June 8 — Achievements, Advancing & Avalanche Trivia

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On Tap For Today — Tampa Bay at Carolina; 6:30 pm EDT; NBCSN, TVAS, SN & Vegas at Colorado; 7:00 pm MDT; NBCSN, CBC, TVAS, SN

Monday’s Moon Shots

WELCOME BACK: Minnesota’s Marco Rossi skated for the first time since January, a huge step towards a return from a nasty bout with COVID-19. Meanwhile, New York Islanders captain Anders Lee was spotted on the ice for the first time since suffering an ACL injury on March 11.

GO VOTE!: Three finalists for the NHL’s Willie O’Ree Community Hero Award, which can be voted on by fans through June 11, were announced yesterday. You can learn more about all three nominees — and all-around amazing people — right here.

QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY: The Islanders went 3-for-4 on the power play en route to a 5-4 Game 5 win over the Bruins, this despite getting outshot 44-19. Even so, you really should check out this ridiculous goal scored by Brad Marchand.

HOW SWEEP IT IS: Montreal’s 3-2 Game 4 overtime win was the Habs’ seventh-consecutive win, resulting in a clean sweep of the Jets. It’s the 23rd sweep in Canadiens franchise history, and it came in a series where Montreal never trailed in a game.

Trivia Tuesday

Do You Know Your Colorado Avalanche Trivia? 

  1. What trade deadline pickup scored 17 points for the Avalanche in the 1999 Stanley Cup playoffs? 
    • Ray Bourque
    • Theo Fleury
    • Jason Woolley
    • Eric Lindros

  2. Milan Hejduk, Joe Sakic, Adam Foote, and Gabriel Landeskog have all played more than 600 games for the Avalanche. Who is the other player to do so?
    • Matt Duchene
    • Cody McLeod
    • Alex Tanguay
    • Stephane Yelle

  3. What was the 2013-14 Avalanche social media slogan?
    • #ColdAsIce
    • #TogetherAsOne
    • #SnowbodyLikeUs
    • #WhyNotUs

  4. Joe Sakic holds the NHL record for most playoff overtime goals. How many did he score?
    • 6
    • 8
    • 9
    • 11

  5. Who holds the worst +/- record in Avalanche history, posting a minus-60 in their time with Colorado?
    • Tyson Barrie
    • Fedor Tyutin
    • Matt Duchene
    • David Jones

Answers can be found at the bottom of the email.

Season Awards Seldom Lead to Stanley Cup

Hockey is a team sport — but like any sports league, the NHL understands that celebrating individual achievements helps create stars and highlights the very best that hockey has to offer. Those individual awards might also help throw a bone to fans whose teams fall by the wayside — in spite of certain players’ best efforts. Of course, that doesn’t mean there won’t be at least a bit of an empty feeling when teams are celebrating an individual piece of hardware rather than the Stanley Cup.

This year’s NHL Awards — whose nominees are currently in the midst of being announced — will be handed out during the Stanley Cup Semifinals and Final in lieu of having an actual awards show take place. While it’ll be nice to see deserving players honored after a challenging season, there will undoubtedly be some awkwardness.

Connor McDavid is a clear favorite for the Hart Trophy, although I’m sure he would have readily surrendered his candidacy in favor of not suffering through an embarrassing first round exit at the hands of the Winnipeg Jets. Let’s be honest, fans of his Edmonton Oilers feel the same way.

For as strange as it seems to have a team enjoy first class individual performances all season long and then fall flat in the postseason, it happens surprisingly often. For example, in 2019 a dominant Tampa Bay Lightning team cruised to the Presidents’ Trophy on the back of Hart winner Nikita Kucherov and Vezina Trophy recipient Andrei Vasilevskiy. When the playoffs hit, Tampa was stunned by the Columbus Blue Jackets in a shocking (pardon the pun) four-game sweep.

This trend seems to extend beyond the anecdotal, however. The last Hart winner to also win the Stanley Cup was Martin St. Louis in 2004, a driving force behind the first championship for the Lightning. In that same 17-year time frame, there has also been only one Vezina winner to raise the Cup at season’s end — Boston’s Tim Thomas (2011).

In the coming weeks, there will be individual achievements celebrated — and deservedly so. But forgive the few surviving teams vying for the Cup for being preoccupied. After all, they have bigger fish to fry.

IN MEMORIAM

Please join us in a moment of silence for these recently eliminated teams – gone, but never forgotten. We can’t wait until we meet again (the 2021-22 season, of course!), but for now we’ll take this opportunity to reflect on a their brief — but memorable — playoff run.

Winnipeg Jets
Dates Active: 1/14/21 – 6/7/21
Cause of Death: Lead poisoning
Last Words: Toronto lost three straight to Montreal? That’s gotta hurt

Trivia Answers 

  1. Theo Fleury
  2. Cody McLeod 
  3. #WhyNotUs 
  4. 8 
  5. Matt Duchene

Click here for more Avalanche trivia!