Your daily shot of hockey to go with your coffee
March 5th, 2014

Busy day yesterday so I couldn’t get a roundup together in time for the busy night that was Tuesday, March 4th. I went 3-1 on Monday’s picks to bring me to 75-66 on the season.

BIG DAY for the Thunderblog today! The Iceman launched the Devils section and later today I’ll be launching the Flyers section. Interested in writing about your favorite team as well? Let me know in the comments below with your email address. Here is the full scoreboard from last night, and here is Iceman’s first post recapping the Devils’ game against the Rangers last night. I would normally go through all the games myself but today is the NHL Trade Deadline. So far, here are some of the bigger trades that occurred yesterday (Tuesday), as the NHL on NBC reports:

Trades from today:

-The New York Rangers traded captains with the Tampa Bay Lightning: the Rangers sent Ryan Callahan, a first-round pick in 2015, and a second-round pick in 2014 (becomes a first rounder if NYR make the ECF) in exchange for Martin St. Louis

-The Philadelphia Flyers make another defensive deal: After acquiring MacDonald yesterday, today Philadelphia declared that the team plans on re-signing the veteran defenseman. The Flyers followed up that declaration by sending D Andrej Meszaros to the Boston Bruins for a third-round pick

-Roberto Luongo goes back to START: In case you didn’t know, Luongo spent the first six seasons of his career with the Florida Panthers. Today, he goes back to the team that drafted him. This potentially explains why he didn’t start Sunday in the Heritage classic and tells us what Florida thinks about Timmy T.

Plenty of other trades around the league as well, I’ll have a full wrap-up of the deals later on.

GAMES TONIGHT:

Four games around the league tonight: Maple Leafs at Rangers @ 7pm, Capitals at Flyers @ 8pm (NBCSN), Senators at Flames @ 9:30pm, Canadiens at Ducks @ 10pm. Leafs over Rangers: Toronto’s horrible on the road and New York is under .500 at the Garden. The Rangers will no-doubt be deflated with the loss of Callahan while the Leafs are looking to lock down their defense to support their prolific offense. Flames over Sens: Something makes me want to think otherwise, but Calgary has been uncharacteristically good since the break. Ducks over Habs: Even if the reports that Thomas Vanek is coming to Montreal are true, he shouldn’t be in Anaheim tonight. Even if he was, it wouldn’t be enough to go agains the Ducks at home.

I’ll have a preview of the Flyers/Caps game later on today to launch the Flyers section. Again, if you are interested in writing about your team (NHL or otherwise) for us, leave a comment with your team and email address below.