From the Leafs perspective:

You just know — based on their history of over-exuberance and the Vito-From-Woodbridge-style hyperbole — that there was someone out there on Yahoo wondering if Frederick Sjostrom was available in his fantasy league.

Hey, it’s Toronto. On Twitter this morning, eight of the ten trending topics in Canada were related to Brian Bruke’s roster moves. In fact, even the name of the reporter who broke the Phaneuf trade (Darren Dreger) was trending. Is it obvious yet that a certain segment of Leafs Nation was desperate for something positive to talk about?

But … was it positive?

For the most part, yes it is. The Phaneuf and Giguere trades make the Leafs even more ofensively challenged than they were before, but who really cares? They couldn’t score when it mattered anyway, and despite what Brian Burke says, this season is a write-off for the team. It doesn’t even matter where they finish, since a top-five pick would help nobody but the Bruins.

Essentially, the last 30 games of the season can be used for the purest of roster-building endeavours: Player evaluation. Christian Hanson, Tyler Bozak and Viktor Stahlberg should all get a look down the stretch and although Giguere isn’t coming here to be a benchwarmer, Burke did make it clear today that the team still intends to play Jonas Gustavsson enough to determine whether or not he deserves a contract extension when he becomes an RFA at the end of this season.

So yeah, should you run out and grab any of these acquisitions? Probably not. Phaneuf isn’t available, and unless you’re desperate for goaltending, Giguere is not going to play enough or win enough to help you out. These trades are about next year and the year after that. Brian Burke cares not for your fantasy team.

From the Flames perspective:

Well, hell, maybe now they’ll have two lines capable of scoring. Maybe Niklas Hagman can ignite Olli Jokinen. Maybe Matt Stajan can find his way onto a line with Dustin Boyd and Jarome Iginla. Maybe Ian White has a lot of fun feeding Jay Bouwmeester on the power play. Maybe Jamal Mayers … ummm … fights even more.

Or maybe not. If things had a tendency to go right for the Sutter-run Flames, they wouldn’t have hit the nine-game skid that made them desperate enough to shake up their roster to this extent. You can hope that lightning will strike everywhere, but in reality, hoping it strikes once is a pretty big leap for this team.

But Niklas Hagman has been a solid, if streaky, scorer wherever he’s played. And apparently Hagman and Jokinen are friends. It’s not out of line to gamble an extra forward position on a Finnish connection flourishing between the two. By the same token, since Ian White was a borderline-serviceable fantasy defenceman on the Maple Leafs, it’s not unreasonable to expect him to maintain similar production — perhaps even with a boost to +/- — now that he’s on a (marginally) better team.

Matt Stajan, however, is a third-liner, despite his first-line minutes in Toronto. Unless he ends up playing with Jarome Iginla, expecting steady production from him is not very realistic.

Should you pick them up? You can roll the dice if you want. But keep in mind that the Flames are a deeper team than the Leafs, where Stajan, White and Hagman were all enjoying top-line minutes. Not all of them will see that time in Calgary.

From the Ducks perspective:

Toskala was part of the deal because his contract is up and he won’t challenge Jonas Hiller for starts.

Jason Blake, however, could be interesting. The Ducks have been searching all year for a way to extend their scoring punch beyond the Getzlaf-Perry-Ryan-plus-(when healthy)-Teemu-Selanne formula. Dan Sexton has helped here and there; Saku Koivu has had a couple of moments, but there is definitely room for a speedy winger to snare some second-unit PP time.

Will it be Jason Blake? Honestly,m it’s Jason Blake. Who the fuck knows? He was a 40-goal scorer, then he was a cancer patient. Then he was a comeback story, then he was a dressing room cancer. Then he was a floater who was stealing money, and now on his way out of town he’s Brian Burke’s ‘hardest worker, in the weight room and on the ice’. Really? Okay, Burkie. You know, once you’ve traded him, you don’t have to keep selling. You know that, right?

Should you pick them up? Hell no to Vesa Toskala. If you’re feeling dangerous, grab Blake.

Bottom Line: For a couple of league-shaking deals, there is remarkably little fantasy impact here. Phaneuf may benefit from having Tomas Kaberle feed him the puck, but it’s not like Bouwmeester was a bad passer in Calgary. Jonas Hiller is now a locked-in No. 1 goalie, so that’s a positive. And maybe, just maybe, some of the Leafs pieces are a perfect fit in Calgary. But we’ll have to wait for the first couple of games to see how they line up.

If I had to bet on one of them, I’d go with Hagman. And he was just scooped up in two of my leagues. Seems like that’s the early favourite.

I never thought I would be saying this, but I wholeheartedly agree with Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke.

No, I’m not saying it’s a good idea to load up on tough guys, deal away your next two first-round picks and choose your own team’s coach to also run your national team so you can’t fire him even if you show up to work one morning and catch him banging your daughter on the desk in your office.

I still think those aspects of the Burke Master Plan fall solidly under the Not Too Bright banner. But as thousands of hockey junkies suffer through the dead months of the season with nothing to do but check the box scores, watch the occasionally compelling matchup and wait for the Olympics to start … I have to say that Burke is absolutely right when he says that there’s precious few reasons to wait until the trading deadline to swing deals.

“Everyone in this business seems to believe that you always get your best deal right before the store closes,” said Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke.

Because there is a “compressed time frame”, Burke said there might be some early dealing.

“But I expect to see the same train wreck we always see at the trade deadline,” Burke joked.

He’s right. The deadline is a train wreck for many GMs and there’s no reason it has to be. In fact, there are plenty of examples of why it’s a bad idea to make a deal later that you could make today.

The best and most recent illustration is the Nov. 23 transaction that sent Guillaume Latendresse to the Minnesota Wild and Benoit Pouliot to the Montreal Canadiens. More than reinvigorating their respective careers — both guys have been at the top of their game since the deal — what looked like a seemingly minor trade has injected life into two stagnant offences.

