A little over a year ago, the above photo of Darth Maul on ice made the rounds at Reddit Hockey.

Sadly, it was a Photoshop. While we imagine the real Darth Maul would indeed play hockey with a double-bladed stick, just like he fights Jedi with a double-edged lightsaber (or saberstaff, as it's formally known), the Darth Maul from the photo, which was taken during a Tampa Bay Lighting/San Jose Sharks game, was just carrying a regular one.

The double-bladed stick was just a fiction.

That is, until the AHL's Grand Rapids Griffins, inspired by the image, set to making the Frankenstick a reality. And, once they had, they did the only reasonable thing you can do with such a creation: They gave it to stickhandling wizard and viral video machine Tomas Jurco:

Other members of the Griffins have some nice moments with it. Willie Coetzee earns our respect for recognizing the Stars Wars influence. Triston Grant wisely suggests it needs two different curves to really be an all-situation piece of equipment.

But the magic happens once Jurco has it and begins juggling the puck while twirling it like a baton. It's pretty neat -- at least up until he breaks it because it won't do what he wanted it to.

How does he break it? With a routine slapshot, because, as unique as it may be, it remains a composite hockey stick.

Follow Harrison Mooney on Twitter at @HarrisonMooney

No. 1 Star: Brad Marchand, Boston Bruins

The Bruins struck first, edging the New York Rangers 3-2 in overtime of Game 1. Marchand scored the winner, and added an assist on Torey Krug's powerplay goal to tie the game early in the third period.

No. 2 Star: Drew Doughty, Los Angeles Kings

Doughty scored the Kings' second goal and was on the ice for the late powerplay marker that tied the game in their 4-3 comeback win over the San Jose Sharks. He was also the best skater on the ice for nearly half the game, leading all skaters with 28:28 of icetime.

The Los Angeles Kings won their sixth straight Thursday, shocking the San Jose Sharks with two goals 22 seconds apart -- in the final two minutes, no less -- to turn a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 victory in Game 2.

Right up until the last 120 seconds of this one, the story was the San Jose Sharks and their impressive comeback. After going down two goals early in the second, San Jose refused to quit, storming back taking their first lead of the night midway through the third.

But then, 139 seconds from returning to San Jose with the series knotted at one, Marc-Edouard Vlasic turned a 5-on-4 penalty-kill situation into a 5-on-3 by putting the puck over the glass.

It was inadvertent -- they always are with this stupid penalty -- but there was no arguing the infuriating rule, and Vlasic was forced to watch his team's fortunes turn on a dime from the penalty box.

When he went in, the Sharks were up by a goal. He was released 58 seconds later, his team now down by a goal. All an incredulous, dismayed Vlasic could do was laugh.

The last time we saw the Boston Bruins, they came back from a third-period deficit and won a big game in overtime.

They have not forgotten how to do this. Brad Marchand was the hero Thursday night in Game 1 of Round 2, scoring the OT winner after 15:40 of bonus hockey.

It was the first goal of the postseason for the little guy with the big heart and even bigger nose.

That's Patrice Bergeron with the game-winning assist, as if you had to ask. If clutch were a real thing, he'd be the clutchest guy around. Bergeron was a force all through Game 1, winning 14 of 18 faceoffs, and playing 27 minutes, second on the Bruins to Zdeno Chara's absurd 38:02.

Henrik Lundqvist deserved better for the Rangers. He was outstanding, making 48 saves in the loss. 16 of those saves came in overtime, as the Bruins pressed all through the extra frame for the winner, and 7 of those 16 came on a dangerous-looking powerplay with Derek Dorsett in the box for interference.

"I thought it was pretty even going into overtime, but we got spanked in overtime," said John Tortorella. Fortunately, Lundqvist stood tall.

Ironically, it was the players most incapable of standing tall that did him in. After the Rangers took the lead just 14 seconds into the third period, rookie Torey Krug -- all 5'9" of him -- scored his first NHL goal to tie things up two and a half minutes later.

And in overtime, Lundqvist did his best to get over and stop Marchand on Bergeron's centring pass, but Marchand found a gap as the Rangers' netminder came across, sliding the puck through to end Game 1.

Game 2 goes Sunday.

As soon as the Department of Player Safety requested an in-person hearing for Raffi Torres, you knew the San Jose Sharks' winger was in trouble. I mean, sure, bringing Raffi to New York simply gave them the option of suspending him for five games or more, but this is Raffi Torres we're talking about. If they came away from the hearing with even an inkling that Torres had made the head the principal point of contact when he hit Jarrett Stoll, they were going to exercise the crap out of that option.

Sure enough, they did. Sort of. Rather than putting a number on the suspension, the NHL has gotten creative with Torres, suspending the San Jose Sharks' winger for the remainder of the semifinal series -- anywhere from 3 to 6 games.

Here's Brendan Shanahan to explain the decision:

A word on the floating suspension itself: It's a sneaky decision, as the players have the right to appeal any suspension of six games or more, and we won't know if Torres's ban is six games for awhile now. Was that calculated or what?

The night of the hit, we asked if Torres had gotten the shoulder first, or if the head was the principal point of contact. The answer, from the Department of Player Safety: yes.

