The backhand sealed the comparison to Patrick Kane. Speeding into the offensive zone, Kent Johnson faked as though he would cut inside, wrongfooted his defender with a deke, and then fit the puck between the netminder's left shoulder and the crossbar. The goal, scored last December against the University of Minnesota, looped on SportsCenter. Johnson got texts likening the move to a Chicago Blackhawks highlight.

"That was obviously really cool for me," Johnson said. "I've watched (Kane) score that goal 1,000 times."

Keep in mind: Johnson, 18, is the least accomplished member of the University of Michigan's elite draft trio, three college freshmen about to go top 10 - at least - in the NHL's selection frenzy. Johnson hasn't played at the world juniors before. He wasn't invited to compete at the men's world championships in May like his teammates Owen Power and Matthew Beniers. But his skill pops, and the company he keeps is historic.

Three NCAA teammates have never been picked in the same first round. That'll change when the draft opens July 23 at NHL Network's New Jersey studio. Power, Beniers, and Johnson headlined a 2020-21 Michigan roster that brimmed with teenaged talent. Teammates John Beecher (a Bruins prospect), Brendan Brisson (Golden Knights), and Cam York (Flyers) were first-round selections in 2019 or 2020. Luke Hughes, another high-end 2021 prospect, plans to join the Wolverines next season, taking after his NHL star older brother Quinn, though not his other brother, Jack.

This'll be the second and final draft that the NHL delays and conducts virtually because of the pandemic. Scores of prospects started their junior seasons late or scrambled to ink pro deals in Europe. COVID-19 messed with Michigan's campaign, too; some games were postponed and the Wolverines didn't get to feature in the NCAA tournament. Still, Power, Beniers, and Johnson had time to test themselves against hardened upperclassmen.

"A few guys are stepping in right to the NHL, as you can see this year, right after college," said Jack Becker, Michigan's co-captain and an occasional linemate of Beniers and Johnson in 2020-21.

"It's obviously a good level of hockey. It's really impressive that they put up the numbers that they did."

Indeed, Beniers and Johnson were point-per-game players as freshmen, but the jewel of the 2021 class is Power, the safe bet to go No. 1 overall to the Sabres next Friday.

In a word, Power is trustworthy, that rare seal of approval for developing defensemen. Coaches tap him to kill penalties, spearhead offensive breakouts, and erase opposing rushes with his reach and nimble skating at 6-foot-6. Such was the case at Michigan and with Team Canada's gold-medal squad at the worlds in Latvia, where Power logged first-pairing minutes in the knockout round against Russia, the United States, and Finland.

Everything about Power's season impressed, NHL Central Scouting director Dan Marr said in an interview. Teammates and analysts alike appreciate the breadth of his toolkit, the crispness of his first pass, the fluidity with which he skates. Power has the vision in the offensive zone to tee up glorious scoring chances and, as Cole Caufield's Wisconsin teammates learned in February, the shiftiness in tight windows to create his own space.

"You don't see that a lot with big guys," Beniers said.

"Motor" is the buzzword of choice to sum up Beniers' game, evoking the energy that helps him conjure scoring chances and win battles over 200 feet. He seems tireless on the ice. ("Sometimes after a bag skate, you'll see him breathing a bit," Johnson said. "But definitely few and far between.") Beniers is the son of a Cornell wide receiver, Bob, who emphasized that his son should care about defense while coaching him in organized hockey in Massachusetts. Michigan coach Mel Pearson calls him a spark plug - the sort of forechecking, backchecking, playmaking center whose shifts swing momentum and sustain pressure.

Beniers is NHL Central Scouting's sixth-ranked North American skater, trailing Power, Mason McTavish, Johnson, Hughes, and Dylan Guenther. Swedes Simon Edvinsson and William Eklund are comparably promising. Still, Marr maintains that this segment of the draft is wide open, and Beniers could reasonably go as high as second overall to the expansion Seattle Kraken. To Marr, Beniers' blend of skill and sandpaper is tailor-made for the postseason, when checking tightens, and it reminds him of Jonathan Toews, long a leader for Canada internationally.

"I think Matty Beniers is going to be called Captain America," Marr said. "This is the guy teams want to acquire at the trade deadline going into playoffs. This is the guy who can make a difference."

Johnson is a natural center but rides shotgun on Beniers' left wing for Michigan, two dynamos reading and feeding off each other to monopolize possession. ("Wish I could have played with two guys like that in my day," quipped Pearson, 62, a former Division I winger himself. "I might still be playing.") Johnson is slight at 6-foot-1 and 167 pounds, but he's deceptive and strong enough on his edges to protect the puck. Except for Michigan teammate and Sharks prospect Thomas Bordeleau, no NCAA freshman recorded more assists last season than Johnson's 18.

Gifted with a quick release, Johnson also attacks with panache, completing plays that less creative minds wouldn't think to attempt. Like lacrosse goals. Johnson scored two of them in 2019-20 in the Junior A British Columbia Hockey League, making Ann Arbor his logical college destination. Michigan forward Mike Legg popularized the trick in the 1996 NCAA Tournament, and Johnson's out to duplicate the feat as a Wolverine.

"He'll pull the 'Michigan' off when we're messing around after practice like it's nothing," said Becker, who recently transferred to Arizona State for his final college season. "I wouldn't be surprised if he lands one next year."

Despite qualifying for nationals, the Wolverines didn't get to vie for Frozen Four glory in 2020-21. The NCAA booted them from the event the day it began because of positive COVID-19 tests within Michigan's testing group. First-round opponent Minnesota-Duluth got a bye to the next stage, where the Bulldogs stunned top-seeded North Dakota 3-2 in five overtimes.

It was a bitter end to a Michigan season that picked up as it continued. Pearson's club lost five of six games leading into Christmas but went 10-5-1 in 2021, outscoring teams 61-25 in those 16 matchups. Michigan ended the year ranked ninth nationally, and freshman growth led to world championship invites for Power and Beniers - a 17-day crash course on life as a pro. During Canada's gold-medal push, Power got to talking with starting goalie Darcy Kuemper and tournament scoring leader Connor Brown, and they encouraged him to play his game with confidence.

The trio needs to add strength to withstand the pro grind, Johnson especially. Pearson says he'd like Beniers to shoot more; he bagged 10 goals as a freshman, tied with Brisson for most on the team, but too often "tries to get to the perfect spot" before he releases. If the Sabres draft Power first overall, they might deploy him on the blue line out of training camp. Pearson hopes he'll return to college to refine his pivoting, defend with greater bite, and aim to dominate as a sophomore.

"We really see the biggest development from that first year to the second year, and then they're ready (to go pro) - whether it's Cale Makar, whether it's Cole Caufield, whether it's Quinn Hughes or Josh Norris or Cam York," Pearson said. "I really believe that second year is key in helping the transition to the National Hockey League."

Now that Caufield's graduated to Montreal, Power coming back obviously would boost Michigan's team aspirations, too. Big Ten and national titles are within reach in 2021-22, Beniers said: "We've got all the potential in the world." Bordeleau and Brisson will be second-year players; the same goes for Sabres goalie prospect Erik Portillo, who's set to start in net after recording a .935 save percentage in seven appearances last season.

Luke Hughes and incoming Minnesota freshman Chaz Lucius are teammates with the U.S. national development program. If they're drafted in the top 10 alongside Power, Beniers, and Johnson, half of those picks would be NCAA products or commits. Hughes is a superb skater and a few inches taller than either of his brothers at 6-foot-2. Less flashy than Quinn and Jack, this transitional breakout and heady drop pass proved he doesn't lack offensive juice.

Want flash? Draft Johnson, whose "SportsCenter" backhand against Minnesota awed Pearson with how easy he made it look. "Like he's done it 100 times before," Pearson said, which he surely has when you account for practices. By way of gearing up to imitate Legg, Johnson scooped the puck lacrosse-style in some Wolverines small-area drills, another memory that stuck with his coach into the summer.

"I think he got put on his butt a couple of times," Pearson said, laughing. "But that's OK. At least he's willing to try things."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Under pressure seconds earlier, Brandt Clarke had flipped a high-arcing pass out of Don Mills' zone to spring Wright in open space, and now Othmann glided into view on his left wing, three future NHLers linking up to create a glorious chance. The OHL Cup is Ontario minor hockey's marquee tournament, the peak of a great 16-year-old player's progress through the ranks. Seasons, daydreams, and a three-goal Flyers comeback built to Wright feeding Othmann's forehand. Othmann rang the puck off the post and in.

Mistry mobbed Othmann first. Gloves and caged helmets flew as teammates raced to pile on: Liam Arnsby, Payton Robinson, twins Alex and Paul Christopoulos, beaming and screaming a few weeks before they'd each be drafted to the OHL. Don Mills coaches jumped and hugged at the back of the bench. The team trainer joined in, the number 74 emblazoned on the back of his black hoodie.

On the ice, one sentiment resounded in the throng: This was for Roysy.

In the stories his friends tell, Roy Pejcinovski is 14 years old and in motion, beelining across the Don Mills dressing room to blitz their conversation, prolong a joke, demand an anecdote be retold. He blasts a Drake song that booms in his Fortnite squad's PlayStation headsets. He plays the saxophone in music class, group-texting a video clip to hype his skill. He's smiling. He's the first person to say hello. His energy never dwindles. He's their go-to goalie, wearing 74 for his dad's birth year, making windmill glove saves from the butterfly, chirping when he stones your breakaway attempt, refusing to quit on a play.

In 2018, Roy Pejcinovski was killed in a triple homicide in Ajax, Ontario, east of Toronto. His mother, Krissy, and his 13-year-old sister, Vana, were the other victims. Cory Fenn, Krissy's ex-partner, faces trial this fall for three counts of second-degree murder.

Krissy, Vana, and Roy died during a Don Mills playoff series, the Greater Toronto Hockey League's Under-15 AAA championship - a footnote to the family's grief, but context that was central to Roy's radiant life. Some of his Flyers teammates have matured into top-flight teenaged prospects, among the best in the sport. Clarke, a creative defenseman, might go in the top five in this month's NHL draft. Othmann snipes from the wing and is another projected first-rounder. Wright, a complete center and budding NHL captain, is the consensus top player available in 2022.

Knowing and loving Roy enriched their hockey journeys and young lives, these players and fellow 2003 Flyers told theScore in recent interviews. He was a dressing-room cornerstone during formative years, when lacing up the skates at the highest level fortifies a brotherly bond. Roy caught with his right hand. He bailed out defensive mistakes. He made call-ups feel welcome in the room. "He wanted to be best friends with everyone," Robinson said. Memorializing him will be a lifelong effort.

"He stays alive within us," Mistry said.

"Hockey was his sport. Hockey was his love and passion," Wright said. "I'm just trying to go out every skate, work as hard as possible, and do everything I can for him, and to help honor his legacy."

To remember Roy is to talk about his drive to stop pucks, but also about video games, which brought out all sides of him. Confidence: Late one Friday night, Roy and a few teammates won six straight Fortnite battles, and he yelled into his headset that he was unstoppable. Fieriness: When the next clash started and his character was felled first, Roy turned off his console. Selflessness: Knowing his limitations as a gamer but ever fearful of missing out, Roy volunteered on another occasion to be his squad's medic, carrying supplies for the guys who sprinted into the fight.

Other interactions made it clear that Roy was wise beyond the years he was given. He struck up conversations with Clarke's septuagenarian grandfather, Tom, whenever he saw him at the rink. Outside a chicken restaurant in Detroit during a tournament there, he handed $20 to a homeless man and paused to learn his story. He phoned Flyers trainer Marshall Bacon to consult about math homework: "You know this shit more than I do," was Bacon's stance.