It’s not fair to the Wild and Habs to credit the newcomers for everything, but it’s fair to assume that neither club would have benefited quite as much from this swap had it happened at the beginning of March. There’s just less of a season left to make a difference.

There are two scenarios in which late deals are preferable, and that’s pretty much about it:

1. The team acquiring a player is a lock for a top seed in the playoffs, they’re going to acquire one more piece for a Cup run and they want to wait until the last minute to see who becomes available. That makes sense because for all we know the New York Rangers could go 0-for-February and perhaps some of their players end up on the market when they otherwise wouldn’t.

2. The team taking on the larger salary is very tight up against the Salary Cap. Salary Cap rules mean that it’s the amount remaining on that player’s contract for the rest of the season that counts against his new club’s cap hit. So if you’re swapping a $3-million player for a $5-million player, and you’re only $1-million under the cap, then you can’t do it on Jan. 26. That’s a rule, bitch, and I can understand that.

The other reasons? ‘We want to examine all our options’; ‘We’re not sure we’re out of the playoff race yet’; ‘We feel we’ll get a better return closer to the deadline’ … they are, by and large, bullshit.

Here are your options: You’re going nowhere and you need to trade your decent players for picks and prospects. Doing so now allows you more time to either plan for the draft or see how those prospects will fit into your oragnization’s depth chart.

Guess what? You’re out of the fucking playoff race. Even if you get in you’re likely first-round fodder. And who’s to say that the one or two players you’re dealing — unless one or more of them are named Kovalchuk — are going to be the difference between playoffs and golfing? The reality is, if you even have to consider using this line, it’s because you know you’re probably golfing, but you’re a coward hoping for a miracle.

A better return? Yeah, because so many teams have the cap room and prospects to deal in the new NHL that a lengthy bidding war will likely ensue and you’ll end up with twice what you would have had before the deadline. No. Just as likely is that stalling for better offers will convince your potential trading partner to grab a similar player from one of the other GMS who also waited until deadline day to deal, thereby driving the price DOWN, dipshit. They’re all out to rip you off because you’re a bottom-feeder. Better to make the deal with only one wolf at the door. At least he’s more likely to listen.

All of this is a useless excuse for me to rant about how boring the NHL is in late January, especially when a cadre of overmatched GMs are holding out for some mythical deadline deal that will be way way better than any deal they could possibly make today.

If Brian Bruke did not have to err on the side of non-profane comments, he would probably join me in labelling these deadline-focused GMs as, well, pussies.

Because they are.

… It’s Black Fuckin’ Monday, at least it should be if you’re a fan of professional athletes (or would-be professionals) demonstrating any kind of class as they go about their athletic endeavours.

Sports are a distraction. They’re fun, and cool, and interesting to gamble on. In very rare moments, they’re incredibly inspiring. If we tune in or buy tickets on the right day, sometimes we see something we’ve never seen before, and won’t see again.

But mostly, they’re a distraction. A good one, sure, but that’s it. That’s why I write about sports on here instead of more pressing issues — I’m spending most of my day sifting through various parts of a newspaper, and when I’m done choosing a picture of a pile of dead bodies in Haiti, I want to do something that doesn’t make me want to cry or curse. That’s where professional sports comes in.

But it’s a job at which professional sports has failed miserably in the past 24 hours. For three reasons.

1. Just before I went to bed last night, a highlight began making the rounds on YouTube and various sports highlight shows of a disturbing hit delivered in the QMJHL by a player named Patrice Cormier. That would be the same Patrice Cormier whom we selected as the Captain of our World Junior Championship team. Here’s the hit, and the aftermath. You will grimace.

Disgusting. And this is a kid who was among the best this country put forward in a tournament that took place last month. Of course, he tried his cheapshots in that tourney, too, but we turned a blind eye to them because we love it when Canadian kids intimidate the rest of the world in those situations.

Now he’s done it to the point where his victim, Michael Tam of the Quebec Remparts, may have brain damage. At the very least Tam has a concussion and a broken jaw. Remparts coach Patrick Roy is talking about legal action — and rightfully so, in my opinion — and we get to have that awful discussion about violence in hockey all over again.

The worst part, of course, is watching that poor kid convulsing on the ice. Then wondering what would have happened had it been during the WJCs, and the kid on the ice was a Swedish or Finnish junior player. You’d like to think the stands wouldn’t be filled with cheering Canadians, and that the announcers would STFU as quickly as possible once they realized the kid was hurt … but I don’t know. We get a little rabid at those tournaments.

I hope the Devils rescind their rights to Cormier as an NHL player. And I hope that Hockey Canada publicly apologizes for giving him the ‘C’. Hey, maybe we could blame him for only winning the silver and turn him into a scapegoat. That’s be sweet!

2. Next on the list, the Dallas Cowboys, who are upset that the Minnesota Vikings threw a late touchdown pass to add a little insult to injury in yesterday’s humiliating playoff loss.

The Dallas Cowboys, in case you have forgotten, are known far and wide as “America’s Team” — presumably for their testicular fortitude and never-say-die attitude. Anyway, Keith Brooking, a Dallas linebacker charged with the job of preventing the Vikings from scoring, is upset that … the Vikings scored late in the game.

After the touchdown, linebacker Keith Brooking walked over to the Vikings sidelines and yelled at some of the Vikings players, especially coach and playcaller Brad Childress.

“I was just trying to say something to whoever wanted to listen on their sidelines,” Brooking said. “Whoever was in charge of calling that play and making that decision. It was B.S.”

Wade Phillips noted how the Vikings ran up the score in his opening statements to the media.

“Defensively we gave up big plays we hadn’t given up,” he said. “And [the Vikings] know how to run it up when they get ahead again. And we were coming after them and they made plays.”

It’s a terrible thing when an offence scores late in a playoff game on a defence who tries to stop them. I mean, the next thing you know, they’ll be talking about playing a full 60 minutes, or giving 110% out there.

