Tampa Bay Lightning sniper Steven Stamkos has called upon his fellow players to be more responsible about making dangerous head contact, whether it is deliberate or not. (Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE)

By Stu Hackel

The NHL’s first preseason games will be played next Monday, just a few days after training camps open, and because preseason play tends to feature some aggression as hopefuls try to catch their coaches’ eyes, we may begin to quickly see the effects of the strengthened Rule 48. That’s the rule that last season prohibited blindside and lateral hits to the head and now applies to most — but not all — other hits that intentionally target the noggin.

Judging by some recent comments from NHL players, these rules and their enforcement will continue to be a hot topic, and sentiment is growing to make them stronger and more consistent.

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Fighting is just one form of neurologically dangerous behavior the NHL allows. (Bill Greenblatt-UPI/Landov)

By Stu Hackel

Will the recent class action suit by former NFL players – who allege that their league trained players to hit with their heads, failed to properly treat them for concussions and tried to conceal for decades any links between football and brain injuries — have an impact on the National Hockey League? One player agent thinks so.

Massachusetts-based Kent Hughes, whose NHL clients include Patrice Bergeron, Peter Mueller and Matthew Lombardi, who have suffered severe concussions, told Mathias Brunet of La Presse that the lawsuit “opens up a can of worms” for the NHL. “I feel that the NHL will closely monitor what happens in the NFL,” said Hughes.

A big part of that can of worms has to do with fighting in the NHL.
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Though it contains some glaring omissions, the ”Boston Bruins Stanley Cup 2011 Champions” video is will please devoted fans with its account of the team’s historic run to the title. (Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated)

By Stu Hackel

The ice has melted, the scruffy beards are gone and now, in the radiating heat of mid-July — one month after the Bruins won the Stanley Cup — the official NHL highlights video gets its premier in Boston on Monday and in New York on Tuesday. It’s a good, not great video, unless you’re a Bruins fan in which case you will forgive its shortcomings — including omitting some of the B’s more rugged play — due to the happy ending and the inside look at your heroes. For Bruins fans everywhere, this will be a must-have addition to their hockey collection.
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Given the rugged nature of the position, a defenseman hasn’t won the Lady Byng Trophy (gentlemanly play) since 1954, but Nicklas Lidstrom of the Red Wings truly deserves it. (Robin Alam/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

The NHL hands out its regular season awards on Wednesday evening in Las Vegas, a venue that just oozes hockey history and tradition. Actually, the “nominees-winner” Academy Awards-style format is as artificial as Vegas glitz because the “nominees” are not nominees at all but actually the top three vote-getters from the April balloting (here’s who SI.com’s Michael Farber chose) after the votes are tabulated. So the winner has already been determined when the nominees are announced. This format transforms the known into the suspenseful, so maybe Vegas is the right venue after all.
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Coach Claude Julien took lots of heat as he patiently guided his team on its long, hard road to the title. (Andy Clark/Reuters)

By Stu Hackel

When the 2010-11 season was around a dozen weeks old, the Bruins went into a brief tailspin and some fans, bloggers and media types felt that coach Claude Julien was the wrong guy to run this team. Too defensive-oriented, they charged, Too predictable. Unwilling to shake up his team or mix up his lines…

Unfazed, Julien stuck with his plan and the Bruins finished atop the Northeast Division. When the playoffs began, the Boston media speculated that he’d have to win at least two rounds or he’d be gone, especially coming off the Bruins’ historic playoff collapse against Philadelphia the previous spring after having led the series 3-0. And when the B’s went down 2-0 to Montreal in the opening round, the gravediggers went reaching for their shovels.

This morning, Claude Julien is the coach of the Stanley Cup champions, something he greatly deserves. Which only goes to prove that what is said or written in the media and among fans has — or should have — little to zero impact upon what happens when the puck drops.

You often hear players and coaches in the playoffs talk about tuning out all outside distractions and focusing on their tasks. Julien had to do that all year. “As a coach you’re going to be subject to criticism, but the most important thing is what’s going on inside that dressing room,” he remarked from the postgame podium (video) after Game 7 against Vancouver, his five-year-old daughter sitting next to him, a Stanley Cup Champions t-shirt in his hand. “There wasn’t a guy that didn’t believe in what we were doing. So it’s easy to stay the course, and you got to stay the course. Today you’re rewarded for it.”
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A matter of mind: Keep an eye on goaltender Roberto Luongo and how he and the Canucks react if the Bruins score a goal, especially if they light the lamp early in the game. (Kathleen Hinkel/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

It’s Game 7 tonight, one last contest for the silver bowl named for Fredrick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston, the 16th Earl of Derby KG, GCB, GCVO, PC. Yes, that was his official title when, as Governor-General of Canada, he donated the trophy as a challenge cup for the country’s top amateur hockey team in 1882. The Stanley Cup is now the most famous and storied trophy competed for by professional athletes in North America. Players on both the Bruins and Canucks, regardless of their country of origin, have played their entire lives for a chance to have their name engraved on it.