Agile and cerebral, Roy played basketball with friends outside Othmann's house - "Terrible shooter," Othmann said - but excelled as an athlete between the pipes. One night in practice, Othmann scored off a three-on-two and made a show of raising his arms, prompting Roy to shut the door for the next half-hour. Playing for the Toronto Marlboros at the Under-13 level, the season before he joined Don Mills, Othmann clapped a one-timer that Roy lunged to glove. Roy saved video of that robbery to his phone, ready to be aired in the dressing room at his leisure.

Roy was 5-foot-7 but played bigger in the crease, and Clarke swears this memory isn't rose-tinted: "I love him, but I'm not trying to pump his tires. He just was a really good goalie." He challenged shooters without losing his positioning. He poke-checked from the splits to spoil breakaways. He and Mistry once retaped a stick blade for a full sleepover, testing Roy's thesis that certain tape jobs conceal the puck. During one tournament, a shot bruised his catching forearm and Bacon padded the wound with foam, only for Roy, his motion cramped, to replace the foam between games with sock tape.

"Whatever you do," Bacon told him, "do not show that to anybody and tell them your trainer taped you up like this."

He was OHL-caliber, like his 14 Flyers teammates who got drafted in 2019. Wright went first overall to the Kingston Frontenacs, Othmann second to the Flint Firebirds, and Clarke fourth to the Barrie Colts. The North Bay Battalion nabbed Arnsby and the Christopoulos twins. Robinson joined the Sudbury Wolves. At No. 73, the Hamilton Bulldogs drafted Owen Simpson from the Toronto Red Wings, the club that Don Mills was fresh off beating in the OHL Cup title game.

The league itself picked next, dedicating slot No. 74 to Roy's memory.

The night before Roy died, gloves and punches flew at Victoria Village Arena, the Flyers' home rink, after Alex Christopoulos scored in the third period of Game 3 of the GTHL final. This opened a 4-1 lead over the Marlboros, Othmann's former team and a heated rival that took issue with Don Mills' celebration. Ten skaters brawled as the benches bickered and the officials decided who to penalize and eject. Flyers coach Marc Slawson and his Marlies counterpart, Stephen Dennis, were booted from the game.

Two hundred feet from the fray, Roy left his crease to retrieve the puck, dangled it a bit, and wristed the disc to the Marlboros goalie. They traded ice-length saucer passes as teammates seethed, then stifled giggles, awed by the sight of this peace offering.

"He was just making friends and having fun," Mistry said.

In the room postgame, anticipating suspensions from the melee, the coaches urged the Flyers to be ready to play Game 4 with a shorter bench. Clarke was last to leave; he told his goalie he'd see him tomorrow. The next day was March 14, 2018, Wednesday of the spring school break. Othmann, Robinson, and Wright went to watch the OHL Cup, the 2002-born age group's turn in the spotlight. They could sense people staring when Wright's and Robinson's dads pulled the boys into an arena conference room, bearing news that shattered them.

The coaches texted the Don Mills parents to say the practice rink would be open that night, and anyone who wanted could stop in. The whole team showed. Roy's seat was empty as the Flyers talked and cried and screamed and sat silent, probably for two hours in all, and then as they unpacked their gear to skate together, the most comforting action available. They'd seen him yesterday. They were 14 and 15 years old. This had to be a mistake. The world seemed to freeze. They turned Roy's net around so that it faced the boards.

Game 4 was postponed, but the Flyers and Marlboros returned to the ice that Sunday for a memorial exhibition. Rivals piled their sticks in the neutral zone to mix the teams, black jerseys versus white jerseys that all featured a burgundy R, the Toronto Star's Victoria Gibson reported. Goalies from around the league turned up to watch. They and the Marlies knew Roy, too.

When the GTHL title series resumed, the Flyers topped the Marlies in five games to progress to the provincial AAA championships. They won that competition, Clarke netting the overtime clincher in the final. The heartache of losing Roy stayed with them, and they talked about it with grief counselors, reminiscing about him in circle formation at the rink. Company made living with the trauma a few degrees easier.

"It was a sense of brotherhood," Robinson said. "It makes you feel you're not the only one who's lost this amazing person."

Krissy, Vana, and Roy are survived by the kids' older sister, Victoria, and dad Vas, the inspiration for Roy's jersey number. At a memorial gala later in 2018, they took the stage to a 600-person ovation, and Vas told the crowd that Krissy was the family's glue. Vana was his light, he said. Roy was his "best friend." The gala, Sportsnet's Michael Grange reported, raised about $200,000 for the Pejcinovski Family Memorial Fund, to be donated to charities that support women's shelters and youth sports.

Vas visited the Flyers throughout the 2018-19 season. He announced the starting lineup in the room. He watched his son's friends compete with Roy stickers on their helmets and "74" patches on their sleeves. In any GTHL dressing room that was spacious enough, Don Mills kept an extra stall open. Sometimes Roy would get so engrossed in conversation that he talked through the start of his coaches' speeches. Now his teammates reprised pregame chants that he'd been part of, pausing for four seconds during his lines.

Those Flyers were an all-time minor hockey powerhouse. They lost once in 84 games and cruised to the OHL Cup. Don Mills outscored its first six opponents there 35-5, yet got down 4-1 to the Toronto Red Wings in the final, deflating portions of the crowd but not the bench. As a shorter goalie, perseverance - battling - was Roysy's hallmark. The thought galvanized Mistry throughout the year.

Goals from Edward Moskowitz, Othmann, Arnsby, and Alex Christopoulos got Don Mills back into the game. The score was 5-5 late in OT when Clarke flicked the puck over a defender's outstretched hands to Wright. Othmann was double-shifting and gassed. He drove to the offensive zone anyway. Wright found him in the slot and he found the net.

Othmann flung his gloves and stick and unfastened his helmet, ready to be blitzed. Roy came to mind. The players shouted his name in the throng. They broke apart to wait for the trophy presentation, Mistry's privilege as captain. Robinson looked toward the bench and noticed Vas, that funny, gregarious, kindred personality of his son who buoyed the Flyers every time they saw him, the collective mood lightened by his presence.

"He looked happy," Robinson said.

Seasons passed and COVID-19 upended the Flyers' transition to junior. Rookie years were cut short by the pandemic's onset. The OHL didn't play in 2020-21, so Clarke and Othmann joined pro clubs in Europe. The drive to honor Roy went worldwide. Photos of him still hang at Victoria Village Arena in north Toronto; guys write RP74 on every stick they tape. Robinson has a couple of Pejcinovski jerseys hanging in his basement that he wants to get framed. Clarke plays pingpong with his brother Graeme, a New Jersey Devils prospect, and smiles when the score ticks to 7-4. On NHL draft day two Fridays from now, Othmann hopes to host Vas at his watch party.

This spring, Clarke, Othmann, and Wright headed to Texas to play at the Under-18 World Championship, three Don Mills kids shining for Canada - they combined to score 27 points in seven games - as their country charged to gold. In quiet moments at the tournament, they swapped memories of the '03 Flyers and Roy's antics, of quips slung and time shared. In Don Mills, this trio sat together at the far end of the room from their goalie. Maybe something funny happened at school that day, material to bank and laugh about with stallmates as they dressed for practice.

They'd look up and Roy was in the mix.

"He'd be screaming. He'd be having to know what we were talking about," Clarke said. "Having us tell the whole story over again."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore. He can be reached at nick.faris@thescore.com.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The NHL's North Division commands wall-to-wall coverage in Canada, but stellar hockey is being played south of the border in front of spirited home crowds, a striking change from the regular season.

On cue for Round 2, we preview the postseason's next slate of American series. Here's a rundown of what's at stake, and key storylines and battles to monitor, in the East, Central, and West Division finals.

East Division: Boston vs. N.Y. Islanders

Six points in the standings separated this division's first and fourth playoff seeds, and now a couple of the NHL's stingiest defensive clubs get to square off for the East title.

The Bruins are undeniably more dynamic; that'll be true until older stars Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, and David Krejci fall off. And the team probably improved more than anyone at the trade deadline, adding impact contributors Taylor Hall and Mike Reilly at the cost of a bottom-six forward, Anders Bjork, and two picks.

Kyle Palmieri was a nice acquisition for New York, but the Islanders are dangerous because they trust and execute Barry Trotz's system. They're workmanlike, bunker down in the defensive zone to inhibit shot quality, capitalize on counterattacks, and buck the idea that possession control is needed to thrive.

Take New York's six-game defeat over Pittsburgh. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Penguins owned 58.92% of shot attempts at five-on-five but only 52.25% of high-danger chances, and they were outscored 18-12. One big reason was Ilya Sorokin, the 25-year-old rookie who authored a .943 save percentage (to Tristan Jarry's .888). Now, he'll encounter a formidable netminding foe in Tuukka Rask.

What's at stake: Beyond the question of how many runs Boston's thirtysomething core has left, how's this for a subplot: pending free agent Hall's quest for personal playoff success. The 11-year vet is drumming up something resembling momentum, if we ignore his woeful stint in Buffalo. He won his first career postseason series with Arizona last season (albeit in the bubbled play-in round) and scored twice to help the Bruins dispatch Washington in five games.

The Islanders want to build on the headway they've made under Trotz's command. They don't have a superstar on Alex Ovechkin's level, but the former Capitals coach's emphasis on team defense has powered the Isles to series victories three years running, including their surge to the 2020 Eastern Conference Final. They lost to Tampa Bay in six games that postseason, but a rematch in Round 3 or a trip to the Stanley Cup Final remains possible.

Boston's player to watch: Charlie McAvoy. If the Bruins are through to Round 3 by the time Norris Trophy finalists are announced on June 9, expect that their No. 1 defenseman dictated play. In the heavy minutes that McAvoy shouldered this year without Torey Krug or Zdeno Chara around, Boston outscored teams 50-32 at five-on-five, an elite figure. He assisted on all five of Boston's Round 1 power-play goals.

New York's player to watch: Josh Bailey. Brock Nelson's right-winger scored in double overtime against the Penguins and leads the Islanders in playoff assists and points (23 and 32 in 36 games) since Trotz's arrival. Mathew Barzal dazzles, but Bailey, Nelson, and Anthony Beauvillier are New York's safest bet to drive offense as a collective.

Central Division: Carolina vs. Tampa Bay

By the standings, the odds in this matchup tilt toward the Hurricanes, the divisional top seed whose defensive game is on par with Boston's and New York's. Spiritually, the reigning Stanley Cup champions have to be favored until a challenger unseats them.

Why not the Hurricanes? Nashville goalie Juuse Saros just pushed them to six overtime periods, but the 'Canes controlled 56.69% of five-on-five expected goals in the series, signaling good process. Sebastian Aho, Vincent Trocheck, and Jordan Staal each center a wicked Carolina forward line. One compelling battle to track this round: Norris Trophy aspirant Dougie Hamilton seeking to outplay Victor Hedman, 2020's Conn Smythe Trophy winner.

Carolina is deep, yet the Lightning remain stacked, and Nikita Kucherov dispelled against Florida the concern that he'd be slow to boot up following his return from hip surgery. Blame the Panthers' goalie carousel for conceding 22 goals in six games, but acknowledge Tampa's firepower, too. Eight forwards scored multiple first-round goals, including Steven Stamkos, the captain who saw only 2:47 of ice time during the Cup run.

What's at stake: The Bruins gave Carolina fits the past two postseasons, winning eight of nine games to stunt the Hurricanes' transition from up-and-comers to legit contenders. Ousting the Lightning would signify that this team has made the leap. Aho, Andrei Svechnikov, and Martin Necas are no longer playoff newcomers. Do any of them have a career performance in store?

Tampa Bay is gunning to become the Stanley Cup's second repeat victor this century, taking after Pittsburgh in 2016 and 2017. Consider it a golden opportunity before the bill's due. Twelve Lightning players earn more than $4.4 million annually; the club contorted below the salary cap by stashing Kucherov ($9.5 million) on long-term injured reserve for the entire season. Tougher decisions loom this summer.

