Month: May 2019

A NSW Police weapons instructor who wrote the agency's Taser policy has told an inquest that frontline police are expected to carry one Taser between two officers, but that did not happen on the evening a man was fatally shot at Central Station.

Danukul Mokmool, 30, was shot dead on July 26, 2017 after he ran at police outside a florist while holding a pair of scissors in each hand. Mr Mokmool, who had a history of psychosis, was likely experiencing a psychotic episode at the time, the NSW Coroner's Court heard.

On Friday, weapons and defensive tactics instructor Sergeant Justin Waters said frontline police wearing uniforms are expected to have one Taser between two officers. Previously, an officer giving evidence seemed to believe wearing the weapon was a matter of individual choice.

Counsel assisting, Adrian Williams, asked if that expectation of wearing the Taser had been made clear to officers.

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"If it hasn't been, it will be after this particular matter," Sergeant Waters said.

The weapons instructor previously said that even if there had been a Taser at the scene, using it would have been futile because it is a single-shot device that needs to be armed with a switch on the side, and if both probes do not hit a target they remain an active threat.

He said if a Taser was used on Mr Mokmool, a firearm would likely have been used "at exactly the same time" by another officer nearby.

Mr Mokmool was fatally shot about 21 seconds after police arrived at the florist, responding to an urgent call that a man was holding a knife to a shopkeeper's throat.

Sergeant Waters said the two officers who shot at Mr Mokmool identified an "immediate risk" to their lives and responded according to their training. Senior Constable Frederick Tse fired three rounds, while Senior Constable Jakob Harrison fired one round.

"The threat from a bladed weapon cannot be understated," Sergeant Waters said.

"I don't believe there's anywhere in there that those officers could have done anything different."

Giving evidence on Friday, forensic pharmacologist John Farrar said when an autopsy was done on Mr Mokmool he was found to have a concentration of methadone in his blood of 0.98mg/litre.

Dr Farrar said Mr Mokmool took one dose of methadone a day, a drug usually given to people to wean them off opiates, and would have been at or near "peak blood concentration" of the substance at the time of the shooting.

He said if a person is consuming methadone on a regular basis, nothing in its effects would cause Mr Mokmool's behaviour on July 26.

Mr Mokmool's mother Supaporn Chomphoo and brother Charlie Huynh were among his relatives to attend the inquest on Friday.

Speaking at the time of his brother's death, Mr Huynh said it was "pretty heartbreaking" and described Mr Mokmool as a lovely person and an "innocent young bloke".

The inquest will resume in June.

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ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Blues are marching into the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in decades.

Pretty sweet moment for Vladimir Tarasenko and Co.

David Perron had a goal and an assist, Jordan Binnington picked up his franchise-record 12th playoff win and the Blues eliminated the San Jose Sharks with a 5-1 win in Game 6 of the Western Conference final Tuesday night.

Tarasenko, Brayden Schenn and Tyler Bozak also scored for St. Louis, which will face the Boston Bruins for the championship. Ivan Barbashev got an empty-netter with 2:15 left, Ryan O’Reilly had three assists and Binnington stopped 25 shots.

“We always believed we could do this,” said Tarasenko, who had a point in every game of the series. “But it’s still an unbelievable feeling.”

St. Louis won three consecutive games to advance to the franchise’s first Cup Final since 1970. That series also pitted the Blues against the Bruins.

Game 1 is Monday night in Boston.

Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” blared over the speakers at the Blues’ home arena after the latest victory on an improbable run from last in the NHL Jan. 3 to one of the last two teams standing. The turnaround came after Craig Berube replaced Mike Yeo as coach in November and Binnington took over as the starting goaltender in January.

“We always had the talent,” said Doug Armstrong, the general manager and president of hockey operations for the Blues. “But we were finding ways to lose games instead of winning them. They turned it around and just haven’t stopping going.”

Berube gave his team credit for working its way through a coaching change and several months of disappointing play.

“We were trying to get on the right track,” Berube said. “Once we got going in January and February, I knew we had a good hockey team. Once you get into the playoffs anything can happen — and it did.”

Blues defenseman Colton Parayko said it was a matter of confidence.

