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‘Tis the holiday season! Time to celebrate with friends and family, spreading the gift of Christmas cheer!  So with that in mind, lets settle back with a festive beverage and take a look at what Santa Gritty has left under the tree for each NHL franchise in the Western Conference. See what Santa might bring the Eastern Conference teams here. Anaheim Ducks Julie ‘The Cat’ Gafney: Since reboots are all the rage in Hollywood, even in the land of Disney, why stop now? Ryan Miller’s banged up. John Gibson is playing a ton of minutes, why not add another reliable option at backup? Arizona CoyotesRead More →

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‘Tis the holiday season! Time to celebrate with friends and family, spreading the gift of Christmas cheer!  So with that in mind, lets settle back with a festive beverage and take a look at what Santa Gritty has left under the tree for each NHL franchise. Boston Bruins Operation: A traditional game for one of the Original Six. This would be a fun and interactive way for teammates to understand the litany of injuries they’ve endured this season. At least until Brad Marchand keeps intentionally touch the sides and ruins everything… Buffalo Sabres A Trailer: With so many people jumping on the Sabres bandwagon theyRead More →

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With the NHL’s Global Series drawn to a close for another year, commissioner Gary Bettman has announced plans to bring it back in 2019. Germany and Switzerland have been touted for some potential pre-season games, while Prague and Stockholm could get a season opener and back to back series respectively. Of course this is all tentative at the moment, although the NHL is in the planning stages. I feel there’s another European market that’s open to exploitation, but is being ignored. The mighty UK. The NFL hauls a couple of its teams over each season to ruin the Wembley turf and the games pretty muchRead More →

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When Andrei Vasilevskiy went down with an injury early in the season Tampa Bay Lightning fans and pundits around the league were left to wonder what would happen to the Eastern Conference contender and preseason Stanley Cup favorite in his absence. The answer is as of December 11th is nothing short of Doming-ate. . . That is due in large part to the man who filled the large hole left in net by Vasilevskiy, Louis Domingue. Embed from Getty Images Domingue  was brought to Tampa in November of 2017 in exchange for Tye McGinn and goaltender Michael Leighton. With two other goalies on the rosterRead More →

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From the Quiet Ice . . . by Mike Filce In-game Entertainment You can’t help noticing with all of the pundits, talking heads, bloggers, podcasters and assorted Twitter-drunk commentators, some ideas come up again and again, and some of them receive respectful consideration — when they should be squashed like the stink bugs they are. Let’s look at a few. Late in a recent “31 Thoughts” podcast episode, Jeff Marek broached the topic of “pump[ing] up the home team” with in-game music. We’re talking about the practice of silencing the music as the puck drops so fans can hear the sounds of the game. ElliotteRead More →

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Back in September when we all found out that Erik Karlsson was being traded to the San Jose Sharks, every Ottawa Senators fan lost a little piece of themselves. Just like Daniel Alfredsson’s return to Ottawa, Erik Karlsson will be making his first appearance against his former club on December 1st. Embed from Getty Images How the trade has panned out so far When looking at the trade from a fan’s point of view, the Senators fans felt like they could have received so much more in return. Fast forward to present day, that trade is looking better and better by the day. Erik KarlssonRead More →

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Growing up in the 90’s few rivalries in the NHL came anywhere close to matching the Red Wings and Avalanche. It was hockey. They were talented, fast, physical, and most importantly, couldn’t stand the sight of each other. From the infamous Claude Lemieux hit on Chris Draper to Patrick Roy losing the puck after showboating on a save against Steve Yzerman, only to drop it and allow Detroit score, helping to force Game 7, their playoff match ups were the stuff of legend, leaving no shortage of memorable moments. From 1995 to 2002 they won 5 of 8 Stanley Cups, with Detroit losing in theRead More →

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The guys are back and ready to break down the news of the week in the NHL. Todd McLellan was fired by the Edmonton Oilers and Mike Yeo was fired by the St. Louis Blues. Is this the right direction for these organizations or just band-aids to fix a bigger issue? Specifically looking at Edmonton, on the heals of the Ryan Spooner for Ryan Strome deal, the question must be asked, “When will Peter Chiarelli be fired as well?” Carl Hagelin was dealt by the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Los Angeles Kings for Tanner Pearson. Is this the move that will kickstart the Penguins? TheRead More →

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Here at The4thLinePodcast.com, we like a good arbitrary scale to give context to how we’re feeling about something. Now that we’re nearly a quarter of the way through the regular season, I wanted share my thoughts on the Detroit Red Wings’ rebuild and in particular, head coach Jeff Blashill. To this end, I give you the Maxner – Bowman scale. It’s difficult to say who the worst ever coach was. The Red Wings, at times, have scraped the bottom of the proverbial barrel, but I’ve gone with Wayne Maxner. Maxner was behind the bench in the early 1980s, and his team was by no means packed withRead More →

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By Mike Filce, coming to you from the Quiet Ice Imagine for a moment that you were Gary Bettman and you wanted hitting gone from hockey. How would you go about it? For starters, you would have to make players far less interested in hitting, and that’s no easy feat. You have to make the cost of hitting higher than the reward — higher than the great feeling of delivering punishment, higher than the feeling of making statements for your team and higher even than elevating your value through this kind of play. The consequences would have to make it simply not worth it anyRead More →