back began to spasm and DiPietro was forced to face Kane, Tomas Hertl, Timo Meier, and Joe Pavelski, a quartet of 30-goal scorers who all beat him at least once that night.

Those experiences against Finland and San Jose might have tanked most other teenagers' play, but few prospects seem to be wired like DiPietro, the OHL's goalie of the year in 2017-18. A 6-footer, he's long been knocked for being short for the position, but he's always felt mature for his age. He says he thrives on pressure - "Call me crazy, call me whatever, but that's just something I love to do" - and considers his battle and his drive to be the twin attributes that define his game.

"I'll do whatever it takes to stop a puck," he says.

That mentality has translated into consistently positive results for his whole junior career, which itself has been anything but typical. In 2016-17, DiPietro backstopped his hometown Windsor Spitfires to a Memorial Cup championship - before he ever won an OHL playoff series. (Windsor lost in the first round and spent the next 44 days practicing before playing in the national tournament as hosts.) The Canucks drafted him 64th overall in 2017.

The rebuilding Spitfires traded DiPietro to the ascendant 67s shortly before he left for the world juniors this past December, which brings us to the final phase of his one-of-a-kind season. By winning 12 consecutive games to open the OHL playoffs - sweeping three Eastern Conference opponents in the process - DiPietro and Ottawa are within striking distance of a Memorial Cup trip of their own.

"In the playoffs, right now, I think we're seeing what he's really all about," says 67s head coach Andre Tourigny, whose team will face the Western Conference champion Guelph Storm in the OHL's best-of-seven final starting Thursday.

"He's making key saves, keeping us in the game all the time. The more the game is on the line, the better he is."

Facing an average of 28 shots per game, DiPietro has recorded a .913 save percentage in these playoffs. In the high-scoring OHL, that slots him third among goalies whose team advanced past the first round. In Game 4 of the second round, his 58 saves powered Ottawa to a 3-2 triple-overtime win that eliminated the Sudbury Wolves. Their starter, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, tended goal for Finland when that team won gold at the world juniors and was picked 10 spots ahead of DiPietro in the 2017 draft.

What skills have enabled DiPietro to become a junior star since the Canucks selected him? Different observers point to different strengths. Tourigny praises DiPietro's reaction time, lateral quickness, and competitiveness. DiPietro's agent, Darren Ferris, lauds his client's technical ability, his character, and his insatiable desire to excel and to win.

DiPietro's drive helped convince Hockey Canada head scout Brad McEwen to invite him to the country's two most recent world-junior selection camps. His assessment: DiPietro doesn't get rattled and finds a way to make saves on broken plays, a trait that compensates for his relative lack of size.

DiPietro was a late cut from Canada's 2018 world junior team. (Philadelphia Flyers rookie Carter Hart wound up leading the team to gold, supplemented by Dallas Stars prospect Colton Point.) But he handled his release graciously, and by the time DiPietro left the Canadians' pre-tournament headquarters, McEwen was already confident he'd want him to start the following year.

"If there's anybody that can handle adversity, it's Michael," says Ferris, whose DHG Sports Agency also represents Taylor Hall, Mitch Marner, and several other NHLers.

"It's going to be an easy transition for him (to professional hockey). His next steps, the path he has to take, I think, will probably be a lot more accommodating for him because of his maturity. He handles everything just like a pro."

When DiPietro was 5, his mother, Rebecca, died of cancer. He says now that he had to grow up quickly and that his father, Vic, raised him to eschew excuses and instilled in him the belief that he could handle any challenge.

A few years later, Vic married Assunta Fenty, whose son Mark used to be a goalie. At one of Mark's games about a decade ago, DiPietro - a young defenseman at the time - was watching raptly from the stands when his older stepbrother stoned an opponent on a breakaway.

In that moment, DiPietro knew he wanted to switch positions.

"He likes to be the guy everyone looks to: 'Listen - I got your back,'" Vic DiPietro says. And as a goalie who isn't 6-foot-5, Vic continued, he's also come to enjoy proving doubters wrong.

"Not in an arrogant way, of course," Vic says. "Just (by) going to work."

On the evening of Feb. 11, Vic and Assunta were sitting at their dinner table in Amherstburg, near Windsor, when Michael told them that Canucks coach Travis Green had tabbed him to start that night against the Sharks. There was no way to foresee this turn of events, so they were limited to watching his first NHL game on TV.

After the final buzzer, Michael, his dad, and his agent all concluded that the blowout constituted an opportunity for growth. The Sharks scored on five of their nine high-danger shots on goal - "He was taking shots no goalie should be taking, in my opinion," Ferris says - and demonstrated to him just how fast NHL action can move.

"For a young kid to step in and take that kind of workload right off the bat, it's kind of difficult," Ferris says. "I think it'll benefit him in the long run."

Barring another emergency recall, it might be a few years before DiPietro's parents get to witness his second NHL appearance. The Canucks have Markstrom signed through next year, and Demko, who is 23 years old, has two seasons left on his entry-level contract. In April, Vancouver nabbed 22-year-old NCAA star Jake Kielly in free agency after a superlative season at Clarkson University.

Like Demko, most netminders begin their pro careers with extensive seasoning in the minors. Hart, who started 30 games for the Flyers from late December onward, was the only goalie younger than age 22 to log significant time in the NHL this season. Come fall, it seems likely that DiPietro will share a crease with Kielly on the Utica Comets, Vancouver's American Hockey League affiliate.

For now, his focus is the OHL final, and the last, pivotal month of a whirlwind campaign. This "crazy" season has taught him about the need for a player to be adaptable, he says. It also has crystallized the vision he has for his future.

"Once you have a taste (of the NHL), that's all you want," DiPietro says. "That's something I'm going to (use to) push myself this summer: to make sure I surprise a few people at camp, and, hopefully, do my thing and make sure I have a good transition to pro hockey.

"I want to be the best I can possibly be. At the end of the day, I don't want anybody feeling sorry for me."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Before this week, Curtis McElhinney had appeared in all of two playoff games in his 11 years as an NHL goaltender, and one of those took place a decade ago.

Still, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that in this zany Carolina Hurricanes postseason run, McElhinney - like so many of his teammates - has delivered when pressed into action.

Ever since the injured Petr Mrazek ceded his crease to McElhinney midway through Game 2 against the New York Islanders, Carolina's backup has stopped 45 of the 47 shots he's faced. That includes 28 saves on Wednesday, when the 35-year-old McElhinney became the oldest goalie in league history to make his first playoff start and his surging club moved within a win of the Eastern Conference Final.

Reserve netminders aren't supposed to look impregnable, especially against an opponent that advanced to the second round via a sweep. But Mrazek and McElhinney have combined to yield just three goals in three games - all Hurricanes victories - and the Isles appear bound to suffer the same fate they just imposed on the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Canes' performance in their 5-2 win in Game 3 was well in line with the ethos that has gotten them this far. Through 10 postseason games - and particularly in their past eight, of which they've won seven - it seems like Carolina's always had a "next man" ready to rise to the occasion.

Five Hurricanes have scored at least three goals in these playoffs, and three others have tallied a game-winner. The team didn't stumble when forwards Andrei Svechnikov, Micheal Ferland, and Jordan Martinook all went down in the first round with various injuries. The same goes for life without Mrazek, Saku Maenalanen, and Trevor van Riemsdyk, all of whom were hurt in Game 2 against New York.

And how emphatically did Carolina put the "bunch" in Bunch of Jerks on Wednesday? Every single Hurricanes skater finished Game 3 with positive shot-attempt and scoring-chance ratios at even strength, signifying that New York had a lesser chance of scoring for practically the entire game.

The Hurricanes' dominance was especially pronounced in the third period, which began tied 2-2 and ended with the Islanders robbed of all but the faintest hope of coming back in this series.

In that final frame, Carolina had eight scoring chances to New York's three, including a 5-0 edge in quality chances. Even after Justin Williams scored to put the Hurricanes ahead 3-2 with 9:45 remaining - assisted by Sebastian Aho's midair interception of Robin Lehner's attempted clearance around the boards - they continued to control the run of play despite the Isles having an incentive to push aggressively for a tying goal.

