'Banner year' for Winterlude with chilly weather, sunny days

A curious thing about the sport that this country loves so much is that it is essentially, on any given night, random. Good hockey teams will win more often than bad hockey teams, of course, but there is a high degree of uncertainty baked in. Pucks that deflect off a stick and then a skate. Shots that find their way through a crowd of bodies in front of the net. Goalies who make saves by sprawling the right direction at the right moment. There’s even a term for it: puck luck. It’s one of the reasons why the best team over the course of the NHL’s regular season rarely wins the Stanley...