Yes on both fronts. He caught Stoll's shoulder first, but as Shanahan says twice in this video, it was "a glancing blow" on his way to the principal point of contact, the head.

After being bounced in the first round by the New York Rangers with a 5-0 loss in Game 7, Alex Ovechkin was upset. He was text-his-coach-upwards-of-20-times upset, which is, like, super upset.

But with the World Championships in full swing, there was an opportunity for quick redemption, so Ovechkin jumped on a plane to Helsinki to join Russia for the quarterfinals, hoping to put the five-goal elimination loss behind him.

In this, he was unsuccessful. On Thursday, Ovechkin saw the same result on the other side of the Atlantic, as Team Russia was eliminated from the tournament with an 8-3 loss to Team USA.

It was painful, especially towards the end. After the Russians trimmed the lead to 5-3, they fell apart completely. The Americans scored three times in 116 seconds to put this one away:

Deja 'vechkin, amirite? Har har har.

It was a historic loss for the Russians, who had never surrendered more than five goals to the Americans prior to this one.

You've got to feel for Ovechkin. Not only did he lose the last two games of the year by five goals each, but his KHL team during the lockout, Dynamo Moscow, won the Gagarin Cup without him.

Eliminated twice in a week in five-goal losses. The team that lost him won the championship. It's enough to make a man think he's the problem.

But lest you think the recipe for success is to be minus Ovechkin, the Capitals' winger was named Russia's best player in the loss, with a goal and an assist. So there's that.

UPDATE: Via the Washington Post, more Ovechkin news. He played on a fractured foot in Games 6 and 7 against the Rangers, and one assumes in this IIHF game as well:

In the first period of Game 6, Ovechkin blocked two shots by Rangers’ defenseman Ryan McDonagh. The first shot, at 14:29 of the first, struck his left foot. Replay of the game shows Ovechkin hesitant to get up after that block. Skating could not make the injury worse, the source said, so Ovechkin played with it through the rest of Game 6 and Game 7 against the Rangers. The fracture will only require rest to heal, the source said.

Follow Harrison Mooney on Twitter at @HarrisonMooney

Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.

• Enjoy Jack Edwards' expectedly animated call of Patrice Bergeron's Game 7 OT winner and find out what the Boston Bruins do with the point of the dagger at their throats.

• John Tortorella takes a shot at the fallen Capitals: "We’ve got everybody and their brother whining up there in Washington about what happened in that series, and I think that’s a big reason why they lose that series. [NY Daily News]

• Thomas Boswell rips the Washington Capitals something fierce. "When you have a star who was made captain not because he deserved it but in the hopes that it would prod him to get in better shape, cut down his carousing and show some leadership, why be shocked when he scores fewer goals (one) in a first-round exit than Rangers fourth-liner Arron Asham?" [Washington Post]

• The NHL has officially announced the two outdoor regular-season games at Yankee Stadium next season. The Rangers will face the Devils on Sunday, January 26, and then the Islanders on Wednesday, January 29. The Rangers will be the visiting team for both games.

• Raffi Torres has been offered the in-person hearing option, which means the suspension could be longer than five games. [TSN]

• Teemu Selanne on how he'll make the decision to play or not next year: "It’s a commitment with training and dedication in the summertime. That’s when you have to be ready. Like I said before the good thing is, I don’t have to play. I only play because I want to play. That’s the motivation that players dream of. That’s why I take some time off. I want to start feeling either way. Do I really want to start pushing myself again? If I don’t have it, then I don’t play. That’s the best way to do it. After like six weeks, I’ll start thinking about whether I want to start working out. Your body and your mind start missing it, and then you know what’s the right decision. If you don’t get that, then it’s time to start doing something else." [Ducks]

• This is cruel. [Reddit]

• Mike Babcock is the worst trash-talker on the planet. “Chicago’s a great city. They’ve got great players. They’ve got five D who are flat-out great skaters. They’ve got a captain who’s a real good human being and a great leader. They’ve got lots of skill and good depth. They’re well-organized. The national anthem is fun. Good uniforms. They’ve got nice restaurants. It’s a good spot. We’ll have a good time. We got a lot of reasons to be excited about playing them.” [The Globe & Mail]

• Sure, you witnessed a collapse, Leafs fans, but you witnessed a collapse that only happens once in sixty lifetimes. Revel in the history. [MC79Hockey]

Like California? Like battles? If so, then, by golly, you're going to enjoy this playoff series between the San Jose Sharks and the Los Angeles Kings, the first time they've met since 2011.

Both clubs enter the second-round on four-game winning streaks, having breezed through first-round opponents that were supposed to give them a lot more trouble than they did. The Sharks swept the Vancouver Canucks. The Kings dropped the first two to the Blues, then found their bearings and won the next four.

In a way, the Sharks look a little like last year's Kings, after an underwhelming regular season and the way they metamorphosed into a juggernaut as soon as it ended. Suddenly, they're firing on all cylinders, and they look like a group that could win it all. But, on the flipside, this year's Kings look like last year's Kings too, since they're pretty much the same basic roster and they wear the same jersey and everything.

So who comes out ahead in the battle of California?