Given how well his team played, McElhinney's effort didn't have to be Herculean, but he did make a tremendous toe save on Nick Leddy when Jordan Eberle sprung the defenseman for a breakaway in the second period, and made another with his glove when Eberle tried to pot the rebound. That was plenty on a night when the Isles generated only six quality scoring chances, far fewer than the 10.5 they averaged in the first two games.

It's hard to fathom any way New York could mount a miracle comeback. Any such blueprint would probably start with Lehner playing lights-out - his .915 save percentage at even strength in this series is significantly below his .934 regular-season mark - but at some point, they'd actually have to score. It's easier to forgive Brock Nelson for tapping McElhinney's head when you consider it came after his team's first and only goal at five-on-five through three games.

When the Islanders are inevitably eliminated, they'll rue not capitalizing on opportunities to win Games 1 and 2, in which they could have legitimately claimed to be the better team.

However, the Hurricanes fully earned their Game 3 victory, even as their power play failed to score for the seventh straight contest. Pretty much everything else is playing out in their favor - McElhinney being the latest embodiment of that trend.

Dallas flexes scoring depth

Stars head coach Jim Montgomery's successful decision to tweak his top two lines ahead of Game 4 on Wednesday accentuated the reason his team has kept pace with the St. Louis Blues: Dallas is getting secondary scoring.

Rather than forging ahead with Tyler Seguin centering Jamie Benn and Alexander Radulov - the trio that netted 89 of the Stars' 209 goals this season - Montgomery shifted Seguin to the second line and promoted flourishing Finnish 22-year-old Roope Hintz in his place.

The shakeup worked out happily for everyone involved, as Dallas won 4-2 on the strength of three terrific joint efforts from the members of those two lines: Seguin won a puck battle to feed new linemate Jason Dickinson for a tap-in; Dickinson, Mats Zuccarello, and Seguin all made key plays to set up a John Klingberg goal; and Hintz scored to reward Radulov and Benn for two consecutive pretty passes.

Hintz now has five goals in these playoffs, tied with Radulov for the team lead. Seguin, Dickinson, and Zuccarello have all scored three times, while Benn has contributed two goals and seven assists.

Their combined production has fortified Dallas' offensive punch in a series where Vezina Trophy finalist Ben Bishop - he of the .945 save percentage against the Nashville Predators in Round 1 - has looked shockingly beatable (.906 save percentage through four games).

Even in a 2-2 series, it's remarkable how little separates these teams. The Stars and Blues have each scored nine goals at even strength, while Dallas has a modest edge in total scoring chances at 123-119.

Like Bishop, St. Louis netminder Jordan Binnington has fared worse than expected (.904 save percentage) after his sterling second half of the regular season, mainly thanks to Dallas' aforementioned top-six forward group.

Does either goalie have a shutdown showing in him? In what's now a best-of-three matchup, it could make all the difference.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

At this stage of the playoffs, the Carolina Hurricanes have all the reasons in the world to fret about their chances of progressing past the second round.

Already down three of their top nine forwards due to injury, the 'Canes lost three more players - including starting goalie Petr Mrazek - to assorted ailments in Game 2; Mrazek's counterpart, New York Islanders starter Robin Lehner, has turned aside 47 of the 50 shots he's faced through two games; Carolina's power play, now 0-for-7 in the series, scarcely looks capable of generating a scoring opportunity, much less a goal.

And yet the Storm Surge is alive and well as this Eastern Conference semifinal shifts to Raleigh for Game 3 and 4. The Hurricanes have carved out a reputation for themselves as the postseason's most resilient team, and have taken a 2-0 series lead by the thinnest of margins due to the Islanders' inability to produce at even strength.

Resilience ranks among the best explanations of how the Hurricanes managed to win 2-1 Sunday after their offense barely tested Lehner through 40 minutes. Any of the Isles' 13 high-danger scoring chances at even strength (Carolina had five) could have knotted the series. Instead, they'll hit the road with no margin of error remaining.

Here are three takeaways from Game 2 that will set the tone for the remainder of the series.

Islanders need to score - for Lehner, more than anyone else

Lehner's Game 2 stat line was nothing special - 16 saves on 18 shots - but New York's Vezina Trophy finalist has kept his squad in each of their past two losses with a sparkling .940 overall save percentage. Sunday marked the first game since the Islanders' playoff opener against the Pittsburgh Penguins that Lehner allowed more than one goal.

His effort should be enough for any NHL lineup to succeed, even one that scored fewer goals than every playoff team but the Dallas Stars this season. But a litany of missed chances (along with a disallowed goal) kept New York off the scoreboard at five-on-five for the second straight game.

Though the posts and crossbars Josh Bailey, Jordan Eberle, and Ryan Pulock struck at various points in the final 10 minutes were particularly painful, the Isles' inability to finish plagued them from puck drop. Driving toward an open net five minutes in, Anthony Beauvillier whiffed on a tap-in; on the two-on-one rush that directly preceded Mrazek's exit with a lower-body injury, Eberle and Casey Cizikas were unable to connect for a shot.

Meanwhile, the Hurricanes have capitalized on key opportunities. In Game 1, Jordan Staal scored in overtime by beating Isles defenseman Devon Toews to a rebound off a shot that missed the net. On one of the Hurricanes' few open-ice rushes Sunday, Warren Foegele collected a banked pass from Lucas Wallmark and wired a wrister past Lehner for Carolina's first goal. Less than a minute later, Nino Niederreiter tipped in the game-winner.

The Islanders are probably due for better luck in the next couple of games, but at this point, time is of the essence.

Injuries haven't caught up with Carolina … yet

After going down 2-0 to the Washington Capitals in the first round, the Hurricanes have now won six of their past seven games despite injuries to forwards Andrei Svechnikov, Micheal Ferland, Jordan Martinook, Saku Maenalanen (who left in the third period with a hand injury and will be sidelined 10-to-14 days), goaltender Mrazek, and defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk (who hurt his shoulder 25 seconds into Game 2 and is out indefinitely).

If Svechnikov (concussion) and Martinook (leg) return soon, it would be a boon to Carolina's offense, which has operated on a by-committee basis through nine playoff games. Seven 'Canes have scored multiple goals, led by Foegele's five, while defenseman Jaccob Slavin has a team-high 10 assists.

Can they withstand these latest blows? One argument in the Hurricanes' favor is the way they've responded to adversity. Carolina dug itself out of a two-game deficit and overcame a 6-0 loss in Round 1. Before Niederreiter scored on Sunday, the Hurricanes hadn't led for any amount of time since Game 6 against the Caps, aside from their overtime goals.

As for the Mrazek injury, Carolina might not be that much worse off with Curtis McElhinney in net. To be fair, that isn't a ringing endorsement of McElhinney, but an acknowledgment that their stats from this season were similarly mediocre (.914 save percentage in 40 games for Mrazek; .912 in 33 games for McElhinney). Mrazek posted a 31-save shutout against the Isles in Game 1, but his .899 save percentage against Washington was poor.

Hurricanes' power play looks broken

Ranked 20th in the NHL, Carolina's power play was pretty drab this year. But they could sure use more in this stage of the playoffs, especially on an afternoon when their offense looked lifeless for extended stretches.

The Hurricanes' time on the man advantage actually did them more harm than good in Game 2. They went 0-for-3 and didn't put a single puck on net during a five-on-three that lasted 1:25 in the second period. The tail end of that particular power play produced the odd-man rush where Cizikas could've scored and Mrazek appeared to hurt himself.

Foegele and Niederreiter finally solved Lehner at five-on-five in the third period, but the Hurricanes certainly didn't make it easy on themselves. (Nor have they for most of the playoffs: Game 3 vs. Washington was the last time they scored on the power play.)

The gap between now and Game 3 on Wednesday will be the first time the Hurricanes have consecutive days off in nearly two weeks. Rest won't be the only order of business they attend to.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Carolina Hurricanes evened their series, the St. Louis Blues mounted a frantic comeback, and the San Jose Sharks warded off elimination on a busy Thursday in the NHL playoffs. Here are some key takeaways from each game.

Wild night for Foegele, spunky Hurricanes

From the first rush of the game to the third-period shove from behind that caused Alex Ovechkin to fume, Carolina's fourth matchup with Washington became the Warren Foegele show.