Carolina's player to watch: Alex Nedeljkovic. No one's taking the Calder Trophy from Kirill Kaprizov's mitts, but 25-year-old Nedeljkovic was a revelation in net in his first full NHL campaign. His save percentage in 23 appearances was .932, the best in the league among regular starters. Per Evolving Hockey, only Marc-Andre Fleury and Connor Hellebuyck topped his mark of 12.92 goals saved above expectation.

If he dominates the Lightning as he did in three starts during the season - Nedeljkovic stopped 75 of 78 shots and posted a shutout - then hockey will crown a new champ this year.

Tampa Bay's player to watch: Alex Killorn. The Lightning have nailed their share of first-round draft picks since the 2005 lockout - Stamkos, Hedman, Andrei Vasilevskiy - and unearthed gem after overlooked gem later in the process. Kucherov and Brayden Point are studs, while Ondrej Palat and Anthony Cirelli were inspired finds.

Teams like the Panthers lose hope when guys like Killorn, the 77th pick in 2007, snare four goals and four assists in a series - two fewer points than he contributed to Tampa Bay's entire 2020 Cup charge. Kucherov, Stamkos, and Point will inevitably get their points. Let Killorn score at will, and Carolina's in trouble.

West Division: Colorado vs. Vegas

Bitter: This matchup is worthy of the Cup Final, let alone the second round. Sweet: After Joel Kiviranta's Game 7 hat trick booked Dallas - not Colorado - a playoff date with Vegas last summer, at least these powerhouses finally are meeting.

Little separated Colorado and Vegas in the regular season, though the Avalanche's edge in regulation wins broke a tie for the Presidents' Trophy. Colorado was first in the NHL in goals for, third in goals against, and - accounting for goal differential and schedule strength - a close second in Hockey Reference's Simple Rating System. Vegas was third, first, and first in those categories, respectively.

One distinction: Colorado's 60.08 expected goals percentage was by far the league's top mark, according to Natural Stat Trick's data. Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, and Gabriel Landeskog menace defenses together, but what separates Colorado from, say, Connor McDavid's Oilers is influential forward depth, plus the terrific blue-line corps that Cale Makar headlines and Devon Toews has fortified.

Philipp Grubauer was a top-10 goalie this season by save percentage and goals saved above average; he let in a mere seven goals on 110 shots (.936) as Colorado swept the Blues in Round 1. Minnesota, the Golden Knights' first opponent, really distressed Vegas, but Fleury's .931 save percentage over seven games was almost as pristine.

Although Max Pacioretty sat out the postseason's first six games, Mark Stone and top-line fill-in Alex Tuch combined to burn the Wild for seven goals. Pacioretty scoring and playing 16:28 in Game 7 was a welcome sight, considering how sorely Vegas missed his point-per-game touch in two shutout defeats.

What's at stake: Recent history dictates that Colorado has more riding on this matchup. The Avalanche have the core, the ascendant young talent, and the team-friendly superstar contract - MacKinnon is signed at $6.3 million through 2023 - to achieve staying power and compete for Cups annually. But they've lost consecutive second-round Game 7s and haven't reached Round 3 since 2002.

It only took three years for the playoffs to thrill, devastate, and vex the NHL's 31st franchise. The Golden Knights made the 2018 final as expansion darlings, crashed epically in a first-round Game 7 in 2019, and got stoned by Anton Khudobin in last year's Western Conference Final. This is their last shot to hoist the Cup before the Seattle Kraken debut.

Colorado's players to watch: Andre Burakovsky and Makar. The MacKinnon line is Colorado's greatest edge in this and any matchup. If the club's next-best scorers can pressure Fleury and swing possession in the Avalanche's favor, that would offset Vegas' signature strengths: goaltending and offensive variety.

Burakovsky was serviceable for half a decade in Washington, but the second-line winger rounded into a marksman once he was dealt to the Avs in 2019. He would have challenged for 30 goals had 2020-21 been a full season. At any rate, he tallied a career-high 0.83 points per game (44 in 53).

Makar has aced each of his NHL tests, starting with his 2019 playoff baptism out of college. The Golden Knights held him to two points in six games this season, and they're relentless when they hit top gear. Watching Makar try to pick them apart in the postseason should be tremendous fun.

Vegas' players to watch: Stone and Alex Pietrangelo. No need to strain to identify these difference-makers. Stone, the NHL takeaways king, tied for sixth in the league in five-on-five scoring in the regular season. His 37 points in that phase of the game bested Rantanen's 35 and MacKinnon's 34.

If Stone is the most potent scorer in the series, pencil Vegas in as the West Division champ and Stanley Cup favorite. The subtext here: That would require slowing MacKinnon, the forward Pietrangelo and Alec Martinez faced the most this year.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Jets bounced the Oilers from the North Division playoffs early Tuesday morning by winning 4-3 in triple overtime. Here are four reasons Winnipeg cruised to a first-round sweep.

Winning plays > losing plays

Two true statements: Edmonton got rocked in this series, and the series was close, more so than the idea of a sweep suggests. Each Winnipeg victory was settled late in regulation or in OT, and puck battles, turnovers, extra efforts, and split-second choices all were magnified in the meantime, as happens in tight games.

By Natural Stat Trick's count, the Oilers attempted 72 high-danger shots in the series to Winnipeg's 48. They led the Jets in total expected goals, 14.98 to 11.45. These advantages were hollow. Edmonton wasted Connor McDavid's marvelous season - easily his greatest yet - by finding ways to lose, and Winnipeg accomplished the reverse.

Think back to last week at Rogers Place. Because the Jets' stickwork and positioning thwarted McDavid and Leon Draisaitl in Games 1 and 2, they didn't require many highlight-reel saves - though Dylan DeMelo, as he killed a penalty from his back, denying McDavid with his hovering wrist sure qualifies. Sturdy, suffocating defense held Edmonton's big guns pointless for half the series.

Discounting Winnipeg's Game 1 empty-netters, the aggregate scoreline was 12-8, the difference being one Jets goal per game that smart thinking or dirty work set up. Tucker Poolman and Blake Wheeler scored by slipping away from defenders on cuts to the net. During Winnipeg's Game 3 comeback, Kyle Connor and Adam Lowry forced turnovers that wound up behind Mike Smith within seconds. Connor got to clinch the series because Neal Pionk, 107 minutes into Game 4, knocked down McDavid's attempted flip-in and sprung his teammate on a partial break.

The opposite of the winning play is the backbreaking error, Edmonton's domain in this series. Dmitry Kulikov and Adam Larsson lost track of Poolman in Game 1 and screened Smith on Paul Stastny's Game 2 overtime winner. Up 4-1 late in Game 3, Josh Archibald clipped Logan Stanley and the Oilers didn't kill the minor, unlike the Jets six minutes earlier when DeMelo was dinged for airing the puck over the glass.

As for Game 4, there was Ethan Bear's intercepted breakout pass in the third period, the steal that Wheeler fed to Connor as the defense scrambled and left Mark Scheifele open to pot the tying goal. Sportsnet cameras panned throughout the night to McDavid barking on the bench. After that play, he wore a dazed, disbelieving half-smile.

Every team makes mistakes, and one that boasts McDavid and Draisaitl has extra leeway to cover them up. That's why losing by sweep is galling. This defeat wasn't akin to Colorado's first-round romp; the Avalanche outscored St. Louis 20-7 in four games. Edmonton was more dangerous than Winnipeg throughout the series, but plays matter most when they lead to goals or save them, and that's where the Jets manufactured the decisive edge.

Hellebuyck was brilliant

That Connor Hellebuyck headlines this rundown's second section probably is a slight to him. Log a .950 save percentage for the series and you deserve top billing. There's this, too: Hellebuyck didn't start on back-to-back nights all season, and then he went out Sunday and Monday and stopped 81 pucks across Games 3 and 4.

Unbeatable to open the series in Edmonton, Hellebuyck had to battle at home to stake his team to a sweep. In Game 3, Draisaitl solved him twice in the first 10 minutes, but Hellebuyck made 15 first-period saves and 44 total, affording the Jets the time they needed to rally back. In Game 4, McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored on two of Edmonton's first seven shots; Hellebuyck stoned 32 of the remaining 33 he faced, including every attempt that originated beyond the foot of the crease.

The consensus in hockey is that no goalie, and perhaps no skater except McDavid, is single-handedly as capable of stealing a game as Hellebuyck. He proved as much this series and set an unjustly high standard for Smith, who looked impenetrable at times - including in Game 4's OT periods - but not consistently and never outplayed his Jets counterpart.

Hellebuyck saved 6.82 goals above expected in the series, per Evolving Hockey, easily the postseason's top such number so far. Maintain this form in the North Division final and he'll enter Round 3 as the Conn Smythe Trophy front-runner.

Jets' depth reigned supreme

Poolman, the third-pairing defenseman with five career goals and none this regular season, was the first Jet to score on Smith in Game 1. Dominic Toninato, a fixture of Winnipeg's 2020-21 taxi squad, bagged his own first goal of the year later that night. Bolstered by their respective breakthroughs, 10 Jets tickled twine in the series all told.

A few telltale stats, moments, and decisions illustrate the depth imbalance at play in this matchup, starting with the cold streak that helped doom the Oilers: they scored twice in four games when McDavid was on the bench. Nikolaj Ehlers matched that in his Game 3 debut alone, his dynamism and lethal release combining to produce two snipes.

Once his usual top three lines were intact, Paul Maurice capitalized on Ehlers' return from injury by making a vital tweak. Confident that Lowry, Andrew Copp, and Mason Appleton could curtail McDavid, he relieved Scheifele's line of the responsibility late in Game 3. Galvanized, both lines created goals during the comeback, and then they accounted for all of Winnipeg's offense in Game 4.

Dave Tippett's corresponding adjustment was to partner McDavid and Draisaitl with a rotating cast of wingers - Jesse Puljujarvi, Zack Kassian, Kailer Yamamoto - from Game 2 onward. Pairing the superstars got them on the scoresheet, but limited the Oilers' creativity and finishing ability to a single line.

Draisaitl exits the playoffs with five points and McDavid with four, while Jujhar Khaira beat Hellebuyck on a Game 3 tip and Nugent-Hopkins retrieved his own rebound to score in the series finale. That was the sum of Edmonton's offense when McDavid took breathers, belated signs of life from the bottom-three forward units that amounted to almost no help at all.

The regular season doesn't matter

Not if you no-show in the playoffs, anyway. Edmonton had losing records against Toronto and Montreal this season, but pumped Winnipeg for 34 goals in nine games, seven of them Oilers wins. McDavid dominated everyone but especially the Jets, the only opponent that never held him pointless as he breezed to the Art Ross Trophy.

Rightfully, highlights of McDavid's 105-point year will be everywhere when voters award him the Hart Trophy. That said, it's worth restating here what he achieved - adjusted for era, it was the NHL's best individual season since Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux's 1980s heyday - to emphasize how little it meant the past six days. Because of COVID-19 delays to Vancouver's season, the North Division playoff matchups were the latest to start, but Edmonton's cameo came and went so fast that five series are still happening.

Game 3 marked the first time Edmonton lost in 2021 when McDavid and Draisaitl each recorded three points, a fitting prelude to this franchise's fourth consecutive end-of-year letdown. The Oilers beat San Jose in Round 1 in 2017 and then pushed Anaheim to seven games, but hadn't returned to the playoffs since. (Counting 2020, when 12-seed Chicago ousted them from the Western Conference's bubbled play-in bracket, wouldn't exactly strengthen the club's resume.)

Draisaitl and McDavid are signed through 2025 and 2026, but down the depth chart, there's a chance this veteran batch of underperformers looks a fair bit different next training camp.

Edmonton has 11 pending unrestricted free agents on the roster, ranging from Nugent-Hopkins to Tyson Barrie to Larsson to Smith, whose resurgent season at age 39 the Oilers just squandered, too. Down the stretch of Game 4, Tippett only trusted four defensemen, and Darnell Nurse had to shoulder 62:07 of ice time. (Genuinely, props to him; only Seth Jones and Sergei Zubov have ever played more.) Evidently, general manager Ken Holland and his players have soul-searching to do.

