Tuesday's hockey: MSU's O'Connell named third star; Wings gain ground on Leafs, Lightning
Michigan State freshman Gavin O'Connell was named the Big Ten's Third Star of the Week, leading the conference in goals (3) and points (4) in last weekend's games.
The Plymouth, Minn. native pushed his season totals to 14 goals (tied for ninth, B1G), and 11 assists for 25 points, which is tied for seventh on the first-place Spartans (15-5-2, Big Ten). Michigan State will face second-place Wisconsin (15-6-1, Big Ten) on the road this weekend to decide the conference title.
The 6-foot, 180-pound right-winger ranks third among B1G players in power-play goals (5) and tied for third in game-winners (4), which included the game-winner on the man advantage in the Saturday win over Ohio State last week.
O'Connell's 14 goals is among the most for a first-year player in recent Spartan seasons. Mitchell Lewandowski posted 19 in 2017-18, which is fifth all-time by a first-year player. The freshman goal record of 27 scores is held by current Carolina Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind'Amour.
Tuesday's NHL games
(At) Florida 3, Buffalo 2: Matthew Tkachuk scored a goal and had an assist in his return from injury.
Tkachuk gave Florida a 2-1 lead with a power-play goal with 4:24 to go in the first period and never relinquished it to win for the eighth time in nine games and move into a tie for first place in the Eastern Conference with the idle Boston Bruins. Both teams have 82 points.
Sam Bennett and Brandon Montour also scored for the Panthers while Sergei Bobrovsky made 28 saves. Montour also picked up a pair of assists and has 10 points in his past five games.
Dylan Cozens and Tage Thompson scored for the Sabres while Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen stopped 34 shots.
Pittsburgh 4, (at) Vancouver 3 (OT): Erik Karlsson scored the winning goal at 1:42 of overtime to lift the Penguins over the Canucks for their third consecutive victory.
Rickard Rakell, with two goals, and Lars Eller added the others for Pittsburgh. Tristan Jarry made 32 saves between regulation and overtime.
J.T. Miller, with a goal and an assist, Nils Hoglander and Brock Boeser scored for Vancouver with Tyler Myers grabbing an assist. Thatcher Demko stopped 36 shots.
New Jersey 7, (at) San Jose 2: Nico Hischier had a goal and three assists, Jack Hughes added a goal and two assists and the Devils beat the Sharks.
New Jersey scored seven straight goals after falling behind 1-0 and improved to 16-10-2 on the road. The Devils, who had lost three of four, sit five points back of a playoff spot.
Jesper Bratt, Kevin Bahl, Colin Miller, Brendan Smith and Dawson Mercer also scored for New Jersey. Timo Meier had two assists in his return to San Jose.
Nico Sturm and Justin Bailey scored for San Jose.
(At) Colorado 5, Dallas 1: Andrew Cogliano (Michigan) and Nathan MacKinnon scored 49 seconds apart, Alexandar Georgiev stopped 33 shots and Colorado cruised to a win over Dallas.
MacKinnon also had an assist to give him at least a point in all 29 home games this season. It’s the longest home point streak since Mario Lemieux’s 31-game streak in 1995-96.
Joel Kiviranta, Mikko Rantanen and Artturi Lehkonen also had goals as Colorado scored five straight after falling behind 1-0 just 60 seconds into the game.
It was a big night for Cale Makar, who had an assist on MacKinnon’s goal to become the highest-scoring defenseman in franchise history. His 308th career point broke a tie with Tyson Barrie.
Logan Stankoven scored early and Jake Oettinger made 22 saves for Dallas.
(At) Winnipeg 4, St. Louis 2: Sean Monahan scored a goal and added an assist after missing a game because of an illness to help Winnipeg extend its win streak to four games.
Brenden Dillon, Kyle Connor (Michigan) and Alex Iafallo also scored for the Jets, which has won seven of their last eight. Josh Morrissey and Nikolaj Ehlers each contributed two assists and Laurent Brossoit made 36 saves.