An unlikely headline-grabber, even on a Hurricanes team that lacks star power, Foegele opened the game flying and scored just 17 seconds into the contest after Washington's Matt Niskanen was caught up ice.

But the 23-year-old rookie winger could face suspension for the check he delivered to T.J. Oshie late in the third period. Capitals coach Todd Reirden said postgame that Oshie will be out for the foreseeable future.

Carolina has been one of the NHL's healthiest teams this season, but they've already proven capable of compensating for the absence of some key contributors. The Hurricanes were down Micheal Ferland and Andrei Svechnikov in Game 4, while fellow middle-six winger Jordan Martinook played only 4:39 after twisting his right leg in the first period.

Losing Foegele would be another blow as the series shifts to D.C. on Saturday, but the Capitals will face an even greater test with Oshie out. Reirden elevated him to Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom's line in Game 4, hoping to spark Washington's sputtering attack. But the trio struggled at even strength against Carolina's top defensive pairing of Jaccob Slavin and Dougie Hamilton, and second line of Foegele, Jordan Staal, and Justin Williams.

No matter who does or doesn't play on Saturday, one of the Capitals' chief objectives should be to reverse their newfound offensive malaise. Washington scored eight goals at home in Games 1 and 2 - five of which came at even strength - but they only mustered one goal in Carolina, and that was on the power play.

Jets stars no-show, Blues big guns do their part

As TSN and NBC commentator Gord Miller noted in the wake of Winnipeg's latest third-period meltdown, this series has followed anything but a logical progression.

In the spirit of this topsy-turviness, consider this stat from the Blues' madcap 3-2 comeback win in Game 5: Of the 10 high-quality scoring chances the Jets generated on the night, eight came courtesy of their bottom two lines. Not coincidentally, those are the units that out-muscled the Blues for two goals in the first period.

But for all the praise heaped on goalscorers Adam Lowry and Kevin Hayes along with their respective linemates, St. Louis was in position to steal a victory with 15 seconds left because Winnipeg's best players weren't nearly good enough. Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, and Kyle Connor, the Jets' No. 1 line, were severely outgunned at 5-on-5 by Oskar Sundqvist, Brayden Schenn, and Jaden Schwartz, whose efforts to drive possession paid off when each of them featured prominently in the final two goals.

Ahead of puck drop, it seemed like the Blues' best chance to buck their two-game losing skid would be to hope for a David Pastrnak-like breakout performance from their stars. Schenn, Ryan O'Reilly, and Vladimir Tarasenko, St. Louis' usual first line, combined for just one goal at even strength (plus two on the power play) through four games. Jordan Binnington, a revelation in net since he wrested the starting role from Jake Allen in January, came into Thursday with a decidedly average .902 playoff save percentage.

Pastrnak's two-goal performance against Toronto on Wednesday might have been louder on its own, but Schenn's two points, O'Reilly's power-play goal to get his team on the board, Tarasenko's multiple scoring chances on the power play, and Binnington's 29 saves constituted an admirable response under pressure.

In a close game, the late results they got made the Blues deserving winners, controversy surrounding Sundqvist's drive to the net on the tying goal be damned. All they have to do now is remember how to win at home.

Vegas' top line finally falters

Early in Game 5 between Vegas and San Jose, NBC producers cued up a graphic to detail the exploits of Max Pacioretty, Paul Stastny, and Mark Stone, who form what is ostensibly the Golden Knights' second line. Those players scored a combined 28 points through the first four games of the playoffs, more than any forward trio since Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri, and Esa Tikkanen tallied 30 points in the same number of games for the 1987 Edmonton Oilers.

But Thursday was an entirely different story. In their strongest defensive showing since the postseason's opening slate of games, the Sharks finally kept Vegas' leading bigwigs in check, holding them scoreless in a 5-2 win that prolonged Joe Thornton's career for at least one more monumental road trip.

Stone, Pacioretty, and Stastny still top the individual playoff scoring leaderboard in that order, so San Jose shouldn't derive too much hope from their off night. After all, it was their impression of prime Gretzky and Co. that led Vegas to outscore the Sharks 13-3 over the eight periods of action directly preceding Game 5.

Still, the Sharks have reason for cautious optimism as they set their sights on staving off elimination again on Sunday. Unceremoniously yanked from the net in Games 2 and 4, Martin Jones rebounded with a 30-save effort and only allowed two power-play goals. His pad save on Reilly Smith, Vegas' best forward on the night, with fewer than eight minutes left in the third period forestalled a possible catastrophe with his club clinging to a one-goal lead.

Equally encouraging were the contributions the Sharks got from their stars. Tomas Hertl, who emerged as a point-a-game scorer this season, came within a pinged crossbar of a hat trick. San Jose's top line of Logan Couture, Joe Pavelski, and Timo Meier potted two goals and teamed with Brent Burns and Marc-Andre Vlasic, who returned from a two-game absence, to hound the Stastny line at 5v5 for much of the night.

Smith and Jonathan Marchessault's power-play markers kept the score close until the waning minutes. Vegas now has a playoff-high eight goals with the man advantage (on a playoff-high 24 opportunities), which, along with the Stastny line's overall prowess, emphasizes that the series is still the Golden Knights' to lose. The onus is on Jones and the defensemen in front of him to come out with the same steeliness on the road in Game 6.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Carolina Hurricanes evened their series, the St. Louis Blues mounted a frantic comeback, and the San Jose Sharks warded off elimination on a busy Thursday in the NHL playoffs. Here are some key takeaways from each game.

Wild night for Foegele, spunky Hurricanes

From the first rush of the game to the third-period shove from behind that caused Alex Ovechkin to fume, Carolina's fourth matchup with Washington became the Warren Foegele show.

An unlikely headline-grabber, even on a Hurricanes team that lacks star power, Foegele opened the game flying and scored just 17 seconds into the contest after Washington's Matt Niskanen was caught up ice.

But the 23-year-old rookie winger could face suspension for the check he delivered to T.J. Oshie late in the third period. Capitals coach Todd Reirden said postgame that Oshie will be out for the foreseeable future.

Carolina has been one of the NHL's healthiest teams this season, but they've already proven capable of compensating for the absence of some key contributors. The Hurricanes were down Micheal Ferland and Andrei Svechnikov in Game 4, while fellow middle-six winger Jordan Martinook played only 4:39 after twisting his right leg in the first period.

Losing Foegele would be another blow as the series shifts to D.C. on Saturday, but the Capitals will face an even greater test with Oshie out. Reirden elevated him to Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom's line in Game 4, hoping to spark Washington's sputtering attack. But the trio struggled at even strength against Carolina's top defensive pairing of Jaccob Slavin and Dougie Hamilton, and second line of Foegele, Jordan Staal, and Justin Williams.

No matter who does or doesn't play on Saturday, one of the Capitals' chief objectives should be to reverse their newfound offensive malaise. Washington scored eight goals at home in Games 1 and 2 - five of which came at even strength - but they only mustered one goal in Carolina, and that was on the power play.

Jets stars no-show, Blues big guns do their part

As TSN and NBC commentator Gord Miller noted in the wake of Winnipeg's latest third-period meltdown, this series has followed anything but a logical progression.

In the spirit of this topsy-turviness, consider this stat from the Blues' madcap 3-2 comeback win in Game 5: Of the 10 high-quality scoring chances the Jets generated on the night, eight came courtesy of their bottom two lines. Not coincidentally, those are the units that out-muscled the Blues for two goals in the first period.

But for all the praise heaped on goalscorers Adam Lowry and Kevin Hayes along with their respective linemates, St. Louis was in position to steal a victory with 15 seconds left because Winnipeg's best players weren't nearly good enough. Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, and Kyle Connor, the Jets' No. 1 line, were severely outgunned at 5-on-5 by Oskar Sundqvist, Brayden Schenn, and Jaden Schwartz, whose efforts to drive possession paid off when each of them featured prominently in the final two goals.

Ahead of puck drop, it seemed like the Blues' best chance to buck their two-game losing skid would be to hope for a David Pastrnak-like breakout performance from their stars. Schenn, Ryan O'Reilly, and Vladimir Tarasenko, St. Louis' usual first line, combined for just one goal at even strength (plus two on the power play) through four games. Jordan Binnington, a revelation in net since he wrested the starting role from Jake Allen in January, came into Thursday with a decidedly average .902 playoff save percentage.