This is fucking retarded. This is an example of an over-entitled athlete crying because he couldn’t do his job. In the sport that is supposedly the manliest of all the professional team games. Perhaps a mercy rule would spare Brooking the humiliation. Perhaps the NFL could issue a shadowy directive to all its coaches instructing them to take their foot off the gas when the score is more than 20 points in favour of one of the teams. Perhaps Keith Brooking can shut the fuck up and book a tee time.

Perhaps Vikings DT Pat Williams put it best:

“We don’t care what Keith Brooking says. He was about to get his ass whupped on our sideline over there. It don’t matter. Nobody said anything when they blew out the Eagles. … It’s the playoffs. It ain’t no regular-season game. If you lose, you go home. We take no pity on them. Do they expect us to? I don’t care about no Brooking. He can say whatever he wants to say”

I mean, it’s not like anybody pays money to see athletes compete at the highest level of effort, and it’s not like anybody wagers hard-earned money on the result, is it?

Eat it, Keith Brooking. Your cheesy-as-all-hell pre-game motivational tactics just lost all power over anyone with a set of testicles.

And finally, as if we needed anyone to illustrate the utter disconnect that sportscasters who take themselves very seriously can have from the rest of the real world … I give you Jim Nantz,doing a promo for 60 Minutes and managing to mispronounce the name of a country that has recently been featured prominently in the news thanks to a noteworthy natural disaster, before turning around and using the rest of the promo to talk about the NFL in Samoa.

Nice one, Jim. Way to make it look like all sportscasters are self-involved idiots. If it wasn’t already evident.

There are days when I wonder why I pay attention to these games.

(Your most-definitely-not-daily look aound the NHL)

Ummmm, about last night:

• Sir, I demand satisfaction: Seriously guys, I did not tune into a Leafs/Flyers games in the hopes that I would see a dazzling first NHL goal from Tyler Bozak, a 38-save shutout fom Vesa Toskala, a convincing Maple Leafs win an a meek Flyers team going quietly into that good night. I mean, really. If I wanted to watch a crummy team beat up on a better team that was clearly struggling, I would have watched the Islanders kick the Red Wings ass on Tuesday, and then vomited. All things considered though — I’m a hockey fan, and as a hockey fan, I was led to believe by the Maple Leafs callup of goonster Jay Rosehill, that There Would Be Blood. Do you know what I got? A scuffle at centre ice with about three minutes left in a game the Leafs (supposedly the ones out for revenge after a 6-2 pasting earlier this month) already had well in hand. That’s no fun. What happened to adding injury to insult, guys? For real, I don’t uually watch hockey looking for fights, but when I’m promised potentially damaging brawls between two teams I hate … then I want them to deliver, dammit.
• His name is Jimmy Howard: And his backup is some dude name Chris something. Can;t remember much about him, except that he was pretty good in the playoffs last year. Howard, who was yanked on Tuesday in the vomitlicious game against the Islanders because his defence had deserted him, showed up to play last night, stopping 37 shots as the Wings were outshot 38-35 by the NHL’s worst team and still managed to come out with two point. Valtteri Filppula had his best game since returning from injury — which is not saying a lot, I know, but it’s early — with two helpers, and The Sniper Claimed Off Waivers, aka Drew Miler, had a goal and an assist. Is it wrongthat I wish he actually was a sniper, just so drunk old Mickey Redmond could scream ‘It’s Miller Time!’ whenever he scored? Hell, that’s not the only reason. This team could use some goals. I’m going to start watching the games with my eyes squinted shut and I’ll pretend that Drew Millr is Johan Franzen.
• Another shutout for M. Brodeur: That’s two games in a row a goalie with that name has shutout the New York Rangers. Being blanked by Marty is nothing to be ashamed of. He’s the best who ever done it, after all. Butwhen Mike Brodeur comes to town a day later and achieves the same resul … that’s when you get worried. If you’re desperate for a goalie in your pool, you could do worse as a waiver pickup — not because he’s going to light the world on fire, but because the Sens goaltending situation recently can best be described as ‘three steps beyond desperate’.
• When it goes … it’s gone: Lord only knows what has happened to Marty Turco, but unless he can pull something together soon, the Dallas Stars are probably done. In his last 12 starts, only twice has Turco allowed less than three goals. In fact, in five of those starts, he’s allowed at least four goals. And in eight of those starts … his team lost. Not exactly a surprise. Turco had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 and, well, Georges Laraque scored, so you can glean from that event that Turco’s netminding was less than spectacular. Meanwhile, as the Stars continue to self destruct, Brenden Morrow is missing in action, Brad Richards’ scoring pace has slowed to put it mildly and Mike Modano provided most of the team’s offence in the 5-3 loss, despite being on the Stars’ fourth line.
• St. Louis 1, Minnesota 0: I was blown away to realize that chris Mason now has 19 career shutouts. That’s about 13 more than I expected. I guess he’s been around long enough to get them, I just didn’t think he’d been … good enough to get them. In other news, when Mikko Koivu and Martin Havlat don’t show up, Guillaume Latendresse cannot get te job done by himself.
• Oilers Suck: That’s pretty much all you can say about this one. The Penguins gave the Oilers a two-man advantage. Edmonton scored. The Pens gave up another power play ten minutes later, Edmonton scored again. Then the two teams went to their locker rooms for the second intermission. Then the Penguins came back out, score three times and won the game. I watched a bit of this third period. There was only one team playing. The Penguins did not need Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin. These are the Oilers, after all. They got by with Jordan Staal (quietly having a fantastic last month, if you’re in need of help at centre), Tyler Kennedy, Matt Cooke and Pascal Dupuis. So yes … the Oilers Suck.