“We all bought in and eventually we figured out just how good we can be,” he said. “It’s a tight-knit group. But that adversity, it made us work harder for each other.”

San Jose played without injured forwards Joe Pavelski and Tomas Hertl and defenseman Erik Karlsson. Injury attrition played a role for the Sharks, who played seven games in each of the first two rounds.

Dylan Gambrell scored his first career goal for San Jose, which lost for the first time in five elimination games this postseason. Martin Jones made 14 stops.

St. Louis grabbed control with a fast start.

Perron tipped in Sammy Blais’ shot just 92 seconds into the game. Tarasenko made it 2-0 with a well-placed wrist shot at 16:16.

Tarasenko got his eighth goal of the postseason just seven seconds after San Jose forward Barclay Goodrow was sent off for tripping.

Gambrell converted a breakaway along the right wing 6:40 into the second period. Joonas Donskoi set up the play with a long stretch pass.

Gambrell’s goal came just seconds after Jones stopped Pat Maroon from close range. It also stopped the Sharks’ scoring drought at 99 minutes, 32 seconds.

Schenn pushed the lead to 3-1 with a power-play goal 12:47 into the second. He pounced on the rebound of a shot by Alex Pietrangelo for his first goal in 14 games.

Bozak scored on a feed from Perron in the third period for a 4-1 lead.

Binnington improved to 12-7 with his second straight strong effort. He made 21 saves in a 5-0 win in Game 4 on Sunday.

The 25-year-old Binnington stopped Evander Kane on the doorstep midway through the third. He also denied Logan Couture on a breakaway later in the period.

“It’s excitement and relief,” Binnington said. “We put in all the work. It’s pretty special. The final minutes, counting down and how loud it was in the rink, it was a special moment.”

The Sharks took a 2-1 lead in the series, but were outscored 12-2 in losing the final three games.

“I think the two hardest, heaviest teams are in the final,” San Jose coach Peter DeBoer said. “There wasn’t any room out there. And when there was — Binnington made some saves.”

Couture had four of the Sharks’ 26 shots on goal.

“When you lose this opportunity and it gets snatched away from you it’s very hard to take,” Couture said. “You’ve got to get over it.”

Former Blues players Bob Plager, Brett Hull, Chris Pronger and Al MacInnis were in attendance along with numerous other former players. Plager was in tears in the locker room after the win.

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Kaapo Kakko is fueling the debate over who should be the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NHL draft.

“This is a big thing for me for the draft,” Kakko told NHL.com through a translator. “I think I can be the first [pick].”

The Finnish star is certainly making his case for the Devils to select him first over American Jack Hughes, who is expected to go to New Jersey on June 21. Kakko, a forward, has six goals in four games, tied for the lead at the 2019 IIHF World Championship in Slovakia. That includes a highlight-reel goal in a win over Canada in the preliminary round.

Hughes, on the other hand, has recorded just 11 shots on goal and an assist in four games, while seeing limited action on the U.S.’s loaded roster. The two top prospects went head-to-head earlier this month, but neither found their way on the score sheet.

“I’ve played well,” Kakko said. “I haven’t paid much attention to Jack Hughes and his game, but I’m confident I’ve been able to let everyone see my skills and the level of my game. It’s not going to be an easy choice for the teams.”

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If the Devils do select Kakko first, Hughes would likely drop to the Rangers at No. 2. The pair have been the censuses top two players in the draft for a while, but Kakko is providing reasons to question the order.

“It’s great that people are interested in me and my game, of course,” Kakko said. “I’m glad I’ve been able to play well and execute.”

If the Devils don’t listen, the Rangers will be there sitting at No. 2 to scoop Kakko up.

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So you want every scoring play in the playoffs subject to video review, or is that only overtime scoring plays? But it can’t only be on overtime scoring plays, right, because what about a game-tying or game-winning scoring play in final minute of regulation? So, OK, final minute of regulation plus overtime. But wait, you mean the tying or winning scoring play with 1:01 to go would not be subject to review? All right, so every scoring play.