Pastrnak's two-goal performance against Toronto on Wednesday might have been louder on its own, but Schenn's two points, O'Reilly's power-play goal to get his team on the board, Tarasenko's multiple scoring chances on the power play, and Binnington's 29 saves constituted an admirable response under pressure.

In a close game, the late results they got made the Blues deserving winners, controversy surrounding Sundqvist's drive to the net on the tying goal be damned. All they have to do now is remember how to win at home.

Vegas' top line finally falters

Early in Game 5 between Vegas and San Jose, NBC producers cued up a graphic to detail the exploits of Max Pacioretty, Paul Stastny, and Mark Stone, who form what is ostensibly the Golden Knights' second line. Those players scored a combined 28 points through the first four games of the playoffs, more than any forward trio since Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri, and Esa Tikkanen tallied 30 points in the same number of games for the 1987 Edmonton Oilers.

But Thursday was an entirely different story. In their strongest defensive showing since the postseason's opening slate of games, the Sharks finally kept Vegas' leading bigwigs in check, holding them scoreless in a 5-2 win that prolonged Joe Thornton's career for at least one more monumental road trip.

Stone, Pacioretty, and Stastny still top the individual playoff scoring leaderboard in that order, so San Jose shouldn't derive too much hope from their off night. After all, it was their impression of prime Gretzky and Co. that led Vegas to outscore the Sharks 13-3 over the eight periods of action directly preceding Game 5.

Still, the Sharks have reason for cautious optimism as they set their sights on staving off elimination again on Sunday. Unceremoniously yanked from the net in Games 2 and 4, Martin Jones rebounded with a 30-save effort and only allowed two power-play goals. His pad save on Reilly Smith, Vegas' best forward on the night, with fewer than eight minutes left in the third period forestalled a possible catastrophe with his club clinging to a one-goal lead.

Equally encouraging were the contributions the Sharks got from their stars. Tomas Hertl, who emerged as a point-a-game scorer this season, came within a pinged crossbar of a hat trick. San Jose's top line of Logan Couture, Joe Pavelski, and Timo Meier potted two goals and teamed with Brent Burns and Marc-Andre Vlasic, who returned from a two-game absence, to hound the Stastny line at 5v5 for much of the night.

Smith and Jonathan Marchessault's power-play markers kept the score close until the waning minutes. Vegas now has a playoff-high eight goals with the man advantage (on a playoff-high 24 opportunities), which, along with the Stastny line's overall prowess, emphasizes that the series is still the Golden Knights' to lose. The onus is on Jones and the defensemen in front of him to come out with the same steeliness on the road in Game 6.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

No moment emphasized the magnitude of Game 4 in Toronto on Wednesday night quite like the point when, a few minutes in, a TV camera panned high above the ice and settled on Drake. The local rapper deigned to support his hometown Maple Leafs in person - despite not appearing courtside, as is his custom, at either of his beloved Raptors' first home playoff games.

Facing the prospect of a 3-1 series deficit, the importance of the occasion moved Boston Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy to make a drastic change. Move David Pastrnak down a rung in the lineup, his thinking went, and maybe each member of hockey's most dangerous line could shake his respective quiet start to the series.

In a sense, Cassidy's gambit worked beautifully. The Bruins won an enthralling 6-4 showdown with Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, and Patrice Bergeron playing but two shifts together at even-strength.

Still, Boston now has a curious decision to make as the series returns to TD Garden for Game 5. Cassidy could let this result speak for itself and leave Danton Heinen in Pastrnak's usual spot on Bergeron's right wing. Or he could reunite his No. 1 line in accordance with another argument: that the fleeting sequences in which the Bruins' stars skated together are what powered Boston to victory on a night the opponent dominated the run of play.

Three minutes into the second period, shortly after Auston Matthews scored to erase Boston's early lead, Cassidy deployed Pastrnak with Marchand and Bergeron on a faceoff for the first time at even strength. The shift culminated in Pastrnak tipping home his first goal of the playoffs on a slick feed from Marchand, whom Bergeron had sprung on a two-on-one with a timely chip out of the defensive zone.

Fewer than two minutes later, with Matthews banished to the box for a roughing penalty, Pastrnak slipped unabated into the slot - all four Leaf defenders were caught puck-watching on one side of the ice - and fired a one-timer past Frederik Andersen on another pretty Marchand pass.

"(Pastrnak is) a guy we rely on to score and create offense," Cassidy said after the game. "Scorers, when they don't score, can get antsy. I'm not saying David was there, but we wanted to keep him from going there."

The Bruins nearly unraveled in the frantic last 10 minutes of the third period - the seemingly inevitable product of allowing 47 Toronto scoring chances to their 26 - but those flashes of synchronized brilliance were almost enough on their own to put Boston ahead for good.

And even though Zdeno Chara's clinching goal officially went down without an assist, it, too, was keyed by contributions from the big guns. Marchand lifted Zach Hyman's stick on an end-around to let the puck slide to Chara at the point, and Bergeron blocked Andersen's view of the ensuing shot with a textbook screen.

After getting slammed at even-strength in Boston's losses in Games 1 and 3, Chara and defense partner Charlie McAvoy joined Bergeron, Marchand, and Heinen as the only Bruins to generate a scoring-chance margin at or above 50 percent. Together they outshone Toronto's top five-man unit of John Tavares, Mitch Marner, Hyman, Jake Muzzin, and Nikita Zaitsev - the source of the Bergeron line's shared headache in the matchups that preceded Wednesday's puck drop.

For the Bruins, the dispiriting subtext of this information is that, to a man, each of their other lines and pairings got caved in. Morgan Rielly excelled in extended action against Boston's new second line of Pastrnak, David Krejci, and Jake DeBrusk. Toronto's third forward trio was overwhelmingly good, though none of William Nylander, Patrick Marleau, and Connor Brown found the back of the net.

"We did a lot of good things tonight. We generated a lot of chances, got a lot of pucks to the net," Tavares said postgame. "We just probably made too many mistakes at certain points in the game."

Beyond the play of Pastrnak and his usual running mates, the Bruins will head home buoyed by a couple of other encouraging trends. Their power-play clicked at 25.9 percent - the third-highest rate in the league - during the regular season; Pastrnak's second goal in Game 4, combined with McAvoy's first of the series, upped Boston's first-round success rate with the man advantage to a sparkling 5-for-11. Toronto's power play is 3-for-10 overall.

Tuukka Rask, meanwhile, should have saved the Matthews wrister that tied the score 2-2, but he made some other crucial stops, including a point-blank denial when Brown found himself alone at the side of the crease with Toronto down 4-2 in the second period. Rask now has a .942 save percentage at even strength for the series, just below Andersen's .943.

The slimness of the margin separating these goalies and their teams, combined with the scarcity of time to make adjustments in the playoffs, is what prompted Cassidy to split up his scuffling stars. Whether Pastrnak returns to the first line on Friday or not, it's clear that Game 5 will loom just as large as the spectacle that attracted Drake.

"I think when we're able to separate those guys a little bit, you're able to see more opportunities for them, and overall, I think they can just play with anyone," McAvoy said. "They're great players. They can adapt to whoever is on their wings.

"And we need them. We need them. It was nice to see them all play a hand - a big hand - in tonight's game."

— With files from theScore's John Matisz

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore. He's on Twitter @nickmfaris.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

A couple of weeks ago, journalist Zach Schonbrun was browsing the internet and happened across an article about an unusual 3-point-shooting demonstration in Tokyo. Toyota engineers, he read, had built a human-shaped robot that stands 6-foot-10, equipped their creation with pliable knees, elbows, and wrists, and programmed it to aim basketballs at a hoop with knockdown precision.

In front of an Associated Press reporter, the robot canned 5-of-8 attempts from behind the arc - a lesser success rate than usual, its makers said. Later, one publication noted in a headline that the machine is a better long-range gunner than Stephen Curry, the offensive maestro who's shot threes at a 43.6 percent clip throughout his NBA career.