Quick Picks: As I wrote in the column this week, now is the siesta time for superstars on the NHL schedule. Jordan Staal will see a lot of ice in Pittsburgh as both Sid and Geno rest up for the Olympics … Val Filppula will likely enjoy the same kind of action in Detroit as Babcock protects Datsyuk and Zetterberg for a run at a playoff spot … Mathieu Garon is pretty much the de-facto No. 1 goalie in Columbus until Stave Mason proves he can put together more than one decent game in a row … Josh Bailey and Rob Schremp have shown terrific chemistry in Long Island, but I’d be worried if your league puts weight on +/- numbers … Tyler Bozak skates with Phil Kessel in Toronto, he’s got a little bit of talent, illustrated by his gorgeous goal last night, and coach Ron Wilson thinks that line is just getting warmed up … Jason Chimera is fitting in very nicely with the Washington Capitals, with four points (and a fight!) in his last three games. He won’t be much more than a depth player, but on a team with that offence, he’s going to see a lot of ice against the weakest defenders the opposing team has to offer.

… featuring not a single damned award that prognosticators could have predicted before the season, I promise.

Sometimes a season is just so … messed up, that nobody who claims to know anything about the sport could have predicted the events unfolding. It happens a couple of times a decade in one of the major sports. Remember, for all the MVPs Peyton Manning and Co. win, there are those years where Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson are superbowl-winning quarterbacks and those NBA season where some short, white Canadian dude wins the NBA MVP.

The NHL is having a season like that right now. Check out this expert set of predictions. You can find similar preseason calls, with the same set of names in different configurations, from just about any damn fan with a blog — here and here, for instance.

But ESPN — you know, the Worldwide Leader? Sometimes remembers hockey exists? Keeps Buccigross around so nobody can say they ignore the game? — has been known to gather panels of experts to make such important calls. This year, they went with six legitimate experts, each picking a winner for each of the six major awards (Hart, Vezina, Norris, Selke, Calder and Jack Adams).

And if we did a little balloting at mid-season? The six experts picking six awards each? They’d be, at best, 5/36 or thereabouts. Realistically, they’d be 1 or 2/36. There’s also a chance they could be 0/36.

This is not to say picking the NHL awards before a game has been played is easy to do — just that all predictions should be taken with a grain of salt and that this is one whacked-the-fuck-out NHL hockey season. I mean, usually you could count on an MVP ballot full of Ovechkin, Crosby and Malkin to at least ensure one of those writers look good at the end of the season.

But if the awards were held right now….

Hart: Henrik Sedin, Canucks. He’s leading the damn league in points. He was even without his brother for a significant amount of time. He’s made Alex Burrow a fantasy force, the Canucks a dangerous offensive team instead of one that relies on Roberto Luongo and has basically been the best player in hockey for about two straight months now. You could make an argument for Joe Thornton, but he’s got Patrick Marleau and Dany Heatley and has had them all season long, so I’m not buying it. The only other real competition I could see for Sedin comes from the winner of our next award.

Vezina: Ryan Miller, Sabres. Another name that’s not listed on any preseason ballots, but now seems as though he’d have to ride out a devastating slump to take his name out of consideration. Miller has been dominant to the point where some are giving Team USA a chance at Olympic Gold solely because Miller’s going to be in net for them. The Sabres are leading their division by 10 points over the Bruins, and they don’t even have a 13-goal scorer (Thomas Vanek leads the team with 12). I know that Ilya Bryzgalov has been outstanding in Phoenix as well, but Ryan Miller has been so consistently good that it’s impossible to see anyone else knock him off. (Why yes, I do own him in my fantasy league, thank you for noticing.)

Norris: Our panels upon panels of experts believed that this award would be between Nicklas Lidstrom and Zdeno Chara. Hard to fault the logic, really. The only problem is that, right now, neither of them would even be nominated. The leader in defenseman scoring is the Capitals’ Mike Green, and since he was nominated last year, I suppose that’s not too much of a reach. But, honestly, if the balloting were held today, this award would be a dogfight between Green, Duncan Keith and Drew Doughty (who was a rookie last season). Two years ago, I was making fun of Blackhawks fans for predicting that Keith would unseat Lidstrom from his Norris trophy reign. Now, it’s not even close. (Also, were he not labouring for a sad-sack Leafs team, Tomas Kaberle would get some consideration here as well.)

Selke: I don’t really care too much about this award, and neither do the writers, really. It’s a chance to give some love to players like Datsyuk, Zetterberg and Mike Richards, who put up points, but not quite enough points to qualify for the real awards. That said, the Selke trophy winner thus far is none of those guys, but in the spirit of giving it to great scorers who play D, instead of … say .. the Jochen Hecht’s of the world, this trophy is going to either Zach Parise or Jonathan Toews. And they’re deserving. They also ain’t on anybody’s list of best-defensive-forwards. At least they weren’t…

Calder: This was supposed to be battle between John Tavares and Victor Hedman. Tavares will be nominated, for sure, but barring a second-half hot streak (when he seems to have been slowing down lately), he ain’t winning it. This is now a battle between the Sabres’ Tyler Myers and the Red Wings’ Jimmy Howard. Myers leads all rookie defensemen in scoring, anchors the Sabres defence and looks way too goddamn fast when he’s skating with the puck to be 6′7″. Howard, meanwhile, was supposed to back up Chris Osgood this year, but has gotten so good that he’s not only the starter, not only a Calder candidate, but is starting to nudge his way onto the fringes of Vezina talk. With a hat-tip to Abel to Yzerman, here’s how Howard’s season has unfolded:

That’s, ummm, unforeseen.

Jack Adams: Lindy Ruff is the one guy who was chosen at least once in our expert previews who seems to deserve some consideration for this award. Until you remember that Lindy Ruff’s coaching strategy this season has basically consisted of patting Ryan Miller on the back and telling him not to let in any goals. The real hero here, if you’ll pardon a brief but very necessary foray into Homerville, is Mike Babcock. As I type, the Red Wings have just knocked off the San Jose Sharks, in San Jose, to move to one point out of a playoff berth. At various times this year, they have been without up to 9 of their 18 regular skaters. That is, and I’m sorry for pointing out the obvious, half the frigging team. This list includes, at various points: Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Johan Franzen, Dan Cleary, Valtteri Filppula, Tomas Holmstrom, Darren Helm, Niklas Kronwall, Jonathan Ericsson, Andreas Lilja and a couple of other guys who, sadly, are not Ville Leino. The point being that every significant Red Wing not named Lidstrom has been hurt this season, and the team is one point out of a playoff spot. And if Babcock didn’t get credit when the Wings were destroying the league, I think he should get it now, while they’re forced to earn every damn point they get.