Meanwhile, the Jets motor on to face Toronto or Montreal, having relegated their downcast April and May to the rearview. They went 8-10-1 to end the regular season, amassing 10 fewer points than Edmonton across those final months to finish nine points back in the division.

That sentence reads as ancient history now, as irrelevant to the ongoing playoff conversation as McDavid's amazing year.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The Winnipeg Jets topped the Edmonton Oilers 4-1 on Wednesday night in the NHL's North Division playoff opener. Here are three takeaways from Game 1.

McDavid subdued

Here's an underrated Connor McDavid stat to ponder as the Oilers seek to rebound in this series: 22 NHL skaters, discounting guys who barely played, scored at a point-per-game rate during the regular season. McDavid hit that mark in Edmonton's defeats alone.

Categorize No. 97's production by game result, and his club's drastic dependence on him is laid plain. McDavid torched defenses for 84 points in the Oilers' 35 regular-season wins, 2.4 per night and as many as Leon Draisaitl, who placed second in the league, recorded in total. Over 21 losses, including two following regulation, McDavid's production slipped to 21 points.

It's a crude metric but reflects what opponents can get away with: Spot this incandescent talent one goal or assist and you remain in the fight. Basically, Winnipeg can beat Edmonton if McDavid resembles, say, Sebastian Aho or Max Pacioretty. At his best, he's untouchable.

Credit the Jets, then, for holding McDavid to two shots on target and zero points. They largely nullified him as a threat on the rush, where he exploited Winnipeg this season en route to 22 points in nine meetings. A few times on Wednesday, McDavid slipped the notice of backcheckers to gain speed in transition, but the likes of Dylan DeMelo and Derek Forbort managed to keep pace, knock him off stride, and/or force an errant shot.

Per Natural Stat Trick, the Oilers controlled 65% of shot attempts at five-on-five with McDavid on the ice, a concession Winnipeg will make in the name of prudence. (The game plan: keep three men, minimum, between him and the net and rough him up when possible.) He wound up only being the night's third-most influential Connor, accounting for Connor Hellebuyck's first-rate goaltending and Kyle Connor's insurance marker into an empty net.

Indeed, this was the sort of game that Winnipeg had to win, assuming McDavid's season for the ages guarantees he'll break out soon. The Jets were aided in Game 1 by their discipline; their lone penalty - Paul Stastny's inadvisable high-stick in the neutral zone - on its own didn't fuel the Oilers' league-best power play.

An adjustment to monitor: Will Dave Tippett pair McDavid and Draisaitl at even strength more often to try to jump-start the offense? Deployed together in the waning seconds of the first period, they almost worked magic to open the scoring, though Draisaitl's sublime backhand, breakout pass went for naught. Forbort backpedaled to deny McDavid clean passage to the goal, and the Oilers captain's forehand flick flew wide. Crisis averted.

Jets coped without Ehlers

There's a case to be made that Nikolaj Ehlers is Winnipeg's most important forward. The Jets scored 35 goals and allowed a mere 18 at five-on-five this season with Ehlers on the ice, an elite ratio that no fellow Jets top-sixer came close to matching.

Safe to say the shoulder injury that's shelved Ehlers since April 24 continues to loom large, even with a one-win advantage. Ehlers, like Pierre-Luc Dubois, donned a yellow no-contact jersey at practices ahead of Game 1, and in their absence, the Jets were overwhelmed by Edmonton's forecheck and cycle game.

The fancy stats reflect poorly on Winnipeg's top lines. Connor, Mark Scheifele, and Blake Wheeler had their hands full with the McDavid matchup and rarely threatened offensively together - Scheifele's high miss on a three-on-one break was an outlier - until Tippett pulled Mike Smith in the last few minutes. Tapped to play on Stastny's wing, Kristian Vesalainen had a nice look at the net early, but they and Andrew Copp together gave up 11 scoring chances and only generated one.

Playoff hockey is funny sometimes. Besides Wheeler, who hopped off the bench before his linemates when he recorded an assist, the point-getters on Winnipeg's first two goals - Tucker Poolman, Dominic Toninato, Nate Thompson, and Logan Stanley - combined for a measly 11 points during the regular season. Before you rail about unsustainability, you have to tip your hat. Their dirty work and opportunism were decisive Wednesday.

In similar circumstances, the Jets already have avoided last postseason's nightmare scenario. Their vaunted top six was thinned in Game 1 against the Calgary Flames when Scheifele and Patrik Laine were knocked out of the series. Winnipeg's lifeless offense went on to manage six goals in four games, two of them off Ehlers' stick. If he returns soon and has help, that'll put the Jets in an optimal position to offset McDavid's inevitable surge.

Yes, there's a goalie mismatch

Hellebuyck and Smith aren't in the same netminding echelon. Hellebuyck won the Vezina Trophy last year and posted a .916 save percentage in 2020-21 (and a .923 mark against opponents that weren't Edmonton, incidentally).

Contrast the 28-year-old star (Wednesday was Hellebuyck's birthday) at the peak of his powers with Smith, a 39-year-old journeyman who has enjoyed longevity but not consistency while cycling through five career teams. Smith's resume features one excellent season: He saved 34.29 goals above expected in 2011-12 for a squad, the Phoenix Coyotes, that ditched its former city name seven years ago.

So much time has since passed that Smith spent multiple seasons as a platoon option on either side of the Battle of Alberta. His play with the Flames and Oilers dipped to the point that he feared he'd be out of a job in 2021, Smith's wife, Brigitte, indicated to The Athletic's Scott Burnside ahead of the playoffs.

Instead, Smith re-upped with Edmonton on a one-year deal in the fall and, out of the blue, posted an impressive .923 save percentage this season. By usurping Mikko Koskinen, he turned a team weakness that prohibits contention into a source of strength, maybe Edmonton's most potent after the megastar duo up front.

All of this is to wonder: Is Smith out of his depth against Hellebuyck, or is he a worthy foil?

He wasn't bad in Game 1 but faltered in a critical moment, bobbling the rebound that let Poolman tie the score 2:37 after Jesse Puljujarvi's opening goal. Dominant on the cycle, the Oilers heavily outchanced the Jets in the second period - high-danger attempts were 8-3 - but the game stayed deadlocked until Smith was beaten in the third on Stanley's point blast that was tipped twice.

Hellebuyck was masterful in the last five minutes, stoning Draisaitl, Ethan Bear, and McDavid in turn before the empty-netters let him exhale. Par for the course for a player whose goals saved above expected figure (13.72) was second in the league this season to Marc-Andre Fleury, according to Evolving Hockey.

Smith deserves kudos for the four-month stretch when he threw it back to 2012. Allowing two goals is forgivable, maybe even a blip. But the bodies of work suggest Hellebuyck is more trustworthy, and now he has a series lead to work with.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Recently, as the NHL's North Division playoffs neared, theScore recounted the twists and turns of one especially memorable all-Canadian series: the ascendant Edmonton Oilers' defeat of the dynastic Montreal Canadiens in 1981.

The staggering upset confirmed young Wayne Gretzky was a megastar, and it wasn't much of a struggle. The Oilers outscored the Canadiens 15-6 over a three-game sweep. But Canada's NHL playoff history doesn't lack for drama. Canadian teams have faced off 68 times in past postseasons; dozens of these series were rivalry showdowns, plenty more reached Game 7, and eight decided who won the Stanley Cup.

Ahead of puck drop up north, here's a rundown of seven all-Canadian series that enthralled fans, fomented ill will, clinched, boosted, or crushed championship dreams, and combined to feature 17 overtime goals, some of them unforgettable.

1951 Cup final:
Toronto def. Montreal 4-1

This series ended more quickly than the Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs' lone previous Cup clash, the violent six-game affair Toronto won in 1947 after Maurice Richard was suspended a game for stick-swinging. But the '51 edition is unique among NHL finals because every last contest required overtime.

Richard played OT hero in Game 2 for the overmatched Canadiens, who trailed the Leafs by 30 points (95 to 65) in the season standings. This was familiar ground for the "Rocket," a perennial 40-goal scorer when 30 per season was elite. Against the top-seeded Detroit Red Wings in the semis, he broke consecutive deadlocks in the fourth and third overtime periods.

Indeed, Richard found the net in all five games against Toronto, including a beautiful solo effort in which he dangled a backtracking defenseman and Leafs goalie Al Rollins to open the scoring in Game 5. Yet Toronto's depth offset Richard's consistent production amid the Leafs' all-time best run of play. The 1951 Cup victory was Toronto's fourth in five years, fifth in seven years, and sixth in 10.

Three playoff-hardened Leafs forwards - Sid Smith, Ted Kennedy, and Harry Watson - each netted an OT winner to stake Toronto to a big series lead. Tod Sloan's power-play goal tied Game 5 with 32 seconds left in regulation, and teammate Bill Barilko lunged to seal the result 2:53 into the extra frame.

Barilko's backhand goal was his first point of the series and the last of the brawny defenseman's life. Killed at age 24 that summer in a remote float-plane crash, his fate was memorialized in "Fifty Mission Cap," the Tragically Hip song. As the Hip hinted, the Leafs didn't win another Cup until April 1962, two months before Barilko's remains finally were found in the northern Ontario wilderness.

1984 second round:
Edmonton def. Calgary 4-3

Few Canadian postseason matchups have recurred as frequently as the Battle of Alberta. Between 1983 and 1991, the Oilers and Calgary Flames met in five Smythe Division finals or semifinals, and indelible moments abounded: Steve Smith's own goal in '86, Theo Fleury's sliding celebration in '91, Esa Tikkanen's OT snipe that won Edmonton Game 7 of that series.

In 1984, history's best offense, the 446-goal Oilers, faced a pedestrian Flames club that pestered them until midway through Game 7.

Edmonton won its first Stanley Cup in 1984, predictably following up Gretzky's bananas regular season (87 goals, 205 points). Glenn Anderson and Jari Kurri each surpassed 50 goals, and even netminder Grant Fuhr got in on the fun, slinging 14 assists to smash the league record for his position. The Oilers took 15 points from eight meetings with the Flames, the last a 9-2 beatdown in Calgary two weeks before their playoff rendezvous.

Then the juggernaut seemingly forgot how to hold a lead. Up 4-1 in Game 2, Edmonton allowed four straight goals and needed Gretzky to knot the score with 45 seconds left, only for Flames rookie Carey Wilson to pot the winner in overtime. Mark Messier bemoaned the Oilers' vanishing killer instinct. Head coach Glen Sather pinned the loss on the calendar, it being Friday the 13th.

Pushed to the brink via two home defeats, the Flames rebounded for consecutive 5-4 wins. Edmonton erased four Calgary leads in Game 6 (Messier's 4-4 goal off a third-period faceoff was delightfully strange), but Lanny McDonald - tenacity and skill personified - soon scored the first playoff OT goal at Calgary's new Saddledome.

McDonald had a splendid series (six goals, 13 points), but his club slipped in the second period of Game 7, squandering a 4-3 lead as Gretzky's gang tallied four times in 6:43. Two rounds later, Edmonton ended the Islanders' four-Cup dynasty to win the first of five in seven years, substantiating Oilers defenseman Kevin Lowe's analysis of what the Flames achieved, per the Edmonton Sun: "The series may have been the best thing that ever happened to (us)."

1985 second round:
Quebec def. Montreal 4-3

The NHL's old Adams Division served up several Quebecois playoff encounters in the '80s. The one in 1984 is remembered for the Good Friday Massacre, two brawls that bookended the second intermission of Game 6, got 11 players ejected - including the backup goalies, Quebec's Clint Malarchuk and Montreal's Richard Sevigny - and overshadowed the Canadiens' comeback that won them the series.