"Steph Curry's going to be long retired before any robot's taking his job," Schonbrun thought to himself.

Schonbrun found the comparison especially ludicrous because, as he puts it, most robots aren't as deft as the average 5-year-old child - if you're in search of a laugh, he suggests watching YouTube compilations of automatons trying to open a door - while Curry and few other people on Earth represent the pinnacle of human motion. No novice basketball fan would look at Curry and see a two-time MVP, but the nimbleness with which he moves on the court, handles the ball, and lets it fly from deep has made him exactly that.

At 6-foot-3, Curry is smaller than the Toyota robot and many of his opponents, but it's still easy to see how his physical attributes allow him to dominate on the court. We can perceive the elusiveness that earns him a modicum of space from a defender and understand the strength that enables him to hoist effortless, accurate jumpers from close to half court.

But to Schonbrun, this focus on Curry's body is misguided. In his book "The Performance Cortex," which was released in paperback form last week, he contends that the true key to the point guard's greatness - and to the Golden State Warriors' hopes of winning a fourth championship in five seasons - can largely be traced to another factor.

"His skill has a lot more to do with his brain than it does with his fast-twitch muscles," Schonbrun told theScore.

Curry's brain and those of his peers on the highest plane of professional sports are the central objects of fascination in Schonbrun's book. A former contributing writer for The New York Times, he set out a few years ago to explore the ways that neural activity controls the movements of elite athletes - and, as such, how those athletes perform in competition.

In one important passage, Schonbrun writes that top performers "have an inimitable talent for making the right decisions at the right time." Sidney Crosby, he notes, is able to sling a pinpoint pass across the ice when he senses an opening that no one else in the arena has glimpsed; his brain discerns the opportunity and prompts him to take advantage. The same goes for Curry with the ball in his hands. Crucially, this logic doesn't apply to robots that stroke threes but are otherwise incapable of movement.

Schonbrun himself long viewed sports as a purely physical exercise, never appreciating that signals originating in the brain are what make athletic magnificence possible. That changed when a Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist, John Krakauer, told him that his perspective was akin to crediting someone's proficiency in a foreign language to their dexterous tongue.

"I'm no longer focused, necessarily, on how fast (athletes are) running or how high they're jumping," Schonbrun said. "I'm really thinking about the milliseconds it takes for them to make decisions - and make the right ones, most of the time."

This notion can be employed across sports. Take the NFL combine, which in Schonbrun's estimation is a wasteful venture where talent evaluators tell prospects to run in a straight line, leap as high as they can, and execute other quick-twitch acts that won't really identify the best game-day competitors.

He floats an alternative method of assessing, say, quarterbacks: Use neuroimaging technology to track the reads they make in the frantic few seconds after a snap.

"Having an understanding of who's making those decisions more accurately and who's making them better before the ball is even being released, certainly, I think, would be valuable information," he said.

Much of Schonbrun's book is predicated on neuroscience's relevance to baseball, and specifically to the interaction that underpins each of its games: the milliseconds that elapse between the time the ball leaves a pitcher's grasp and the moment it arrives at the plate. When he stares down a 95-mph fastball, a batter has about two-tenths of a second to process the offering and to choose to swing or lay off. If he chooses to swing, he'll have another two-tenths for his brain to send that instruction down the spinal cord and out through his musculature.

That severe time crunch means batting is more about prediction than reaction. Expert hitters can project the appeal of a pitch as it's being released. Jason Sherwin and Jordan Muraskin, two neuroscientists whom Schonbrun profiles at length in the book, have used brain-scanning equipment to show that the best hitters are often those whose neurons make accurate decisions fractionally faster.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, a story of three famous strikeouts helps reveal the brain's paramount contribution to batting. At a 2004 exhibition, legendary softball pitcher Jennie Finch made quick work of MLB All-Stars Albert Pujols, Mike Piazza, and Brian Giles by throwing underhand from 43 feet away, the standard distance in women's softball.

As Schonbrun writes, the speed of Finch's pitches mirrored that of a 95-mph fastball thrown from a major-league mound distance of 60 feet, 6 inches, but the unfamiliar angle of her delivery stripped the hitters of the predictive capacity that propelled them to stardom. They didn't know what to expect, and their physical gifts weren't enough to compensate.

In a number of ways, the aims and possibilities of neuroscience are at odds with the realities of pro sports. Analytics mavens abound in MLB front offices, but a few years ago, when Sherwin and Muraskin tried to convince teams that neural data could help them evaluate hitters, they found that some executives were suspicious of their scientific expertise. Even if a team acknowledges the utility of such data, it might determine the fate of a player's career based on a sample an academic would think too small. Players might not want their employer to study their brain.

Despite these hindrances, Schonbrun believes neuroscience is gradually starting to take hold. He sees it every time a franchise hires a sports scientist who's studied the brain, including a few in recent years in MLB.

"It's silliness to ignore it," he said, "and to continue to go make terrible decisions based off of combine scores and sprints."

For now, one of the main lessons in "The Performance Cortex" can be summarized by a piece of celebrated internet content. In the above video from 2014, a 2-year-old girl solves a Rubik's Cube in 70 seconds. It came up in a conversation Schonbrun once had with Krakauer, and it's worth contemplating anytime Curry pulls up from 30 feet.

Typically, no kid would be considered intelligent at such a young age. But her accomplishment sure seems like a sign of genius.

"Perhaps, then, Krakauer argues, we should be evaluating intelligence simply based upon extraordinary things we can do with our brains," Schonbrun writes.

"Becoming an all-time great professional basketball player would be one of those things."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore. He’s on Twitter @nickmfaris.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

TORONTO - When Kaleb Dahlgren was 2 years old, his dad dressed him in the Calgary Flames' alternate jersey of the day - a black sweater with red trim and a flaming horse on the front - strapped a pair of roller blades to his feet, and suggested the two of them imitate playing an NHL game.

Showdowns between Mark Dahlgren and his son quickly became a nightly production in the cement-floored basement of the family's home in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Kaleb, often impersonating young Flames star Jarome Iginla, skated through a smoke machine as he entered the improvised arena. They warmed up to Mark's favorite AC/DC and Metallica hits and paused to sing "O Canada" together. At the end of three periods, they picked the city where they'd play tomorrow.

"He was into it like you wouldn't believe," Mark says. "Hook, line, and sinker."

When Kaleb was 3, too young to attend school, Mark and his wife, Anita, dropped him off at a babysitter's house. He typically passed the time there by grabbing a mini stick and shooting on a small net. But on this day his sitter was puzzled: All Kaleb cared to do was sit still on the couch.

"Are you OK? What are you doing?" she asked him.

"I'm on the airplane going to San Jose," Kaleb replied. "That's where I play tonight."

At age 5, Kaleb declared at the dinner table that hockey was his passion. His parents didn't even know he understood the definition of the word. At 9, Mark and Anita took him on a group tour of the rink at the University of North Dakota - an event he dominated by asking, his father jokes, somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000 questions. The whole ride home, he kept telling them that one day he'd play at the university level.

Soon Mark and Anita signed Kaleb up with a personal trainer. He beseeched his parents to enroll him in every hockey camp the family heard about. As Kaleb got older, he swore off alcohol and refrained from getting a girlfriend until after high school, viewing the prospect as a potential distraction. He wrote down objectives on pieces of paper - record a certain number of assists in a year; earn a captain's letter at the start of a season - and taped them to the wall by his bedroom door.

Kaleb played other sports but discovered they weren't for him. Baseball was too slow. Basketball's defensive rules seemed needlessly restrictive. "You've got to be able to take a hit," he'd think after smacking an opponent on the hand.

On the ice, Kaleb bloomed into a tenacious winger with a tendency to outmuscle bigger guys for loose pucks in the corner. He loved to hit, despite never growing taller than 5-foot-9, and came to believe that the camaraderie of a hockey locker room - a brotherhood forged by sacrificing one's body to better the team - was singular.

At every rung of minor hockey, he competed with a smile on his face. He wore an assistant captain's "A" during his last two seasons of Junior A, including, in 2017-18, for the Humboldt Broncos.

"He's devoted his life to hockey," Mark says.

