Jake DeBrusk’s starring role at the Winter Classic has proved costly, with the Boston Bruins putting the forward on long-term injured reserve Thursday. The team announced that DeBrusk suffered hand and lower-body injuries in the 2-1 win over the Penguins at Fenway Park on Monday. He scored both of Boston’s goals in the third period, including the game winner with […]

Greg Wyshynski is ESPN’s senior NHL writer. The NHL season is nearing its midpoint, which means teams separating out into the hopeful and the hopeless. Here are the Stanley Cup Hope Tiers as they are currently constituted. The projected points and playoff probabilities are through Monday’s games and provided by FiveThirtyEight. The Stanley Cup champion probabilities are via Money Puck. […]

Time to go play outside. The NHL Winter Classic on Monday features the Pittsburgh Penguins against the Boston Bruins at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. This is the NHL’s second time playing in front of the Green Monster, the first coming in 2010. Since the Winter Classic began in 2008, the game has been played at a […]

Before the final 2022 stroke of midnight, the Avalanche finally yanked a starting goaltender. Not out of situational necessity or injury precaution; it was a performance-based change. Jared Bednar pulled starter Alexandar Georgiev late in the second period Saturday after Georgiev allowed a fifth Toronto goal in an eventual 6-2 Avalanche loss. Hard as it is to believe this was […]

The Colorado Avalanche have activated star center Nathan MacKinnon off injured reserve ahead of Saturday’s game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. MacKinnon has not played since Dec. 5 because of an upper-body injury that forced him out of a loss to the Philadelphia Flyers. He was placed on IR the following day. The Avalanche said at the time that MacKinnon […]

To make up for their three upcoming off days, the Avs’ holiday gift to fans is extra hockey on a near-nightly basis. Stretched to overtime for the second consecutive game and fourth in the last seven, the Avalanche ended a five-game homestand with a 2-1 win over the Canadiens on Wednesday night. Artturi Lehkonen scored a third-period, game-tying goal in […]

All the Avs want for the holidays is Nathan MacKinnon back in the lineup. Their wish probably won’t come true at least until the new year. So how does coach Jared Bednar formulate an interim top-forward line? The initial solution after MacKinnon’s upper-body injury in Philadelphia was to move right winger Mikko Rantanen to center. That experiment lasted five games, […]

Coach Jerry York quickly learned to take cover from Alex Newhook’s shenanigans. Then a freshman in York’s Boston College program, Newhook always liked to douse himself with water before his hockey games, but now the ritual was expanding. Newhook gathered water bottles, carried them up and down the bench and splashed every one of his teammates to energize them – […]

The line has blurred between correlation and coincidence, between bad luck and good reason. Colorado’s injury list reached double-digits after star center Nathan MacKinnon went down last weekend in Philadelphia, leaving the 2022-23 Avalanche looking unrecognizable from last season’s Stanley Cup champion roster. It’s enough to make fans scream into the void: Why is this happening? Speaking of the Stanley […]

Two opposing perspectives of a consequential moment in Boston emerged as the Avalanche and Bruins prepared for a rematch. In the first period of Colorado’s 5-1 loss Saturday night at TD Garden, Boston’s Charlie McAvoy dragged Artturi Lehkonen down to the ice during a skirmish in the Bruins’ crease as the play was whistled dead. Lehkonen was reaching over the […]