NHL Atlantic

The Winter Classic is headed to Florida for the first time in NHL history.

The New York Rangers and Florida Panthers are set to face off in the 2026 event at the Miami Marlins' LoanDepot Park.

The NHL has previously played outdoor games in locations including Los Angeles, Dallas and Nashville, but the upcoming Winter Classic will mark the southernmost outdoor game in league history.

The contest will also mark the first time the Panthers have played in an outdoor game.

The Utah Hockey Club (formerly the Arizona Coyotes) is set to be the only NHL club without an outdoor game on its record. The Columbus Blue Jackets are slated to compete outdoors for the first time in March during a Stadium Series matchup with the Detroit Red Wings at Ohio Stadium.

Meanwhile, the Rangers will be playing in the franchise's sixth outdoor contest, tying the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers for the second-most in NHL history.

The Rangers most recently competed outside in February 2024, when the Blueshirts claimed a 6-5 overtime win over the New York Islanders at MetLife Stadium.

The Chicago Blackhawks, who played the St. Louis Blues during the 2025 Winter Classic at Wrigley Field, hold the all-time NHL lead with seven outdoor games.

The NHL will now hope to hold a game between two playoff competitors when the Panthers and Rangers take the ice next season.

The Rangers have struggled early in the 2024-25 campaign but are looking to bounce back behind star goaltender Igor Shesterkin and 2021 Norris Trophy winner Adam Fox alongside scorers like Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck and Mika Zibanejad.

The Panthers, who landed their first outdoor game after defeating Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers to win the Stanley Cup, are set to bring back key members of their championship team including Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Aleksander Barkov and Sergei Bobrovsky next season.

The first Winter Classic took place in 2008 between the Penguins and Buffalo Sabres. The Panthers and Rangers will be playing in the 17th edition of the event.

The Detroit Red Wings announced a coaching change on Thursday, with Todd McLellan replacing Derek Lalonde as their head coach.

The move comes with the Red Wings sitting on 30 points, the second-fewest in the Eastern Conference, through 34 games. They're on pace to finish much worse than last year, when they narrowly missed out on the playoffs.

Detroit collected 91 points in 2023-24 and lost the final wild-card spot through a tiebreaker with the Washington Capitals.

Nobody was putting the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup conversation entering the year, but Patrick Kane returned and Vladimir Tarasenko arrived on a two-year deal. Those are the kinds of moves you make when you want to end an eight-year postseason drought.

Instead, Detroit is anchored near the bottom of the standings. The team is averaging 2.56 goals per game while ranking 25th in goals-against average at 3.27. Lalonde's ouster coincides with a particularly tough stretch defensively. The Red Wings have allowed four or more goals in five of their last seven games.

The fans made their voices heard midway through Monday's 4-0 loss to the St. Louis Blues as they booed the team inside Little Caesars Arena.

Swapping out the coaches is both warranted with the Red Wings' performances and reflects the level of pressure on general manager Steve Yzerman. The franchise legend came aboard in 2019 and has little progress to show since then.

Whether McLellan arrests Detroit's slide could make or break Yzerman's tenure.

This is the fourth stop of McLellan's coaching career. He got off to a roaring start as the San Jose Sharks made the playoffs in each of his first six years, including back-to-back trips to the Western Conference Finals in 2010 and 2011.

However, McLellan's teams have tasted the postseason in just three of his last 10 years on the bench.

Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews says he plans to play on Saturday against the Tampa Bay Lightning after missing nine straight games with an upper-body injury.

"In my mind, I'm playing tomorrow and I'm excited to be back," Matthews said after Friday's practice, per Kevin McGran of the Toronto Star.

Matthews last played on Nov. 3, when he skated more than 22 minutes in an overtime loss to the Minnesota Wild. He was placed on injured reserve five days later.

"I think just like the first 10 minutes, I'll try to get my feet moving and get some puck touches, keep things simple and just go from there... obviously there's going to be a little bit of rust," Matthews said on Friday, per McGran.

Leafs general manager Brad Treliving told reporters on Nov. 19 that Matthews was visiting a doctor in Germany "more as a general checkup, but also to get some work done on this thing."

Matthews later told reporters that he was working to address an injury that had "flared up" during the preseason, per The Athletic's Joshua Kloke.

"I thought it was time to take a step back, re-evaluate, and take it day by day," Matthews said on Nov. 23, per Kloke. "And it hasn't necessarily gotten worse, but it wasn't really getting better. So I wanted to be proactive."

Matthews continued: "I wouldn't call it a mistake, but I guess the mistake I made in the past is maybe coming back, you want to get back and you start to feel good and then you try to jump back into the game and maybe you're not quite ready yet. So I think with this, just wanted to be mindful and make sure that I'm feeling back as close to 100 percent before we start getting back into game situations and stuff like that, so it's not something that prolongs throughout the season."