The end. Should Alex Ovechkin manage to claim the scoring title and thus earn MVP honours … and even assuming Babcock gets screwed and the Jack Adamas award goes to Lindy Ruff … and let’s further assume that the most obvious and well-known guys who are even in contention for various awards (Tavares and Green for Calder and Norris, respectively) take their trophies …

That would mean, giving them the benefit of every possible doubt, that ESPN’s experts went 3 for 36 on their predictions.  Buccigross predicted Ruff to win the Adams and E.J. Hradek and Matthew Barnaby both picked Ovechkin to win the Hart. None of the panel thought Tavares could win the Calder.

The moral of the story? It was a very good year for me to get lazy and forget to make a preseason predictions post of my own. Because I would have been just a wrong as these fucks, though I might have picked Babcock for the Adams.

I know many of you out there have been wondering, ‘how can I spend even more time scanning a barren waiver wire, hunting for replacements for my latest fallen players?’

Well, have no fear. There were several NHL games played last night, which means that at least a couple of worthy players probably bit the dust. (Assuming, of course, that Jason Spezza still qualifies as ‘worthy’. I’d certainly debate that.)

Anyway, here’s a quick update:

• Jason Spezza went down with a knee injury, and he’ll be out for ‘weeks’, according to his coach. This is, of course, perfect timing, as Alexei Kovalev had finally been coming alive and he needed an excuse to go back into hibernation. With Spezza gone, the Senators offence now consists of Daniel Alfredsson, Milan Michalek (one point in seven games), the astounding Mike Fisher (currently imitating a first-line scorer) and the bloated, decomposing corpse of Jonathan Cheechoo. Good times ahead for Sens fans and fantasy owners alike. I, of course, have Brian Elliot in a very deep league, and he’ll have to start some games this week. I’m … excited.
• The Red Wings played last night, so you know someone got hurt. This time it’s Jonathan Ericsson fucking up his knee, who was eating up a lot of the minutes Niklas Kronwall would take, were his knee not all fucked up. This means that … (rolls dice) Derek Meech could be in line for some PP time, and Brad Stuart probably gets a bump in value, as he’ll now have to play every second that Lidstrom and Rafalski are not on the ice. Where’s Chris Chelios when they need him?
• In a startlingly non-inury-related note, Philadelphia claimed Michael Leighton off waivers from the Hurricanes. If you had told me before the season that Michael Leighton would go from the Canes to the Flyers and his team’s record would go from ‘dead last’ to ‘below-.500′ … I’d have doubted you, to put it mildly. I’d suggest picking him up if you’re desperate, because he has been able to perform in short stints in the past, and Ray Emery could be gone for a while, leaving Leighton to share duties with Brian Boucher, but then I looked at his stats — 4.28 GAA, .848 SV%, 1-4-0 — and figured even the Hurricanes can’t be responsible for all that failure.

This NHL season has been, from a fantasy standpoint, pretty fucked up, thus far. It’s not just the injuries, though if you’ll click on the injuries link to the right, the number of missing stars — and others who have already missed time and returned — is pretty staggering. It’s the whole genuine … weirdness of this campaign. I mean, Marian Gaborik is healthy, Dustin Penner is a force to be reckoned with on the ice and not at the buffet table and the Detroit Red Wings are struggling to get themselves into a playoff spot. Not only that, but the Colorado Avalanche are still steamrolling through the competition, the Toronto Maple Leafs are somehow turning themselves into a respectable team and the New York Rangers are disappointing fans, management and every American pundit who thought they were contenders for the Eastern Conference title. (Okay, so the last one is completely normal. Still…)

So with that in mind, and casting an eye towards filling the missing spots on many a fantasy team (I play in six fantasy hockey leagues right now, each with two IR spots, and I have a grand total of three spots still available), let’s take a look at some of the miraculously healthy, somehow-not-disappointing wonders that I never would have thought you’d find playing major roles on winning (fantasy) teams. Or, in some cases, players who have taken a leap so gigantic that the lucky sucker who drafted the in a late round is posting trash-talking messages twice a week and generally annoying the shit out of his leaguemates. (I am guilty of this in one instance).

10. Rich Peverly and Maxim Afinogenov, ATL: These guys go together because, well, they belong together — they play for the same team, they’d both shown glimpses of PPG potential in their past and they were both expected to notch a few points simply by virtue of playing with Ilya Kovalchuk. And Ilya has no doubt helped, when he hasn’t been (like so many other first-rounders I could name) hanging out on the IR. But they also belong together because, despite the glimpses of potential they’d shown, few poolies would have believed you had you said, ‘Ilya Kovalchuk’s going to miss three weeks and both these guys will still be close to a point-per-game pace’. In fact, few people wouldn’t have laughed, or spat, in your face.

9. Matt Stajan, TOR: Ummm, Matt Stajan is on pace for almost 30 goals and about 70 points. And we thought Phil Kessel would miss Marc Savard. Who knew that, thanks in part to The Staj, it would be the other way around? He’s not the best of this list, but he’s definitely one of the most surprising. And while we’re on the subject of Maple Leafs … currently third in the entire league in assists? That would be Tomas Kaberle. And that noise you hear is Leafs fans still screaming at him to shoot the damn puck.

8. Mike Fisher, OTT: Hey, when you’re banging a Hollywood celeb and campaigning for a dark-horse spot on Canada’s Olympic team, you have no excuse not to step up your game. So we all should have seen this coming. It’s not like Fisher hadn’t offered tantalizing flashes, and once the Senators realized that Jonathan Cheechoo was a fourth-liner and Mike Fisher was a power-play guy, and started to divide the ice time accordingly, it all fell into place.