Safe to say the '85 rematch was hotly anticipated. Separated by three points in the standings, the Habs and Quebec Nordiques staged a proportionally tight battle, scoring 24 goals apiece and trading wins night by night.

Quebec won the odd-numbered games and dominated in overtime, including with Mark Kumpel's Game 1 winner and Dale Hunter's slap shot that closed a madcap, 13-goal Game 3. No one brawled, but the series still was rough, typified by Montreal's Chris Nilan, a protagonist of the Massacre, who amassed double-digit penalty minutes in five games and 79 PIMs overall.

By Game 7, two of Quebec's top scorers, Hunter and Michel Goulet, were hampered by an infected hand and bruised backside, respectively. Montreal's rookie goalie, Steve Penney, made a fine glove save on a breakaway but let in a soft wrister. In the Quebec net, a slapper to the collarbone knocked Mario Gosselin to his back, and Montreal scored twice in 10 minutes to negate a 2-0 deficit.

While his fellow stars slowed, Quebec center Peter Stastny picked up the slack, as was his tendency throughout a 1,239-point NHL career. Two minutes into OT, Stastny won a faceoff to set up a point blast, compelled Penney to bobble the rebound, and banged home the Nordiques' third shot of the sequence.

Sevigny, who'd swapped sides in free agency the previous summer, celebrated on Quebec's bench by standing atop the boards and leaping to the ice. He stuck the landing.

1989 Cup final:
Calgary def. Montreal 4-2

Most all-Canadian Cup finals - five of eight - set Montreal against Toronto during the Original Six era. The last two have been between Calgary and Montreal in 1986 and 1989.

No margin of victory in the Flames-Canadiens rematch exceeded two goals, befitting their joint rule of the league that season. Calgary's 117 points were most in the NHL in 1989, Montreal finished with 115 points, and no other club exceeded 92. Their defenses were the game's stingiest, and six of the league's top 31 scorers drew into the championship series.

Their collision course produced a marathon Game 3 scrap-fest; referee Kerry Fraser assessed five sets of offsetting minors in overtime alone. The difference was a disputed boarding penalty that the Flames' Mark Hunter took deep in double OT. Ryan Walter scored on a jam play by the crease the moment Hunter exited the box.

"It was total BS," Lanny McDonald told Sportsnet years later about the boarding call.

The Canadiens' edge was pronounced entering Game 4 at the Montreal Forum, where the home side went 30-6-4 that season. Desperate yet organized, the Flames limited Montreal to 19 mostly harmless shots in a 4-2 victory, and the Habs never led the rest of the series. Much of the credit fell to Joe Mullen, Doug Gilmour, and Conn Smythe Trophy winner Al MacInnis, who combined for eight goals over Calgary's last three wins.

Gilmour was clutch down the stretch in Game 6, and MacInnis' postseason was historic: No defenseman had topped the playoffs in points until he recorded 31. Two more memories resonate, both involving Calgary's 36-year-old co-captain; in his career finale, McDonald scored his first goal in two months off Joe Nieuwendyk's pretty cross-ice feed, and the images of him cradling the Cup later are iconic.

1990 first round:
Edmonton def. Winnipeg 4-3

There are mismatches, and then there's the hurt that the Oilers inflicted in the Manitoba capital when Wayne Gretzky was around. Between 1983 and 1988, the original Winnipeg Jets lost 16 playoff games in a row to Edmonton, spanning blowout defeats in five Smythe Division series.

Demand for a breakthrough remained through 1990 when Gretzky was long settled in Los Angeles and the Jets iced their strongest lineup in several years. They were led by beloved center Dale Hawerchuk and point-per-game playmaker Thomas Steen. Hawerchuk's pair of goals fueled a Game 1 statement win. He scored again in Game 3 at Winnipeg Arena to break a 1-1 tie with 4:30 left.

At the end of Game 4, broadcaster Don Wittman remarked on Hockey Night in Canada that Winnipeg's barn was as loud as any in the NHL. The decibel count peaked in double overtime when 15,572 fans in white shirts went wild for Dave Ellett's greatest feat. The Jets were scoreless on seven power-play tries when Steen won a faceoff back to Ellett, whose cannon from the point on the man advantage put the Jets up three games to one.

Only six 3-1 series leads had been blown to that point in league history. Naturally, the Jets grew the total. They lost a two-goal lead in the back half of Game 5 and couldn't capitalize on their own three-goal comeback in Game 6; Jari Kurri unleashed a backbreaking slap shot from the right faceoff dot for the late winner. Edmonton goalie Bill Ranford, the eventual playoff MVP, shone in Game 7 with 26 saves.

"The Edmonton Oilers know that they could just as easily have been the vanquished as the victors," Wittman intoned on TV during the handshake line. They instead proceeded to clinch the Cup without Gretzky, and Jets 1.0 never won another playoff series.

1994 first round:
Vancouver def. Calgary 4-3

Triumphing in this series was immensely meaningful to the Vancouver Canucks - they wound up surging to Game 7 of the final - and on a personal level to Stan Smyl. The assistant coach was the team's captain in 1989 when he rang the post and was stoned on a breakaway in overtime of a Game 7 loss to Calgary.

Five years later, Smyl's charges made history with sudden-death wins in Games 5, 6, and 7 of a series. Even the 1990 Oilers' high-wire act against Winnipeg hadn't been so delicate.

Calgary outpaced Vancouver by 12 points in the regular-season standings, and by mid-series, the Canucks' massive Game 1 win looked like an outlier. The Flames poured in 15 goals over the next three contests and Mike Vernon made 42 saves in Game 4, matching his total from the '89 Game 7 that haunted Smyl.

Pavel Bure, twice a 60-goal scorer, failed to light the lamp for four games, but soon he and three teammates went down in Canucks lore. Afforded a partial breakaway in OT of Game 5, Geoff Courtnall took advantage, beating Vernon glove-high with a clapper. Prowling the front of the net on an OT power play - the Flames were dinged for too many men - Trevor Linden shoveled home the winner in Game 6.

Vancouver goalie Kirk McLean reserved for Game 7 his best performance (46 saves) and denial, the above kick-stop on Robert Reichel's OT one-timer that was tailor-made to end the series. Instead, that honor fell to Bure, who deked Vernon in the second overtime to avenge the 1989 letdown.

"You don't forget things that happened in the past," Smyl told the Vancouver Province after the series, referring to his missed opportunities five years earlier.

"I knew I'd have to retire and never be able to do anything about it myself, but this is just as sweet. I can honestly say the ghost is risen now. It's gone."

2002 second round:
Toronto def. Ottawa 4-3

Ottawa's competed in six of this century's nine all-Canadian series, including four straight painful Battle of Ontario defeats. This edition was rancorous and dramatic, even though the Leafs' leading scorer, Mats Sundin, missed all of it with a fractured wrist.

Sundin's fellow Swede, Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson, made his presence felt. He scored and added two assists in Ottawa's opening rout, though he failed to solve Curtis Joseph on eight shots in Game 2. Toronto's netminder stymied 54 attempts all told, and Gary Roberts' wrist shot from a scrambled faceoff finally eluded Patrick Lalime in the third overtime.

Alfredsson netted the winner in Game 3 - the Leafs' plea for goalie interference was ignored - and stole the spotlight in Game 5's signature sequence. The score was 2-2 when Alfredsson hit Darcy Tucker from behind, left him crumpled by the boards, meandered to the net, and went top-shelf to claim the lead with 2:01 left. The restart was delayed five minutes as Toronto fans hurled cups over the glass.

"Full of anger" is how Leafs coach Pat Quinn described himself postgame. Toronto forward Travis Green said the no-call was "a bloody joke."

As it happens, boarding cost the Senators at home in Game 6. They led 2-0 early when Ricard Persson, making his first appearance of the series, was ejected for burying and bloodying Tie Domi. Toronto would score twice on the ensuing major. Alex Mogilny broke a third-period stalemate, and then he recorded two more goals in Game 7, which was all the support Joseph needed in a 19-save shutout.

Persson signed in Germany the next season, while his old club got one last crack at Toronto in 2004. The Leafs again prevailed in seven, marking the franchise's most recent series victory.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The buzzer at the hospital entrance sounded a little after 10:30 p.m. Visiting hours had ended for the night, stranding an NHL legend at the locked door. But it was April 2018, the month of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash, and Joe Sakic didn't want to leave Saskatchewan without seeing Kaleb Dahlgren.

At a dinner for Broncos families earlier, Sakic had heard that the alternate captain who'd suffered a severe brain injury and skull and vertebrae fractures was a childhood fan. Sakic's flight was to leave Saskatoon the next morning, so he found Dahlgren's father Mark to arrange a late drop-in. He rode shotgun to the hospital in the Dahlgren family SUV and, once there, helped Mark sway the wary receptionist. Her husband, it turned out, admired Sakic, too.

In Dahlgren's room in the rehab wing that night, Sakic broke down the secrets of his wicked wrist shot, the release that powered so many of his 625 career NHL goals. They spoke about his leadership philosophy as a captain and a general manager. Then Sakic brought up the winter of 1986, when in the midst of his breakout season with the major junior Swift Current Broncos, he survived a bus accident that killed four teammates. Dahlgren needed support to heal, and Sakic had advice on how to carry on: Strive to live fully to honor those 16 friends he lost.

"His message really sat with me," Dahlgren recently told theScore. "(The crash) happened in the past, and now it's what you do moving forward. That helped me reframe my mind toward controlling the things I can control. I couldn't control the crash. I couldn't control who's not here. But I could control how I respond to it."

Dahlgren, 23, is the author of a memoir published in hardcover Tuesday. "Crossroads: My Story of Tragedy and Resilience as a Humboldt Bronco," inescapably chronicles the impact, literal and figurative, of April 6, 2018, when 29 players and team personnel set out for a Saskatchewan Junior A road playoff game they would never reach.

A couple of caveats apply. Dahlgren's memoir, he emphasizes, isn't the definitive story of the 2017-18 Broncos team for which Canada and the hockey world mourned, but "one of the 29." And "Crossroads" spans much more than the season he spent in Humboldt, though that year was formative and precious. His is a story of gratitude and hope, of braving sorrow and managing Type 1 diabetes, of the delight and belonging that Dahlgren still finds in hockey even as his brain injury continues to prevent him from playing.

It covers the totality of a young life scarred by trauma, animated by the ambition to help people, and preserved by the care of paramedics from the STARS air ambulance service to which Dahlgren is donating some of the proceeds from his book.

"They saved lives on April 6," Dahlgren said. He added: "A second chance at life literally is life-changing."

Hockey, Dahlgren writes in his book, was a childhood fulcrum that also introduced him to grief. In 2010, a car accident claimed the life of his 13-year-old teammate Brock Pulock. The next year, Dahlgren's Saskatoon strength coach, Chad Martin, died of brain cancer at 37. During the 2013-14 season, when Dahlgren left home to play midget AAA elsewhere in Saskatchewan, his dad was hospitalized with a rare liver disorder that sapped his muscle mass and prompted Dahlgren to rush home by car after a road game for fear his father wouldn't survive.

These trials shaped Dahlgren's perspective on handling loss. After the crash, grief overwhelmed him and returned in waves, but he also felt thankful he'd shared a close bond with the deceased. The onus was on him to live big in their light, a favored metaphor of his dad's. Caring gestures helped brace him, be it the sight of sticks on porches nationwide or encouragement from hockey luminaries, Sakic among them.

In spring 2018, Dahlgren's visitors at the hospital in Saskatoon included Connor McDavid, Ryan O'Reilly, Ron MacLean, and Hayley Wickenheiser, who posed for a photo in his No. 16 jersey. Glen Gulutzan and Todd McLellan, then the head coaches of the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, respectively, stopped by together; McLellan said if Dahlgren's recovery progressed, he'd invite him to training camp to skate on a line with McDavid. (The opportunity never materialized, though Dahlgren quips it was for the best: "He's pretty fast, and I'm pretty slow.")

