Hockey players are tough creatures, and that toughness somehow gets ratcheted up a few notches in the playoffs. Case in point: Brooks Orpik and his slashed-off pinky finger.

The Washington Capitals rearguard addressed the media during the Caps' locker room cleanout Wednesday, divulging a bit of injury news in the process. "It probably looked a lot worse than it was," Orpik said of his injured digit, according to Tarik El-Bashir of NBC Sports.

"It was tough to look at, but the trainers did a really good job. It (finger) kind of fell off."

Despite the gruesome nature of the injury, which he suffered on a late third-period slash from Golden Knights forward Erik Haula in Game 2, Orpik will not require any offseason surgery.

Orpik was a complete workhorse for Washington all playoffs, not missing a single game while registering five points and a league-best plus-17 rating.

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The Los Angeles Kings traded forward Andy Andreoff to the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for veteran backup goalie Peter Budaj on Wednesday.

Budaj spent the majority of two seasons with the Kings between 2015-2017 after signing a free-agent deal with L.A. in October 2015. He would go on to log a 28-20-3 record before being dealt to the Lightning in February 2017.

Most recently, the 35-year-old played in only eight contests last season for the Bolts, earning a 3-3-1 record to along with a .876 save percentage and 3.76 goals-against average.

As for Andreoff, a third-round pick of the Kings in 2011, he's registered 13 goals and 11 assists across 159 regular-season games. Andreoff's size (6-foot-1, 203 lbs) and aggressive style should provide the Lightning with an element of truculence in the team's bottom-six forward group if he's able to crack the NHL lineup.

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The Washington Capitals have been tearing D.C. up with their epic Cup celebrations over the last few days. However, one of their star players was probably just trying to numb the pain from a lingering postseason injury.

Nicklas Backstrom missed the final game of the second round and the opening three games of the Conference Finals with an upper-body injury. So on Wednesday, Backstrom revealed to the media that he suffered a couple fractures in his finger, according to Tarik El-Bashir of NBC Sports.

Prior to leaving Game 5 of Washington's series versus the Pittsburgh Penguins, Backstrom blocked multiple shots up to that point of the contest, so fractures in his finger could have easily come from that.

Regardless, Backstrom's ability to fight through injury should be praised, as he was a key contributor for the Caps and a main reason for their Cup victory, notching two goals and eight assists in the seven games after his return. He finished the entire postseason with five goals and 18 assists in 20 contests.

Backstrom will not require any offseason surgery to repair his digit.

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The Detroit Red Wings have offered one- and two-year contracts to pending unrestricted free-agent defenseman Mike Green, according to The Athletic's Craig Custance.

The two sides are close on salary, too, Custance added.

Green will be 33 years old next season and has defensive flaws. But he's still the second-best blue-liner set to the hit open market, behind only Washington Capitals rearguard John Carlson.

Green recorded 33 points in 66 games during the 2017-18 campaign, a season that ended early for the veteran when he needed surgery on his cervical spine. The injury likely won't affect his availability for the start of next season.

“I anticipate whether he signs with us or someone else, he’ll be on the ice for the first day of training camp,” Red Wings general manager Ken Holland told Custance. “Everything, I’m told, he should be green-lighted for the first day.”

The Red Wings are clearly in rebuilding mode, and re-signing Green may not seem to fit that direction. However, Holland said Green was the team's "best defenseman," and some of Detroit's up-and-coming defensive prospects still aren't ready for prominent NHL roles.

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Wade Belak, Rick Rypien, Steve Montador, and Derek Boogaard are four examples of former NHL enforcers who suffered through depression and eventually took their own lives.

Another former NHL enforcer, Nick Boynton, revealed in an article with The Players' Tribune on Wednesday that he's dealt with some of the same issues as the aforementioned players, whom Boynton describes as "brothers."

While he claims he's feeling more hopeful and optimistic now than he has in a long time, he still won't let his 3-year-old son, who loves hockey, play the sport.

"I cannot, in good conscience, let him play the game of ice hockey until something changes and we start looking out for our players by taking the problems of head hits and concussions - and their potential impact on mental health - more seriously," he said.

"I've seen the damage that results from that stuff firsthand. I've lived it. And to say it's been a struggle for me would be putting it way too lightly."

Boynton chronicled one instance while playing for the Philadelphia Flyers, in which his concussion-caused drug addiction nearly led to his own death.

