Boston Bruins center Patrice Bergeron, New Jersey Devils center Nico Hischier and Toronto Maple Leafs winger Mitchell Marner were named the finalists for the 2022-23 Frank J. Selke Trophy given to the best defensive forward in the NHL on Tuesday.

Bergeron has won the Selke a record five times, most recently last season, and he was named a finalist for the award for the 12th straight season to extend his record for most consecutive top-three finishes for an NHL award.

Bergeron, 37, led the league in faceoff wins for the eighth time in his career and won 61.1 percent of his draws. He is the captain of a Boston team that produced the best regular-season record in NHL history (65-12-5, 135 points).

Hischier, 24, captained the Devils to the third-best record in the NHL (52-22-8, 112 points) and a 49-point turnaround from last year. He helped the Devils’ penalty-killing unit rank fourth in the NHL at 82.6 percent and also paced the team with 64 takeaways.

Marner, 25, led the NHL with 104 takeaways and also played a key role in his team winding up seventh in the league with an average of 2.68 goals allowed per game. Marner ranked fifth among all NHL forwards in short-handed ice time.

Hischier and Marner are finalists for an NHL award for the first time in their careers.

Also on Tuesday, the NHL announced that Jack Hughes of the Devils, Anze Kopitar of the Los Angeles Kings and Brayden Point of the Tampa Bay Lightning were selected finalists for the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, given to the player who “exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability.”

Kopitar was assessed just four penalty minutes, the lowest total among the NHL’s top 100 scorers this season. Hughes had six penalty minutes and Point had seven.

–Field Level Media

Matthew Tkachuk had three assists and a career-high nine hits to help the visiting Florida Panthers to a 4-2 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference second-round playoff series on Tuesday night.

Sam Bennett had a goal and an assist, Nick Cousins, Carter Verhaeghe and Brandon Montour also scored and Sergei Bobrovsky made 34 saves for Florida, which upset the Boston Bruins in the first round by winning the final three games.

Tkachuk’s assist total tied the franchise record for a single postseason game, a mark set by Verhaeghe on April 26.

Matthew Knies and Michael Bunting scored and Ilya Samsonov made 24 saves for the Maple Leafs, who reached the second round for the first time since 2004 by getting past the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games.

Game 2 is Thursday night in Toronto.

The Panthers took a 1-0 lead at 9:25 of the first period when Cousins fought off Toronto defenseman Jake McCabe for a rebound and scored with a backhand.

Florida moved ahead 2-0 at 7:58 of the second period. Aaron Ekblad took a point shot that went off the stick of Knies and then was tipped into the net by Bennett.

The Maple Leafs answered 11 seconds later when Knies scored his first NHL goal in his ninth game (regular season and postseason).

Knies took a centering pass off the wall from Auston Matthews. His initial shot was saved, but he followed up with a spinning backhand that hit the net to make it 2-1 at 8:09.

Matthews extended his point streak to seven games (five goals, five assists), and Morgan Rielly also assisted on the goal to extend his point streak to six games (three goals, six assists).

The Maple Leafs tied it 2-2 at 14:51 of the second. Calle Jarnkrok fed Bunting driving through the slot, and Bunting faked out Bobrovsky before lifting the puck into the net.

Verhaeghe got loose on a breakaway and scored to make it 3-2 at 17:47 of the second. It was his 11th playoff goal with the Panthers, setting a team record.

Montour scored his sixth goal of the 2023 playoffs with a slap shot during a delayed penalty to extend the lead to 4-2 at 12:24 of the third period.

Bennett was called for a double-minor high-sticking penalty with 37 seconds left and the Maple Leafs pulled Samsonov for a two-man advantage, but they were unable to generate a scoring chance.

Florida had lost eight consecutive Game 1s.

–Field Level Media

The top two picks of the 2015 NHL Draft will go head-to-head when the Connor McDavid-led Edmonton Oilers face Jack Eichel and the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 1 of a Western Conference semifinal series on Wednesday night in Las Vegas.

It’s the first-ever postseason meeting between the two teams that paced the Pacific Division during the regular season. Vegas finished with 111 points to finish as the top seed in the Western Conference, while fast-closing Edmonton, which went 14-0-1 in its last 15 games, took second with 109 points.

The Golden Knights have been off since Thursday, when they defeated the Winnipeg Jets 4-1 in Game 5 at home, while the Oilers needed six games to polish off the Los Angeles Kings. Edmonton capped its first-round series with a 5-4 victory on Saturday night in Los Angeles.

Edmonton, led by McDavid’s league-leading 153 points (64 goals, 89 assists) and Leon Draisaitl’s 52 goals and 76 assists, won the regular-season series with the Golden Knights, 3-0-1.