Last year, on a sunny spring afternoon in rural Saskatchewan, Kaleb Dahlgren was badly hurt when a bus and a truck crashed at the intersection of two highways. Now he wonders if he'll ever get to play again.

One year removed from April 6, 2018, the 13 young men who survived the Humboldt Broncos bus crash are dispersed across Canada, rehabbing their injuries, grappling with the mental toll of the tragedy, honoring the memories of the 16 friends and mentors who died, and trying to move forward with the rest of their lives. It is a weight only they can begin to understand.

Each survivor's situation varies. Some of them suffered brain injuries in the crash. Their bodies were scarred, lacerated, fractured, or paralyzed. Some of them suffer from anxiety, panic attacks, or post-traumatic stress. Some lost the ability to speak. Recovery isn't a uniform process, and for each of them, it's still ongoing.

Living in Humboldt, on university campuses, or in their respective hometowns across the Canadian Prairies, they have responded with courage and toughness, extraordinary strength and enduring grace. In public appearances, they express the hope that people will draw inspiration from their stories. In a private group chat, they talk nearly every week, bantering and offering words of support at opportune times.

Two things bound the Broncos on the afternoon they boarded the bus: hockey and each other. Those forces have become two of their guiding lights.

Ryan Straschnitzki, who was paralyzed from the chest down in the crash, describes the joy he has always found in his chosen sport like this: "Time doesn't exist. You're just out there having fun with the people you love playing with."

As many of his old Broncos teammates followed one path or another back to hockey - resuming their junior careers, joining university teams as rookies, taking up sledge hockey or assistant coaching roles, beginning to skate again with assistance - Kaleb Dahlgren represented a unique case. Most of his injuries have healed: the skull fracture, the broken vertebrae in his neck and back. He is a commerce student at York University in Toronto, preparing to write his last exams as a first-year undergrad.

As a member of York's men's hockey team, the Lions, Dahlgren is a single tantalizing step from achieving the childhood dream he crafted on a North Dakota interstate. But the gap between the 21-year-old and the fulfillment of that dream is evident in his stat line from the 2018-19 season: zero points in zero games played.

Through two-hour rehab sessions five times weekly at York's sport injury clinic, Dahlgren's back and neck have mended, as has an ankle ligament he tore last fall. But the brain injury he suffered in the crash is a different story. Dahlgren hasn't been cleared for contact since he was rushed to hospital in Nipawin, Saskatchewan, the destination the Broncos' bus never reached last April 6.

The prohibition means that even though he has been skating since last May, his future on the ice remains an open question. Getting medical approval to play requires him to ace a series of neurological tests, and so far he hasn't come close.

Back at his parents' home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a handwritten note Kaleb left affixed to his bedroom wall reads, "Take Action For Your Passion." The past year has forced him to adjust to a difficult truth: There's little he can do for his ailing brain besides sleep 10 hours a night and wait to see what happens.

"(Playing again) would mean so much to me," he says. "The only issue is that I can't control it. I can't control my brain."

His Humboldt teammates who transitioned to university all played more than 20 games as rookies: Nick Shumlanski at the University of Prince Edward Island; Bryce Fiske and Matthieu Gomercic at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. But Dahlgren was limited to wearing a yellow no-contact jersey at York practices. He attended home games in a suit but stayed behind during overnight road trips. He watched his team win nine of its first 12 games before injuries mounted and the Lions slumped to a losing record.

In the stands, Dahlgren got to see the sport unfold from a new perspective. The university game is faster and less physical than Saskatchewan's rugged Junior A circuit, suggesting to him that he'd do well to increase his foot speed - and retain his inclination to play the body in order to stand out.

He hopes he'll get the chance to apply his forethought in competition by the start of next season. Lots of shut-eye might help cinch this timeline; so might his work with leading neurologists, or the fact he's tried cranial and chiropractic therapy. Alternatively, his ambition and effort may amount to something less than enough.

"You have to accept it for what it is, and just be thankful for what you have," Dahlgren says. That includes the opportunity to practice and work out during the season, and to aspire to a greater role on game day.

"I use that as my motivation," he says, "as well as the 16 people that can't even be here."

A couple of months ago, Tyler Smith got 16 black birds tattooed onto the left side of his chest, above his heart and directly beneath a scar that runs along his collarbone. "Home is where the heart is," reads an inscription below the flock.

Smith is from Leduc, Alberta, but Humboldt is a city he will always hold dear. When Smith joined the Broncos in 2017-18 for his second season of Junior A hockey, he says he was welcomed into a locker room replete with talented players and better people. Togetherness with his teammates had drawn him to the sport from childhood, and now he was playing for a head coach, Darcy Haugan, who emphasized the importance of family when he spoke to his team.

To Smith, those Broncos became a family in their own right. Everything they did together was easy, comfortable, special. Never a big scorer, Smith saw his role as a purveyor of humor, positivity - the properties that lighten a collective mood.

"As cliche as it sounds, the whole 'It's all about the boys' thing, it really is for me," he says.

This past September, the Broncos returned to the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League in a reconstituted state: Only two survivors, Brayden Camrud and Derek Patter, still had junior eligibility and were healthy enough come training camp to join the new roster. They immediately emerged as leaders on a team that went 35-19-4 and played into late March, when the Broncos lost in seven games in the second round of the playoffs.

It took Smith a little longer to recover from his personal catalog of injuries: the broken collarbone, shoulder blade, and ribs; the punctured lung; the nerve damage to his left arm. In November, he became the third survivor to don a Humboldt jersey again - until he decided to head home to Leduc after 10 games, too distracted by his thoughts to enjoy playing.

Smith says the new crop of Broncos are "awesome" guys; they made his transition back to the ice very easy. But it wasn't last year's team, and he didn't want his emotions to permeate the dressing room. Even if going back to Leduc didn't hasten his recovery, it at least delivered some solace. Many of his friends play for the local Junior B Riggers, and when he joined the club this winter for the final third of the season, he settled into a happy routine: tying his skates at the rink where he'd played as a kid and sharing laughs with some familiar faces.

"I didn't want to worry about anything," Smith says. "I just needed to embrace the game again."

Two hours south of Leduc down Alberta's busiest highway, Straschnitzki - a teammate of Smith's dating back to midget hockey - is living in a hotel in his hometown of Airdrie, waiting for his family's house to be retrofitted to accommodate his new physical reality, and embarking on his next chapter in hockey from a seated position. Just as Smith found fun and Dahlgren is keen for medical clearance, Straschnitzki is oriented toward a new goal: playing sledge hockey for Canada by the 2026 Paralympics.

To reach that ideal endpoint, Straschnitzki first needs to be cleared for contact himself. Stints with Team Alberta and the national development program would come next. The whole process starts with two sets of sessions he labors through four times a week: rehab at a spinal cord injury center in Calgary, where he strengthens his muscles and hones his balance, and practice at rinks in Calgary and the neighboring suburb of Okotoks.

Balance has been his chief concern there, too: Straschnitzki's paralysis sapped his core strength, and navigating a sled was an untried skill when he got back on the ice last summer. But as he says, hockey means everything to him. He started playing at age 4, has played it ever since, and still plays it now in a recognizable form. He's a smart player, a responsible defenseman with two-way ability, and all he has to do to succeed from here is work very, very hard.

"I've been training my whole life to be strong-minded with hockey," he says. "If I can keep this attitude going, I'm pretty hopeful."

Straschnitzki's coach and mentor, retired national team player Chris Cederstrand, attests to his student's drive. Whenever he regains some activation in his core muscles, they have to tweak the manner in which he operates his sled. So they readjust, Cederstrand says, and Straschnitzki keeps making "unbelievable" strides.

Soon, Straschnitzki expects to put his return to the game on hold. He and his family plan to travel to Thailand for experimental surgery in which an epidural stimulator will be implanted into his back, in the hope the device will allow him to use limbs and muscles he can no longer control. He'd stay for six or seven weeks and could depart as soon as May. Or he might wait until the end of summer, which would let him reunite with some Airdrie friends he hasn't seen in a while.

For now, he sticks to his weekly regimen - "Bad day or good day, he's out on the ice just absolutely crushing it," Cederstrand says - and makes a point of keeping in touch with the boys from Humboldt. It's difficult to live far away from the people who have the best idea of what he's going through. But he and Smith share the conviction that their connection will transcend distance and endure.

