Last night we saw some teams square up their first-round series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Florida pulled off a stunning 6-3 win in Boston that included a tremendous hot mic moment for ESPN. Gotta love it when the between-the-benches person is trying to do their jobs while the F Bombs are flying back and forth! Edmonton and Dallas were able to even their series as well, while Carolina took a commanding 2-0 lead against the Islanders.
Here’s tonight’s schedule:
- The Seattle Thunderbirds finished off a sweep to advance in the WHL playoffs with another huge 8-2 win. They’re now headed to the Western Conference Final after outscoring Prince George 25-5 in the four-game sweep. How about that for dominant! Nolan Allan had two assists, Kevin Korchinski was held off the scoresheet and Colton Dach had two assists and the goal below for a big three-point night.
- The IceHogs needed OT to win the first game of their playoffs in Rockford last night. Rocco Grimaldi was the hero.
- Happy birthday to Brent Seabrook. His 1,114 regular season games with the Blackhawks ranks fourth in franchise history behind only Stan Mikita, Duncan Keith and Patrick Kane. He and Keith appeared in more than 1,000 games together for the Hawks, and were warriors during the most successful period in franchise history. He gave Jonathan Toews a legendary pep talk, scored the OT GWG that sent Detroit to the Eastern Conference a loser and his “Wakey Wakey” against St. Louis will live forever. Most importantly, his was the first jersey I bought of what became the dynasty team. I’ll always ride with 7. Happy 38th, Brent!
- An interesting note on another platform where NHL teams are engaging their potential consumers and fans — TikTok. The Blackhawks have the most followers — 491,000 — in the NHL. The Leafs are second with 452,200 followers. For the sake of comparison, the average NHL team has 210,488 followers. The Blackhawks receive 9,736 likes per video and can earn almost $500 per sponsored post on TikTok. The Hawks are also the first NHL team to make it 10 million overall likes on TikTok. Impressive work by the social media team in Chicago!
- USA Hockey announced the roster for the upcoming U-18 World Championship. This list is full of players whose names you’ll hear in the draft this summer. But there’s on that caught my eye: Carter Slaggert. Yup, the younger brother of Blackhawks prospect and Notre Dame forward Landon Slaggert — and the reason Landon wanted to return to South Bend for one more season. Their father is an associate head coach at Notre Dame. Love to see it!
- This was kinda wild, and it speaks to how a little point here or there can influence history. Marty Turco was on a podcast in St. Louis earlier this week and talked about an infamous whiff on an empty net that could have impacted the histories in Chicago and Edmonton. What if Patrick Kane ended up on the Oilers instead of the Blackhawks? Yeah, I don’t want to think about that, either.
- Finally, it appears another team is leaving Oakland for Las Vegas. Overnight, news broke the A’s have purchased land in Vegas and plan on building a new stadium. Brett’s got some details.