All hail the Kings: Jeff Carter (77), Drew Doughty (8), Mike Richards (10), Rob Scuderi (7), Dustin Penner and company are winning with confidence and uncommon authority. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

It’s still a good month before the captain of an NHL team hoists the Stanley Cup over his head and a lot can happen between now and then. But on the basis of the first three games in the Conference Championship round, there is no more impressive team at this moment than the Los Angeles Kings.

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Refs seem to have rediscovered the idea that sending a player to the box and leaving his team in a potentially costly penalty-kill is one of the best ways to curb on-ice mayhem. (Mark Goldman/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

Perhaps Wednesday will go down as the day the NHL regained some control over the Stanley Cup playoffs and did it in the most logical manner – having the referees call penalties rather than “let the boys play.”

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By Stu Hackel

After watching too much go too far during the last five days, I think it should be obvious to anyone who has any sense of proportion that the Stanley Cup playoffs are out of control. There have been head-rammings, sucker punches, maulings and ambushes, all of which is apart from the more commonplace vendettas, elbows, crosschecks, spearing, charging, knee-to-knee shots and line brawls that we’ve come to expect each spring.

This isn’t just hard hockey. It is, as one of the sport’s prominent personages called it during the first phone call I got on Monday morning, “a disgrace.”

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Owner Geoff Molson’s command performance at his Thursday press conference should give Canadiens fans some hope, but much needs to be done to restore Montreal’s proud old franchise. (Oliver Jean/Reuters)

By Stu Hackel

The Montreal Canadiens will set a franchise record for most losses this season and could finish last in the Eastern Conference for the first time, so it was expected that GM Pierre Gauthier would be out of a job. The timing is curious, though, with five games left in the regular campaign. But during a season when Gauthier fired an assistant coach minutes before a game, traded a player during a game, and dismissed the head coach on a game day, it is perhaps fitting that the GM himself was relieved of his duties when he was.

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Playoff push: After being tagged as a soft team for failing to respond to an earlier hit in Boston, the Sabres and goalie Ryan Miller have fought back and are overcoming long odds. (Mark Goldman/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

With their victory over the Capitals on Tuesday night, the Buffalo Sabres leapfrogged Washington into eighth place in the Eastern Conference. This event should not be minimized because it is amazingly rare for NHL clubs that have been out of a playoff spot by double digits in February to actually make the playoffs by season’s end. Obviously, this isn’t a fait accompli yet, but the fact that the Sabres were able to make up this much ground has them heading into historic territory.

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By dropping their gloves at the opening face-off, the Devils and Rangers had an ugly start to an otherwise clean game. (Jim McIsaac/ZUMAPRESS.com)

By Stu Hackel

At what point does the NHL and NHLPA decide that moronic spectacles like the “appointment fights” at the opening face-off of the Devils-Rangers game on Monday night are really not good for the game and actually do something about them?

The three simultaneous bouts that commenced at the drop of the puck serve absolutely no purpose other than to brand a major league sport as something less than it is. Yes, it’s Slap Shot. And keep in mind that Slap Shot was about mid-level minor league hockey, the fictitious Federal League based on the old, real-life Eastern League where the quality of play and the players weren’t good enough to sustain interest unless there were some cheap thrills thrown in.

Well, cheap thrills are not what the NHL is supposed to be about. But that’s what was served up in the world’s most famous arena on Monday night.

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Players on at least one other NHL team are wondering why Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson treated Rick Nash as he did by revealing the star’s trade request and possibly damaging his reputation as a team leader. ( Bruce Kluckhohn/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Amidst all the deals that were made leading up to the NHL deadline (including the 16 trades and two waiver claims on Monday), the ones that didn’t happen prompted the biggest reaction, causing some to declare the day boring — which it was by some standards.

But it wasn’t boring in Columbus, even though Rick Nash remains a Blue Jacket. The fallout from that will probably put more focus on that franchise than it has ever had, and not for a good reason.

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Not many deadline deals work out as well as the Islanders’ acquisition of forward Butch Goring in 1980. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

It wasn’t always this way, this craziness around the NHL trade deadline, when all the talk turns to who might be headed where and the actual games — yes, the regular season is still going on — seem to take a back seat to all manner of rumors and speculation. Once upon a time, the trade deadline came and went with little fanfare. All that changed on March 13, 1980, thanks to Islanders GM Bill Torrey when he acquired Butch Goring, the final piece in what became a great dynasty.

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Will there come a time when people look back and wonder why more wasn’t done to stop concussions? (Chaz Palla/AP)

By Stu Hackel

It was another bad week for concussions in the NHL. Sidney Crosby, who many hoped would be back in the Penguins’ lineup by now, is still unable to practice. Unsure of his return, he sought help from a specialist in Atlanta and is seeing another in California. Center Danny Briere was concussed in Saturday’s game against the Devils. He’s the sixth Flyer to suffer that injury this season.  Teammate James van Riemsdyk is still sidelined; Chris Pronger is out for the rest of the season, maybe longer, and his wife Lauren went public with their struggles (video). The Jets’ leading goal scorer, Evander Kane, joined the ranks late last week. The Bruins’ Marc Savard (photo above), whose career is in doubt after repeated concussions, disclosed the problems he’s having with headaches and memory.

When 28 players were concussed in December, we titled our post on the subject  ”An Awful Month for NHL Concussions.” The way Hockey Hall of Famer Ken Dryden sees it, however, it would be a mistake to believe that this epidemic of head injuries is a temporary condition, and that the game will get past it the way one gets over a cold. We’re better off thinking that this painful situation is the way things in the NHL will continue to be.

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Goalies can be like Mama Gump’s box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get — and that’s been very true for the St. Louis Blues with Brian Elliott (left) this season. (Minas Panagiotakis/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

The news from St. Louis that the Blues have rewarded Brian Elliott with a two-year contract extension sparked a few thoughts about goaltending in general and the Blues in particular.

There is no official NHL award for comeback player of the year, and even if there was, Elliott might not actually be a good choice because his earlier incarnation as a goalie for the Ottawa Senators produced only one good season (29-18-4, 2.57 goals-againt average and .909 save percentage with five shutouts in 2009-10) and a few not so good ones. But his work so far this season (15-5-1, 1.68 and .937) has him swimming with the big fish of NHL netminders, namely The Bruins’ Tim Thomas, the Predators’ Pekka Rinne and the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist. (SI.com’s Michael Farber looked at Elliott’s emergence in a recent column.)

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