As talk of NHL discipline heats up early in the season, the Columbus Blue Jackets would like a little bit of love from the league office.
During a 6-2 pasting at the hands of Los Angeles Sunday night, Columbus forward Jason Chimera carried the puck across the Kings' blue line, and was met promptly by a low hit from defenseman Rob Scuderi. What appeared to be an attempt at a solid hip check was treated as anything but by the Blue Jackets.
Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Ray Shero was kind enough to spend nearly an hour on the phone with FanHouse's Adam Gretz discussing a variety of topics. This is the third of a three-part series. Wednesday's entry: Ray Shero discusses how the 2009-10 Penguins were built through free agency, trades, the draft, and what he expects from the defending Stanley Cup champions.
The Los Angeles Kings entered the offseason with a fair amount of cap space and plethora of young assets that could have been used to bring in a big-name player to help boost a young team from Western Conference bottom-feeder to legitimate playoff contender. Personally, I was pushing for disgruntled Senators forward Dany Heatley, who seemed like he would have been a nice fit. The Kings, however, may have found an even better fit, when you consider Heatley is, apparently, out of his mind and doesn't quite know what he wants or where he wants to go.
Late Friday night, the Kings acquired veteran forwardRyan Smyth from the Colorado Avalanche for defensemen Kyle Quincey and Tom Preissing, and a fifth-round draft pick. For the Kings? They get a gritty, veteran leader still capable of scoring 25-30 goals. For the Avs? It's a salary dump, and a head start in the season-long quest for Taylor Hall.
July 1 is a significant day in the National Hockey League. It's the day that unrestricted free agents are finally able to negotiate with any team they want. Even with a fading economy, it's a safe bet that money will be spent, and it will probably be spent freely by at least some teams. With this big day in mind, FanHouse offers up a position-by-position look at the top free agents, as well as some guys you may want your team to avoid.
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 Atlantic Division.
It will be an interesting summer for the five teams in the Atlantic. Four teams made the playoffs, including the eventual Stanley Cup champion, and the one team that didn't make it -- the New York Islanders -- holds the first pick in Friday's draft, which isn't a bad consolation prize. All around it was a pretty successful season for these five teams.
It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We'll be running our division-by-division preview of the offseason beginning later in the week, but we wanted to give the two top dogs their own space. Yesterday we took a look at the Red Wings. Today: the summer outlook for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Thanks to Max Talbot's two-goal performance in Game 7, along with Marc-Andre Fleury's buzzer-beating save on Nicklas Lidstrom, the Pittsburgh Penguins brought home their third Stanley Cup. General manager Ray Shero now has the task of dealing with 10 unrestricted free agents and finding a way to construct a team that is capable of keeping the Cup in Pittsburgh.
The Pittsburgh Penguins ended a 17-year Stanley Cup drought on Friday night with a 2-1 win over the Detroit Red Wings, giving the franchise its third championship. While current general manager Ray Shero will get his name on the cup for overseeing the hockey operations the past three seasons, former general manager Craig Patrick also had a hand in putting this team together.
After the jump, a player-by-player look at how the 2008-09 Penguins were built over the years.
PITTSBURGH -- What a shame hockey didn't own this night. Americans from Florida to California should have been glued to the extraordinary image of Marc-Andre Fleury doing somersaults in front of the net to save the Penguins' season, of Rob Scuderi using the edge of his skate to stop what surely would have been a dagger to the gut, of scruffy-faced athletes pushing the sport to a transcendent, desperate finish.
When it was over, when the last frantic second expired on Pittsburgh's 2-1 Game 6 win over the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals, the 17,132 lucky souls who witnessed this gem in person managed to dislodge their hearts from their throats and turn The Igloo into something that sounded pretty close to a rapturous revival. It was tough to decide where they should genuflect first.
Heading into Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final, it was pretty much assumed that Marc-Andre Fleury was going to have to come up big in net for the Pittsburgh Penguins to force a seventh game. He not only stood up to the challenge in Pittsburgh's 2-1 win, he made what appeared to be one of the biggest saves of the season when he turned aside Daniel Cleary on a breakaway in the final minute of regulation.
As it turns out, that wasn't even the biggest save of the night. Video's after the jump.
In The Face-Off Circle: A game-by-game look at the face-off's in the Stanley Cup Final
The Detroit Red Wings had their best face-off man, Kris Draper, back in the lineup for Game 4, and as a team they had their best showing since Game 1, winning 34 of 60 draws. While Draper won six of his 11, the biggest factor in the margin on Thursday night wasn't what any one individual Red Wing did, but what one individual Penguin didn't do.
As talk of NHL discipline heats up early in the season, the Columbus Blue Jackets would like a little bit of love from the league office.
The Los Angeles Kings entered the offseason with a fair amount of cap space and plethora of young assets that could have been used to bring in a big-name player to help boost a young team from Western Conference bottom-feeder to legitimate playoff contender. Personally, I was pushing for disgruntled Senators forward Dany Heatley, who seemed like he would have been a nice fit. The Kings, however, may have found an even better fit, when you consider Heatley is, apparently, out of his mind and doesn't quite know what he wants or where he wants to go.
July 1 is a significant day in the National Hockey League. It's the day that unrestricted free agents are finally able to negotiate with any team they want. Even with a fading economy, it's a safe bet that money will be spent, and it will probably be spent freely by at least some teams. With this big day in mind, FanHouse offers up a position-by-position look at the top free agents, as well as some guys you may want your team to avoid.
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 Atlantic Division. 
Thanks to Max Talbot's two-goal performance in Game 7, along with Marc-Andre Fleury's buzzer-beating save on Nicklas Lidstrom, the Pittsburgh Penguins brought home their third Stanley Cup. General manager Ray Shero now has the task of dealing with 10 unrestricted free agents and finding a way to construct a team that is capable of keeping the Cup in Pittsburgh.