Pavel Buchnevich and Brandon Saad scored for the Blues, who are 2-4-0 in their past six games. St. Louis goalie Joel Hofer made his first start in his hometown and stopped 28 shots.
Vegas 6, (at) Toronto 2: Jonathan Marchessault had two goals and an assist, William Karlsson had a goal and an assist, and Vegas snapped Toronto’s seven-game winning streak.
Ivan Barbashev and Mason Morelli scored just over three minutes apart in the second period to build a 2-0 lead for Vegas, which got 28 saves from Adin Hill. Nicolas Roy added a late goal and Shea Theodore had three assists.
Tyler Bertuzzi and Ryan Reaves scored for Toronto and Ilya Samsonov stopped 26 shots.
Carolina 3, (at) Minnesota 2: Stefan Noesen scored a goal with his face midway through the third period and Carolina rallied to beat Minnesota.
Jordan Staal had a goal and assist and Andrei Svechnikov also scored for the Hurricanes, which won for the first time in three games and improved to 10-1-2 in their last 13 road games.
Connor Dewar and Jonas Brodin scored for Minnesota, which lost in regulation for just the second time in 10 games since the All-Star break. Ryan Hartman assisted on both goals and Gustavsson stopped 25 shots.
Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov made 28 saves and has allowed just 13 goals in eight games played this month.
(At) Philadelphia 6, Tampa Bay 2: Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink each scored as Philadelphia defeated Tampa Bay after a power outage led to a nine-minute delay in the first period.
The Flyers also got goals from three defensemen, Travis Sanheim, Sean Walker, and an empty-netter from Cam York in the third period. Noah Cates also added an empty-netter and goalie Samuel Ersson made 21 saves to earn the win, just the second in the last six games for Philadelphia.
Nicholas Paul and Steven Stamkos each scored for the Lightning, who had their four-game road winning streak snapped. Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 23 shots. Nikita Kucherov picked up an assist on Stamkos’ goal, adding to his league-leading point total. Kucherov has 103 points in 60 games.
With the Flyers leading 1-0 and 13:43 remaining in the first period, a section of the building lost power and the game was stopped. The emergency lighting remained on and the teams resumed play after the delay.
(At) Calgary 4, L.A. Kings 2: Yegor Sharangovich scored the go-ahead goal at 12:09 of the third period as Calgary earned its fourth straight win.
Andrew Mangiapane, Blake Coleman and Mikael Backlund, into an empty net, also scored for Calgary, while Chris Tanev chipped in a pair of assists. The Flames remain five points back of Nashville for the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
Jacob Markstrom had 21 stops and an assist.
Phillip Danault and Kevin Fiala provided the offense for Los Angeles, which has dropped the first two of its three-game Western Canada road trip. The Kings are tied in points with Nashville, but hold down the first wild-card spot having two games in hand.
Making his first start in four games, former Flame Cam Talbot had 33 saves for the Kings.
(At) Nashville 4, Ottawa 1: Roman Josi had two goals and an assist as Nashville extended its winning streak to six games with a victory over Ottawa.
Gustav Nyquist had a goal and two assists, Michael McCarron also scored and Juuse Saros made 24 saves for the Predators. Nashville returned from a road swing in which it won all five games, the first time in franchise history it's gone 5-for-5 away from home.
Drake Batherson scored and Joonas Korpisalo made 32 saves for Ottawa, which failed to record a shot on goal in the third period and lost for the second straight night after falling 6-3 at Washington on Monday.
(At) Montreal 4, Arizona 2: Sam Montembeault made 36 saves to help Montreal snap their five-game losing streak with a victory over Arizona.
Joel Armia, Jordan Harris, Tanner Pearson and Nick Suzuki, with an empty-net goal, scored for Montreal.
Alex Kerfoot and Nick Bjugstad scored for Arizona.