Every scoring play being subject to review means that every scoring play is subject to an offside review. You understand that, correct? So that all of the goals that are not challenged for offside by coaches because the risk of picking up a 2-minute penalty outweighs the reward of possibly overturning a 49-51 call, well, they will be reviewed anyway. Many, interminably. But all right, you want to get them all right, and the only way to do that is by Zaprudering every one of them.

Now, an apparent goal is scored on a rush that begins deep in the defensive zone following a turnover. Where does the video review begin? When the scoring team gains possession? When it gains the offensive zone? What happens if review uncovers a penalty back at the other end that created the turnover? No goal and a penalty? What if, upon review, a poor line change is detected and the scoring team is discovered to have had too many men on the ice? No goal and a penalty? And replay the time that had ticked off between the overlooked violation and the now disallowed goal?

When that happens a couple of times in a match, regulation games will be maybe 62, 63, 64 minutes — kind of like soccer, when you’re not quite sure how long they play — but not all of the minutes will count.

If we are now reviewing every scoring play in the playoffs, what about the final game of the regular season when two teams are competing for one tournament berth? No? So we only need to get it right in the playoffs, not necessarily the regular season. Sure, that will go over well when a playoff-clincher is scored off a hand pass.

Everything is subject to review? Everything? Or just the one, two or three challenges we arbitrarily decide to dole out to each team in the wake of the NHL’s latest officiating fiasco that ruined Game 3 of the San Jose-St. Louis series, when the overtime winner was scored as a result of a hand pass everyone except the four on-ice officials saw with their own eyes as it transpired?

Reviewing every scoring play will destroy spontaneous reactions from the fans and celebrations from the athletes. It will turn the game into something else altogether, because we’re not just reviewing every scoring play, are we? We are reviewing major penalties, we are reviewing minor penalties that should be majors (or no?), we are reviewing hand-pass infractions, we are reviewing pucks that might have hit the netting, we are reviewing …

Well, we are reviewing everything except why NHL officiating is in a state of crisis. We are not reviewing protocols. And we are not reviewing the performance of Colin Campbell and Stephen Walkom, the two league executives charged with overseeing and running the operation. Of course not. We’re just demanding more video review.

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Let’s give all the calls to Toronto — where, of course, the decisions coming out of Review Central have all made so much sense; and by the way, I defy you to explain how that off-the-skate goal scored by Devon Toews in the final seconds of the second period of the second Islanders-Carolina match was disallowed. But why should the league stop with Toronto making every subjective call? Why not outsource the job to India?

Review it all? If that’s the case, then what is the incentive for on-ice officials to make the correct calls if their mistakes can be reversed? Why call offside if it’s too close to call when technology will almost immediately — or at some point — come to the rescue?

You want to add a third referee off the ice who would have the power to override calls in real time by blowing a horn or something to stop play? So this ref, who presumably would be able to detect just about any infraction, would beep for a missed tripping minor, or only for … well, for what? If it is about getting it right, it necessarily must be about getting it all right. Except it won’t be.

The answer to this officiating mess that has been a long time coming is not to dramatically expand video review, but to dramatically improve the performance of the referees and linesmen working the games. It is to provide them with better direction, perhaps a new protocol. It is to revamp the officiating department, and that means starting at the top.

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Was going to ask a week or two ago if Sebastian Aho was the league’s best-kept secret, but I bet the question will be answered when Carolina’s brilliant 21-year-old winger hits restricted free agency July 1 after going from 49 points to 65 to 83 and recording an aggregate 197 points (83 G, 114 A) in 242 games over his first three seasons.

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Brad Marchand has transformed into more of a wise guy than a menace, which does represent a rather significant step for the winger who, by the way, has emerged as a no-doubt top-10 player in the league.

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Finally, there aren’t many guys who can go through four-plus decades in this game and leave it with as many friends as the unanimously popular Jim Schoenfeld, who stepped down this week as Rangers assistant general manager and who has earned all of the happy trails that lay in front of him.

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It was becoming clear this was the only solution for the Rangers, the only one that made enough sense they would wait for it.

How much longer does not have to be pondered any more, as the Blueshirts got their man and John Davidson is returning to the fold to be team president.

One might be inclined to say, “Oh baby!”