"At the tail end of my career, I really, genuinely thought that I was going to die one night during the season," he said. "It's hard to talk about, for sure, but ... I had stayed up late doing an obscene amount of coke and things just got out of control. After a while my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. I couldn't get it to slow down. Nothing I did worked. It was probably the most scared I've ever been in my life."

Boynton said he needed to be at the rink a few hours later for the Flyers' morning skate and debated what to do: Go to the hospital and check in without anyone noticing or head to the arena and tell the trainer what had happened?

Earlier in Boynton's career, he had been traded less than a month after opening up about a painkiller addition to "some people with the team." He feared this could once again be the case if he opened up yet again.

"But I can tell you that, at the time, it (telling the team about cocaine use) was one of the hardest decisions I'd ever had to make," he said. "I agonized over it. Because I knew if I told the trainer, I was going to get in a ton of trouble."

Boynton, however, worked up the courage to tell the Flyers. Paul Holmgren, the team's general manager at the time, was completely supportive, sending him to rehab.

"And to this day, I honestly believe Paul saved my life back then," he said. "If I had been somewhere else, and they had just traded me away … I'd probably be dead."

Boynton played in 605 NHL games and even won a Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks, but says he would trade it all back in a "heartbeat" so he "wouldn't have had to experience all this pain and sorrow and anger and sadness."

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The Nashville Predators aren't trading P.K. Subban.

And if common hockey sense isn't enough to drive that point home, an emphatic statement from Predators general manager David Poile should.

"You see tweets from different places, but, that’s not happening," Poile said of a potential Subban trade, according to The Athletic's Pierre LeBrun.

"Nobody has even called me about him. P.K. played terrific this year. He played really well. He’s a really good player. He's one of the three candidates for the Norris Trophy. I really don’t know where this comes from."

Despite the Predators falling short of reaching a second straight Stanley Cup Final this past season, Subban produced a solid campaign in which he racked up 16 goals and 43 assists while averaging over 24 minutes of ice time per game.

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The unfortunate scenario developing out of Ottawa surrounding the alleged campaign of harassment against Erik and Melinda Karlsson on the part of Senators teammate Mike Hoffman's fiancee, Monika Caryk, took another turn Tuesday night.

Related: Erik Karlsson's wife accuses Hoffman's girlfriend of harassment campaign

The latest details emerging indicate that the Senators, Hoffman, and his agent, Robert Hooper, were all aware of the alleged harassment since the end of the regular season. "This isn’t something we talked about with (Senators GM) Pierre (Dorion) just today," Hooper said, according to Shaamini Yogaretnam of the Ottawa Citizen. "We’ve been aware of this situation since the end of the season."

Hooper's comments came on the same day that news broke regarding Caryk's alleged extensive harassment of the Karlssons over the past season, prompting Melinda to file for a peace bond - the equivalent of a restraining order - in early May.

Regardless of how the allegations shake out, the likelihood of Karlsson and Hoffman being able to productively function as teammates decreases by the day. It's a fact that both players' camps and the Sens are well aware of.

"What we’ve indicated to Pierre is that, and let’s call a spade a spade, it would be very difficult for both parties - both Erik and Mike as well as the wives and the fiancees - to co-exist in the same wives’ room and the same dressing room," Hooper said.

The Senators released a short statement Tuesday night indicating the organization is "investigating this matter in cooperation with the NHL and will take whatever steps are necessary to protect the safety and privacy of our players and their families."

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The Texas Stars lived to see another day thanks to a 5-2 win over the Toronto Marlies in Game 6 of the Calder Cup Finals, forcing a pivotal Game 7.

The Stars did the bulk of their damage in the second period. After a scoreless first, the club went off for three goals from Curtis McKenzie, Travis Morin, and Austin Fyten.

After the Marlies got on the board early in the third frame with a goal by Calle Rosen, the Stars responded with a shorthanded tally from Sheldon Dries to restore the three-goal lead. Dries marker also saw Garret Sparks, who allowed four goals on 17 shots, replaced by Calvin Pickard.

The teams exchanged goals from Justin Holl and Colin Markison in the final five minutes.

Stars goaltender Mike McKenna was the difference in the end as the 35-year-old turned away 43 of the 45 Marlies shots thrown his way.

Game 7, with the Calder Cup on the line, goes Thursday in Toronto.

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