After a surprisingly quiet offseason, Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes gave fans a surprise by picking up Chris Kreider from the Anaheim Ducks. The move was all the more surprising in light of Kreider’s status as public enemy number one for colliding with beloved goalie Carey Price in the 2014 playoff series between the Habs and the New York Rangers, injuring Price’s knee and knocking him out of the series, which the Rangers would then go on to win. Price has long said he has no hard feelings toward Kreider for the incident, so here’s hoping the Habs fandom can find a place for him in their hearts as well. Initial signs suggest that he may be playing on the top line with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield, with winger Juraj Slafkovský moving down to the second line to play with Russian phenom Ivan Demidov and a center to be determined (I think Oliver Kapanen might be a good option).

I missed putting up threads for most of the preseason, for a variety of reasons including a WordPress technical issue and just a generally overbooked schedule in my work and personal life. But hockey’s back (for an 84-game season starting this year!), and your Avocado hockey threads will be as well.

Here are all the NHL preseason games for today, the last day of the preseason (all times Eastern):

And the NHL regular-season games for the rest of the week (all times Eastern):

Women’s hockey in the PWHL doesn’t start until November, but I’ll be posting all those games in these threads too as the league starts its fourth season, this time with a considerably expanded set of 12 teams.

The regular-season hockey threads won’t be pinned, so you might want to keep this open in a separate tab if you’d like to keep an eye on it until the next one goes up. (Considering how fast unpinned posts slide down the home page, I’ll probably be slapping up a new one of these every Tuesday and Saturday as long as I remember to do so.) Otherwise, you can always find these under the Sports > Hockey menu at the top of the home page.

Have fun and happy hockey!