FanHouse MikeCammalleri

The Montreal Canadiens entered the offseason with the always dangerous combination of salary cap space and open roster spots. It didn't take Bob Gainey long to start reconstructing his roster, making the head-scratching trade for Scott Gomez and his gigantic contract on Tuesday, a move that was panned by pretty much every analyst/blogger/and fan outside of New York City.

On Wednesday, when the free agent frenzy officially opened, Gainey continued his roster overhaul, and essentially cornered the market on small, undersized forwards, and reunited Gomez with one of his former teammates from his New Jersey glory days.

The NHL's new hard-line stance on message-sending and late-game fisticuffs seems to have lasted, oh, about two weeks. Late in the third period of Pittsburgh's 7-4 win on Thursday, Carolina's Ryan Bayda was involved in a line brawl of sorts that featured Bayda delivering what appeared to be a cross-check to the face of Kris Letang.

In the end, Miroslav Satan fought Patrick Eaves, Tim Gleason fought Letang, and Bayda was issued a match penalty for intent to injure. By rule, Bayda was immediately suspended from further competition pending a league review. That review has taken place, and Bayda walks away with a $2,500 fine and no suspension.

On Thursday, the NHL suspended Flyers forward Daniel Carcillo for his actions in the closing seconds of Pittsburgh's 4-1 win on Wednesday night. It was part of a somewhat embarrassing end to the game, as the Flyers racked up 23 penalty minutes in just 19 seconds.

Carcillo admitted that the official dropping the puck warned him not to try anything.

Exactly 1,230 regular season games have been played. We're down to the best eight teams in each conference. The Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Wednesday night with four series lid-lifters.

The Western Conference is home to the league's best team (San Jose), the defending champion (Detroit), and the two most intriguing Cinderella stories in the league (St. Louis and Columbus). Can Cinderella put off the stroke of midnight, or will an established power advance their way to the Finals?

Every season since 2000-2001, Jarome Iginla has led the Calgary Flames in goals. In many of those seasons, it hasn't really been close. While he's a wonderful player and all, this isn't necessarily a good thing. You could argue that Calgary's lack of balance has played a role in their inability to advance past the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs more than once in Iginla's career.

With that in mind, general manager Darryl Sutter found Iginla some help last summer. He acquired Mike Cammalleri from the Los Angeles Kings, hoping he had found someone who could take all the heat off Iginla and Daymond Langkow.

The Penguins needed a game like this, and it's quite a way to open up the second half of the season as they scored five third period goals on their way to a 6-2 win over the New York Rangers. Marc-Andre Fleury kept the Penguins in it early, turning aside 32-of-34 shots, while the offense took over in the third period, peppering Henrik Lundqvist with 16 shots.

Rookie goaltender Cory Schneider made 16 saves in the Canucks 2-1 win on Friday night, picking up his first career win against the Minnesota Wild.

Vancouver outshot the Wild by a 14-3 margin in the first period, and took advantage of -- according to the box score -- 15 Minnesota giveaways to escape with the victory. Kevin Bieska picked up his fifth goal of the season in the first period, while Jason Jaffray scored his first of the season at the 3-minute mark of the second period.

Mikko Koivu scored Minnesota's only goal of the night, while Niklas Backstrom turned aside 29 shots in the loss.

The win is only Vancouver's second in six games since the loss or Roberto Luongo, while the Wild had won three of four coming into action on Friday.

The best action of the night was probably the assortment of brawls in the first and second periods, resulting in the two teams combining for 56 penalty minutes during the game, and the ejections of Derek Boogaard and Darcy Hordichuk.

Playing in his first game against his former team, St. Louis goalie Chris Mason was absolutely sensational on Tuesday, stopping 47 shots in regulation and overtime, not to mention two additional shots in a shootout, as a depleted Blues team walked out of Nashville with a 1-0 shootout win.

David Perron and Brad Boyes scored for St. Louis in the shootout, while Rich Peverley and Ville Koistinen came up short for the Predators.