Davidson — the longtime Rangers broadcaster, who coined that phrase, and the goalie who led the Blueshirts to the 1979 Stanley Cup final on a bum knee — is deservedly a fan favorite. There is the intelligence and experience that make “J.D.” a home run for the job. There also is the personality and loyalty that make him a match unlike any other to replace a legend like Glen Sather as the man running one of the league’s marquee franchises.

With Sather’s compatriot Jim Schoenfeld also stepping down Thursday, the corner office is all Davidson’s. General manager Jeff Gorton has done a terrific job to get the Rangers to the point at which they’re rounding the corner, but now it’s Davidson at the wheel during the most critical juncture.

There is a lot of work to do. This rebuilding is at a point at which it can either be accelerated or slow-played through a plethora of big-time decisions. There are the two first-round picks, including No. 2 overall that represents the Rangers’ best draft position since they took Brad Park in the 1966 amateur draft.

So Davidson will be closely watching the NHL combine that comes in two weeks in Buffalo, studying to understand what he will get in either Jack Hughes or Kaapo Kakko after the Devils pick at No. 1. And Davidson will be scouring the market, inquiring about Evgeni Malkin, thinking about buying out Kevin Shattenkirk, evaluating exactly what he has in Harvard defenseman Adam Fox.

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Maybe most importantly, Davidson has the inside knowledge of the exact worth of Artemi Panarin, the electric Russian winger who was under his stewardship in Columbus for the past two seasons and will hit the market on July 1 as the most coveted free agent. To be able to make a competitive offer with the Panthers in tax-free Florida, the Rangers might have to be in the neighborhood of $10 or $11 million per year. That is a major investment, and likely the biggest decision this team has had to make since “The Letter” went out in February 2018.

There is no denying the Rangers are moving in the right direction. They made their run, got as close as Game 5 of the 2014 Stanley Cup final. So credit to Sather and Schoenfeld and Gorton for getting them to that point. But just as much credit goes to them for knowing when to pull the plug.

Cleaning house while stockpiling picks and prospects was the easy part. The idea of rebuilding is refreshing during a phase like that.

It gets a lot harder to stomach when it comes to evaluating exactly what is left. This is where franchises can go off the rails for years, if not into a perpetual cycle of self-sabotage and delusion. A relatively clean slate is also an open canvas for new mistakes.

And there are landmines left all over this landscape.

Like what kind of future does former No. 7-overall Lias Andersson have? Where does restricted free agent Pavel Buchnevich fit in as he enters the offseason with arbitration rights? How about the Rangers’ top pick from this past draft (No. 9 overall), the precocious 19-year-old forward Vitali Kravtsov, who will be in training camp?

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Oh, and then there is the goalie.

Just what is the approach to 37-year-old Henrik Lundqvist, who has two more years left on his deal at $8.5 million per and has been nothing less than the club’s backbone for a decade and a loyal trooper during this turbulent time? With Alex Georgiev showing flashes of potential this past season, and with unknown prodigy Igor Shesterkin coming over from the KHL, what is the Rangers’ future in nets — the place where Davidson so admirably patrolled from 1975 until the early 1980s before injuries derailed him?

These are good questions to have. The Rangers are in a good place, still in familiar hands. There is continuity in this transition while also bringing renewed perspective.

“Today is the start of a new and exciting chapter in New York Rangers history,” Garden chairman James Dolan said in a statement.

Dolan hired the right guy. The only guy. Now it’s to be seen if J.D. can do the job.

The Rangers added a potential boost to their blue line on Monday by inking young defenseman Yegor Rykov.

The 22-year-old agreed to a two-year entry-level deal with the Rangers, who landed his rights in the Michael Grabner deal with the Devils. He was initially a fifth-round pick of the Devils in the 2016 draft.

The 6-foot-3, 225-pound Rykov has a clause in the second year of his contract that allows him to go back to the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) if he is sent down to the American Hockey League (AHL), a source told The Post’s Larry Brooks.

Rykov played in 47 games with HC Sochi of the KHL last year, registering three goals and six assists, along with eight penalty minutes. He joins the mix on the left side of the blue line with Brady Skjei, Marc Staal, Libor Hajek, Brendan Smith and Ryan Lindgren.

