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Playoff Special 2024
The Hockey News has been providing the most comprehensive coverage of the world of hockey since 1947. In each issue, you'll find news, features and opinions about the NHL and leagues across North America and the world.
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> Top Prospects
DRAKK ON TRACK
THE BAIE-COMEAU DRAKKARled the QMJHL in wins and points for much of the current campaign. But as readily as they’ve picked up those victories, they’ve been just as adept at racking up points for determination and inspiration as the 2024 playoffs loom ahead. Baie-Comeau was considered a team on the rise this year. Following the Drakkar’s heartbreaking – and controversial – Game 7 overtime loss to the Moncton Wildcats in the first round last season, the belief was this group would take the next step toward the upper echelons of the QMJHL standings. But the team has bounded past everyone’s expectations – even their own coach’s. “We knew we’d have a competitive team at the beginning of the season, but this is more than what we were expecting…we’ll take it,” said…
FUEL FOR THE FIRE
THE SPORT OF HOCKEY isn’t always fair. For Shane Wright, much of the past four years hasn’t quite gone according to plan. Wright’s journey from can’t-miss prospect to rising pro paying his dues has been chock-full of drama. The turmoil started when the COVID pandemic scrapped what would’ve been his sophomore OHL campaign in 2020-21. Then, at the 2022 NHL draft, he slipped down the board to be taken fourth overall despite being – in the eyes of many scouts and pundits – the runaway No. 1 choice in the months and years leading up to July 2022. Since Seattle took Wright with that No. 4 pick, he’s banked fewer than a dozen NHL games despite once seeming a lock to be a full-time NHLer at 18. But pressure makes diamonds,…
WINTER HEATWAVE
LOOK AROUND THE JUNIOR hockey world and you’ll often see teams go through cycles. After bottoming out, they groom and develop their top draft picks. Then, as they get close to competing for a championship, they push their chips in by dealing picks and prospects for established players who they hope will get them to the top of the mountain. Under current coach-GM Mike Johnston, the Portland Winterhawks have employed a more even-keeled approach. On Feb. 17, the Winterhawks clinched a playoff spot for the 13th consecutive season, a streak stretching back to Johnston’s second year with the team in 2009-10. The Winterhawks rely on their scouting staff to identify promising young talent, and then the club sticks with those youngsters. “We take a lot of pride in making the fewest trades…
> oral histories
> Between the Pipes
NOT SO FAST
IT WAS SHORTLY AFTER the Winnipeg Jets had lost in the first round to the eventual Stanley Cup-champion Vegas Golden Knights when coach Rick Bowness started calling the players asking for their summer wish list. The answer he got back was universal. The players didn’t necessarily want a high-scoring winger. Or a puck-moving defenseman. No one asked for more grit or more skill or even more experience. Instead, they asked for loyalty. “Everyone told us, ‘We just want players here that want to be Winnipeg Jets,’” Bowness said. And with that request, Pierre-Luc Dubois was shipped to Los Angeles for a package that included Gabe Vilardi, Alex Iafallo and Rasmus Kupari. A few days later, former captain Blake Wheeler – who had the ‘C’ removed from his jersey a year earlier – was bought…
‘GOALERS’ ARE KEY
ALTHOUGH THERE ARE ANY number of factors which enter into making a team that will be successful in the playoffs, the one that looms as the most essential is the ability of one team to keep the other off the scoreboard. In most playoff series, it is the team with the tightest defense or the hottest goaltender that emerges the victor. What about last year, you ask? Yvan Cournoyer won the Conn Smythe Trophy and was the guy that led the Canadiens to their victory. There is no way that anything can be taken away from Cournoyer’s performance, but it was goaltending that got his Montreal Canadiens into the final in the first place. It was also the inspired play of Tony Esposito that enabled the Chicago Black Hawks to defeat an aroused New…
‘DEM’ AND CO.
WHILE HE STILL HAS a decade-plus of high-level hockey to go, it seems unjust that we’ve only seen a glimpse of what Thatcher Demko can do in the playoffs so far. For the record, it’s not the 28-year-old’s fault that his Vancouver Canucks have failed to make the post-season for most of his NHL tenure, but they’ve certainly rectified that this year as one of the league’s best teams. And their turnaround means we’ll get to see Demko play meaningful games again this spring. The first and only time Demko was in an NHL playoff crease was in the 2020 bubble – a no-fans, white-knuckle affair during the early stages of the pandemic when the world was still very much on edge. Vancouver pushed its way past Minnesota in the qualifying…
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