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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.
‘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…
CHASING GLORY
IF YOU WERE TO look up the word “dynasty” in the dictionary, in a perfect world, you’d see an image of the Hershey Bears. The AHL’s most decorated club added a 12th Calder Cup to its ever-growing trophy case last season, knocking off the first-year Coachella Valley Firebirds in a Game 7 stunner to secure the title. No other active AHL franchise has more than six Calder Cups. But those plotting the Bears’ demise will have to wait at least another year, as Hershey was on pace for one of the greatest regular seasons in league history. The all-time AHL single-season record for points percentage belongs to the 1992-93 Binghamton Rangers, who posted a .775 mark. As of early March, Hershey had a .782 figure. This raises the question: how does the longtime…
BEHIND THE MASK
SURE, YOU DON’T WIN friends with salad, but what about with goalie masks? Because with Malcolm Subban’s brilliant bucket for a Springfield Thunderbirds theme night, he definitely won himself a load of new fans. As the Thunderbirds again paid homage to The Simpsons – complete with a rebranding as the Springfield Ice-O-Topes, a gag the organization began in 2019 – Subban partnered with Erich Ferguson of Resurrection Custom Painting on a mask designed around the fictional Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, featuring a yelping Homer and a mid-electrocution Bart. What sets the design apart, however, is the full nuclear-green theme throughout the mask, including the integration of a green-glowing cage and, of course, Blinky, the three-eyed and definitely-not-mutated fish. Not only did Blinky appear on the back of Subban’s helmet, but…
IT’S DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
FOR LOREN GABEL, it definitely wasn’t love at first skate. “I didn’t really like it at first, because I kept falling down,” Gabel recalled. “It was really frustrating.” But kids change their minds faster than Connor McDavid goes end to end. Within a week, the four-year-old from Kitchener, Ont., didn’t just figure out how to stay upright on her blades. She also got instantly hooked on hockey – and started a journey that led her to Clarkson University, a Patty Kazmaier Award win in 2019 and now to PWHL Boston. Before all that, Gabel patrolled the wing on a boys’ AAA team. At 14, she actually got her first taste of PWHL action. “In high school, I played in Kitchener, Oakville and Toronto,” she said. “But that was kind of weird because…
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