John Davidson is coming home, back to Broadway where he was a beloved player and announcer. He’s coming back to where he has spent so much of his professional career, hoping to make the Rangers a spring factor once again.

The Blue Jackets’ president of hockey operations stepped down on Friday afternoon to take the same position with the Rangers, it was announced. Davidson is leaving his post after seven mostly successful seasons to join the Rangers, who were in the market for a new president after Glen Sather stepped down in April after running the team since 2000.

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“I am excited and humbled to be named the President of the New York Rangers,” Davidson said in a press release. “The opportunity of rejoining the Rangers organization and returning home to New York, where my family and I have spent so many wonderful years, was one I simply could not pass up. I want to thank James Dolan for offering me this chance to come home.”

Davidson will run the show and establish a vision for the organization while general manager Jeff Gorton will continue in his rebuilding, which is now a year and few months in the works. Davidson was the runaway favorite for the position, a reason there were very few names in the mix, especially once Steve Yzerman took the job as the Red Wings’ general manager. Once the Blue Jackets were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs by the Bruins, the wheels began to turn.

“Today is the start of a new and exciting chapter in New York Rangers history,” owner James Dolan said. “John Davidson is one of the premier executives in the National Hockey League. As we continue to build a team that can consistently compete for the Stanley Cup, John’s knowledge of the game and his experience and passion for the Rangers logo make him the ideal choice to oversee our Hockey Operations department. I am thrilled to welcome ‘JD’ and his family home.”

The 66-year-old Davidson called Rangers games and was a lead analyst on national broadcasts for several networks for 19 years after his playing days were over before leaving in 2006 to be the Blues’ president. He was with St. Louis for six years and reached the playoffs twice before a new ownership group came in and bought him out of his contract. He joined the Blue Jackets in 2012. Under Davidson’s watch, Columbus qualified for the postseason four times, including the franchise’s first-ever playoff series victory, a mammoth upset of the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Lightning this spring. As a player for the Rangers from 1975-83, he led them to the 1979 Stanley Cup Finals on an injured left knee and then transitioned into broadcasting, where he was affectionately known simply as “J.D.” His “Oh baby” catchphrase became a staple.

“John and I have remained good friends. John as good as it gets,” longtime broadcast partner Sam Rosen said when Davidson was back in town for the 1994 Rangers’ 25-year anniversary celebration. “He is a wonderful person and self made man, who has done wonderful things with his life and just to be around him is great. He is one of my closest friends in the world. Whatever he did, he did the best.

“He was so well respected by those around the league that he became an executive of two teams — the Blues and Blue Jackets. He brought both teams to an excellent level of success. Any time we could be together is a special time.”

— Additional reporting by Justin Terranova

RALEIGH, N.C. — Boston’s top line kept finding ways to score, especially on the power play. With a chance to clinch another series, Tuukka Rask was perfect — again.

Rask posted his seventh career playoff shutout, and the Bruins swept the Carolina Hurricanes out of the Eastern Conference final, winning 4-0 on Thursday night to reach their third Stanley Cup Final in nine years.

“Everyone in the room wanted to be at their best,” forward Brad Marchand said, “and everyone was at their best tonight.”

Rask made 24 saves in his second straight series-clinching shutout. Patrice Bergeron scored two goals, David Pastrnak had a goal and two assists and Marchand added an empty-netter. Both Bergeron and Pastrnak scored on second-period power plays.

The Bruins won their seventh straight postseason game — their longest playoff winning streak in nearly half a century — to return to the Cup final after winning in 2011 and losing to Chicago two years later.

“It’s so difficult to advance in the playoffs, let alone make it to the final,” said Rask, the backup to Conn Smythe Trophy winner Tim Thomas in 2011. “We need to really enjoy this but realize we have a lot of work to do.”

On its longest postseason win streak since reeling off nine straight in 1972, Boston earned a break before taking on the West winner. San Jose leads its series with St. Louis 2-1 heading into Game 4 Friday night.

