Coyotes assistant coach Rick Tocchet returned to the bench last night after a two-year suspension for his participation in a gambling ring.
Interestingly, the Coyotes are such big Tocchet fans, they held his job for him while he was gone.
I guess there are no substitute lines in the Coyotes budget.
It might take a while for the Tocchet magic to kick in, though, as they lost to the Blue Jackets.
Also, this is completely unrelated, but do people really think New York Islander Miroslav Satan is ambivalent about hockey? Because this seems pretty hard-core to me:

Satan accompanied the Islanders on this two-game road trip that continues Saturday in Minnesota. He acknowledged that he has a sprained right knee with partially torn ligaments. When he suffered the injury on Jan. 8 in Vancouver, he was told it was a six-to-eight-week injury. After missing one game at Calgary, Satan relied on pain pills to play the next 11 straight.

Whatever's in those pain pills should be over-the-counter.

The Times hockey blog had a breakdown, via HockeyWidgets, of where American-born NHLers are from in the U.S. Unsurprisingly, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, and Massachusetts, were the big states. It's kind of good timing, though, as the Wild are going to honor Mike Modano, not only the American with the most NHL points, but also a Minnesota North Star for four seasons (before they moved to Dallas). It's a classy move by the Wild.
(The Times also had a neat look at how many American NHLers play for their hometown team).
Speaking of classy, how cool is it that Peter Forsberg won't play for the Red Wings because of the great Colorado-Detroit rivalry? In case you were wondering, Forsberg also won't be playing with Mike Modano, although probably more for financial reasons (login info.).
Also, Mrs. PuckUpdate and I always wonder why athletes seem so prone to getting the flu. Apparently it's not just athletes; it's also broadcasters.

Here in New York, an interesting dynamic has developed, where it seems the fans have beef with the play of Jaromir Jagr and the beat writers are in love with him.
A lot of the stories in yesterday's papers revolved around Rangers coach Tom Renney defending the play and attitude of Jagr.
One thing you hear from the fans is that Jagr isn't enough of a leader. I used to think that, too, until I caught some kind of Mario Lemieux documentary on the NHL Network, which featured Lemieux's return to the Penguins, once Jagr was captain. There was a great locker room scene with Jagr quietly talking to players one-on-one, telling them what they needed to do in the next period. It wasn't dramatic or loud. It was just a boss telling his employees what they should be doing.
So now I'm back on the Jagr bandwagon.
Although, I will mention Jagr was pointless in last night's loss to the Kings.
Oh. And how do the Ducks have cap space to potentially land Mats Sundin or Marian Hossa (login info.)? Don't they have Chris Pronger? Scott Niedermayer? Teemu Selanne? Jean-Sebastien Giguere? I don't understand how they haven't hit the cap ceiling yet. Are the Ducks laundering money or something?
Finally, yesterday in the U.S. was Super Tuesday, a bunch of state-wide elections to nominate your party's presidential candidate. Chris Chelios of the Red Wings, one of the greatest American-born players to play the game? He's never voted.

This is a few days old, but shocking to me: Doug Weight wasn't happy being traded from the Blues. After he told the Blues he wouldn't waive his no-trade, they told him if he didn't, they would cut his minutes. So Weight became a Duck.
Over in New Jersey, things are also messed up. Captain Jamie Langenbrunner got into a very public fight with coach Brent Sutter during Saturday's Kings/Devils game. This, after Larry Brooks had this item in Sunday's column:

So Brent Sutter, who's all about accountability, misses the Devils' first post- All-Star practice because of weather issues in Alberta after skipping Atlanta so he could spend time with his family, and somehow it's all good?

Would it have been all good if, say, Kevin Weekes or John Madden or Patrik Elias had missed practice for a similar reason?

Just askin'.

The funny thing is, I was at Friday's Devils game and one of my friends asked who coaches the Devils and another friend joked that it didn't matter since he would be gone by March or April.
Maybe he wasn't joking.