Neither the Leafs nor Matthews have clarified if the injury involves the forward's left wrist, on which he reportedly underwent procedures in 2021 and 2022.

Matthews, who won his third Rocket Richard trophy last season after leading the NHL with 69 goals, was scoring at a relatively slow pace with five goal in 13 contests prior to his absence.

The Leafs have stayed afloat without him, winning seven of nine games over the stretch to hang on to the No. 2 slot in the Atlantic Division. That could change on Sunday should the Lightning (12-8-2) leapfrog the Leafs (13-7-2) with a win.

Toronto will hope the return of a healthier Matthews can help lead the team to victory when the puck drops on Saturday night at 7 p.m. ET.

The Boston Bruins have fired head coach Jim Montgomery 20 games into his third season with the team.

Associate coach Joe Sacco will replace Montgomery on an interim basis, the Bruins announced on Tuesday.

The Bruins are fourth in the Atlantic Division with an 8-9-3 record to start the season.

Montgomery won the Jack Adams Award after leading the franchise to a historic 65-win season in 2023-24. The Bruins made the playoffs in each of his first two seasons at the helm.

He will depart Boston with an overall 120-41-23 record in the regular season, and a 9-11 mark in the postseason.

In the 184 Bruins games spanning between Montgomery's hiring and exit, the franchise boasts the most regular-season wins (120) and the highest regular-season points percentage (.715) in the NHL.

Those marks may have only increased Bruins leadership's expectations for the postseason, where Montgomery had yet to lead his team has the second round. Last season the team's playoff hopes ended with a first-round exit at the hands of the eventual champion Florida Panthers.

Although the Bruins remain in the postseason conversation at the quarter mark of the 2024-25 season— were the campaign to have ended on Monday, Boston would have claimed the second Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference— worrying downward trends may have contributed to the decision to move on from Montgomery.

Through 20 games, the Bruins ranked in the bottom five of the NHL in both goal prevention (3.45 goals against per game, 28th in the league) and goalscoring (2.40 goals per game, 31st in the NHL.) Those are disappointing results for a team that hoped to take a step forward by adding players like Elias Lindholm this offseason.

David Pastrňák and Brad Marchand are off to slow starts to the season. Jeremy Swayman meanwhile followed up a career-best campaign with a .884 save percentage through 14 starts, which Montgomery pointed out the night before his firing followed the goaltender missing training camp amid a holdout for a new contract.

Several indications, Pastrňák's NHL-high shots total and uncharacteristically low 9.8 percent shooting rate among them, show the Bruins are due for a resurgence. Boston leadership will hope that can take place under Sacco, who previously led the Colorado Avalanche to a 130-134-30 record in three and a half seasons as head coach between 2009 and 2013.

Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews has been placed on the injured reserve with an upper-body injury, the team announced on Friday. The move is retroactive to Nov. 3.

Head coach Craig Berube had already told reporters Matthews would miss a second straight game as the Leafs faced the Detroit Red Wings on Friday night. The IR designation means Matthews will also be sidelined for Saturday's contest against the visiting Montreal Canadiens.

Matthews will be eligible to return before the Leafs face the Ottawa Senators at home on Tuesday.

The move allows the Leafs to use the open roster spot to recall Connor Dewar, who has been rehabbing in the AHL from offseason surgery.

Berube has described Matthews' injury as a "day-to-day" issue that is not related to his 2021 wrist surgery, per NHL.com's Dave McCarthy.

Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman also reported last year that Matthews "may have had another, minor procedure" on his wrist in 2022.

While saying this newest injury was not related to those wrist issues, Berube told reporters that Matthews has been "fighting through it a little bit" through the early stretch of the season.

Matthews has recorded five goals and 11 points in 13 games this season, a relatively slow start for a player who won his third Rocket Richard trophy with a career-high 69 goals last year.

He last played for the Leafs on Sunday, when he registered an assist in a 2-1 overtime loss to the Minnesota Wild.

In Matthews' absence, third-line center Max Domi centered the first line between Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies against the Bruins.

The Leafs leaned heavily on special teams in the win, going 6-for-6 on the penalty kill while scoring three power-play goals. The 4-0 victory marked a breakthrough for the Toronto power play, which ranked last in the NHL with a 7.9 percent success rate before Tuesday.

Pontus Holmberg slid from wing to center on the third line to cover for Domi in the win, while David Kämpf remained the team's fourth-line center. Dewar could potentially slot in on Kämpf's wing should the Leafs give him the nod on Friday night.