The story of the night was Mason, who was traded by Nashville on June 20, in exchange for a fourth-round pick. The 32-year old goalie was a brick wall in net, as Nashville held a commanding 47-17 edge in the shots department. His best performance of the evening had to be the overtime period, as he turned aside nine shots as Nashville peppered him with shots on a 4-on-3 man advantage, following a questionable penalty call on Blues defenseman Barret Jackman.

The Blues have now picked up points in four consecutive games, after losing eight of their previous nine.

Welcome to the NHL FanHouse 2008-09 season preview. While other sites are previewing "30 teams in 30 days," we decided to take advantage of the extra time off before the start of the season to bring you all 30 previews over the next three weeks. We're counting down in reverse order of finish from last season in each conference every weekday from now until October 3. Look for an Eastern Conference preview every morning and a Western Conference preview every afternoon. Click here to read them all.

Who's In: Mike Cammalleri, F (FA-LA); Rene Bourque, F (Trade-CHI); Curtis Glencross, F (FA-EDM); Todd Bertuzzi, F (FA-ANH)

Who's Out: Kristian Huselius, F (FA-CBJ); Owen Nolan, F (FA-MIN); Alex Tanguay, F (Trade-MTL); Curtis Joseph, G (FA-TOR)

What's Changed: The backbone of this team hasn't been touched. 50-goal scorer Jarome Iginla is still the rock of the offense. Cammalleri should help bolster the Flames' top line, and Daymond Langkow is expected to remain the center. The signing of Bertuzzi is an interesting one for the Flames. Calgary has plenty of tough guys, and Bertuzzi struggled mightily at times last year in Anaheim. He did stay healthy for 68 games and tallied a not-terrible 40 points, but he still has a penchant for really dumb and irresponsible penalties.

While I know Mike Keenan wants a tough hockey team (hence the decision to let Tanguay and Huselius go elsewhere), I can't imagine he'll be happy watching Bertuzzi take a dumb penalty late in a close game. Unless Bertuzzi starts playing smarter hockey, it's not destined to go well for him.

Los Angeles Kings winger and party animal (pictured, left) Michael Cammalleri was one of the league's best players that you didn't know about. Playing for a West Coast team nowhere near the playoffs, Cammalleri finished with 80 points in 81 games, good for 27th overall in the NHL point-scoring race.

His agent, Mike Gillis, seeing a big fat commission and new chrome siding for his Porsche, had his client demand $6 million per season!! This for a guy with just 220 career NHL games and only ONE very good season under his belt.

Now, I can see how they would ask for the moon, given how a guy like Markus Naslund racked in that kind of coin, and produced even less than Cammalleri. Having watched Kevin Lowe toss around $7 million for the likes of Thomas Vanek must have made Cammalleri confident that he'd score big, too!

The Kings countered with a more modest $2.8 million per season, citing the fact that Cammalleri has still not established himself as a true star. Obviously, the two sides were so far apart that no pre-arbitration agreement was going to happen.

Yesterday, the arbitrator ruled in favour of the Kings, with an award of $6.7 million over two seasons, far less than Cammalleri and his greedy agent were hoping for. Unlike the 'good old' days of NHL arbitration, the new line of arbiters seems to be heavily skewing their awards in favour of the NHL clubs, and not the players.

Unfortunately for the Kings, Cammalleri is going to be an unrestricted free agent in 2009. While the Kings will get Cammalleri at a very reasonable salary for two seasons, they may wish that they could have secured their diminutive star for a longer-term deal for an extra million or two. Knowing how Mike Gillis operates, don't expect a home-town discount any day soon.

For fantasy players, hang onto this guy! He's on an up-and-coming team with an offensive-minded coach and he's surrounded by some good talent (Frolov, Kopitar, Nagy, and Handzus). Cammalleri is a great skater and has improved at a steady rate for the past few seasons. Anything less than 65-70 points next season would be an utter shock.