“Obviously a different animal, regular season and playoffs,” McDavid said. “I don’t think that translates very well. (Vegas is) obviously a very good team. That core has been together a long time.”

McDavid, a two-time (soon to be three-time) Hart Trophy winner generally regarded as the world’s best player, was the No. 1 pick of the 2015 draft by the Oilers. Eichel, who led Vegas with 66 points (27 goals, 39 assists), went second to the Buffalo. Eichel was a three-time All-Star for the Sabres but was eventually traded to the Golden Knights in a blockbuster deal in November of 2021 following a dispute with management over neck disk replacement surgery.

Now Eichel is playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time.

“I think we’re all past the 2015 draft,” Eichel said Tuesday when asked about his matchup with McDavid. “It’s been a couple of years, right? He’s gone on to do some incredible things. … It’s two teams going at it in this playoff series. That’s the way I’m going to view it, and I’m sure that’s the way everyone will.”

Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy knows the battle between McDavid and Eichel will take center stage but realizes that the Golden Knights have to play as a team if they want to strike first in the best-of-seven series.

“I think everyone will be talking about that matchup,” Cassidy said. “I look at it that our team has to outplay the Oilers, not Jack versus McDavid, because that’s nearly an impossible ask.”

The microscope will also be on Edmonton’s record-setting power-play, which scored on 32.4 percent of its chances in the regular season, the highest success rate since the NHL started keeping track of the stat in 1977-78. The Oilers converted an eye-popping 9 of 16 chances (56.3 percent) with the man advantage in the series with Los Angeles.

Draisaitl led the NHL with 32 power-play goals while McDavid added 21. Their combined 53 power-play goals are more than Vegas had as a team (42). The Golden Knights ranked just 19th in penalty kill (77.4 percent) during the regular season but led the NHL by a wide margin in blocked shots with 1,494.

“We feel good about our game, we feel good about our health, we feel good about our mental mindset heading into the second series,” Edmonton coach Jay Woodcroft said. “I think it’s going to be a big challenge, it’s a different challenge, but we feel we have the people that are up for it.”

–Field Level Media

The Carolina Hurricanes will look to take the next step toward a Stanley Cup when they host the New Jersey Devils in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series on Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C.

The teams finished second and third in the NHL this season, behind only the Boston Bruins, with the Hurricanes at 113 points and the Devils at 112. With Boston (135 regular-season points) now eliminated after their first-round upset loss to the Florida Panthers, the winner of the Devils-Hurricanes series will have home-ice advantage for the remainder of the playoffs.

After defeating the New York Islanders in six games in the first round, Carolina became the only NHL team to win a series in each of the last five postseasons. Getting deeper in the playoffs has been the challenge, as the Hurricanes have reached the conference finals only once in that span, when they were swept by the Bruins in 2019.

Just getting into the playoffs was a breakthrough for New Jersey, which is making its second postseason appearance in the last 11 years. The Devils overcame their lack of playoff experience by topping their arch-rival New York Rangers in a heated seven-game first-round series.

Things looked grim for the Devils after a pair of 5-1 losses in the first two games, but in hindsight, the adversity might have been what the young team needed.

“Just to see the team grow from the losses we had Games 1 and 2, it’s pretty impressive how quick we adapt,” Devils forward Ondrej Palat said. “We changed our game a little bit. So I’m very impressed about our team, how we respond. We never gave up.”

The turning point came when New Jersey replaced Vitek Vanecek in net with Akira Schmid. In his first five career playoff games, Schmid delivered two shutouts and an outstanding .951 save percentage as the Devils stormed back from their 0-2 series deficit.

Schmid looks like the Devils’ choice in net going forward, while the Hurricanes might also commit to a goaltending change. Antti Raanta started the first five games against the Islanders, but Frederik Andersen made his series debut in Game 6 and stopped 33 of 34 shots.

Because Andersen was battling both an illness and an upper-body injury, the goalie “wasn’t really an option” until Game 6, according to Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour.

“(Raanta) was great, he kept us in every game,” Brind’Amour said. “But when we got the green light on Freddy … if there was a time to get him in, this was the night. And obviously it worked out.”

The Devils’ Timo Meier is questionable for Wednesday after he left during the third period of Game 7. After taking a huge shoulder-to-head hit from the Rangers’ Jacob Trouba, Meier later returned to the Devils’ bench but didn’t see any more ice time.

Hurricanes forward Jack Drury (upper-body injury) is expected to play Wednesday after missing the last two games of the Islanders series. Brind’Amour said that defensemen Brady Skjei and Jalen Chatfield are dealing with minor injuries, but both should be ready for Game 1.

Carolina and New Jersey are meeting in the postseason for the first time since the 2009 playoffs. The Hurricanes are 3-1 in four previous playoff series against the Devils.

–Field Level Media