Matthews was sidelined for just one contest last season with what the Leafs reported was the flu, marking his most games played since his 2016-17 Calder Trophy campaign. He is now slated to miss a minimum of three games in 2024-25.

The Leafs have gone 35-19-2 in the regular season without Matthews and won two playoff games without him last spring, but Max Pacioretty emphasized to reporters on Thursday that there is "no replacing" the best even-strength scorer in the NHL. Toronto will hope to get him back in the lineup as soon as possible as they look to improve their 7-5-2 season-opening record and challenge the Florida Panthers for the Atlantic Division lead.

The Boston Bruins are "getting closer" to finalizing a three-year extension for captain Brad Marchand, Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reported on Saturday.

The conclusion was later denied by Marchand, who told reporters that the report was false "for now."

"If I was to sign a three-year extension, it would be signed, you know?" Marchand told reporters on Saturday night. "Clearly, Elliotte is just wrong there. So that's about it."

Marchand is playing on the final season of the eight-year, $49 million deal he inked with the Bruins in 2016. An extension would stop him from hitting unrestricted free agency next summer, and a three-year deal would keep Marchand with the team through 2027-28.

The longest-tenured Bruin since Patrice Bergeron's retirement in July 2023, Marchand was named captain ahead of the 2023-24 season.

He has so far recorded four assists in seven games while the Bruins have gone 3-4-1 to open the 2024-25 campaign.

Marchand is skating in his 16th NHL campaign, all of which he has played with the Bruins. Last season he recorded 29 goals and 67 points in 82 games while leading the Bruins to the franchise's eighth straight playoff appearance.

The Bruins' 2024 playoff run ended last spring with a second-round loss to the eventual champion Florida Panthers.

Having signed starting goaltender Jeremy Swayman to an eight-year, $66 million extension, Boston will hope to make a deeper run next spring despite the team's relatively slow start to the season. Extending Marchand, and therefore avoiding any pressure to trade him at the deadline rather than risking him walking in free agency, could help further that goal.

The slow season start involved Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery, who is also currently working on an expiring contract, expressing visible frustration with Marchand during an Oct. 19 overtime loss to the Utah Hockey Club. When asked about the incident Marchand defended Montgomery and expressed confidence in the third-year Bruins head coach.

Marchand ranks fifth among all Bruins players with 1,037 games played, 401 career goals and 933 career points. The veteran winger also leads the 101-year-old franchise with 56 postseason goals, and ranks second only to Hall of Fame defenseman Ray Bourque with 138 points in 157 playoff games. He is the only remaining player from the roster that led the Bruins to the 2011 Stanley Cup.

The Florida Panthers continued their 2024 Stanley Cup celebration by announcing a multi-year extension for head coach Paul Maurice on Tuesday.

Maurice is in the 27th season of a head coaching career that began with the Hartford Whalers in 1995.

He led the Panthers to two Stanley Cup Final appearances and a 98-58-15 regular-season record over his first two seasons with the franchise.

Panthers general manager Bill Zito said in a statement that Maurice is a "superb communicator and leader for our staff and players, possessing a keen strategic mind for the game."

Maurice's previous deal with the Panthers was reportedly set to expire after the 2024-25 season. The three-year contract he signed in 2022 was worth approximately $4 million per season, Pierre LeBrun previously reported for The Athletic.

Prior to last spring, Maurice had led the Carolina Hurricanes as far as the 2002 Stanley Cup Final in 2002, but his team lost in five games to the Detroit Red Wings.

Then Maurice was given the chance to take over the Panthers after the team claimed the franchise's first Presidents' Trophy with their 122-point campaign in 2021-22.

In the two seasons since the Panthers have ranked among the top ten offensive teams in the NHL with 35.1 shots on goal per game, 3.37 goals per game and a 23.0 percent power play success rate.

Florida's defense also limited opponents to 2.41 goals against and 27.8 shots against per game last season, the lowest totals in franchise history.

The balanced offense and defense, as well as a physical playing style, allowed Maurice to lead a roster starring Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, Carter Verhaeghe and Sergei Bobrovsky to a first Stanley Cup for both the franchise and their coach.

The Panthers have opened the 2024-25 season atop the Atlantic with a 4-2-1 record. Maurice and the defending champions return to action on Tuesday night with a home game against the 3-0-2 Minnesota Wild.

The Boston Bruins will celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the franchise's first NHL game by wearing commemorative uniforms during a December home contest against the Montreal Canadiens.

Bruins star Brad Marchand debuted the new sweater in a video shared on Thursday on social media.

The jerseys will be worn at TD Garden exactly one century after the Bruins won their first game in the league on Dec. 1, 1924 victory over the Montreal Maroons.

The uniform is a slight variation on the centennial uniforms the Bruins debuted during the 2023-24 centennial season, which featured the letter "B" in the center of a spoked wheel.

