Category: The Greatest
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10 greatest NHL playoff series of the 1930s
The latter half of the 1930s saw the NHL playoff format evolve in a hurry. By 1937, the practice of awarding a two-game set based on aggregate goals was retired. Two years later, the best-of-five series in the tournament’s latter stages upgraded to best-of-seven. Now the clash for Canada’s most hallowed trophy, shared with U.S.…
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Greatest NHL playoff series of the ’20s
To say the NHL came into its own in the 1920s is to bid for the No. 1 understatement on the league’s century-long chronicle. The soon-to-be singular circuit of major-league hockey in North America had toddled through December 1917 and the last two full years of the 1910s. Fast-forward a full decade, and it stood…
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Xcel Energy Center’s greatest NCAA games
Most college hockey recruits for next season were born the year the Xcel Energy Center opened. Yet the St. Paul sports mansion is already hosting its third all-time Frozen Four this weekend. With that, it ties Milwaukee’s Bradley Center as the fourth-youngest venue to land the event’s hospitality rights on three occasions. Only the bygone…
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10 greatest multi-program men’s college hockey coaches
Don Lucia’s retirement from coaching created a brief diversion among college hockey coaches and media still immersed in their season. In particular, the three Minnesota-based programs in the NCAA men’s tournament fielded questions on the ex-Gopher bench boss’ legacy. Besides nearly two decades in the State of Hockey, Lucia logged another dozen years at two…
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DCU Center’s greatest NCAA regional moments
Worcester’s DCU Center is the elder statesman among the five venues hosting portions of the 2018 NCAA men’s hockey tournament. The 36-year-old building originally known as the Centrum will log its 15th regional of all time this weekend. It has taken a turn at least once every two years since the regionals started taking to…
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10 greatest Kazmaier Award runners-up
This weekend marks the end of the beginning of the Patty Kazmaier Award’s third decade. The national MVP prize in Division I women’s hockey will have its 21st presentation in Minneapolis this Saturday. Inaugurated three seasons before the sport garnered NCAA auspices, the Kazmaier has emblemized the pivotal ambassadors of a growing entity. A majority…
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10 greatest high-school hockey dynasties
As with nearly all levels, pure dynasties are practically a relic in high-school hockey. The longer a sanctioning body exists, and the broader and deeper its pool gets, the lower a program’s chances of stringing consecutive championships. In almost every tradition-laden hockey state, bygone scholastic dynasties are easy to dismiss as products of a less…
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10 greatest women’s college rivalries
Two WCHA bigwigs combined to hone 10 of Team USA’s gold medalists at the 2018 Winter Olympics. For America’s previous victory in 1998, a pair of pioneering women’s college hockey superpowers from New England produced 11 players. In both cases, it was life imitating art after art imitated life. It is a remake of one…
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Greatest NHL careers by Miracle on Ice alumni
No, the 1995 Stanley Cup Final was not the Miracle on Ice all over again. With that said, it brought back the defining event of the 1980 Winter Olympics better than any other NHL moment. For the clincher, you had an underdog team in white playing to its home crowd in an upper Mid-Atlantic state.…
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10 greatest minor-league hockey franchises in NHL markets
Of the current NHL markets, 22 have harbored at least one AHL, IHL or ECHL team in the past. A remarkable 13 have sustained a minor-league team simultaneous with a franchise in The Show. Granted, many of those franchises fizzled like a snowflake in above-freezing temperatures. The ECHL’s Miami Matadors were in and out after…