7. Henrik Sedin, VCR: What stands out about this list of the top-five scorers in the NHL (other than that it’s a list that includes Marian Gaborik and doesn’t start with the word ‘injured’)? Joe Thornton, Marian Gaborik, Henrik Sedin, Sidney Crosby, Dany Heatley … Yeah, I know. And his brother was hurt for a month, too. Maybe he felt, in some sort of strange Swedish honour thingie, that with Daniel gone he had to score for the entire Sedin family by himself. Regardless, he’s a first-round pick thus far, and was drafted an average of 82nd overall, in round 7.3. Nice.

6. Wojtek Wolski, COL: Not drafted in more than a few leagues, Wolski got off to a hot start and a whole whack of owners dismissed it because, well, he gets off to a hot start every year and then 10 games later he’s playing like a third-liner again. This time, I said fuckit, and picked him up after five games. And 25 games later I’m the jerk posting told-ya-sos on the message board and acting like I had some sort of uber-fantasy knowledge. Really, I just had a big hole on my roster and an itchy trigger finger. Still, considering I missed out on just about every other guy on this list … I’ll take it.

5. Matt Moulson, NYI: Matt Moulson is here because, he’s Matt Moulson, and he’s fantasy-relevant and … there is no way in hell, in heaven or upon God’s green Earth that anybody saw that coming. He is currently owned in 62% of Yahoo leagues and if he was drafted in even 1% of them, I will print out this blog post and eat it. I just interviewed a Matt Moulson owner and his quote was, “I said, ‘Who is this guy? He’s got a bunch of points. I’m going to pick him up.’” That thought process is exactly what happened in 62% of all fantasy hockey leagues. I want him to change his jersey number to No. 24 and sign with the Canadiens in the offseason, just because.

4. Brad Richards, DAL: I’m putting him on this list because it’s a feel-good story, dammit. Richards was thought to be a solid second-liner at this point in his career; you know, defensively responsible, not incredibly exciting, doing his job and never complaining … and then the Conn Smythe Brad Richards stepped out of the time machine and began to fuck shit up. It’s not just that he’s 10th in scoring and tied for fifth in assists. He’s brought James Neal onto the next level with him and some of those passes he’s been making are jaw-dropping. So yeah, he’s been a pleasant surprise, to say the least.

3. Ilya Bryzgalov, PHO: Not so much because he’s been very, very good. Because everybody kind of knew that he’s a pretty decent goalie. He’s here because he’s had a decent enough team to finally translate that excellence into wins and SOs, and he’s currently, if the voting were done tomorrow, a Vezina finalist. Now, if a Vezina finalist puts up incredible numbers, but nobody ever watches him play, should he still get the trophy? Hundreds of thousands of fantasy owners don’t care, because they’re laughing all the way to the damn bank. I am not one of them, but I do own (in three leagues no less) the next man on our list, and I’ll try not to rub it in too much …

2. Ryan Miller, BUF: The current NHL leader in GAA, Sv%, SOs and tied for third in wins. The main reason the Buffalo Sabres are once again a force to be reckoned with. Also the main reason everyone is suddenly wondering ‘well, what if he does this at the Olympics?’ when slotting Team USA into the medal round. Ryan Miller is having the best season by a goaltender since some other dude put up similar numbers in a Buffalo Sabres uniform a decade ago. Yeah, I said it.

1. Dustin Fuckin Penner, EDM: I’m campaigning to have him make that addition to his name, because … well, he’s Dustin Fuckin Penner — the butt of jokes a season ago, the first example given by pundits everywhere on the foolhardiness of the restricted free agent signing and the reason Brian Burke and Kevin Lowe will never speak again. And now … it turns out that maybe Burkie should have matched the offer. Maybe Dustin Fuckin Penner really is all he’s cracked up to be. Right now, he’s one of the ten most valuable players in fantasy hockey and my little Yahoo MVP thingie tells me he’s owned by 16.6% of the top 500 teams in all leagues — that’s 11th best overall, yo. Staggering. I made a so many jokes about this guy last season in the print column I feel like I owe him a personal apology.

(Your daily look around the NHL through the eyes of a disgruntled fantasy GM)

Ummm, about last night:

• From The Dept. of Mentally-Challenged Defencemen: I have seen some stupid things done in the copious amount of time I’ve spent watching professional sports — idiots running onto the field, fly balls bouncing off a player’s head for a home run, players wading into the stands to fight fans, and fans trying to jump into the penalty box to fight players … But Keith Ballard took it to a whole new level last night, when he seriously injured his own goaltender by smacking him with his stick after a goal. The whole smash-your-stick-after-a-goal thing is already pretty dumb. Unless it was clearly your fault the goal was scored or it’s the final straw in a blowout loss, I’ve always seen it as a strange kind of defeatism, though I’m sure players just do it because it’s an easy way to show the coach they’re not satisfied. But this … this was stupidity mixed with carelessness mixed with a guy who doesn’t even have a clue what’s going on around him. Here’s the video. Not that Ballard not only doesn’t seem to realize he’s just cracked the shit out of his team’s best player, he takes ANOTHER swing at the net before skating away and leaving Thomas Vokoun — who was having a hell of a little run, by the way, and will now be out at least a little while (update: he’s ‘day-to-day’) with a laceration behind his left ear — crumpled in a heap.