The special edition jerseys for the Canadiens game in December feature a patch displaying a Bruins bear marked with the number "100", as well as the date Dec. 1 and the years 1924 and 2024.

The commemorative kit also features gold on the sleeves and socks, which were black in the 2023-24 regular-season jerseys.

Inside the collar of the special uniform, players will wear the final score of the 1924 inaugural game, which the Bruins won 2-1 over the Maroons, according to a press release.

The jerseys also have a special design along the bottom hem, where the words "tradition, grit, passion and heart" are stitched as a representation of the franchise's "core values," according to the team.

The Bruins are the first American NHL team to play an 100th season in the league. Only the Toronto Maple Leafs, which celebrated the anniversary in 2017, and the Montreal Canadiens, which hit the centennial in 2009, have longer franchise histories.

The next three NHL teams to celebrate their centennial anniversaries will be the Detroit Red Wings, Chicago Blackhawks and New York Rangers in 2026.

The Tampa Bay Lightning's Saturday home opener against the Carolina Hurricanes has been postponed due to the impact of Hurricane Milton.

A makeup date will be shared "as soon as it can be confirmed," according to the NHL.

The Lightning are scheduled to open the 2024-25 season on Friday against the Hurricanes on the road.

Tampa Bay also has home games scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday of the following week. It is not yet clear if those contests will be impacted by the storm.

Hurricane Milton, which made landfall on Wednesday, left millions of Florida residents without power fewer than two weeks after the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene.

Mandatory evacuation orders were issued to more than seven million Florida residents ahead of the hurricane, Terry Spencer and Kate Payne reported for the Associated Press.

Tampa International Airport was closed on Thursday after reporting damages to boarding bridges, debris on grounds and leaks inside the airport.

The storm also caused apparent flooding at Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and severely damaged the roof at Tropicana Field, where the MLB's Tampa Bay Rays play in St. Petersburg.

It was not immediately clear if Amalie Arena, located on the opposite side of Tampa from the Buccaneers' home, suffered any damage in the storm. Angelina Salcedo of 11Alive News shared video of flooding in the streets near the arena.

Amalie Arena has additionally postponed multiple other events, including concerts originally scheduled to take place at the venue on Thursday and Friday.

The Lightning are currently scheduled to face the Vancouver Canucks and Vegas Golden Knights at home next week before embarking on a three-game road trip. The Minnesota Wild, Washington Capitals and Nashville Predators are then slated to visit Tampa Bay the week of Oct. 24.

The Boston Bruins have committed to their goalie of the future.

Jeremy Swayman agreed to an eight-year contract, according to TSN's Pierre LeBrun. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported the deal is worth $8.25 million annually.

Swayman played the 2023-24 season on a $3.475 million deal reached through arbitration with the Bruins. Both parties declined the opportunity for another round of arbitration this summer.

The new extension resolves a contract dispute that led to Swayman holding out from training camp and the Bruins' preseason.

The dispute led Bruins president Cam Neely and Swayman's agent Lewis Gross to publicly disagree as to how much the netminder had been offered in negotiations.

That conflict has been resolved with a deal that will bring back the netminder who led the Bruins to the 2024 second round with an NHL playoff-best .933 save percentage through 12 games.

Usually part of a tandem with Linus Ullmark, Swayman became the Bruins' go-to starter this postseason during the first round, which he capped off with a 30-save Game 6 performance to eliminate the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Swayman went on to start all but one of the Bruins' playoff games as the team came within two wins of the Eastern Conference Finals.

That strong playoff performance followed a career-high 25 wins during the regular season as Swayman recorded a .916 save percentage and 2.53 goals against average through 44 appearances in net.

Swayman, a fourth-round Bruins draft pick in 2017, made his NHL debut in April 2021 before forming the tandem with Ullmark the following season. He has a career .919 save percentage and 2.34 goals against average in 132 appearances with 125 starts through four seasons with Boston.

As Boston transitioned from the old guard that led the team to the 2011 Stanley Cup by bidding farewell to veterans like David Krejčí and Patrice Bergeron, Swayman helped the Bruins remain a perennial postseason team.

He will now serve as a core piece around which Boston will look to build another championship contender.

The Bruins' attention will next turn to deciding which goaltender will serve as Swayman's backup next season now that Ullmark has been dealt to the Ottawa Senators in exchange for Joonas Korpisalo.

Brandon Bussi, who was re-signed to a one-year, two-way deal after making 41 starts for the Providence Bruins last season, could make his NHL debut this season. Meanwhile Korpisalo is looking to bounce back from posting a .890 save percentage in 55 appearances for the Senators in 2023-24. Both could compete for the No. 2 spot behind Swayman this fall.