The third U.S. team in six years to medal at the IIHF World Championship was littered with players with local ties.
Cam Atkinson (Greenwich, Conn.) and Chris Kreider (Boxford, Mass.) were two of the three Americans to record double-digit points during last month’s tournament in Denmark, respectively totaling 11 and 10 points in 10 games.
Two of Kreider’s four goals came in the May 20 bronze-medal game against Canada, while Atkinson was named one of the U.S. squad’s Players of the Tournament following that contest. Atkinson scored both shootout goals in a come-from-behind, 5-4 win over Canada to open the tournament on May 4.
Tage Thompson (Orange, Conn.) and Colin White (Hanover, Mass.) also appeared in every worlds contest, helping the U.S. amass a 6-2-0-2 record.
Tuch, Knights eye history
Editor's note: This story appeared in our June magazine. Since, Brooks Orpik and John Carlson have won the Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals.
The Vegas Golden Knights and Washington Capitals are the last two NHL teams standing in 2017-18, which means at least one player with New England ties will hoist the Stanley Cup later this month.
Boston College alum Alex Tuch has played a key role during an improbable postseason run for the Golden Knights, who became just the third team in NHL history to advance to the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season. The Baldwinsville, N.Y., native, who played two seasons for the legendary Jerry York (Watertown, Mass.) at BC, entered the Cup final with six goals and nine points in 15 games.
Tuch began this season with the American Hockey League’s Chicago Wolves but played in just three games before earning the call to the NHL. The heavy winger had played in just six NHL games prior to this season. Now, he has nearly reached the pinnacle, having scored a pair of game-winning goals en route to the final playoff round. One came on May 4 as part of a two-goal effort in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals against San Jose.
“I’ve tried to play the same way no matter where Coach (Gerard Gallant) has put me,” Tuch, who has played with both Erik Haula and Cody Eakin at center during the Cup run, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I want to play hard, be physical, go to the net, win the battles in the corners and help my line be successful.”
On the Eastern Conference side of the bracket, Washington features a BC alum of its own in defenseman Brooks Orpik as well as Massachusetts-born John Carlson (Marlboro, Mass.). The Capitals played for the Stanley Cup just once in franchise history (1998) prior to this season.
Orpik recorded just three points over the first three rounds (19 games) of postseason play, but his plus-15 rating is tops in the NHL. Also tops in the league at that point were his 562 hits in 144 career postseason games. Orpik led the Capitals with 168 blocked shots and the team’s defensemen with 218 hits during the regular season.
While Orpik has been as steady a defensive contributor as there is, Carlson has gotten the job done for the Eastern Conference champions at both ends of the ice. Entering the Cup final, Carlson already had set a franchise record for a defenseman with 16 points in 19 postseason games. During the regular season, he became the third Capital since 2000 to lead all NHL defensemen in points.
“I think this team has done the little things maybe a little bit better than the other teams have been able to do. There’s no magic potion,” Carlson said of the Capitals, who have played in an NHL-high 11 Game 7’s since the start of the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs. “In my mind, this team’s special. The ones before were special, too, but just couldn’t find a way to get it done.”
On the losing end of Vegas’ third postseason series was former UMass Lowell goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, who joins Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators and Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Tampa Bay Lightning among finalists for the Vezina Trophy. He is the first finalist in Thrashers/Jets history.
Hellebuyck grabbed hold of the starting job from Steve Mason early in the season and finished the regular season with a 2.36 goals-against average and .924 save percentage — fourth and fifth-best in the NHL, respectively — while facing the third-most shots (2,048). He then won nine times during the first postseason run of his career, including back-to-back shutouts to close out a five-game series against Minnesota.
Fenton, Lamoriello on the move
May was a busy month of transactions for New Englanders atop NHL front offices, too. The New York Islanders tabbed Lou Lamoriello as their new president of hockey operations after the Johnston, R.I., native spent the past three years as Toronto’s general manager, while Paul Fenton (Springfield, Mass.) was named to the GM’s role for the Minnesota Wild.
