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After a 47-year broadcasting career, Mike ‘Doc’ Emrick is hanging up the mic. Emrick announced his retirement Monday after calling hockey for three decades, including 22 Stanley Cup Finals, 45 Stanley Cup Playoffs/Final Game 7s, six Olympics, NHL Winter Classics and All-Star Games. He has spent the last 15 years as the lead play-by-play voice for NBC Sports’ NHL coverage. “It was 50 years ago this fall, with pen and pad in hand at old Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, I got my first chance to cover the National Hockey League. Gordie Howe was a Red Wing, Bobby Hull was a...

The economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic that already led Walt Disney to lay off nearly 30,000 employees who worked in the theme park business may soon affect one of the company’s other ventures: ESPN. The Worldwide Leader could lay off hundreds of employees in the coming weeks, sources told Front Office Sports. On the high end, 700 employees could be gone. On the low end, 300. While the majority of layoffs are expected to affect employees who work behind the camera, some on-air talents are also expected to be let go, especially if they are working with an...

The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup by defeating the Dallas Stars 2-0 in Game 6 of the Final at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Monday. The Lightning previously won the Cup in 2004. "It's the best moment of our hockey lives," Tampa Bay defenseman Victor Hedman said. "So many emotions. It's going to take months for it to sink in, but we're going to be champions forever, we're going to be on that Cup forever. … It's what you imagine all your life."

Game 4 is on right now. they are in the 2nd period. on broadcast TV, not cable. game 5 Saturday.

Tampa Bay counting on up-tempo offense against Khudobin, strong Dallas defense The Stanley Cup Final -- the Tampa Bay Lightning against the Dallas Stars in a best-of-7 series -- will be played at Rogers Place in Edmonton, the hub city for the Final.

Turning on the TV the other night for my ailing mother-in-law, a devotee of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team, we were pummeled by the public address announcer’s sanctimonious spiel about Black Lives Matter, the social sickness of “systemic racism,” and how these issues were “bigger than the game.” Some of the players were featured delivering solemn, not-entirely lucid homilies about justice for the oppressed and the need for brotherhood among the races. One could sense Saint Kaepernick kneeling in the background. I must say I did not appreciate being enlightened by an announcer reading a script he’d been provided by...

The NHL laid out a comprehensive plan on Thursday to "fight against racism" and issue "the mandate to make our sport and our league more welcoming and inclusive." Among several initiatives, the NHL and NHLPA have planned mandatory inclusion and diversity training for all players during training camp for the 2020-21 season. Meanwhile, league employees will have their own inclusion training, led by Bill Proudman from White Men as Full Diversity Partners.

The protest from players is now costing the owners money. Over the past week we have seen protests from multiple sports league's following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin and the National Hockey League has been no exception. Although protests or boycotts from players in the National Basketball Association have received a good bit of praise in this regard, with the NBA also getting its fair share of critics to be sure, similar protests in the NHL have been met by far more backlash from fans, especially as more and more evidence in the case of Jacob Blake...

Hours after the NHL officially announced it had postponed two days of playoff games due to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Western Conference players held a 20-minute press conference from inside the Edmonton bubble explaining their decision. Black players Ryan Reaves of the Colorado Avalanche and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare of the Colorado Avalanche were joined at the podium by the Avalanche’s Nazem Kadri, a Hockey Diversity Alliance member whose family is from Lebanon and identifies as a Muslim; the Stars’ Jason Dickinson, who kneeled with three other players during an August 3 game; and Bo Horvat, the...

On top of their formal request for the National Hockey League to suspend all playoff games last night, Rick Westhead, a senior correspondent for TSN, reports the HDA (Hockey Diversity Alliance) has a number of other demands. Hockey Diversity Alliance, an association made up of seven players whose stated purpose is to eradicate systemic racism and intolerance in hockey, have also revealed these demands: Team owners offer NHL rinks to be used as polling stations for the upcoming US election. NHL should be fully transparent about “all information related to the policies, targets and commitments” related to the hiring of...