Just stump-fucking-dumb, that was. But as stupid as Ballard is, he’s only Keith Ballard, not, you know, the face of NHL hockey to a large portion of the world…

• He’s not just the best, he’s also a punk: I love Alexander Ovechkin, like most hockey fans do. He’s talented, emotional, exuberant and expressive. He’s just a hell of a lot of fun to watch whenever he’s on the ice. And in a season that drags on for more than six months before the playoff even start … that’s a rare thing and should be cherished. But if he keeps playing the game with that Bryan Marchment type edge to it, his act is going to get old really fast. Ovechkin was given his second match penalty in four games last night, for this brutal knee-on-knee hit on Tim Gleason, which he apparently got the worst of:

That doesn’t look pretty. While I’m sure Ovechkin wasn’t trying to injure Gleason … he just didn’t bother to try and keep his knee in. It’s reckless and stupid and he’ll probably get a suspension. But the suspension probably won’t matter, because this looks ugly enough that he’ll be out for a while. No word yet, but he sure seemed to be in a lot of pain. (Update: Ovie was apparently on the ice today, but only in sweats. He reportedly bent his knee a couple of times and packed it in after four minutes. I love Twitter.)

• Other maladies: Not only did a couple of all-stars bite the dust last night, but Joe Corvo was rushed to hospital after being cut by a skate (Update: Out 8-12 weeks. Devastating for an already-desperate Carolina team.) and Rostislav Klesla, who was just starting to show a little jam for the Blue Jackets, will be out four to six weeks with a torn groin. The very thought makes me wince. Meanwhile …
• It’s a goalie’s league: Miikka Kiprusoff continues his shutout string and stretches it to about 150 minutes as the Flames shut out the miserable Predators 5-0. The Preds had been playing better lately, but are still one of those teams you always start your goalies against. They have an “offence” that can dry up at any moment. Speaking of teams like that … Ryan Miller had fun against the Maple Leafs last night, stopping 38 shots for a 3-0 shutout. It’s a lot of fun to watch Miller work right now. He’s barely moving to make a bunch of his saves, because his positioning is so good. Then, on other saves, he will come about 10 feet out of his net to cut down the angle before calmly grabbing the shot and dropping it for his teammate. It’s like watching Dominik Hasek, only without the crazy slinky act and with more respect for his teammates, coach and the media. Anyway, if I’m a nation that is not the United States of America, I’m very nervous about a one-game Olympic showdown with Miller pulling stunts like this one.
• Kenny Holland’s Legacy: Gary Bettman must hate that guy. Once Holland started inking stars to ridiculously long-term contracts in order to keep their cap hit down, everyone else started to jump on the bandwagon. Nice to see Detroit is still exporting something that other cities use. Anyway, I think we should call them Kenny Specials, and the latest to receive one is Marc Savard, who will be staying with the Bruins for seven years, for the astonishingly low cap hit of just about $4.2-million per season. Here’s where you can find the details, but there aren’t many yet.

Quick Picks: Obviously, given injuries, Scott Clemmensen becomes a nice pickup if Vokoun is out for a little while. Don’t I remember something from last year, with some other star goalie going down and Clemmensen doing a more-than-capable job of replacing him? Of course, the Panthers ain’t the New Jersey Devils, and Clemmensen will see more shots than he can shake a stick at, but he’s shown he can handle a starter’s workload… Remember when Alex Ovechkin was hurt earlier in the year? In those six games he missed, Tomas Fleischmann skated with Nicklas Backstrom and put up seven points. Safe to say he’d be a solid addition right now … Klesla’s injury means there’s more even-strength ice time for defencemen in Columbus, and that likely means more minutes for Anton Strahlman, who is playing well on the power play and will probably get a chance to show what he can do at even strength. Kris Russel is a riskier, but potentially more rewarding, pickup. You know, if you just can’t get enough of Bluejacket defenders.

(Your daily look around the NHL through the eyes of a disgruntled fantasy GM)

Ummmm, about last night:

• Pascal Who? Brian Elliott looked every bit of a starting goalie last night, stopping 32 of 33 shots in a tight 2-1 Senators victory over the admittedly offensively-challenged Columbus Blue Jackets. But six of those 32 shots came from the stick of Rick Nash, so it’s not as though he was just hanging out in the nets jerking himself off. I’ve never thought Pascal Leclaire was a really solid starting goalie, and since Elliott gave the Sens some solid work last season too, I’d bet that Cory Clouston is willing to let him have the job and run with it, even when Leclaire’s healthy, if he keeps playing like this. I grabbed him in two of my leagues and I would do the same in the others if I wasn’t already carrying the maximum four goalies. (Yeah, I like to platoon, so what?)
• “They’re not booing, they’re saying ‘Loooouuuuu-urns’”: I’m on of those people that took his sweet time buying into the Roberto Luongo hype, then I finally went for it and drafted him twice in the first round this season only to see him start slow and follow that up with an injury. But here’s the thing: Watching Roberto Luongo play goal when he’s on is one of those things that any sports fan can gladly stare at all day and smile. He’s just that good. Usually, if given a choice of games, I’d rather watch the matchups in which I have scorers going, because I enjoy rooting for success (goals scored) more than voiding failure (goals allowed). But that changes with Luongo. I find myself watching Canucks games, hoping their opponent gets a 2-on-1 break or a power play so that I can see Luongo go right-to-left, flash the leather, stop what seemed to be a pretty certain goal and then just do the ‘yeah, I stopped that, too, so what?’ stare/shrug that has to be demoralizing as all hell to any forward hunting for a tying goal. Anyway, my point is that he’s one of a very, very small club of goalies that are as exciting to watch as forwards. Don’t believe me? This is Bobby Lou last night on Teddy Purcell (I don’t know why YouTube guy thought we all needed the soundtrack):

• Two games back, one month gone: This isn’t exactly last night’s news, but the Bruins announced this morning that Milan Lucic would miss a month with a high ankle sprain. That’s better than some people had thought his injury was going to be, but given how unstable he looked leaving the ice, and the fact that high ankle sprains are among the easiest things to re-injure in sports, I’m not holding my breath for a quick return. If your league counts PIMs, I guess you have to try to stash Lucic, either on the IR or the bench. But if it doesn’t, I’m pretty sure there are better options out there. Which brings us to …