Anze Kopitar, the Los Angeles Kings captain, mailed Dahlgren his signed jersey and a T-shirt emblazoned with a rallying call: "Enjoy the Grind." Dahlgren embraced the mindset. When he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age four, pinpricks, glucose checks, and frequent snacks became as essential to his daily reality as the pursuit of high-level hockey. In 2018 and 2019, Dahlgren applied discipline and optimism to his physical rehab, seeking joy in the slog to rebuild his strength even as MRI scans revealed 10 lesions on his brain.

Doctors deemed it miraculous the bleeds didn't impair his memory, mobility, or speech. Once his fractures healed, he was able to move through the world as usual, except that he couldn't take contact on the ice again.

Dahlgren signed in 2018 to play for Toronto's York University, where for three years now he's studied commerce and handled all manner of jobs for the varsity squad. He joined the school's athletics council. He ran community events, weightlifting sessions, and on-ice skills drills. He peppered the club's goalies with shots and helped fortify the program's future, creating a multimedia recruiting handout to send to prospective commits. He met or video-called with several Canadian Hockey League grads who also wound up picking York.

"Hockey's not just playing the game on Friday and Saturday. It's about the practices. It's about the workouts. It's about team-building. It's about the culture in the dressing room," Dahlgren said. "That really helped me in the process of healing: still being involved with the team, still having an impact."

Accepting that he won't play again meant seeing a bigger picture, which Dahlgren has pondered for the last 12 months at home in Saskatoon. The coronavirus pandemic nixed York's 2020-21 hockey season and shifted Dahlgren's classes online, and now he's a month from graduating. He has specific and simple aspirations for the future: become a chiropractor, maybe open a sports practice, be there for his wife and kids, be happy.

Having grown up without a visible diabetic role model - Bobby Clarke was long retired, while Max Domi is practically his age - flourishing with his condition matters to Dahlgren, too.

When he was 20 and playing Junior A in 300-person Wilcox, Saskatchewan, he requested a trade to a bigger market where he could form an advocacy group for children with the disease. Dahlgren's Diabeauties launched in Humboldt, a platform for the message he wanted to relay widely. Doubts can be dispelled and dreams realized with diabetes, he said, so long as the person manages the disease, and not vice versa.

"Every day won't be a perfect day," Dahlgren said. "But there are always good days."

The Humboldt chapters of "Crossroads" double as a tribute to his fellow passengers on the bus, the 12 who survived - dispersed across Canada and the U.S., they still text in a group chat and hope to get together later this year - and the 16 who Dahlgren remembers daily "in the best light possible." Their personalities imbue him with purpose, pushing him to be his best self.

In the book, Dahlgren describes Logan Boulet, the defenseman who famously inspired a spike in organ donations across Canada, as contagiously selfless. He recalls how Dayna Brons, the trainer who treated his spate of shoulder, wrist, and rib injuries in Humboldt, helped him feel comfortable opening up about pain. Goalie Parker Tobin spurred him to embrace his inquisitive side. Captain Logan Schatz got him to let loose a little. Head coach Darcy Haugan made sure he'd always prioritize family. Browsing NHL stats on his laptop recently, Dahlgren was reminded of Brody Hinz, the Broncos analytics guru who never was happier than when he was at the rink.

One foggy night in Humboldt, Dahlgren writes, he and the late defenseman Stephen Wack drove from their billet home in town to stargaze in a vast field. An astronomy buff, Wack had a phone app that situated constellations and the planets. They parked and stood for a while in the darkness, the expanse above them twinkling to the horizon.

Months after the crash, in downtown Saskatoon, Dahlgren found solace and an unexpected link to the Broncos at the riverbank beside the Broadway Bridge. The arched structure was commissioned in the early 1930s to create work amid the Great Depression - to uplift people in hard times, Dahlgren observed. He'd sit alone on rocks in the cool air, watching birds fly overhead as sunlight peeked through the clouds. The quiet soothed him, and the details were mesmerizing.

Eventually, he tattooed a version of this scene on his left forearm. Skate tracks line the frozen river below the bridge on his skin, and 13 birds soar in V formation into a sky that sparkles.

"Now I'm able to carry them on forever," Dahlgren said, thinking about his Humboldt team. "I have the birds and the light and the stars."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

From the sky-box suite where he sleeps at the Westerner Park Centrium arena, Josh Tarzwell can look upon the expanse of his life as a 21-year-old junior hockey player.

Below him are the Red Deer Rebels' primary net and home bench. At the far end of the rink is the Rebels' meal room, where heaps of eggs and toast are devoured daily at 8:30 a.m. One recent morning, Tarzwell answered a phone call, peered down to the concourse level, and saw most of his team clustered around two ping-pong tables - one donated by his family, the other freshly purchased to satisfy demand.

"I can count probably 15 guys on two tables waiting to play," Tarzwell said.

Tarzwell was born and raised in Red Deer, the Alberta oil hub that's equidistant from Edmonton and Calgary. Normally, he resides 15 minutes from the Centrium, where the Rebels have hosted Western Hockey League games for close to three decades. COVID-19 has no regard for norms. Since mid-February, Tarzwell - an alternate captain and one of three overage players on the roster - and his Rebels teammates have bunked in suites with ice views, choosing to go to unique lengths to be able to participate in a 2021 season.

For exactly a year now, the pandemic has roiled Canada's major junior hockey scene. The Ontario Hockey League has yet to get government permission to drop the puck this season. The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League opened play last October, pressed pause from Nov. 29 to Jan. 22, then resumed by sending clubs into a series of protected hubs; teams have played as few as 14 games and as many as 34.

Out west, the WHL imitated the NHL's regional format to split into U.S., British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan-Manitoba divisions. Starting soon in B.C. and Saskatchewan, games will be played out of hubs for a couple of months. In Alberta, some teams are staying in hotels and postsecondary dorms as they shuttle between their home rink and those of their opponents. Red Deer alone is holed up in a hockey facility.

The Rebels' setup at the Centrium isn't, strictly speaking, a bubble. Team staff members move in and out, though solely between the rink and their homes. Cognizant that mental health matters, the club has made a point of getting the players outside each day - to walk, play catch, or toboggan at the ranch of Brent Sutter, the retired NHL center who is Red Deer's head coach, general manager, president, and owner.

Mostly, though, the players are confined to the 7,000-seat barn where Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Matt Dumba, and Darcy Kuemper once starred, separated from outside society but united in the experience. The Centrium has enough suites to house the 26-man squad. Parents, suite holders, arena management, Red Deer bureaucrats, and fire officials all approved the plan to hunker there for several months. Billet families loaned beds, sharing the consensus that this living arrangement was the Rebels' best option this season.

"It's not a normal situation. But the normalcy is (the players) playing," Sutter said. "Them putting themselves out there for scouts to watch, for teams to see, for their development."

Sutter's Rebels have a record of nurturing junior talent. Jake DeBrusk, Haydn Fleury, and Sutter's son, Brandon, are among the team's active NHL alumni. Martin Hanzal, Dion Phaneuf, Kris Versteeg, and Cam Ward all springboarded from Red Deer into solid pro careers. Brent Sutter, whose tenures with the New York Islanders and Chicago Blackhawks netted him two Stanley Cups and 829 points in 1,111 games, has owned the Rebels since 1999 and coached them to WHL and Memorial Cup titles in 2001.

Recent seasons haven't gone so well. The Rebels haven't won a playoff series since 2016 when they hosted the Memorial Cup and reached the tournament semis. They were on pace to finish 2019-20 well below .500 when COVID-19 nixed their final five games. But last year's team skewed young, and when most of the players finally returned to Red Deer in February, they did so invigorated. On top of canceling hockey for a year, hometown quarantines kept teammates from hanging out in the summer and catching up at training camp on time in the fall.

"These guys are all my best friends. We spend eight months of the year together normally," Tarzwell said. "Being able to (live at the rink) together, it's been a huge weight off my shoulders."

Protocols and routine govern life inside the Centrium. Apart from the Rebels, only Westerner Park complex staff can access the rink, plus select scouts, off-ice officials, and media members on game days. Masks are ubiquitous even in this protected environment, and the Rebels, like all WHL teams, are tested for the coronavirus each Wednesday. Cooks from a local senior-care home prepare three hearty meals daily, but the players - four or five at a time on four-day rotations - serve the food and clean up after the group.

The players' schedule is consistent, Tarzwell said: breakfast first, workouts and study sessions at 10 a.m., lunch at noon, and a 2 p.m. practice that runs for up to two hours. Since this season's 24 games are limited to Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, college-style, free time abounds in the interim. A basketball hoop was installed in the Centrium concourse. Meeting rooms have been equipped with couches, TVs, and gaming consoles. Tarzwell brought his ping-pong table from home, and that pastime regularly gets heated.

"In the afternoons, it gets pretty serious," defenseman Kyle Masters said. "If you're losing, you're not a very happy camper during dinner."

By night, before the Centrium lights go dark at 10:30, the players have staged friendly casino competitions and streamed Creed II, Happy Gilmore, and North Division NHL action on the arena jumbotron. These are necessary diversions from their own intense season. The Rebels are 1-2-1 entering this weekend's three-game slate against the Lethbridge Hurricanes, but one line of thinking holds that those first matchups were glorified exhibitions, results being less important than process as skaters tried to shed rust.

That said, only 20 games remain in the sprint to the playoffs, generating the urge to play up to potential ASAP. This impetus is inescapable when you sleep at the workplace. On Feb. 26, at home against the Medicine Hat Tigers in Red Deer's season opener, the Rebels blew a 4-1 lead late in the third period and lost in overtime.

"Definitely not ideal," Tarzwell said. "You come back to your room and you're looking out at the ice. There's really a switch that I've been trying to (flick) where I'm not constantly thinking about hockey. But it can be difficult, I know, for some guys, because you're constantly looking at the ice, thinking about what could have happened."

Obsessing over what-ifs does beat the alternative that might await OHL teams: having to sit out a season that could make, break, or otherwise shape a player's future. Tarzwell, like every twentysomething player in the Canadian Hockey League, will be too old for junior at season's end and in need of a contract to further his pro and NHL ambitions. Masters, who's 17 and eligible for the 2021 NHL draft, is aiming to maximize his stock after a broken ankle sidelined him for all but 24 games as a WHL rookie. Every shift is an audition for the next level.

"Personally, I'm very grateful for this opportunity," Masters said. "But with the shortened season, it just means you've got to come out that much faster. You don't have the time that (prospective draft picks) had in previous years to get it going in the first few games."

The team has sought to preserve or mimic normalcy on other fronts. Staff converted the Centrium's media and scout lounge into a remote classroom for the Rebels' high-school students. Sutter's friends lent him a barbecue, on which the squad has cooked steaks. The Rebels have maintained their standard, pro-casual dress code for home games, the difference being the players don't leave the building afterward to drive into the Prairie night.

Like scores of Canadian communities, Red Deer has suffered from COVID-19. About 500 cases and four deaths have been linked to an outbreak at a local pork processing plant. Proprietor company Olymel closed the plant for a little while in mid-February, months after the outbreak was declared and, incidentally, around the time Rebels camp started. Inside the Centrium, the players stay healthy by respecting the protocols - and by sticking together.

"When you're locked away in a room, which might have been the case if we (weren't at the rink), it could have been a long 90 days. Having this opportunity, we're around the guys lots and we're able to communicate on and off the ice," Masters said.

"For the new guys coming in, this might be the first time they've lived away from home. Us older guys, we made sure they knew that we're always here if they need to talk about more serious stuff. This is a different experience for everyone. We're all just trying to take care of each other."

