Unser Chat » for many years. Los Angeles pursued him in free agency

Like he does with so many things http://www.islandersfanproshop.com/authentic-nick-leddy-jersey , Sidney Crosby makes it look easy.There was the time he shot the puck off the post and swatted the rebound into the net out of midair. Or, the time he waited for the puck to drop and backhanded it in for a goal. Or, when knocked the puck up to himself with his stick before tapping it in.”I think it’s just instincts,” Crosby said.It’s actually a mix of natural talent, instincts, awareness, timing, patience and hand-eye coordination. Crosby’s Pittsburgh teammates are still amazed every time he does it – and they should be.”It’s just a reactionary thing,” Penguins winger Conor Sheary said. ”When you see the puck go in the air, you just try to bat it. He’s better at it than a lot of other guys, and I don’t know what that is.”Batting a fluttering piece of frozen rubber 3 inches in diameter and 1-inch thick with a stick blade 2 to 3 inches wide is no simple task. Doing it at full speed in an NHL playoff game certainly raises the degree of difficulty. Yet a handful of goals have been scored or saved already this postseason with a player somehow able to connecting their stick with an airborne puck at the perfect time.As recently as Tuesday night, Capitals winger Alex Ovechkin batted the puck out of the air off the post in Crosby-esque fashion for the game-winner to beat the Penguins.”I hit the post and it’s a good thing I didn’t raise my arms up,” Ovechkin said. ”I finished up the play and got lucky.”Teams don’t have drills for this kind of thing, but hockey players are always noodling with the puck, so the familiarity with both stick and puck becomes ingrained at an early age. Playing baseball and other sports growing up can’t hurt. Washington Capitals forward Brett Connolly, who scored a baseball-style goal with Boston in 2015 Womens Wayne Simmonds Jersey , thinks players learn the skill and try to use it when they can.”Your athleticism kind of takes over at that point,” Connolly said. ”Once your hand-eye is at a high level, you kind of track the puck. I think as hockey players we’re always looking around, we’re so quick, our eyes are all over the place and we’re staring at the puck. You kind of just take a chance at it and sometimes it works out.”It worked out for Toronto’s Connor Brown on his goal in Game 5 of the first round when the puck bounced off a defenseman’s stick and he knocked it in before goaltender Tuukka Rask knew where it was. Columbus goalie Sergei Bobrovsky didn’t know where the puck was when captain Nick Foligno whacked it out of the air to prevent a goal during the first round against Washington, either, a product of years of work.”That was actually my guy, so the least I could do was bat it out,” Foligno said. ”Honestly, I practice it so much with playing around with the puck that you just get used to it playing so many years. Obviously, a little bit of luck to make sure you get it out and not hit somewhere else.”To the surprise of no one, Crosby’s career is full of similar highlights. He once slugged a home run during batting practice at PNC Park some years ago.On the ice, Crosby doesn’t have to hit the puck as hard as Aaron Judge hits a baseball or as precisely as Roger Federer hits a tennis ball, but Penguins winger Bryan Rust correctly points out: ”They’re also looking for it to be in the air. Our sport, the puck’s not supposed to be in the air.”Crosby and others figure it out anyway.”There’s a lot of things you’ve got to be aware of, and you need pucks to be in those areas to do it http://www.senatorsshoponline.com/authentic-bobby-ryan-jersey ,” Crosby said. ”Sometimes you can go a period of time where you don’t get a puck that sits right there for you. I’ve been around the net when pucks have been able to kind of just lay there for me. There’s a lot of different factors, but I think just being in and around the net trying to expect different things and being ready for it.”Playing peewee baseball explains some of it for Crosby, a two-time season and playoff MVP who works on redirecting and bating pucks so often in practice it has become a routine way for him to score.Not so much for others, like Bruins forward Sean Kuraly, who played the waiting game during Game 1 of Boston’s series against Toronto and batted the puck in while falling over Maple Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen.”You have to wait for the puck to come down,” the otherwise-impatient Kuraly said. ”I’m a terrible baseball player. It has nothing to do with baseball.”Goalies with thicker blades on their sticks get into the act, too. Andersen robbed Rick Nash on a sure-fire goal in the first round in Game 6, and Pittsburgh’s Matt Murray extended his stick to stop Ovechkin in Game 2 of the Penguins-Capitals series.Goaltenders are counted on to keep the puck out by any means necessary.Scoring a goal by batting the puck in? Well, that’s just fun.”It’s a creative game. You’ve got to mix it up and be creative,” Connolly said. ”To score, you’ve got to try and do something different sometimes to get one.”—AP Sports Writers Jimmy Golen in Boston and Will Graves in Pittsburgh contributed.— After five years back home in Russia, Ilya Kovalchuk is ready to resume his Stanley Cup chase with the Los Angeles Kings.The high-scoring forward agreed to a three-year, $18.75 million deal with the Kings on Saturday, choosing Los Angeles over several interested teams for his return to the NHL.The 35-year-old Kovalchuk scored 816 points in 816 career games for the Atlanta Thrashers and the New Jersey Devils before leaving North America in 2013 for the Kontinental Hockey League’s SKA St. Petersburg. He led the KHL in scoring last season, and he was the MVP of the Olympic tournament in Pyeongchang while propelling the ”Olympic Athletes from Russia” to a gold medal.”He gives us an added element of skill and scoring, along with a desire to win Chris Wideman Jersey ,” Kings general manager Rob Blake said.Boston and San Jose were among the suitors for Kovalchuk, but the Kings made a top-dollar offer to add him to a lineup that could use another dependable goal-scorer. Kovalchuk is likely to be particularly important on the power play for the Kings, who ranked in the middle of the NHL standings in most team scoring categories.Kovalchuk was the first Russian to be the No. 1 pick in the NHL draft when Atlanta chose him in 2001. He quickly became one of the NHL’s most consistent scorers with his wicked shot and hockey sense. He spent nearly eight years with the Thrashers and 3 seasons with the Devils, who acquired him in a trade in February 2010.Kovalchuk will forever be the top scorer in the history of the Thrashers, who moved to Winnipeg one season after trading him to New Jersey. He shared the Rocket Richard Trophy as the NHL’s top goal-scorer in 2004 with Rick Nash and Jarome Iginla, yet his 41 goals that season were only the fifth-best total during a career in which he posted a pair of 52-goal seasons for the Thrashers.Kovalchuk had little playoff success in his NHL career until 2012, when he reached the Stanley Cup Final with the Devils after leading the Eastern Conference playoffs in scoring. New Jersey lost the Final in six games to the Kings, with Kovalchuk scoring only one empty-net goal in the series.The Kings and Kovalchuk have had mutual interest for many years. Los Angeles pursued him in free agency in 2010 before Kovalchuk got a massive contract to stay with the Devils.Just three seasons into a 15-year, $100 million contract with New Jersey, Kovalchuk abruptly left the NHL for St. Petersburg amid complaints about North American taxes and the distance from his family. Kovalchuk and his wife have four children.He won two KHL championships with St. Petersburg, and he scored 141 points in 113 games over the past two seasons against the KHL’s lesser competition. Kovalchuk became a five-time Olympian in February, when he scored five goals in six games for the Russians in the watered-down Pyeongchang tournament, which included no current NHL players.—