The Hockey News

THIS IS IT. THIS is the draft we’ve been waiting for. The Connor Bedard draft. The Hockey News first wrote about Bedard in 2017, when he was 12, and the anticipation has been building ever since. He has more than lived up to the hype in the ensuing years, and at the risk of sounding presumptuous and heaping more expectations on him, we anticipate Bedard to evolve into a generational franchise player. Quite frankly, the entire hockey world is waiting to see that unfold. He’s the most anticipated prospect since Connor McDavid in 2015. But what exact type of superstar player will Bedard grow into? Who are the comparables? That’s what we, and hockey fans everywhere, all want to know. He’s different from McDavid – not as swift to be sure, but…

THEHOCKEYNEWS.COM/TEAMS is the new home for 32 NHL team-specific sites, plus a women’s hockey site for a total of 33 websites, which we started rolling out in March. When completed, 100 new daily hockey articles on average will be free for our readers. In the upcoming weeks, we will continue to add more NHL team sites until we have all 32 NHL team sites up, all of which will be ready for the start of the 2023-24 NHL season, so keep checking back for when your favorite team site is up. The development of these new sites has been long planned, but it has only been now that the right information technology has been available that ensures that we can attract and properly compensate some of the best journalists in each NHL…

FEEL FREE TO ARGUE among yourselves about which deal at the 2023 trade deadline was the biggest blockbuster. An indisputable fact, however, is that no single player was swapped for as many assets as was Tanner Jeannot. There were other deals in which picks and prospects flew every which way, of course, not least of which was the 13-piece trade that made Timo Meier a New Jersey Devil. But, at a deadline that saw Meier, Patrick Kane, Jakob Chychrun and Ryan O’Reilly find new homes, no trade was as seemingly lopsided as Jeannot’s acquisition by the Lightning. To add the gritty winger, Tampa Bay paid the Nashville Predators a princely sum: blueliner Cal Foote, third-, fourth- and fifth-round picks in 2023, a second-rounder in 2024 and a top-10-protected first-rounder in 2025.…

LINUS ULLMARK >BOSTON BRUINS GOALTENDERS TEND TO BE creatures of habit and a fairly superstitious lot. That didn’t stop Bruins netminder and Vezina Trophy frontrunner Linus Ullmark from debuting a new mask in the middle of a career year. The fresh paint job features cartoon versions of a pair of Ullmark’s best pals: his corgis, Greven and Baronen. The dogs, whose names translate to The Count and The Baron in English, are dressed to impress in top hats and tuxedos with flowing coattails. Ullmark and DaveArt’s David Gunnarsson couldn’t have known during the design process, but the mask ultimately became something of a touching tribute to Baronen, who passed away in March.…

WASHINGTON CAPITALS >2022-23 CONTINUING THE ‘YEAR OF the Warm-Up Special,’ we have this incredible look from the Capitals, who honed in on the city’s famous cherry blossoms to create a sweater with awesome colors and a clean, original crest. Designed by D.C. artist Taylor Kampa Olson, this jersey is one of the rare sweaters to feature pink (outside of Pink in the Rink specials and the occasional WHL Calgary Hitmen jersey), but the contrast with the dark blue is a stellar combination. The excellent ‘W’ eagle shoulder crest also gets the pink tinge instead of its usual red. Proceeds from auction sales went to the team’s charitable foundation, so everybody wins on this one.…

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR rookie cards of this year’s best young players – without the chore and expense of opening numerous packs to find them – then you’re in luck. Toward the end of the regular season, Upper Deck released its annual Star Rookies Box Set, consisting of 25 cards of the top new players in 2022-23. Included are Calder Trophy frontrunners Matty Beniers, Owen Power and Matias Maccelli. Each set also has one bonus parallel card that is either Blue (not serial-numbered), Gold (serial-numbered to 349 copies), Red (serial-numbered to 99 copies) or Black (serial-numbered to 1). One in every 20 sets contains an autographed card.…