FanHouse Craig MacTavish

It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We continue our division-by-division preview of the potential wheeling and dealing with the Northwest Division.

It appears we are setting up for an offseason of significant change in the Northwest Division. Only the Vancouver Canucks will have the same coach as last year, and there could be some real upheaval in terms of personnel. Not only that, but two teams (Minnesota and Colorado) have changed general managers.

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The real NHL awards will be handed out Thursday night in Las Vegas, so FanHouse decided to hand out its own special awards for the 2008-09 season.

It's designed to maintain competitive balance and parity across the league, but if you waste valuable salary cap space on free agents that don't pan out or contribute the way you expected, you're pretty much stuck without a paddle because nobody is going to bail you out and take that albatross contract off your hands.

Introducing the FanHouse nominees for the Wade Redden Award for Wasted Cap Space.

The Edmonton Oilers have made a major splash in their efforts to make it back to the playoffs.

Three non-playoff years have followed Edmonton's magical run to the 2006 Stanley Cup Finals, and that was enough to cost longtime coach Craig MacTavish his job. Tuesday afternoon, the Oilers turned to a couple of familiar names to help them turn around their fortunes.

It's not exactly a national secret that hockey teams tend to go through coaching changes about as often as a high school kid goes through a change of clothes (speaking on personal experience, that's about once per year). As we begin the conference finals, it's probably worth pointing out that three of the four teams taking part -- the Pittsburgh Penguins, Carolina Hurricanes and Chicago Blackhawks -- experienced a change behind the bench during the regular season.

After eight years, the Edmonton Oilers and head coach Craig MacTavish will be parting ways following the team's third consecutive non-playoff season. The Oilers compiled a 301-252-103 during MacTavish's watch, while also playing in the Stanley Cup Final in 2005-06, losing to the Carolina Hurricanes in seven games.

While he's not yet saying anything about his future as coach of the Edmonton Oilers, Craig MacTavish had more than a few words about the shortcomings of his team, which will be watching the playoffs from the outside.

"For me this year started with a lot of promise and maybe some false hope based on how we played last year," he said. "There was a lot of inadequacy in our game. The thing that was maybe more disappointing for me was our culture took a hit in terms of our work ethic and unselfishness. Just the universal commitment we've had here for so many years. There were a lot of nights as a coach I had to ask for more and sometimes the talk was pretty empty. It was a difficult year. A disappointing year in a lot of ways." [Calgary Herald]

In our final installment of this season's power rankings, we take a look at how the teams might finish in the NHL standings. The San Jose Sharks have yet to claim the President's Trophy, but a win in their regular season finale, or one loss by the Boston Bruins, will give the Sharks the best record in the NHL for the first time in franchise history.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the standings, the New York Islanders are hoping that all of this losing will mean a big win in June.

Oh my, they're not going to like this in Buffalo. After the Penguins and Sabres skated to a 3-3 tie in regulation, Sidney Crosby deflected an Evgeni Malkin slap shot behind Buffalo goalie Ryan Miller in overtime, giving the Penguins a 4-3 win. As you can see from the above video, it was oh-so-close to being a high-stick.

They key, however, is that the call on the ice was that it was indeed a goal, meaning they would need conclusive evidence to overturn it. Is that conclusive? It's pretty darn close. The fact it's Crosby on the positive end of the call isn't going to sit well with anyone outside of Pittsburgh, I'm guessing, especially after he got away with punching some guy in the goods a week ago. So, cue the conspiracy theories! Anyway, what's done is done, Penguins win, and the Sabres blew three different leads on the night, including a 2-0 advantage in the second period, while going 1-for-6 on the power play.

Pittsburgh's Alex Goligoski picked up three points (two goals, assist) in the win, while Malkin added three helpers in his quest for 100. Malkin, by the way, now has 43 assists on the season -- an amazing number when you consider there were only three players in the NHL entering play on Monday with 43 points (Malkin, Crosby and Alex Ovechkin).

Every week there are minor moves and stories around the National Hockey League that tend to fall through the cracks. Consider this our weekly roundup of those stories from the previous week, all wrapped up in one neat little package.

During the 2006-07 season, Nashville forward Steve Sullivan suffered a back injury that knocked him out of the lineup for the remainder of the season. As a result of the injury, he missed the entire 2007-08 season and the first three months (and counting) of this season.

Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal points out that the 34-year old Sullivan is "skating hard" by himself in Nashville and may in fact make it back to the Predators lineup this season, Assuming he makes it back to the lineup -- and, let's be honest, that's quite an assumption at this point -- how much of an impact can we expect? Prior to his injury during the '06 season, he had played a full 82-game season one time (2002-03, which Chicago) and was a solid bet for 60-70 games per year.

Having said that, when he's on the ice, the 5-foot-8 forward is as steady as they come, good for 25 goals and 60 points. Can he step in and contribute anything close to that after not playing for nearly two seasons, at the age of 34, and with a bad back? Who knows, but it might be interesting to see what he could provide to the Predators.

Edit: The Nashville Tennessean reports Sullivan skated with the Predators in a full practice on Tuesday.

Last offseason the Edmonton Oilers were quite active in the restricted free agent market, throwing huge offers at Buffalo's Thomas Vanek and Anaheim's Dustin Penner. The Sabres, naturally, refused to let Vanek get away, which in turn led to Oilers general manager Kevin Lowe gunning for Penner.

The Oilers signed the massive forward to a five-year, $21.25 million offer sheet, which the Ducks refused to match, sparking a rather hilarious war of words between Lowe, and then Ducks general manager Brian Burke. If you'll recall, Burke called the signing "an act of desperation by a general manager who is fighting to keep his job." Classic.

Anyway, the Oilers aren't even two years into Penner's contract, and they're already having a rather strong case of buyers remorse. Well, more accurately, head coach Craig MacTavish seems to be.

Through the first 16 games of the season, the 26-year old Penner has scored just three goals and was a healthy scratch in the Oilers 3-2 loss to Colorado on Saturday. Hopefully he found himself a nice, comfortable spot in the press box, because he's going to be sitting there again tonight when the Oilers travel to Detroit.