So the past few weeks have been a bit of an emotional roller coaster for Thrashers fans.
Before the Olympics, the team traded away Ilya Kovalchuk. That was a little sad.
Then, GM Don Waddell said the team would be buyers at the trade deadline, rather than sellers. And that had to make the fans happy.
But then, [...]

Fourth-liner Byron Bitz has been seeing some time on the first line with Marc Savard (and Blake Wheeler) and is expected to play up there tonight against Montreal.
The Bruins just re-signed Savard. I hadn’t considered this, but part of the reason they wanted to lock Savard down is to give them long-term depth down the [...]

Forbes released their annual NHL franchise valuations and things actually look pretty good for the league. Or at least for some of the franchises. The average operating profit was $6.1 million, aggregate income increased, as did average franchise value.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t an across the board thing for the all of the franchises. While successful teams [...]

Not that he’s horribly objective, but Jeff Halpern expects the Lightning to be much more successful this year.
Tarik El-Bashir caught up with him in DC and it’s interesting to hear Halpern talk about how hard it was for him to leave the Caps. Halpern also talks about the pressures of being in a contract year.
Speaking [...]

Every few months, I tend to think the KHL is making inroads into eventually overtaking the NHL. Yesterday’s reported signing of Nik Zherdev is a blow to the NHL in that if Zherdev didn’t have the KHL out, he probably would have worked harder on his NHL game. Zherdev might not ever reach his full [...]

I’m really not too interested in the Patrick Kane cabdriver altercation story, because there’s really no way to know what went down in that cab. And I’m not sure we ever will know. But Chris Kuc has an interesting post remembering Kane interacting with another cabbie, leaving the driver with a huge tip.
Obviously, one anecdote [...]

This weekend, Tim Panaccio had a great piece on the great Freddy Shero, who for whatever reason, isn’t in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Coach Shero was innovative, yet complicated. He was very old school, even for the 1970s, yet he was always ready to embrace a new idea.
Panaccio says Shero might not be in the [...]

I like the NHL offseason because it sometimes turns into high school.
Like Dale Tallon gets whacked in Chicago, and Martin Havlat jumps on Twitter to drop some cryptic messages:

I guess everyone saw what happened to Dale….yes, the story is starting to come out but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

What are we even supposed [...]

There’s a lot I don’t get about the Dany Heatley ransom demands.
Like why are the Oilers so hot for a player who so obviously doesn’t want to play for them? Are they only interested because they know he’ll demand a trade in another two seasons? Do they think they can change him?
And as the demand [...]

I love Joe Nieuwendyk taking over as GM in Dallas.
First of all, just the move to a single GM model is pretty huge for the Stars. That alone makes this a great move. But you also have to love Nieuwendyk’s pedigree. He’s a player who knows how to win. Not only did he win the [...]