The NHL Evening Skate for Dec. 19

F1 São Paulo GP 2026 – Practice 2

Story by

Yahoo Sports Staff

Thu, Dec 20, 2018

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Heading into this evening's action, here are the day's top NHL storylines:

Berglund walks away from over $12 million in odd divorce from Sabres

Patrik Berglund seems to be wired a little differently than most athletes — or humans for that matter. The 30-year-old centre is apparently willing to leave an awful lot of dough on the table if it means he can split from the Buffalo Sabres. [Seriously, that's so much money]

The NHL needs to do more to protect its stars

Earlier this week, Ken Hitchcock went on a bit of a rant about how the refs let other teams get away with hooking and holding Connor McDavid to an absurd extent. Sounded an awful lot, to me, like a coach trying to protect his best player. Not that you could really blame him, of course, because a coach has to do that sort of thing and the league tends to undercall penalties in the interest of moving the game along, so it stands to reason that McDavid probably doesn't draw as many penalties as he should. [Ryan Lambert's take]

Evgeni Dadonov might by the NHL's best anonymous player

Aleksander Barkov is an incredibly effective hockey player; however, he isn't the only good thing going on in Florida. Heading into Wednesday night's action, Dadonov has more points than Taylor Hall , Jonathan Toews and Tyler Seguin . The fact that he's in the same discussion as those names shouldn't be a surprise, though. [The things that make the Russian so good]

Lamp-lighters

Carter Hart brings mom to tears as he shines in his NHL debut

As poised and calm as the 20-year-old was during his first NHL start, the same can't be said about his mother. She was essentially an emotional wreck (in the absolute best way possible) throughout the contest. [Plenty of joyful tears]

Gritty mercilessly assaults Santa Claus goalies at Flyers game

It was your standard, run-of-the-mill goaltenders-in-Santa-costumes race at the Wells Fargo Center. That's when the Flyers mascot laced 'em up, put on a Santa suit of his own and took his deep-seated hatred of the holidays out on a few puck-stopping Saint Nicks. [No way he's on the 'nice' list]

Game of the night

Pittsburgh Penguins at Washington Capitals

There may only be two games on the NHL schedule tonight, but a good clash between Sidney Crosby 's Penguins and Alex Ovechkin 's Capitals is always worth drooling over. Washington (20-9-3) comes into the contest atop the Metropolitan division with 43 points. Pittsburgh (15-12-6), meanwhile, is fourth in the division and three points out of the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference following a slow start to the campaign. Crosby has 21 goals and 45 assists for 66 points in 47 career games against the Capitals. Ovechkin also shows up for these battles of former first overall selections. He's collected 35 goals and 23 assists for 58 points in 54 contests against the Penguins. Puck drop is scheduled for 8:00 p.m. (ET). [Follow all of the action here]

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