Quick picks: If Anton Stralman is still kicking around in your league (and he’s only owned in about 19% of Yahoo leagues right now) you might want to dash over there now and click the ‘add’ button. It’s not that he’s a perfect option (the +/- won’t be great and he’s still very raw), but he’s the best option for Columbus as a PP quarterback, and that PP includes Rick Nash, among others … I mentioned in the 24 hours column today that now is a great time to grab a waiver-wire goalie, with Tuukka Rask, Elliott, Jimmy Howard and J.S. Giguere all getting starts and being widely available. And I’ll add Mathieu Garon to that list now, for the Steve Mason owners or the just plain hard-up-for-goaltending peeps. Mason if suffering through an awful sophomore slump (sub-.900 SV%, plus-3.00 GAA) and Garon has looked pretty decent as relief. He’s got four wins on the year and while Mason did stop 34 of 36 against the Sens last night, both goals he gave up were of the ‘Wow. That went in?!’ variety. Not pretty … Martin Erat, however, is on a ‘pretty’ good run (see what I did there? Man that’s lame). As we’ll see when I get around to updating them, I recommended Erat as a sleeper at the beginning of the year, and while I wouldn’t say I got that call totally right, I did point out that he is a streaky scorer and can really help a fantasy team for a few weeks at a time. While this is one of those times — Erat has five points in his last three games, after notching just four in the previous 17, and if he’s starting a run, it’d be nice to get in on the way up.

Game of the Night Day: It’s Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, which means Friday afternoon hockey, and the Sabres face the Flyers at 1 p.m. I’ve seen two recent Sabres/Flyers games and they’ve been fun, flashy affairs. Plus, both teams are, at least so far, real contenders, which is more than I can say for the rest of the schedule, which features such gems as Penguins/Islanders, Blues/Predators and Leafs/Panthers. If you’re Canadian and stuck at work, however, Flames/Wings is probably the best of the evening games: Two highly-touted teams that have really struggled lately. Hell, one of them has to walk away with two points. It’s in Joe Louis so it’s a 7 p.m. start. If I was a gambling man (and I am!) I’d be looking at the Flames and Leafs as decent road underdogs. The Leafs have played well enough to win against better teams than the Panthers and the Red Wings just don’t know where they’re at right now with all the injuries they’re dealing with. Of course, the Leafs can lose any game at any time in any fashion imaginable, and taking the Flames means you’re betting against Pavel Datsyuk, Nicklas Lidstrom and Henrik Zetterberg, who could probably win a few games with ECHL teammates … so I’m not actually making a wager. Just saying, you know, if someone were to bet…

(Your daily look around the NHL through the eyes of a disgruntled fantasy GM)

Ummmm, about last night:

• Scary: Who the heck is going to stop the Blackhawks now? With Marian Hossa returning to the lineup to line up next to Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, the Hawks hung seven goals on the San Jose Sharks, three of them while shorthanded. This was, despite the 7-2 final score, a riveting game, if only to see that a) the Hawks offence looks pretty incredible and b) the Sharks, despite a massive amount of talent, skill and scoring prowess, still seem to shirk away from the big games and big moments. You can’t get much more heartlss than not showing up for the biggest game of your season so far, and coughing up the first three goals in the game by giving your opponent three shorthanded breakaways. From the fantasy side of things, there’s not a lot of revelations here, because the Hawks are stacking three elite players on one line. Troy Brouwer, though, did continue to pop up and score with a goal and an assist. I’d be after him in my deeper league … but of course he was snatched up two days ago.
• Staalin’ for time: Eric Staal returns. And I don’t just mean returns to the ice. It seems he decided to go back to actually playing hockey, too. He had only one assist, but from what I saw of the ‘Canes 3-2 loss to the Ducks, he was flying around the rink looking much more like the 90-point scorer everybody thought they were drafting. He played 16:50, which is less ice than he’ll see when he’s back at full strength, but even so he racked up six shots and was easily the most dangerous Hurricane.
• Niklas Kronwall, Offensive Facilitator: The Red Wings have now played two games since Niklas Kronwall hurt his knee, and the vaunted offence has managed one goal. And this is against Nashville and Atlanta, not exactly the league’s most smothering defences. It’s not just that Kronwall’s gone, I think, it’s the unending crush of injuries that makes it harder and harder to play your best game and, eventually, you just get tired. Facing a hot goalie who stops every one of the 40 shots you put on him doesn’t help either, but the Wings are clearly not firing on all cylinders right now. It makes me leery of picking up the lesser players — Ericsson, Leino, Cleary — who are going to see an expanded role due to injuries.
• End of the Run? Don’t look now, but Craig Anderson has now allowed at least four goals in four of his last five games. Before this stretch, he’d done that twice all season. After the first q0 games, everyone said Colorado was just off to a hot start thanks to ther goalie. After 20 games, people started wondering if they were for real. They might still have a decent season, but I’m here to tell you that the Vezina trophy is not going to Craig-fuckin-Anderson and if you were smart enough to grab him early and ride the streak, now would be a very, very good time to turn around and deal him for a goalie who is more qualified, but off to a less impressive start. It’s not that he’ll suck the rest of the way, it’s just that his value is going to keep falling as the Avalanche realize their true potential.
• Need a goalie? There’s never been a better time to snag yourself a netminder on the waiver wire. Tim Thomas may have a broken hand, so Tuuka Rask is the starter for now in Boston. Pascal Leclaire is an idiot who can’t keep his eye on the puck while riding the pine, so now he’s out for a month and Brian Elliott is the starter in Ottawa. And as Chris Osgood has either battled the flu or battled his own regular-season-induced apathy, that leaves Jimmy Howard to pretty much split the duties in Detroit. It also looks like J.S. Giguere is back in the mix in Anaheim and will likely split time with Jonas Hiller as long as he continues to produce. All in all, it’s a pretty good time to go goalie hunting, if you happen to have a spare spot on your roster.

Later today:  Quick picks and a look at how awesome (or idiotic) our Western Conference sleeper picks look thus far…