The Bruins won this one without captain Zdeno Chara, who was scratched with an unspecified injury and is day to day, ending a run of 98 consecutive playoff games for the hulking 42-year-old veteran that dated to 2011.

Chara joined his teammates on the ice for the post-series handshake line with Carolina, and while coach Bruce Cassidy declined to elaborate on the nature of Chara’s injury, he did say he’s expected back for the start of the Cup final.

Curtis McElhinney made 19 saves for the Hurricanes, whose first playoff appearance since 2009 ended precisely the same way their previous postseason trip did — by being swept in the East final.

“Listen, the tank’s been low for a long time,” captain Justin Williams said. “It’s been running on adrenaline and sheer will. It’s always tough to swallow when the season ends, just abruptly like that. It’s like you’re cut real quick. And you’ve got to go home.”

Carolina got this far by sweeping the New York Islanders in Round 2. Not that the extra rest time helped the Hurricanes, or anyone else in these playoffs: No team that swept its opponent has won its next series.

After outscoring them 17-5 in four games, Boston no doubt wants to halt that trend — especially with the sport’s biggest prize on the line.

Special teams drove this series, with the Bruins scoring seven power-play goals in the four games while the Hurricanes had five during their entire 15-game postseason run. Boston had at least one power-play goal in every game while Carolina failed to score on its last 13 chances with the man advantage.

So it was no surprise that Boston took control with its best-in-the-playoffs power-play unit.

Eighteen seconds into a minor on the Hurricanes for having too many men on the ice, Pastrnak finished off a slick give-and-go with Marchand, getting past Calvin de Haan and slipping the puck into an open net at 4:46 of the second.

“Everything’s going OK, then we get into that specialty area where that’s obviously a huge advantage for them,” coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “And they made us pay.”

With Greg McKegg in the box for goaltender interference, the Bruins scored on another give-and-go involving Pastrnak, who set up Bergeron’s goal with 1:26 left in the second.

Rask — who blanked Columbus 3-0 in the decisive sixth game of the previous series — didn’t even face a shot on goal for roughly the first half of the third, and only seven for the entire period.

“Tuukka’s been very consistent,” Cassidy said. “Usually, if you’re going to get on a roll, your goaltender’s going to have to win a game for you somewhere along the way or steal one for you. … He can’t have a bad night.”

McElhinney made his second straight start in place of Petr Mrazek, a move made by Brind’Amour to shake things up after the Hurricanes lost the first two games of the series in Boston by a combined 11-4 score.

That this game was scoreless after 20 minutes was a testament to McElhinney, who came up with several early gems — including robbing Marchand from close range with his glove about 7½ minutes in.

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Lou Lamoriello has a decision in front of him that no other president/general manager in the NHL must confront. But these are the Islanders, and that must always be remembered regardless of how transformative Lamoriello’s and Barry Trotz’s twin arrivals were last year.

For Lamoriello must decide how to split his franchise’s home dates between two venues, Barclays Center and the Coliseum, and, to make matters more complex, he must do that knowing only the first round of the playoffs — if that — would be staged on the Island.

No one used it as an excuse this season. Not a player and not an executive. But when the Islanders met Carolina at Barclays for Game 1 of the second round on April 26, it marked the team’s first game in Brooklyn since Feb. 16, one day shy of 10 weeks.

This was no place like home.

“Like visiting an old friend,” is the way Trotz tried to spin it positively, when it was actually like unavoidably seeing an icky distant relative at a family reunion.

Lamoriello last week talked about understanding the nostalgia for the Coliseum. But the collective-bargaining agreement isn’t a document that accommodates either reverence or melancholy, and the fact is, every game played at the Coliseum generates lower revenue, while playoff dates at the old barn generate dramatically less income. That impacts not only the franchise’s bottom line but the cap and escrow.

The folks who operate both Barclays and the Coliseum want as few games as possible in Brooklyn, but that does not align with the league view.

“You know, Nassau Coliseum isn’t exactly a major-league, state-of-the-art facility,” Gary Bettman said May 3. “We tried to be accommodating. But we have to be realistic about what that facility is.”

