Search for your favorite player or team
© The Hockey News. All rights reserved. Any and all material on this website cannot be used, reproduced, or distributed without prior written permission from Roustan Media Ltd. For more information, please see our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
Free Agency Preview 2021
In our 100-page Free Agency Preview, we have team-by-team breakdowns for all 31 NHL clubs, plus our Top 30 UFA Power Rankings and features on Taylor Hall, Tyson Barrie, Corey Perry and more. Also, we take a look at the changing face of goaltending – and one thing that never changes: Carey Price winning when it matters most.
‘ONLY GOD WILL JUDGE ME’
A YEAR AGO, JAROMIR JAGR’S storied hockey career balanced at the edge of an abyss. Or so it seemed. Jagr spent 2019-20 playing in the Czech Extraliga with the Kladno Knights, his hometown team, with whom he’s played since departing the NHL in 2018. The 2019-20 season was Kladno’s first in the top Czech division since 2013-14. But the team spent most of the year in the doldrums, facing the possibility of relegation. A season-ending loss to Litvinov sealed their fate. Jagr suddenly had to ask whether the desire to go on remained within him. He’d previously said of the possibility of playing in the second division: “I don’t know if I would still play, if I’d still find desire for hockey.” When Kladno was relegated, he’d rarely looked so beaten…
TOP 10 INTERNATIONAL DEFENSEMEN
IN OUR 2020 COLLECTOR’S Edition, The Top 100 Defensemen Of All-Time, we only included NHLers, and that’s because comparing the skills, resumes and accomplishments of players from across the Atlantic to NHL players is an inexact science – so we gave them their own list. It only contains players from the 1960s through the ’80s – prior to that, international hockey was still developing and it’s debatable whether even the best could have played in the NHL, let alone starred. And of course, from the ’90s onward, the best international defensemen have made their marks in the NHL. But for the period in between, here are five who would have made the top 100…and five more who may have. 1. VIACHESLAV FETISOV CAREER: USSR 1975-89, NHL 1989-98 IN THE EARLY 1980S, prior to…
Montreal Canadiens
SHOPPING LIST: It can’t be a spending spree every summer. The Canadiens loaded up the payroll with Tyler Toffoli, Josh Anderson and Jake Allen in 2020 but don’t have the same financial wiggle room this time around, especially with so many prominent UFAs to consider re-signing. Though if GM Marc Bergevin can shed enough salary, Montreal needs a mobile defenseman for its top-four considering how much Shea Weber is slowing down at 35 (and he’s signed for five more seasons). Since Montreal won’t have the cap space to pursue an elite puck-mover, it could consider a cheapish option with upside such as Brandon Montour or, if the team prefers to address the left side of the defense, a two-way defender such as Ryan Murray. Montreal needs a high-end playmaking center…
Latvia scores high with IIHF World Championship
LATVIA, WITH A SCORE of 89 out of 100 at FreedomHouse.org, just showed the world that rewarding a nations with international tournaments for good treatment of their people works out extremely well both on and off the ice. For those of you into analytics, Canada scores 98/100, the United States 83/100, Belarus 11/100 and the host of the 2022 Olympic Games, China, 9/100. As I stated in the 2021 Playoff Preview Publisher’s Note: Latvia was confirmed to be the sole host of the 2021 World Championship after the IIHF and president Rene Fasel were put under a great deal of pressure to rescind Belarus as a co-host due to human-rights violations and a rigged election. The IIHF finally pulled the plug on Jan. 18, 2021, citing “ongoing challenges placed by COVID-19.” As…
Made possible with the support of