Beyond the Lethbridge series and three dates with the Edmonton Oil Kings next weekend, the Rebels' schedule has yet to be finalized. Their home games will go down in a building that's seen some hockey history. In 2016, Matthew Tkachuk potted the OT goal there that won the London Knights their latest Memorial Cup. Assuming no bubble is required again, Red Deer and Edmonton will co-host the next world juniors, the tournament where Sutter led Team Canada to gold medals in 2005 and 2006.

Sutter's NHL career spanned 18 seasons, plus five more manning the bench for the New Jersey Devils and Calgary Flames. Famously, five of his brothers, including newly returned Flames coach Darryl, played at the highest level, too. Yet in 2020 and 2021, even this hockey lifer was bound to witness something new. His team's current digs certainly qualify.

"These kids, 30 years from now, they're going to be looking back saying, 'During COVID, to get back playing, we had to stay in the rink,'" Sutter said. "I told them: There's 26 players in the world who are doing this right now."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

When the Hockey Hall of Fame weighs whether to enshrine Hilary Knight, the American winger will be remembered and judged for how she played the game.

Excuse the obviousness of that remark a moment and pause to ponder some of her greatest hits. The 2015 world championships in Sweden, where the United States topped the podium and she was named MVP. South Korea's 2018 Olympics, where she opened the scoring in the United States' gold-medal win. The 2019 worlds on hostile Finnish ice, which she led in goals and points. The many far-flung commitments that make up the women's hockey calendar: Rivalry Series dates with Canada, promotional events at NHL All-Star weekend, pop-up tournaments at youth rinks across the continent …

2020-21 has produced no such highlights. Knight, 31, is from Idaho skiing country, but she relocated to Blaine, Minnesota, in the fall to join 24 fellow elite players in a training hub, one of five regional chapters of the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association. Pandemic restrictions have kept the PWHPA from initiating the second Dream Gap Tour, the barnstorming exhibition series the group created last season to showcase their players while lobbying for a sustainably funded pro league.

Knight, a veteran of the sport at its highest and fieriest level, has been left to identify a silver lining in these quiet past few months. "I still get to skate and practice," she said.

Contrasts define women's hockey in 2021. The action at its peak is electric, but no major championship has been awarded for almost two years. U.S.-Canada matchups draw massive attention, yet women's pro games have never commanded that kind of notice, even when they feature the same stars. In October, when the Secret deodorant brand funded the PWHPA with $1 million, that cheery news had to be situated in the context of COVID-19.

"While many men's professional sports have continued to push forward defying all odds, women's professional hockey has taken a back seat and is in jeopardy of losing all momentum," Secret and the PWHPA wrote in the press release that announced the deal.

So started the strangest, most trying season in memory, one that presents shared stakes to the PWHPA and the National Women's Hockey League as they each try to move the sport forward: Survive until fans can crowd the stands again. In the meantime, officials like Jayna Hefford, the Canadian Hall of Fame forward and PWHPA operations consultant, are determined to relish any and all gains. Late in the fall, Sonnet Insurance sponsored the PWHPA's Toronto hub and Scotiabank backed the Calgary roster, tangible affirmation that those companies value the women's game and believe in its future.

"But the irony is: Now we can't play," Hefford said.

Hefford is right on one count: COVID-19 has nixed the possibility of running a travel schedule. But the women of the PWHPA do have some say in the matter.

When the Canadian Women's Hockey League disbanded in 2019, U.S. and Canadian national teamers united under the PWHPA banner, maintaining that the continent's lone remaining pro option wasn't stable enough to last or, eventually, to pay players a living wage. That option is the NWHL, whose teams have sequestered for the past 10 days in Lake Placid, New York, shuttling between the rink and nearby hotels to string together a short but turbulent - and historic - 2021 season.

When the NWHL semifinals air nationally on NBC Sports Network on Thursday night, they'll become the first women's pro matchups ever broadcast on major U.S. TV. NBCSN will show the Isobel Cup final, too, at 7 p.m. ET on Friday, women's hockey's biggest and most important night to date of the coronavirus era.

Ideological differences separate the NWHL and PWHPA, but the players on either side of the split are charting parallel paths forward. They have competing visions for how best to pursue a common goal: elevate the state of the pro game for their generation and for the benefit of the girls who'll someday take the torch.

Women's pro hockey in 2020-21

Hunkering in upstate New York was the NWHL's short-term solution. Lake Placid was the site of 1980's Miracle on Ice, and now it's hosting the debut of the Toronto Six, the expansion club from a famously rabid hockey market that won't take the ice at home till Year 2.

"Nothing surprises me with women's sports, because sometimes, in order to make news, in order to make history, you have to think outside the box," Toronto president and head coach Digit Murphy said in an interview last week. "Anywhere we can play, especially in the spotlight, it's just heaven for me as a leader, and I think the players appreciate it, as well."

COVID-19 has complicated the NWHL's operations since last March, when the Boston Pride and Minnesota Whitecaps were set to meet in the Isobel Cup title game. That plan was scrapped on the eve of puck drop, the final was officially canceled later in the spring, and the pandemic delayed the league's 2020-21 start date by several months. COVID-19 remained an issue at Lake Placid: An outbreak among the Metropolitan Riveters forced that team to withdraw from the season last Thursday, by which time they'd played just three games.

The NWHL tweaked the schedule, pausing play for a couple days and guaranteeing the Six, Whitecaps, and Connecticut Whale berths in the semifinals. Then the Whale chose to forfeit their last regular-season game Monday evening and withdrew from the tournament hours later. Rather than battle for one final playoff spot, the Pride and Buffalo Beauts both were elevated into the semis, nudging the league within sight of the finish line it was unable to reach in 2020.

"Last season was really difficult for everyone. It was understandable why we couldn’t (finish it). But we were expecting to play our Isobel Cup game about three months later, and when that didn’t happen, it was really disappointing," Whitecaps goaltender Amanda Leveille, the NWHL's career wins record-holder, told reporters from Lake Placid last week.

"To be able to be here is just unbelievable. I personally didn’t think it was going to happen. Each week we got closer, and they didn’t announce anything canceling it, we just got more and more excited."

Without Olympians present in Lake Placid, players of lesser renown have shined on Twitch, which has streamed the whole tournament live. Pride defender Kaleigh Fratkin leads the league in assists and points (10). Rookie teammate Sammy Davis, the top pick in the NWHL's 2020 draft, paces Boston with four goals, second overall to 22-year-old Toronto forward Mikyla Grant-Mentis' five. Before the Riveters departed, goalie Sonjia Shelly cultivated a 119:50 shutout streak, only to lose her second appearance 1-0 when Minnesota scored on a five-on-three with 10 seconds left. Five netminders - Shelly, Leveille, Boston's Lovisa Selander, Toronto's Elaine Chuli, and Connecticut's Abbie Ives - own save percentages of .936 or better.

Helped in part by a new sponsorship accord with credit card provider Discover, the NWHL paid more than $2 million to organize the season, per Sportico's Emily Caron. Underpinning the expense was the idea that the league needed to play some amount of games in 2021 to avoid an 18-month lapse in competition. As first-line Whale center Emma Vlasic said in a midseason media availability, a two-week sprint to the championship still was "better than nothing."

"To have a hockey season when people are just clamoring for sports, and to amplify your sport and your message, is a massive leg up relative to other women's sports," Murphy said. "You've got the WNBA that played in this bubble. You've got (the National Women's Soccer League). That's it. Now, to be part of that club, it's huge for our sport. We've arrived. We have enough money where we can actually be in a bubble."

Out in the wider world, some of the PWHPA's U.S.-based players faced men's junior teams in exhibition games in January in Tampa, the extent of their formal competition since March. The group hasn't been able to replicate last season's Dream Gap Tour, which touched down in hockey hotbeds Toronto, Chicago, and Philadelphia, plus Hudson, New Hampshire, and Tempe, Arizona, for weekend tournaments.

In a recent interview, Hefford said the PWHPA intends to hold some tour events this spring, pandemic protocols permitting. Scheduling and other logistical questions abound - crossing the border might be a nonstarter, for example - but ideally, the five hubs will get to vie for the Secret Cup, with cash prizes on the line and a broadcast deal in place.

Keeping sharp has remained top of mind in each PWHPA region. In Minnesota, Knight has skated and lifted weights as part of a roster that includes Kendall Coyne Schofield, another Olympic mainstay. Until Christmastime, when strict lockdown measures took effect in Toronto, eight skaters and a goalie from the local roster were able to practice together at once. The setup suited two-on-two and three-on-three work, which wasn't without upside, Canadian forward Sarah Nurse said: players could prioritize personal skills development over team tactics and systems.

"I think the (first Dream Gap Tour) actually prepared us a little bit for COVID," Nurse said. "We're very used to having to adapt and be very creative with what we do and how we do it."

What hasn't changed from 2020 is the dissonance between the PWHPA and NWHL - the gulf between one side's ambitions for a new league and the model the other is pursuing.

Private owners run the NWHL's Pride and Six, and the league is seeking investors to buy the four other franchises. Players aren't paid much and need to hold down day jobs - and in many cases, they worked remotely from Lake Placid. (Boston star Jillian Dempsey is teaching fifth grade over Zoom; rookie Six defender Lindsay Eastwood has blogged about the competition for Sportsnet.) That said, the NWHL didn't prorate its $150,000 salary cap this condensed season. Half of the league's sponsorship profit goes to players, and new agreements that include the Discover deal could boost their take by up to 50%, NWHLPA director Anya Packer told FiveThirtyEight's Marisa Ingemi.

Since the inception of the PWHPA, its players have said that they're holding out for an optimally professional environment. They want a living wage, support and game-day staff for each team, and access to ice time at palatable hours (read: before 9 p.m.). They'd like to be able to devote full attention to their craft, and they maintain that for a women's league to be sufficiently resourced, the NHL needs to be a major partner, a view Hefford reiterated to theScore.

Absent the NHL's backing, support for women's hockey in the men's game has been individualized. Alexis Lafreniere and Mitch Marner have been photographed rocking blue PWHPA hoodies. J.T. Brown, the former NHL forward who recently signed in Sweden, joined the NWHL's Twitch chat on the first night of play in January to gift fans subscriptions to the streaming service.

NBC is the NHL's longstanding U.S. TV partner, and the NWHL has banked on this week's playoff telecasts raising its national visibility. The deal was inked two months after the NWHL hired as its new commissioner Tyler Tumminia, a seasoned baseball executive who used to operate several minor-league teams. To Murphy, Tumminia's influence can't be overstated: "When she picks up the phone, she has instant credibility," the Toronto coach said.

Murphy's fledgling squad only logged about seven full-ice practices before the team bused to Lake Placid. Now the Six own the top playoff seed and will aim for a title on NBCSN, the significance of which got Murphy thinking about 1998. She worked as a color analyst for TNT at that winter's Nagano Olympics, women's hockey's entry to the stage, and remembers returning from Japan with the fruitless hope that more TV exposure for the sport would soon follow.

"It actually has been a long time coming," Murphy said. She added, "You have to have a belief that women matter. If NBC puts us on television and helps us amplify the message, hats off to that broadcasting institution for helping us and helping women get the credit they deserve for playing sports."

In Lake Placid, the coronavirus wasn't the only outside force to disrupt the NWHL season. Two weeks ago, Riveters players Kelly Babstock and Rebecca Russo appeared on the podcast of Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini. When some NWHL employees, fans, and media members tweeted their disappointment, Nardini tweeted a video compilation of their usernames, tacitly encouraging Barstool followers to attack them online.

Nardini in her video mused about buying an NWHL team, which prompted Riveters defender Saroya Tinker, one of the league's few Black players, to tweet that the NWHL doesn't "want support from ANY openly racist platform." (Barstool and its founder, Dave Portnoy, have extensive histories of racist and misogynistic behavior, and their readers have a habit of assailing people who point this out.) Portnoy, in turn, said in a video he tweeted that Tinker "should be in jail" for writing that Barstool promotes white supremacy.

