With 32 teams, games every night and countless narratives emerging, the NHL season can make one\u2019s head spin, and it\u2019s easy to miss out on the weekly storylines. Not to worry; every Monday from October to April, I\u2019ll map out the major events, games, plotlines and milestones on tap for the next seven days.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s happening the week of Dec. 1 -7 ?<\/p>\n
Brenden Dillon\u2019s 1,000th game<\/p>\n
Columbus Blue Jackets<\/a> at New Jersey Devils<\/a>, 7:00 p.m. ET<\/p>\n Dillon is the type of defenseman whose ideal game is one in which you don\u2019t notice him, meaning he\u2019s played mistake-free, meat-and-potatoes hockey, so it\u2019s fitting that he\u2019s very quietly reached the 1,000-game plateau, split across five franchises. The 35-year-old remains a reliable third-pair banger and penalty-kill fixture.<\/p>\n Dec. 2: \u2018Tank Bowl\u2019 matchup between NHL\u2019s bottom two teams<\/p>\n Calgary Flames<\/a> @ Nashville Predators<\/a>, 8:00 p.m. ET<\/p>\n Through Sunday\u2019s action, the Flames and Predators hold the two worst points percentages in the NHL, meaning they\u2019re on track to have the top odds for the NHL Draft Lottery at 25.5 percent and 13.5 percent, respectively. Are their seasons lost enough already that their respective fan bases will cheer for a loss as a \u201cwin\u201d in this matchup?<\/p>\n Dec. 4: Jim Montgomery returns to Boston<\/p>\n St. Louis Blues<\/a> @ Boston Bruins<\/a>, 7:00 p.m. ET<\/p>\n It\u2019s been just more than a year now since the Bruins dumped Montgomery as their head coach just one season and change after he led them to the greatest regular season in NHL history and won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year. The Bruins ended up missing the playoffs last season, while Montgomery quickly caught on with the Blues and led them on a Cinderella run to a playoff berth. They\u2019ve struggled to stay competitive this season, however, while the Bruins are back on the upswing. Maybe a win over Montgomery\u2019s old team could spark a surge for the Blues?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With 32 teams, games every night and countless narratives emerging, the NHL season can make one\u2019s head spin,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-318430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}