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Quick Strikes: Re-live Anthony Cirelli’s first NHL goal

and the rosters are set for the Syracuse Crunch’s annual media ball hockey match

The Bolts

Like they always say, once you get your Foote in the door, there’s nowhere to go but up. Cal Foote hopes to get his foot in the Tampa Bay Lightning’s door and force them to play him. [Raw Charge]

Foote is the biggest defenseman in the group coming in at 6’4” and 212 pounds. He has the lowest upside on offense of any of those five defensemen, but he has the tools to be the best on the defensive side of the puck. He already has above average NHL size for a defenseman and has exhibited a strong two-way game in the WHL. In 11 less games in 2017-18, he matched his assists from the previous season with 51, but he added 13 more goals and points to his totals to finish with 19 and 70 respectively in 60 games played.

Anthony Cirelli was with his family and friends in Toronto after a game against the Marlies when he got the call to big leagues. What happened next will make your jaw drop! [NHL dot com]

The game against the Marlies was on a Wednesday morning, and the Lightning were playing in Dallas Thursday night, so I went directly to Dallas to meet up with the team. There were mixed emotions for me for sure; definitely excited, nervous, it was just a surreal feeling the whole time I was at the airport and on the flight and then arriving in Dallas. I couldn’t really believe it was happening. I couldn’t believe I was in Dallas. But it was really exciting, and I was anxious to see what was next.

The Prospects

Oh, yeah. You know what time of the summer this is. [Syracuse Crunch]

The Street Crunch Media Game is an annual event where members of local media and the Crunch front office compete in a fun-spirited street hockey match-up. Teams were selected in a live draft on Twitter by team captains Brent Axe of Syracuse.com and Galaxy Communications and Niko Tamurian of CNY Central.

The players got to turn the tables and question every move made. I bet they enjoyed that, haha.

And after a long and arduous draft that included several fists fights (not really), we have our rosters!

If you are in the Syracuse area on Saturday, go check out the action and cheer on your favourite media members!

The Game

Canes Country’s Carolina Hurricanes Revisionist History pieces are always amazing reads. In this episode, what if the Canes didn’t collapse at the end of the 2011 season and made the playoffs? [Canes Country]

The arrival of a (still) baby-faced Jeff Skinner was a shot in the arm to a team that already had established veterans in the likes of Eric Staal, Erik Cole, Tuomo Ruutu and Cam Ward. The Canes were feeling good and had already passed their point total for the season prior before the end of March. All the team had to do in order to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since the 2008-2009 season and only the second since hoisting Lord Stanley’s Cup was win a game against a Tampa Bay Lightning team that had already clinched its spot in the postseason.

How bad could the Ottawa Senators be? Down Goes Brown investigates. [Sportsnet]

And then there’s the ongoing Erik Karlsson saga, which these days has no end in sight. Maybe that’s a good thing — until he’s traded, there’s always a chance he could stay. But that still seems unlikely, and given the poor reviews from the Mike Hoffman deal and the general lack of confidence in the Senators’ front office, you could forgive their fans for expecting the worst.

Seattle has the NHL in the palm of their hand, but they’re too focused on the NBA in the trees. [Seattle Times]

The Leiweke brothers, Tim and Tod, dropped an eye-opening tidbit last week that 40 percent of season-ticket deposits for Seattle’s future National Hockey League team came from people living within four miles of KeyArena.

It’s another indicator of Seattle’s changing demographics and that what we thought we knew about the NHL fan base was vastly underestimated. Almost nobody envisioned 33,000 season-ticket deposits within 31 hours and a waiting list of 4,000. Now, we’re told a huge percentage of those deposits came not from far-flung areas, but the very heart of this changing city.

Chicago Blackhawks great Stan Mikita has passed away at the age of 78. [Second City Hockey]

Mikita is the franchise leader in games played (1,396), assists (926) and points (1,467) after 22 seasons. He was an eight-time All-Star, two-time Hart Trophy winner and member of the Hawks’ 1961 Stanley Cup championship team. He also is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s 1983 class and has a bronze statue next to one of teammate Bobby Hull outside the United Center.

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