"We all went through the same thing," Straschnitzki says. "I think having each other to vent to or talk about our problems with, it's kind of like being in the locker room again."

Last April, on the morning after the bus crash, Kaleb Dahlgren awoke in hospital with a bandage on his head and his parents by his side. He alerted them to one of the first concerns that entered his foggy mind.

"Look at my legs," he said. "Look how small they are. I haven't had a good workout in a week."

Dahlgren wasn't quite himself in that moment; he soon started to swear, make sarcastic remarks, and chirp well-wishers who came to visit, each phenomenon totally foreign to his character. But he was indeed correct on that point: The Broncos' playoff run had limited the scope of his exertion to skating and stretching. Though it took him several days to comprehend the devastation the crash had wrought, his focus on the game apparently hadn't wavered.

In the coming weeks, Dahlgren kept defying the boundaries that his injuries might otherwise have imposed, an attitude that set the tone for the months ahead. Four days after the crash, when hospital staff planned to assess his ability to walk, he instead persuaded a physiotherapist to take him to the on-site gym. He walked on a treadmill, did light work on a stationary bike, and performed some standing squats. Only when he tried to transition to wall pushups did his minder cut the session short.

Two weeks later, Dahlgren was back in the gym and riding the bike when he was informed an MRI he'd recently undergone had returned with startling results. Doctors had only just discovered that he'd fractured four vertebrae in his back. Fearful the breaks could impact his spinal cord, they told him to stop pedaling - now.

"The timer hasn't gone yet," he replied.

A year on, Mark Dahlgren still can't be sure what the future holds for his son. But he is astounded at the extent to which Kaleb has recovered physically - it is nothing short of a miracle, he says.

On the living-room wall of his apartment overlooking the York campus, Kaleb has hung the yellow alternate jersey he used to wear in Humboldt, the shirt the 2017-18 Broncos wore in their official team photo. The game has taken him to some wonderful places and introduced him to cherished friends. In the case of the 16 he lost on the bus, he says he'll forever be thankful to have known them.

Hockey imbues its players with resilience; it brings teammates together. In these ways, Dahlgren thinks it is helping him and his fellow survivors move forward. Each of them has been injured at some point in the past, he says, and if those ailments were less severe, they at least made them willing to do whatever it took to come back.

When Dahlgren talks about his Broncos team, he likens their friendship to a familial bond. In Toronto he'll catch himself repeating their favorite sayings: inviting people over for a "chill sesh," or calling somebody "A-A-Ron" in a nod to a "Key & Peele" bit. He recently stumbled across an old video of his Humboldt billet family singing "Happy Birthday" to Stephen Wack, a teammate Dahlgren considered a brother before he died in the crash. He told the group chat about his discovery.

"I didn't need anything at all," Dahlgren says. "It was just nice to know they were there for me."

Mentally, he says he is doing very well, in part because he's been able to accept the crash as an irreversible fact. Dahlgren has Type 1 diabetes, and when he was 6 years old, his parents outlined the choice he would face for the rest of his life: Manage the disease or let the disease manage him. Ever since he has tried to focus on things he can control.

Dahlgren, true to form, can reel off a list of plans and objectives for his future. This summer he'll continue to promote Dahlgren's Diabeauties, a program he started in Humboldt to support local kids with diabetes. He plans to attend two diabetes advocacy walks in June. He'll take two classes online and do a bit of volunteering, and might also work at a high-level hockey camp in Saskatoon.

If his brain permits him to return to competition, he wants to finish his university career at York and seek an opportunity to play professionally abroad - maybe in Italy, he says, or even Australia. Then he'd apply to the intense four-year program at Toronto's Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in hopes of becoming a chiropractor.

The barrier for admission is high, and the curriculum only gets tougher from there. But he says the challenge would excite him.

"Say a (chiropractic) session is 15 to 30 minutes. I have 15, 30 minutes to make (a patient) feel better," Dahlgren says. "They leave feeling better, and that's what I want. I want to make a difference in people's lives, and also create that bond."

In the immediate term, Dahlgren has settled on a plan for what he's going to do this Saturday, the first anniversary of the crash: celebrate the lives of his Broncos teammates by watching the final game they ever played together.

On April 4, 2018, the Nipawin Hawks led the Broncos two games to one in a semifinal playoff series when they met in Humboldt for Game 4. It became a triple-overtime thriller. The Broncos trailed 3-1 early on, scored four consecutive goals, and then squandered that advantage in the third period.

In the dressing room, the Broncos implored one another to direct pucks on net, aware that a shot from any angle could knot the series. The concession stand sent them muffins and granola bars to keep them fueled during intermissions. Dahlgren devoured three bananas to ward off cramps, but his legs still started to spasm shortly after Nipawin scored the winning goal.

Earlier, midway through double overtime, a rebound from a point shot had fallen to Dahlgren's forehand at the side of the crease. The nearest defender was a few feet away, and as Nipawin's goaltender lunged toward the post, he left the bottom half of the net open. But Dahlgren aimed high, straight at the goalie's glove, and the puck ricocheted into the corner.

"If I would have went five-hole, it would have been game over," Dahlgren says. "But you can't change it. You can't change it."

For now, the Broncos' loss goes down as the last time he laced up his skates in competition. Yet it wasn't his last chance to step onto the ice in Humboldt. He visited Elgar Petersen Arena in late August for the start of Broncos training camp and returned Sept. 12 to watch his old team's season opener. Banners bearing his number and those of his teammates were raised to the rafters.

The following week, Dahlgren's new team, the York Lions, flew from Toronto to Saskatchewan for a unique preseason road trip: the Mark Cross Humboldt Strong Remembrance Tour. The set of three Western Canada exhibition games honored Cross, the Broncos assistant coach and former Lions forward who died in the crash at age 27.

The second game of the tour was played in Humboldt, where Dahlgren was allowed to inch closer to the action. Barred from taking any contact, he could at least participate in a familiar ritual: the warmup skate.

Forty minutes before puck drop between the Lions and the University of Calgary Dinos, Dahlgren stepped out of the home bench and took a solo loop of York's half of the ice. His teammates had guilted him into accepting the recognition. The fans who'd already filed into the stands crowded the front row to pound the glass above the boards and Snapchat video clips of his smiling face as he skated by.

Devoted followers of the Broncos would have recognized the soundtrack playing as the teams got loose: 20 minutes of remixed rap and EDM hits, beginning with 2 Chainz's "4 AM," segueing into offerings from Maggie Lindemann, The Weeknd, and Skrillex, and ending with "Jumpman" by Drake and Future.

To Dahlgren, the music was familiar, too - he'd curated the mix himself a year earlier with Wack, his former billet roommate. When they listened to the finished version on Wack's computer, a happy realization dawned on them: "Holy, this is actually kind of good." The Broncos turned to the playlist for pregame galvanization whenever they played at home in the first half of 2017-18.

Dahlgren completed warmup in a custom white jersey with the words Humboldt Strong on the front and the last names of the crash's 16 victims listed alphabetically on the back. Later, he swapped that shirt for a red Lions sweater. Flanked by Brayden Camrud, Derek Patter, and a young member of Dahlgren's Diabeauties, he hunched at center ice for a ceremonial faceoff. Then he walked back into the dressing room and changed into street clothes.

"I was ready to go and play a game, but didn't play the game," Dahlgren says.

Still, the experience was rejuvenating. Wearing York colors as he skated in Humboldt for the first time since the crash made him feel like he'd been "reborn into the game." In the stands and out in the arena lobby, he posed for dozens of photos and shook hundreds of hands. Eventually, he managed to join his parents for long enough to catch five minutes of the game.

One of Kaleb's last acts before he left the ice that night had been to stand on the blue line for the playing of "O Canada," just like he and his dad used to do in the basement in Moose Jaw. Mark took a few photos of the scene. He sensed that his son felt totally at home.

As he flicked through his snapshots later, Mark noticed Kaleb had spent much of the anthem craning his neck toward the ceiling. Mark asked him what he'd been thinking.