Connor Ingram made 17 saves as Arizona’s losing streak was extended to 13 games.
Playoff tracker
Atlantic
▶ Bruins (82)
▶ Panthers (82)
▶ Maple Leafs (74)
Metropolitan
▶ Rangers (81)
▶ Hurricanes (76)
▶ Flyers (69)
Wild card
▶ Red Wings (72)
▶ Lightning (69)
(Top two wild-card teams make the playoffs)
▶ Devils (64)
▶ Capitals (63)
▶ Islanders (62)
▶ Sabres (58)
Fighting down but alive and well in the NHL
Minnesota's Marcus Foligno took a hit, delivered one of his own to Chicago's Jarred Tinordi, and the two big guys dropped the gloves. Outdoors in front of 82,000 people in the Meadowlands, it took even less for Matt Rempe and Matt Martin to spice up the Rangers-Islanders showdown with a fight.
When Morgan Rielly cross-checked Ridly Greig for firing a slap shot into an empty net? Some pushing and shoving. Nothing more.
“How there wasn’t a brawl there, I don’t know how everyone didn’t start fighting,” wondered Todd Simpson, a 50-year-old retired player who piled up more than 1,300 penalty minutes in 580 NHL games. “That should’ve been a big fight."
All of these situations were over the past month alone, riveting reminders that fighting is alive and well in the NHL even if it is diminished in many ways. It has been 20 years since Simpson and his Ottawa teammates got into a fight fest at Philadelphia, a game that still holds the NHL record with an astounding 419 penalty minutes. Of 40 players who suited up, 23 got at least two minutes of penalty time. Many got far more.
Those kinds of massive clashes are long gone, faded like the cheap shots and blood in “Slap Shot.” Like the beloved movie, however, fighting is warmly remembered, even desired, by many fans of the game and cheering on the brawls remains common. Those fans need not worry: Even in the NHL, which has fewer and fewer spots for goons these days, fighting is rare but certainly not gone, with a fight coming roughly every four or five games across the league.
Many see a permanent place for it in a sport that values standing up for teammates, even as they have watched some of the biggest fighters left shells of themselves by repeated blows to the head.
“It doesn't happen often, but you still have to have it,” said Vancouver Canucks coach Rick Tocchet, whose 237 career fights rank 21st all-time. “When I played, you could really use as intimidation. You can still use it a little bit today but not as much. The staged fighting and all that stuff, that doesn’t work anymore. But there is a time and place for it.”
Don't expect fighting ban
The NHL does not publicly list penalties by type, including fighting and other major infractions. According to HockeyFights.com, there have been 219 fights this season through Monday with 63 more projected before the playoffs begin for a total of 282, which would be a sharp drop from the 789 in 2003-04. That is a 200% decrease over 20 years and significantly down from 645 as recently as 2010-11.
Rule changes are part of the reason. The institution of the salary cap in 2005 made it more difficult for a team to pay a player whose skills were limited to throwing punches and protecting stars. In 2013, it became illegal to take a helmet off to fight and mandatory visors were grandfathered in.
“It’s obviously evolved a lot where guys like myself back in the day no longer exist – one-dimensional fighters no longer exist,” said Riley Cote, who fought 50 times in 156 games with Philadelphia from 2007-10 and countless other times in the minor leagues. “It’s been a natural progression. … I’m not sure at the NHL level they’ll ever fully phase it out, but they’re doing a pretty good job of trying.”
No one expects a fighting ban, like the ejection and suspension policies that exist in college and internationally. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has said the fighting helps keep tensions from boiling over.
“Fighting, in the spontaneous sense, tends to act as a bit of a thermostat when things happen in the course of the game," Bettman said in 2013. Discussing a fight between Jarome Iginla and Vincent Lecavalier, Bettman said, "I’d rather them be punching each other than swinging sticks at each other.”
Will fighting survive?
