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Champions Issue 2018
It’s our annual Champions Issue, celebrating the best of the best from the season that was, including a 22-pages on the Washington Capitals, our Top 10 Moments from the NHL season and profiles on the top teams from the AHL, KHL, top Euro and women’s leagues, the Memorial Cup and much more. Plus, 31 NHL players ready to break out next season, and why the NHL coaching ranks have gone college crazy.
SO WHAT’S NEXT FOR VEGAS FANS?
OVERHEARD IN AN ELEVATOR at the T-Mobile Arena an hour before Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final: “It’s the Cup, baby! I’ve been waiting seven months for this!” He says this to nobody in particular. Standing not far from him is a kid in a Marc-Andre Fleury sweater who can’t be older than six. It strikes me that this youngster is experiencing something of which 50-year-old fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs and St. Louis Blues would have absolutely no conception. In the atrium of the arena overlooking the Toshiba Plaza where thousands of fans are gathering to watch the game, Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley, in a team-issued golf shirt and khakis, tries to make sense of what he is seeing. “It’s mind-boggling that this town doesn’t quite…
GETTING TO THE ROOT OF IT
I HAD A ROOMMATE IN university who loved tennis. He was watching the final of a major one day, let’s say the French Open (just because), when another housemate – one who was even more fanatical about team sports than me – asked him who he was pulling for. The first roomie ruminated on it for a couple moments, then said, “I’m cheering for tennis.” Chuckles ensued. He may as well have said he was rooting for opera. For those of us raised on rivalry and the tribalism of Them versus Us, neutrality isn’t an option. Even if you’re Swiss. Histories breed underdogs and favorites, villains and heroes. The stories stoke our passion and give us additional incentive to emotionally invest. I confess, even though I’ve been schooled to be unbiased, I’ve…
THIS ONE’S FOR YOU, DAD
THE 2018 FINNISH LEAGUE final was a familiar affair, as Tappara Tampere and Karpat Oulu met for the third time in five years. And just like in 2014 and 2015, Karpat came out on top, claiming its seventh title since 2000. For Tappara, the final berth was its sixth in a row. Karpat winger Julius Junttila, who led the post-season scoring race, received the Jari Kurri Award as the playoff MVP, but nobody would’ve been upset had it been handed to 21-year-old Karpat goaltender Veini Vehvilainen. He played in 17 of the team’s 18 playoff games, posting a .933 save percentage and league-best 1.53 goals-against average while also recording three shutouts, two of them in the final. He won the Urpo Ylonen Award for best goalie during the regular season and was…
OVIE’S ODYSSEY
THE WHOOPING and hollering and hugging and carrying on had gone on long enough, he decided. So there he stood in the middle of the ice at the T-Mobile Arena, a place that didn’t even exist a little more than a year ago, the Stanley Cup firmly in his grasp held at waist level. Wearing Evgeny Kuznetsov’s shower flip-flops, he began ordering his teammates off the ice. “Backy, let’s go. Locker room. Steve-O (Chandler Stephenson), locker room. Who’s left?” There was Lars Eller, chatting with Tony Robbins, team owner Ted Leonsis’ buddy from Palm Beach who’s only worth about a bajillion dollars. “Tiger, let’s go, locker room,” he said. “I’m freezing out here.” And like the others, Tiger nodded his acknowledgement and went on his way. All the while, he…
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