The day after Tinker took her stand, Tumminia released a statement that read, in part, "There is no circumstance where it would be acceptable to call out many of the reporters, staff members and fans who have given so much to women's hockey, especially knowing that these people could be targeted or harassed on social media." The statement didn't name Barstool, but Tumminia said in a follow-up media availability that it wouldn't be healthy for the league to associate with the company.

"The main message for me was to be one of protection and backing," Tumminia, who expressed her support for Tinker, told reporters. "I'm here to serve as the person who will make sure that we, going forward, don't have these types of situations that distract us from what we're trying to do here, which is grow the women's game in a very fun and respectful manner for all of our fans to enjoy."

Hefford has strived to grow the game for almost 25 years now, spanning her 1997 debut with Team Canada, five Olympic tournaments and 12 world championships, and her transition to management. She ranked third all-time in CWHL scoring, and she was that league's interim commissioner at the time it folded. Reflecting on this season's demands, Hefford said it's in a female athlete's nature to be adaptive and resilient: "From the time you're young, and especially in a sport like hockey that was, in the past, male-dominated, you're always going against the grain and trying to prove yourself."

Knight and Nurse, international foes and PWHPA allies, feel the weight of history and of their place in this movement. Cracking the U.S. and Canada's 23-player national teams remains the pinnacle of their trade, as it was in Hefford's prime. To Nurse, this is why they needed to take up the cause: Even before the pandemic axed the 2020 world championships, there were still so few dream-worthy roster spots to go around.

TV will spotlight the Isobel Cup playoffs without them, but another overdue spectacle awaits. If the 2021 worlds can be held as scheduled in Nova Scotia in April, Knight said, the intensity is sure to ratchet into overdrive, a sign of top players returning to their comfort zone. Competing between the boards is what they've always known. Nurturing the sport's future, doing right by tomorrow's aspiring pros - that, they've had to try to figure out on the fly.

"You wake up and you care about the trajectory of the sport, especially at this delicate phase right now," Knight said. "It's also one of the hardest things, I think, any of us have had to do. For many years, we learned how to play hockey. Hockey's an extremely humbling sport, but they don't teach you all the other stuff."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2021 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

For 41 winters, Lake Placid, New York, has been synonymous with the United States' most treasured hockey triumph: the "Miracle on Ice" defeat of the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics.

This weekend at Herb Brooks Arena - of which the late namesake coached the underdog Americans to gold at that tournament - the National Women's Hockey League will make its own sort of history. The NWHL is gearing up to play for two weeks in a sealed bubble environment, its means of salvaging a 2021 season amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Women's hockey wasn't contested at Lake Placid in 1980, nor at any Olympics until Nagano 1998. U.S.-Canada clashes have since been must-see, but the pro version of the sport is still trying to establish a foothold in both countries. The continent's 250 top players are split down the middle into two camps that have different visions for the future of the game, and each side has separately had to deal with the limitations on travel and crowding that the pandemic demands.

The NWHL's solution: sequester its six teams in a bubble, much like the NHL did on a bigger scale in Edmonton and Toronto last summer. In Lake Placid, each squad will play seven games to decide which four teams advance to the semifinals. The semis and title game are set to air live on NBCSN early next month, a first-of-its-kind nationwide showcase for the women's pro game.

Ahead of puck drop on Saturday afternoon, here's a rundown of what you ought to know about the NWHL in 2021.

What is the NWHL?

Let's cover the basics first. The NWHL opened play in 2015 and is the only women's pro hockey league operating in the United States or Canada. That's been the case since the Canadian Women's Hockey League folded under financial duress in spring 2019, which in turn spurred a group of elite players to form the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association.

In Lake Placid, six teams that represent traditional hockey hotbeds will participate in the NWHL's sixth season. Five are based in the northern U.S., and the aptly named sixth is a Toronto expansion club that launched last April.

Unlike, say, the WNBA, which since its inception has been part of the broader NBA ecosystem, the NWHL isn't affiliated with the NHL. The league operates the Buffalo, Connecticut, Metropolitan (which plays out of New Jersey), and Minnesota franchises, while Boston and Toronto each have private ownership.

The U.S. and Canada's very best players - the women who habitually compete for those mighty national teams - aren't part of the NWHL, but rather the PWHPA, in which members have organized themselves into regional training hubs while working toward the creation of a new, financially sustainable pro league.

The NWHL, however, believes it's in the midst of proving itself to be strong and sustainable, and the caliber of play remains high absent the likes of Kendall Coyne Schofield and Marie-Philip Poulin. Some former PWHPA and national team players are on NWHL rosters. So are plenty more women who excelled at the Division I level in college.

As in every NWHL season but 2019-20, when the onset of the pandemic forced the league final to be canceled, they'll get the chance to vie for the Isobel Cup championship. Isobel Garthone-Hardy was a pioneering women's player in Ottawa at the turn of the 20th century, and also the daughter of a certain Lord Stanley.

"Was it hard last season to survive without (the players who joined the PWHPA)? Sure, from a numbers standpoint, it was a struggle in the beginning. But I think that we put together good rosters. There was a quality product on the ice," Metropolitan captain Madison Packer said in a preseason media availability. "You'll see more of that this season. The rosters are, top to bottom, very talented. Regardless of who you're playing against, you're competing for a trophy."

What's the plan in Lake Placid?

In 2019-20, the NWHL schedule spanned 24 games and featured travel from city to city, which we might call sports' old normal. This season is starting months later than expected and won't run nearly as long, but the mere fact it's proceeding, even in an altered form, is a silver lining. Consider Lake Placid the league's attempt to make the best of uniquely tough circumstances.

Teams that have been practicing together since October finally traveled to New York late this week to get the season going. Since NWHLers aren't paid a living wage - a sticking point of the PWHPA's - players had to take time off their day jobs to stay for two weeks in the bubble. There, they'll undergo regular coronavirus testing facilitated by Yale University.

The regular-season schedule is balanced and compact, featuring in the span of eight days one matchup between every set of NWHL opponents. The entire tournament will be held at Herb Brooks Arena, but unlike the NHL playoffs - when games that ran as long as five overtime periods delayed or postponed the rest of the day's slate - ties are to be broken via five-minute extra frames and shootouts.

Once the regular season settles seeding, each team will play two additional games to finalize the standings and semifinal pairings. NBCSN has arranged to broadcast the semis on Feb. 4 and the final the next night. Those will be the first women's pro - rather than international - games shown live on major U.S. cable TV; league commissioner Tyler Tumminia has hailed the breakthrough as "monumental for the visibility of the NWHL."

"As we have seen with the WNBA and (National Women's Soccer League in 2020), when women's major league sports leagues are given a strong showcase, viewership is increased and countless new fans connect with the teams and players," Tumminia said in the press release that announced the NBCSN telecasts.

Every game ahead of the semifinals will stream live on Twitch, and the NWHL has hired a 10-woman officiating crew to referee the action. Taking after the NFL and MLB's 2020 crowds, cutouts of prominent athletes will populate the stands in support of each market: David Pastrnak and some Bruins teammates for Boston, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and fellow Blue Jays for Toronto, and so on.

Can anyone beat Boston?

The Pride were the class of the NWHL in 2019-20, though the pandemic scrubbed their scheduled Isobel Cup showdown with the Whitecaps. Boston went 23-1-0 and posted a plus-77 goal differential last season; one 4-3 loss to Minnesota is all that stunted its shot at perfection.

Boston's ownership group is headed by Miles Arnone, the managing partner of a local private equity firm, and the Pride's head coach is retired NHL defenseman Paul Mara. Despite losing U.S. Olympians Gigi Marvin and Haley Skarupa to the PWHPA a couple of years ago, Boston's lineup remains laden with NWHL stars, including last season's top goaltender (Lovisa Selander), defender of the year (Kaleigh Fratkin), and scoring champion and co-MVP (captain Jillian Dempsey).

Led by Dempsey's 17 goals and 40 points in 24 games, eight Boston players were among the NWHL's top 16 scorers in 2019-20. Seven of them are back to guide the Pride in the bubble, as are Selander - who recorded a .941 save percentage in 18 appearances last season - and capable backup netminder Victoria Hanson. If the NWHL has a Tampa Bay Lightning comparable, Boston is it.

"It's one of those things out of our control: We didn't win the Isobel Cup last year, so that's what we're striving for this year," Mara told reporters this week. "We have an invigorated, intense attitude going up to Lake Placid. We're looking forward to getting started. We've had four months of practice and playing against each other, and I think we're all eager for 4 o'clock on Saturday to play Minnesota."

How will Toronto's debut go?

Toronto's team name is an admiring take on the nickname that Drake once coined for his home city. The Six's president and bench boss, Digit Murphy, is a towering figure in the game with vast coaching experience in the NCAA and CWHL. Their latest major acquisition, forward Emily Fluke, was the lone high scorer who left the Pride this offseason. Since the schedule is localized in Lake Placid, this club won't play its first true home game until next fall or 2022.

Befitting a franchise that came to life last spring while sports were shut down, Toronto's NWHL expansion season promises to look unusual. Whether the Six have darkhorse or wild-card potential - the capacity to complicate or thwart Boston's push for the title - is a separate matter. Toronto captain Shiann Darkangelo played for the U.S. at the 2016 world championships; she, assistant captain Emma Greco, goaltender Elaine Chuli, and several other established pros departed the PWHPA after one season to headline the Six's first roster.

Minnesota, a longstanding independent team that joined the NWHL in 2018-19, set a high standard for future expansion squads by immediately winning the Isobel Cup, a bar even the Vegas Golden Knights couldn't clear. Seven games in the bubble is a tiny sample, but if Toronto gets hot and embarks on a playoff run, that would constitute a pretty decent debut.

Quick hits

Here's a player or two to watch on each of the NWHL's other teams, plus one off-ice storyline that'll influence the league's trajectory beyond the bubble.

Buffalo: Technically, the Beauts have played in every Isobel Cup final ever held, a streak that endured last March when Boston-Minnesota was canceled. To return to the stage without captain Taylor Accursi, an Ontario police officer who couldn't travel to Lake Placid, Buffalo might need its goalies to dominate. Rookie netminder Carly Jackson, the No. 3 pick in the 2020 draft, posted a .934 save percentage at Maine last season.

Connecticut: The Whale have recorded just seven wins (out of 56 opportunities) over the past three regular seasons, including two in 2019-20, former NHL heavyweight Colton Orr's first campaign as head coach. Yet they actually beat Buffalo and troubled Boston for most of a knockout game in last year's playoffs. In the offseason, Connecticut added Alyssa Wohlfeiler - a point-per-game scorer in limited action for the 2019-20 Pride - to a forward corps that for a while now has sorely lacked offensive punch.

Metropolitan: Packer set career highs in assists (21) and points (34) last season to lead the Riveters in scoring, rank fifth in the league in both categories, and move into second place on the NWHL's all-time points list. (Dempsey is first, with 98 to Packer's 85.) Packer's wife, Anya, is a retired Whale defender who now directs the NWHL Players' Association.

Minnesota: Allie Thunstrom, a former U.S. Olympic speed skating hopeful, shared MVP honors with Dempsey in 2019-20, and deservedly so: no NWHL player ever reached the 20-goal mark until she netted 24 in as many games. Equally dangerous is Thunstrom's All-Star linemate Jonna Curtis, whose 22 assists and 36 points helped power a Whitecaps attack that was almost as prolific as Boston's.

The push for independent ownership: Dani Rylan, the NWHL's founding commissioner, ceded that role to Tumminia in October to focus on securing private ownership for each of the four non-Boston and Toronto teams. No such sale has happened yet, but the hope is that shifting to a decentralized operational model will help every franchise and the league grow and will safeguard their collective post-bubble future.

"You need (owners) who are going to invest in that team, in that market that they want to be successful in, so that they can build those relationships with the fans, with the communities," Murphy, the Six president and coach, told theScore shortly after her team was founded. "That's what it's really going to take to get people to come to the games."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

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