A 2011 surveyby the NHL Players' Association and CBC found that 98% of players at that time didn't support the total elimination of fighting. A vast majority of those players are now out of the league, replaced by a generation that has made hockey faster and more skilled than ever – but still willing to drop the gloves on occasion and wanting that option.
“It always needs to be in the game,” said St. Louis Blues captain Brayden Schenn, who has fought twice this season but never more than four times a year as a professional. “You need guys to police it themselves, and if you’re going to run around and make a big hit, you’ve got to know that sometimes you’re going to have to deal with the consequences."
That is certainly the opinion of Steve Oleksy, who HockeyFights.com credits with 107 bouts at various levels, including the NHL. He is 38 and retired and, after at least a couple of concussions and other wear and tear, is sometimes irritated in noisy places. Long drives and playing recreational sports is hard on his hands, which delivered hundreds of punches over the years.
He believes fighting will be virtually extinct a decade from now.
“I think it declines exponentially, but I also think the definition of a fight has changed so much,” Oleksy said. “The number of actual punches, actual fights – what we would deem a fight back in the day – I just don’t think that’s there, either. And I think with that comes the rise in incidents like the cross-checking incident, slashing, two-handers, things like that.”
Oleksy and many others point to junior hockey and even younger levels of hockey banning or at least discouraging and not teaching fighting as a bellwether for where things are going: Fewer players knowing how to, or being willing to, fight.
Fighting's legacy
Like many sports, hockey is facing the fallout from decades of its players suffering concussions and other traumatic brain injuries when safety wasn't the top priority it is now.
Patrick Sharp, who fought a handful of times as a player and is now in the Flyers' front office, said he cringes when he sees a player's helmet come off taking a heavy punch or banging their head on the ice. It's what happened to George Parros during a fight in 2013 that left him unconscious after falling face first.
The deaths of old-school enforcers like Derek Boogaard and Bob Probert, who were posthumously found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, has changed some minds when it comes to glorifying fighting the way it used to be. Oleksy contends that heavyweights of that vintage are no longer in the game and the risk of serious injury is much less now.
Dan Gallant, who has run HockeyFights.com since 2016, understands the business aspects of the decline of fighting and believes it to be cyclical. Now, general managers are looking for the next Milan Lucic or Tom Wilson – the big guy who can play hockey first but also can drop the gloves.
“The types of players that teams are going out and looking for to create that championship team have just kind of evolved,” Gallant said, confident fighting will never totally disappear. “Who knows what tomorrow might bring, but I do believe that the players that played the game before, being in the game now and the players that are currently here will make sure that fighting does stay in some form or fashion.”
Michigan-area hockey this week
Tuesday
▶ Red Wings 8, Capitals 3
Wednesday
▶ Iowa at Grand Rapids, 7 (AHL/106.9/1300)
Thursday
▶ N.Y. Islanders at Red Wings, 7 (BSD/97.1)
Friday
▶ Iowa at Grand Rapids, 7 (AHL/106.9/1300)
▶ Michigan State at Wisconsin, 8 (Big Ten+/1240)
▶ Michigan at Minnesota, 7:30 (Big Ten)
▶ Western Michigan at North Dakota, 8
▶ St. Thomas at Michigan Tech, 7
▶ Bowling Green at Northern Michigan, 7
▶ Ferris State at Lake Superior State, 7
▶ Waterloo at NTDP U18s, 7
▶ NTDP U17s at Cedar Rapids, 8
Saturday
▶ Florida at Red Wings, 3 (ABC/97.1)
▶ Rockford at Grand Rapids, 7 (AHL/106.9/1300)
▶ Michigan State at Wisconsin, 8 (Big Ten+/730)
▶ Michigan at Minnesota, 7:30 (Big Ten)
▶ Western Michigan at North Dakota, 7
▶ St. Thomas at Michigan Tech, 6
▶ Bowling Green at Northern Michigan, 6
▶ Madison at NTDP U18s, 7
▶ NTDP U17s at Cedar Rapids, 8