There were nine NHL games on Tuesday night in the NHL, five more on Wednesday and 10 more on Thursday night. After 14 days at the Olympics, the NHL has a lot of catching up to do. It will be difficult to keep up.
In the meantime, from new rules regarding hits to the head, possible new shootout rules and a lawsuit against the former owner of the Phoenix Coyotes, this is just about the busiest March of the decade.
Let’s look a little deeper inside the NHL…
1) On Sunday, the 92-CITI-Sports Machine was in St. Paul, Minn., to watch the suddenly strong Calgary Flames drill the Minnesota Wild 5-2. So what suddenly changed in Calgary?
Simple, as we told you on Sunday, Flames head coach Brent Sutter put Jarome Iginla on a line with Rene Bourque And Matt Stajan and on Sunday, the line combined for 10 points as Iginla had his 10th career hat-trick.
Not bad, for only the second game together and they were pretty darn good on Tuesday night in their third game together. Bourque and Iginla each scored once and added an assist and the Flames won (4-2) a rare one in Detroit.
2) If there was one team that would frighten me if I were the San Jose Sharks or Chicago Blackhawks, it would be the Detroit Red Wings.
The Wings have been banged up all season long. For months, they had at least three of their best players out of the lineup. They were half a hockey team for much of the season. But now they’re healthy, the playoffs are beckoning and if Jimmy Howard gets the job done, the Wings could be the sleeper of the playoffs.
But first, they have to play better than they did against Calgary on Tuesday night.
3) This weekend while I was in St. Paul, a number of hockey experts watched the newly formed Iginla-Stajan-Bourque line and wondered aloud which line was the best in the game today.
A couple suggested Alexander Ovechkin-Alexander Semin and anyone on the other side, but the consensus seemed to be that the best line in the NHL was New Jersey’s No. 1 line of Zach Parise, Jamie Langenbrunner and Winnipeg’s own Travis Zajac.
If nothing else, it’s one of the few lines in the NHL that has been together for most of the season and it provide salmost all of New Jersey’s scoring.