The NHL is following the MLB, NBA, WNBA and MLS' lead ... with the league officially postponing games following the Jacob Blake shooting. "After much discussion, NHL Players believe that the best course of action would be to take a step back and not play tonight’s and tomorrow’s games as scheduled," the league announced Thursday. The decision comes after several players -- including Matt Dumba and Evander Kane -- criticized the league's response to the boycotts sweeping the sports world. The NHL says they support the players' wishes ... and will make up the games starting Saturday. NHL continued ......

Humanity is entertained by competition of all kinds. The pandemic has shown sports fans will find a new way to cheer and chant and boo. It is sometimes underappreciated how new professional sports is as a dominant cultural phenomenon. For the vast majority of human history, sports has been overwhelmingly played by amateurs. And even in America, it is only in the past fifty years that this professionalized version of sport became a route to wealth. Baseball, which has the longest professional sports history in the United States, illustrates this: the average MLB salary is up an inflation-adjusted 3,000 percent...

EASTERN CONFERENCE Philadelphia Flyers (1) vs. Montreal Canadiens (8) Tampa Bay Lightning (2) vs. Columbus Blue Jackets (7) Washington Capitals (3) vs. New York Islanders (6) Boston Bruins (4) vs. Carolina Hurricanes (5) WESTERN CONFERENCE Vegas Golden Knights (1) vs. Chicago Blackhawks (8) Colorado Avalanche (2) vs. Arizona Coyotes (7) Dallas Stars (3) vs. Calgary Flames (6) St. Louis Blues (4) vs. Vancouver Canucks (5)

Players from the Vegas Golden Knights and Dallas Stars knelt on the ice before their game Monday to support Black Lives Matter and other social causes. Dallas forward Tyler Sequin and Jason Dickinson knelt alongside Vegas forward Ryan Reaves and goaltender Robin Lehner during the American and Canadian national anthems prior to their round-robin playoff game.

Matt Dumba of the Minnesota Wild became the first player to kneel for the U.S. national anthem in the National Hockey League (NHL) on Saturday night before the Chicago Blackhawks faced the Edmonton Oilers in Alberta, Canada. Dumba, who is Canadian, was invited onto the ice for a special ceremony, walking down a red carpet and delivering a speech about racial justice. He knelt for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but stood for “O, Canada,” the Canadian anthem. The scoreboard flashed a slogan with a hashtag: “We Skate for Black Lives.” “During this pandemic, something unexpected, but long overdue, occurred,” Dumba said,...

It might be time for patriotic Americans to discover a new favorite sport, professional hockey. Unlike other professional athletes, hockey players have refused to show disrespect toward the National Anthem. At exhibition games this week, all players with the New York Rangers, New York Islanders, Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers stood for the National Anthem. Likewise, for Thursday night’s start of the season, all the players with the Dallas Stars and the Nashville Predators stood for the National Anthem. After the game, a few of the Dallas players displayed their clothing featuring the slogan, #WeSkateforEquality. The NHL is allowing players...

I wish to cancel my subscription. I have been a hockey fan since I watched my first game in 1986 and I'm sad to leave. But America is not "systemically" or "systematically"(sic) racist. I will not pay to be lectured to about how my country is rotten to the core. I've read with pride how much NHL teams and individual players do to promote equality and diversity in hockey through the "hockey is for everyone" programs and their work in the local communities, for example the Capitals' tireless work with the Fort Dupont program. The NHL has highlighted the cases...

Matt Dumba kneeled during the U.S. national anthem Saturday after vowing that the NHL and the Hockey Diversity Alliance will stand up for justice and against racism. The Minnesota Wild defenseman spoke at center ice at Rogers Place before the Edmonton Oilers faced the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 1 of their best-of-5 series in the 2020 Stanley Cup Qualifiers.

I turned on the Rangers Hurricanes hockey game at 12:00 today expecting to turn it off when the pre-game anthems were played and there were some sort of shenanigans & disrespect shown by players or announcers. Lo and behold to my surprise there was no tomfoolery at all. At least I can now watch hockey which is the sport I like most. Thank you NHL.