"Just looking up to the boys," Kaleb told him, "and soaking it all in."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore. He's on Twitter @nickmfaris.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

TORONTO - Early on the morning of Feb. 22, a few hours before the Ottawa Senators traded point-per-game center Matt Duchene to Columbus, the team recalled rookie forwards Drake Batherson and Logan Brown from its AHL affiliate in Belleville, Ontario.

The moves, minor as they were in the larger scheme, made sense: The Senators needed fresh legs in anticipation of trading their top three scorers. Within hours, Duchene was told to take his gear across the Canadian Tire Centre hallway to the visiting Blue Jackets' room. Then Ryan Dzingel and Mark Stone were scratched that night before a 3-0 Columbus victory.

Batherson and Brown were in the NHL for three days, drawing sparse minutes as Ottawa lost two games. Then the front office sent them back to Belleville, a bastion of positivity in an organization that's seen better days.

“Whatever is going on up there, that’s up there,” Brown says. “We’re down here, and right now we’re just trying to focus on getting into the playoffs and going on a run.”

Less than two seasons since they came within a goal of playing for the Stanley Cup, the Senators have become one of the NHL's most downtrodden franchises.

They're last in the league by a comfortable margin, and the Sens don't have their first-round selection in the upcoming draft, part of the cost to acquire Duchene in November 2017. The team has shown a recurring flair for the tragicomic ever since - including prior to an outdoor game on Parliament Hill when owner Eugene Melnyk said he’d consider relocating his team if flagging attendance didn’t improve.

Much happened in Sensland between that ultimatum and the recent collapse of Melnyk’s bid to build a new arena on federal land downtown. Billboards with the "MelnykOut" hashtag were installed around the city. The owner sat down for an infamous interview with defenseman Mark Borowiecki. Duchene and some teammates were filmed deprecating one of their coaches in an Uber in Arizona. The hits kept coming.

In a 15-month span, the Senators traded their top five scorers from the team that made the Eastern Conference Final in 2017, bottoming out and setting in motion a rebuild Melnyk has vowed will result in five years of “unparalleled success” from 2021 to 2025. Luminous youngsters Thomas Chabot and Brady Tkachuk only account for two spots on the depth chart, so Ottawa’s lineups in the interim are bound to look a lot like the present-day Belleville squad.

It’s fortunate for Ottawa, then, that as the big club excised its last remaining veteran stars, Belleville went on a tear. Between Jan. 19 and last week, the
B-Sens didn’t lose in regulation for 17 games, a remarkable points streak that vaulted the team from the depths of the AHL’s North Division into playoff contention.

Were Belleville aligned with any other NHL team, its surge up the standings might not mean as much. But ahead of a transformative roster reset, the contrast between the Senators’ grim outlook in the short term and the optimism flourishing one rung down the organizational ladder is striking.

More than perhaps any other team, Ottawa is banking on wins in the AHL translating directly into future NHL victories. Even if the equation is rarely that seamless, the composition of Belleville’s roster makes the gamble more understandable.

“From an organizational perspective, the good news is all our best players are young guys,” Belleville head coach Troy Mann says.

In his first pro season out of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, Batherson, 20, is spearheading the B-Sens’ frantic playoff push.

Known prior to this year for scoring seven goals in seven games as Canada won gold at the 2018 world junior hockey tournament, the winger has been Belleville’s best offensive threat while scoring a team-high 55 points. He's been hot lately, too, recording 26 points in the 15 games he played during the team’s long points streak.

The two games Batherson missed during the streak came when he and Brown, a hulking 21-year-old center who scored 17 points during that run, were promoted to Ottawa. The B-Sens did well to emerge with wins, showcasing their depth beyond those two marquee names.

“If you go to the rink and you expect to win, you’re going to win,” Brown says. “The whole team, we all kind of came together, and I think the past couple months we’ve been playing some really good hockey.”

Asked to quantify the potential on Belleville’s roster, Ottawa assistant GM Peter MacTavish says he thinks a dozen Sens prospects have “very good” shots to become established NHLers.

That list includes Batherson and Brown, along with fellow top-six forwards Filip Chlapik, Nick Paul, and Jack Rodewald. On the blue line, Christian Wolanin and Andreas Englund could contribute, and in goal there's Marcus Hogberg and Filip Gustavsson. Lastly, three young players the Sens acquired this season in momentous trades - Rudolfs Balcers (for Erik Karlsson), Vitaly Abramov (for Duchene), and Erik Brannstrom (for Stone) - have potential, too.

The extent to which Belleville grads will feature in Ottawa’s rebuild should become evident at training camp next September. All of those young players could get the chance to contend for a permanent role with the Senators. They would join Chabot, Tkachuk, Colin White, Maxime Lajoie, and Christian Jaros, all of whom are 22 or younger and logging NHL minutes this season.

“There are a lot of players in Belleville who could be playing in the NHL right now,” MacTavish says. “The organizational philosophy and goal this season is to have them develop as a young group together, and grow together, have success together, hope they make the playoffs together and then see what happens once they make the playoffs.

“There’s a significant number of those players that we see with great futures in Ottawa.”

In the coming years, MacTavish will be able to test the thesis that winning together in the AHL breeds cohesiveness and trust that carries forward to the NHL, especially if Belleville’s recent push leads to a playoff berth. After losing two of three games since the end of the points streak, the B-Sens are now two points up on the Utica Comets for their division’s fourth and final postseason spot.

“We’ve got a really good team. I think if we get in, we can surprise some people,” Brown says.

“You do that, and then you get used to the pro-style playoffs. It’ll definitely be a new experience. I think it’ll be huge for us to get that experience and to carry it on into the NHL one day, hopefully.”

Speaking the day before his team beat the defending AHL champion Toronto Marlies 5-3, Mann says he was reared as a coach in the Washington Capitals’ minor-league system to believe that winning and prospect development go hand in hand.

Two years after he guided the Hershey Bears to the 2015-16 Calder Cup final, Mann noted, two of his best young forwards - Jakub Vrana and Chandler Stephenson - participated in the Capitals’ charge to a championship.

Hershey’s 2009-10 team, which went 60-17-3 and won the Calder Cup in Mann’s first campaign as an assistant coach, supports the theory even more. Several players from that roster later turned into productive NHLers, including three who won the Stanley Cup with the Capitals last June: John Carlson, Jay Beagle, and Braden Holtby.

Outside of the points streak, of course, the B-Sens haven't resembled a 60-win powerhouse. And there's another key difference between Hershey then and Belleville now: In 2010 and 2016, and nearly every season in between, Washington was among the NHL’s strongest teams, whereas Ottawa will be lucky to clamber out of last place over the next month.

Even if Belleville’s best players wind up making an NHL impact soon, one hole in Ottawa’s rebuilding blueprint is a lack of surefire elite talent, a necessity to contend. Mann’s Bears helped build the Capitals’ Stanley Cup team, but it was led by Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Nicklas Backstrom, none of whom played a minute in the AHL.

This is where the legacy of Ottawa’s trade for Duchene could continue to sting. By holding on to their first-round draft selection last June, the Sens snagged Tkachuk, who is fourth among NHL rookies in scoring. But the Senators had to give Colorado a pick that has the best odds of becoming the first selection after this year’s lottery, and now Ottawa can't build around consensus top prospect Jack Hughes. (That pick could still fall as low as fourth in the lottery even if Ottawa finishes last.)

There are, of course, worse ways to remake a franchise than stockpiling talented youngsters and counting on some of them, at minimum, to develop into trustworthy NHLers.

That logic was manifest on Monday when Belleville staged a rousing comeback on the road against the Marlies, a game in which Abramov scored in the second period and Batherson and Paul, after their hosts curtailed them until late, combined for three goals during the final seven minutes.

Thirteen games remain in Belleville’s regular season, and in a stretch drive that has been imbued with unforeseen magnitude.

“It’s paramount that we win. That’s what we’re trying to (do). When the team is struggling at the NHL level, to me, one of the two teams has to make the playoffs,” Mann says.

“It would be a great thing for our organization if we can make a push here in the next six weeks and get into that four spot. I think it would do a lot for the organization, knowing that we’re in a rebuild and it’s probably going to take a couple years.”

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore. He’s on Twitter @nickmfaris.

Copyright © 2019 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.