It’s a snowy, end-of-a-holiday-weekend Sunday in Chicago which means what better way to spend your afternoon than watching the Blackhawks and Blues? The puck drops shortly after 1 PM CT today. Jason Dickinson is one of the hottest players in the entire NHL right now; he’s scored a goal in four consecutive periods! His game against Toronto on Friday afternoon was magnificent, and the win made it feel so much more significant.
Of course it’s nice with the Bears playing on Monday night football that the NHL could schedule the Blackhawks for another afternoon game on this holiday weekend.
Yesterday was somewhat confusing for a lot of Blackhawks fans. General manager Kyle Davidson spoke with the media for the first time in a while and kinda-sorta addressed the Corey Perry situation. Then Perry’s agent released a statement about an hour later that kinda-sorta gave a little bit of better clarity, if only to make the entire day’s talk about the situation less clear. Here’s what we know at this point: Perry is dealing with a personal matter and is away from the team. I’m going to let that be until someone wants to give us anything more specific, because I really don’t need to know what’s going on in players’ personal lives.
Patrick Kane has been all over the rumors lately. Elliotte Friedman addressed both the Perry situation and Kane last night on “Hockey Night in Canada.” The most prominent team being linked to Kane has been the Florida Panthers, but there are still whispers about Detroit, Buffalo, Dallas, Colorado and others keeping their phones charged just in case. We’ll see where he’s headed when he makes that decision.
Gavin Hayes had himself a Saturday night. He scored twice in a big win for Flint. Hayes, who has been in and out of the conversation surrounding the US roster for the upcoming World Junior Championship (depending on where/who you’re reading), has now scored 17 goals in 21 games this season; he’s tied for with those 17 markers.
Aidan Thompson scored once and added an assist while winning 6 of 11 faceoffs last night as DU beat Yale 9-0. It was great to see Thompson get back on the score sheet; he hadn’t scored since the season’s first game all the way back on Oct. 7. He now has a point in four of DU’s last five games and has six points over that stretch.
After placing defenseman on Saturday morning, the Islanders grabbed a cheap replacement off waivers: Mike Reilly. Reilly had only appeared in two games for the Florida Panthers thus far this season. The timing of him going on waivers was interesting when you think about them maybe needing a roster spot for a certain right wing we mentioned earlier…
Jacob Trouba was fined $5,000 last night for what appeared to be a lumberjack hack on Trent Frederic. The first angle of the hack (in the second half of the tweet below) looked like Trouba — whose name probably autopopulates on the phones of the folks in the NHL’s Dept. of Player Safety after two letters — went full Paul Bunyan. BUt the second angle from above doesn’t look nearly as intentional. Either way, Frederic took a stick to the face pretty hard and I’m still disappoint this didn’t warrant at least one game for Trouba to collect his thoughts.
Finally, it’s firing and hiring season in college football. We’ll see if any of the names being moved off campus have interest in NFL jobs this winter, but the guys handling the football side of the BN house are doing a great job of keeping you on top of what’s relevant.
