1 – BEST BOLTS: At long last, the NHL came out with its All-Quarter Century Teams for the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday and it’s created some debate! The First Team consists of forwards Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos and Martin St. Louis, defencemen Dan Boyle and Victor Hedman, and goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. The Second Team was made up of forwards Vincent Lecavalier, Brayden Point and Brad Richards, defencemen Pavel Kubina and Ryan McDonagh, and goaltender Ben Bishop. Wait! What about netminder Nikolai Khabibulin, who backstopped the Bolts to the 2004 Stanley Cup championship?
2 – CHUCKY CHEESE: What an honor for winger Matthew Tkachuk. Both the Florida Panthers and Calgary Flames All-Quarter Century Teams were named a few weeks ago and the 27-year old from St. Louis, MO was named to both squads! What a cool, almost quirky, factoid. Sort of like goaltender Roberto Luongo leading TWO franchises in all-time wins (Florida & Vancouver). This season in 46 games for the Panthers, Tkachuk has 15 goals and 29 assists for 44 points including a goal and two assists in Saturday’s 7-2 romp at San Jose. For that, he was named the game’s #1 star.
3 – COMIN’ HOME: The Cats went 2-2 on a four-game west coast road trip last week which included a 5-2 win at Anaheim, a 2-1 loss at LA, the 7-2 triumph at San Jose and a 4-1 loss at Vegas in the finale; a rematch of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final which the Golden Knights won in a five-game series. It’s a busy week for the Panthers at Amerant Bank Arena as they host LA on Wednesday, Connor Bedard and the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday and the New York Islanders on Sunday.
4 – MAC: Former Florida coach Doug MacLean (1995-97) appeared on our weekly Cats N Bolts Podcast and offered this assessment of the 29-19-3 Panthers, who sit in second-place in the NHL’s Atlantic Division. “They’re missing some … Bobrovsky hasn’t been as good, #1,” MacLean stated. “He’s been good but he hasn’t been ‘stand on your head good’, is one thing. And (losing) Brandon Montour and Oliver Ekman-Larsson are big holes on the backend. Sam Bennett not being signed and sitting out there as an unrestricted free agent – I think he got his first goal in 20 games recently. So I think there’s some things that are ‘off’ with them. The holes on the blueline are tough. Aaron Ekblad hasn’t been as good. The blueline, to me, isn’t good enough right now to win the Stanley Cup. They’re still a contending team, they still play really well. I don’t see anybody else besides the Leafs and the Panthers on that side challenging. It’s going to be a war.”
5 – GO BOLTS: Last week in this space we noted that MacLean doesn’t see the Tampa Bay Lightning as being a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. They certainly have been spotty, recently going 1-3 on a four game road trip. However that victory came in Chicago on Friday and Tampa showed flashes of their old selves in that one as they came back from a 3-1 deficit to win 4-3 over the Blackhawks in overtime on Nikita Kucherov’s 23rd of the season in the extra session. However the Hawks turned the tables on Wednesday at Amalie Arena, beating the Lightning 4-1. Connor Bedard scored his 14th of the season for Chicago, which we’ll discuss further below.
6 – PULLING OUT: We’re just a couple weeks away from the NHL’s first-ever Four Nations Faceoff featuring the best teams Canada, USA, Finland and Sweden can put together in a tournament to be played in Montreal and Boston. There was big news on the weekend when Team Canada defenceman Alex Pietrangelo of the Vegas Golden Knights pulled himself from the tournament due to an undisclosed ailment. The timing was curious, since later that night Pietrangelo played 24 minutes in Vegas’s 4-1 victory over the Panthers in Sin City. But hey – if a guy wants to skip the tournament and get healthy, I don’t think he should be flamed.
7 – WHO’S NEXT?: Guys are lining up to take Pietrangelo’s place and have the honor of playing for their country. The list of stellar Canadian righthanded-shooting defencemen is long including Florida’s Aaron Ekblad, LA’s Drew Doughty, Pittsburgh’s Kris Letang, Seattle’s Brandon Montour and Calgary’s MacKenzie Weegar. Weegar, a former Panther who went to the Flames in the Tkachuk trade, said he’s got a Mexican vacation booked for that time period but he’s “ready to cancel at any time.”
8 – THE TRADE: The first major move ahead of the March 7 NHL Trade Deadline was consummated Friday night as Chicago, Carolina and Colorado got together in a massive three-team swap. Martin Necas and Jack Drury landed with the Avalanche, Mikko Rantanen and Taylor Hall went to the Hurricanes, and all the last-place Blackhawks received was a third round pick and 50% of Rantanen’s salary! Hockey pundits quipped that we should check in on Chicago sophomore star Connor Bedard, since he lost one his few remaining “finishers” in Taylor Hall. Meh, Bedard is still dazzling including a highlight reel goal Wednesday at Tampa Bay. Again, the next Face of the NHL (Bedard) makes a swing through Sunrise on Saturday. His Chicago #98 jersey is the NHL’s top-selling sweater this season.
#9 – RANKINGS: There’s still plenty of hockey left to be played (30-plus games per team) but here are our weekly rankings just past the midway point: 1) Washington, 2) Winnipeg, 3) Vegas, 4) Edmonton and 5) Dallas. At the bottom are: 28) Nashville, 29) Anaheim, 30) Buffalo, 31) San Jose and 32) Chicago.
#10 – STAR GAZING: Boston Bruins winger David Pastrnak, Anaheim Ducks centre Mason McTavish and Utah Hockey Club centre Barrett Hayton are the NHL’s three stars of the week. Pastrnak was named the week’s first star after leading the league with eight points (three goals, five assists) in four games. McTavish topped the NHL with five goals in three games last week. Hayton had four goals, including two game-winners, and two assists in four games.
See you at the rink!
(Rod Pedersen covers the NHL for the South Florida Tribune. He also hosts the award-winning Cats N Bolts Podcast and the daily Rod Pedersen Show on Game+TV, YouTube Live & Podcast)