The commissioner could be more realistic about the toll that hits to the head — any and all of them — extract on hockey players under his watch, but that obviously is hoping for much too much from the denier-in-chief. But back to our story.

Last year, the Islanders played 21 of their 41 home games at the Coliseum, including the final 12 (and 21 of the last 30) dates. There is no guarantee Bettman will go for that split, though the folks in Albany who have been in the middle of everything here, and that most prominently includes awarding the Belmont site to the franchise, will certainly have their say. Then it goes to the Islanders.

Regardless of the raw numbers, it would seem best this time around for Lamoriello to reverse the approach and schedule as many home games as possible in March and April for Brooklyn so that it all doesn’t seem so foreign when it is time to set up shop for the playoffs.

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When the Sharks needed a botched call to advance in Game 7 of the first round against Vegas, they got it. (Yes, they needed four power-play goals, too, but that’s a mere detail.) When they needed a letter-of-the-law reversal on an offside challenge to maintain the lead in Game 7 against Colorado, they got it. This round: a critical goaltender interference review to complete the trifecta. And then maybe San Jose will score one off a ricochet off the netting in the finals.

There is little both more stupid and more unpopular in the sport than what the offside challenge has become, the latest evidence being the letter-of-the-law reversal of an Avalanche goal because of Gabriel Landeskog’s idleness by the bench in Game 7.

If it is about getting it right, what about the dozens of offside violations that occur every night but are unnoticed or undocumented because goals did not immediately follow?

Yet as long as Bettman stands in support of it, the league GMs won’t have the brass to recommend elimination of the offside challenge.

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Another hit to the head, another insufficient response from the officials on the ice, this time the Kelly Sutherland-Steve Kozari referee tandem that gave Charlie McAvoy merely a two-minute minor for his blow to Josh Anderson in Game 7 of Boston-Columbus.

And if it is true, as suggested by folks of pedigree, that the refs did not give McAvoy the match penalty (and the Jackets a five-minute major) he’d earned because they were concerned about repercussions if proved wrong by replay, as happened in the botched mess Dan O’Halloran and Eric Furlatt made of Game 7 of San Jose-Vegas, then that is as big an indictment of NHL officiating as I can recall.

Or at least since VP of officiating Stephen Walkom got that standing ovation at either a Board of Governors or GMs meeting a few years ago.

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Honestly, social media does not get any better than a subsection of Rangers fans acting all horrified over the prospect that the Devils might opt to select Kaapo Kakko first overall, thus allowing Jack Hughes to slide to the Blueshirts at No. 2.

Nico/Nolan? So far, the Swiss with the edge.

Tyler/Taylor? Still too close to call, the winger with a Hart but the center  — a center — who has been healthier and has posted better numbers.

Jacko/Kakko? We’ll see.

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Not quite John Smoltz for Doyle Alexander, but you do know that the Flyers traded Justin Williams when he was 22 years old to Carolina for defenseman Danny Markov, who played a sum of 34 regular-season games with Philly?

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Finally, in the realm of all-time trades, there is Boston acquiring Tuukka Rask from Toronto for Andrew Raycroft in a one-on-one goaltender exchange in June 2006, when Jeff Gorton was operating as interim/acting GM while waiting for Peter Chiarelli to be released from his obligation in Ottawa.

Raycroft, who won the 2004 Calder, played 91 games for the Leafs over two years. Rask is the front-runner for the Conn Smythe Trophy.

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The Carolina Hurricanes hope the friendly confines of PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C., for Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals will reboot the storm surge and help get themselves back into the series against the Boston Bruins. Boston leads it 2-0, outscoring Carolina 11-4. The Bruins have been terrific at both five-on-five even strength and with the man-advantage, converting four power-play goals in seven attempts. Carolina is one for seven on its power play.

It is not all doom and gloom for the Hurricanes, who can take comfort in knowing they have played their best on home ice in the playoffs, entering Tuesday with a 5-0 home mark.

The Plays: Carolina to win Game 3 (-115), and to score the first goal (-125). The return to home ice should provide a massively needed energy and adrenaline boost for the Canes. Plus, home teams have scored the first goal in the opening home game of a series 21 times out of 26 (81 percent) in these playoffs.

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