That includes Tim Thomas, the Bruins goaltender from the hard-bitten industrial town of Flint, Michigan, who has distinguished himself above all others this spring. “When we’re in the garage or driveway playing as a kid and you’re fantasizing,” Thomas said on Tuesday, “well, I was Stevie Yzerman, which doesn’t make sense for a goalie, but you’re saying to yourself, Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, you’re not saying Game 6, you know? So this is really, you know, what every kid dreams about.”

Dreams are important and no one achieves greatness without them. But it will be transforming those dreams into desire and then execution that will likely carry the evening in Vancouver. The team that plays better and tries harder should be the one that skates with the Cup. Of course, as we’ve seen all spring, anything can happen in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and we fully expect one final bizarre chapter will be written in the story of this year’s very bizarre tournament.
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As the stakes, tension and desperation rise, the feisty, physical play of Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas could ignite more nastiness in a Cup final that has been blemished by it. (Greg M. Cooper/US Presswire)

By Stu Hackel

This dramatic, nasty and sometimes ugly Stanley Cup Final resumes tonight in Vancouver and the stakes are obvious for both the Canucks and Bruins. If the home team loses, it faces the prospect of traveling back to Boston with the B’s having a chance to win the Stanley Cup on home ice, where they crushed the Canucks in two straight games. If the visitors lose, it will halt their mighty momentum and put the Canucks on the verge of the championship.

We ventured a few thoughts on how the series has progressed over the first four games yesterday (If you missed that, here’s the link so you can catch up.) and while the series is tied 2-2, it feels more like a 2-0 lead for the Bruins, who sail into Vancouver with the wind at their backs. Whether the Canucks can dig deep and raise the level of their play to match and overcome what the B’s threw at them in Games 3 and 4 is the overriding question for everything that will happen tonight.
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It’s always hard to know how the NHL’s supplementary discipline czars will react to incidents like Nathan Horton’s season-ending concussion in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final. (Brian Snyder/Reuters photos)

By Stu Hackel

We’re thinking about Nathan Horton this morning and hope the words we hear about his condition allay the fears caused by the sight of him staring blankly at the ceiling, arm extended upward, and eventually writhing at center ice during the first period of Game 3 in Boston.

After a morning hearing, Mike Murphy of the NHL will rule today on the hit by Canucks defenseman Aaron Rome that sent the Bruins winger to Massachusetts General Hospital. It certainly deserves a suspension. It was clearly a late hit, well after Horton passed the puck, and Rome was given an interference major and a game misconduct. That his hit resulted in a serious injury should be enough to keep Rome in street clothes for at least Game 4.

But — as we’ve seen repeatedly this season — you never know.

[UPDATE - Rome was given a four game suspension by the NHL. Yep, you never know.]
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The Bruins won’t last long if goalie Tim Thomas has to keep bailing them out. (Kathleen Hinkel/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

The Stanley Cup Final moves to Boston tonight for Game 3 and the Bruins must win, as NBC/SI analyst Pierre McGuire explains in this SI.com video. In fact, the Bruins pretty much have to take the next two games at home or the series will return to Vancouver with the Canucks having a chance to win the Cup on home ice in Game 5. But the B’s can’t think about two wins just yet. “One at a time” has to be their mantra.

The Bruins have been accentuating the positive despite their 2-0 deficit. They speak about their resiliency, the fact that they’ve rallied from being down two before, and how they were in both games right up to the very end. All that is true, and with a few bounces, we could be at 1-1 or even 2-0 the other way. But Vancouver has been the better, more consistent team so far and had it not been for Tim Thomas, these games might not have been so close.
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Mark Recchi has been a major part of the Bruins’ power play struggles. (Brian Babineau/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Like Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon, in which four people describe a crime in four very different ways, Game 1 of the Canucks-Bruins Stanley Cup Final evoked very different reactions. Some found it boring, lacking flow and intensity and overmanaged by the referees who called too many penalties. Others found it a rousing opener that provided one late game-winning goal, a number of big hits, spectacular saves, a few angry scrums and something for the world to nibble on as we head for Game 2.
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