Nev

Sweden play a game every 7 hours, that's about all I remember from the schedule.

Just about every other major team sport in the world? The World Cups of Soccer, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Cricket and more besides all take place during someones season. International sports, that recognise the fact that they are international. There's a hell of a lot of arrogant nationalism that borders on xenophobia in this thread, and I'm finding it very hard to not go on a rant. All the wah-wah about Russia being in a different time zone, about the seeming irrelevance of South Korea - quick, someone tell Hasek his gold medal from Nagano doesn't count!

This is all about money - nothing more, nothing less. The olympics generate money that the NHL doesn't see, and the billionaires and multi-millionaires who own the NHL teams cannot stand that. Thankfully the players see it differently. They don't get paid for the Olympics, but its still a big deal to them. Remember how Ovechkin said he would go AWOL if the NHL wouldn't release the players for Sochi?

I watched portions of both womens games today and was really impressed. The quality level has really gone up since last time I saw it, the goaltending especially which I remember as being particularly bad. My wife commented that it was like watching the Sheffield Steelers (British team) and I have to agree with her, kinda ECHL level. Japan - Sweden was an interesting contrast in styles, and Russia were very impressive in a surprisingly physical game with Germany.

Yes, unclear if he can be LTIRed against the cap though

And so it begins. The NHL earns no money from the Olympics and that eats at the very core of Bettman and the owners. Screw the fans, screw whats good for the game, screw what the players want, They remind me of this guy

Steve Izerman, Alexander Semen

If I'm Pittsburgh, the last team I want to face in the 1st round is a healthy Detroit. Z is Crosbys kryptonite, we can roll 4 good lines, and Howard is easily capable of outplaying a flaky Fleury.

Andersson for me. The only advantages I can see for Glendening are 1) Grittier, which causes LGW to go into spasms of ecstasy, and over-rate it over other elements of the skill set 2) Not as slow 3) Newer. Something which is very important on LGW. Give it another season for us to become more familiar with his flaws and his popularity will plummet in the face of the next unproven young player. Andersson is great on face-offs, a good PKer and decent offensively. He's a 10-10-20 guy, which ain't bad for a 4th line PK specialist, and better than Glendening.

I'm concerned he isn't Healthy at all, and is only playing because of the Olympics.

Pav back? Wings win 14-3, Dats with a goal and 13 assists.

My opinion on what's going on changes on an almost daily basis, but todays thought is that his mystery injury actually requires surgery, but Pav has been trying to rehab it instead in the hope of making the Olympics.

Rugby League and Rugby Union are probably one of the leaders in video technology, not afraid of it at all, and openly embrace it. They even have the refs mic'd up so you can hear the conversations between the ref and the video judge, and even the ref and the players. They even leave the mic open during play so you can hear them communicating with the players "stay on your feet number 8!", "no hands white!" etc etc. And since Rugby enforces respect for the refs, you don't get the mic picking up on them swearing when they're saying "yes sir, no sir" to the refs. Yes, the players in rugby really do call the ref "sir"

Imagine if every player deliberately skated over an opponents stick, threw themselves to the ice and got a penalty for it (including a nice soccer style fist pump for drawing the call). It'd be 60 minutes of 3on3. I genuinely thought the Caps player was getting called for diving at first.

What, mad that we could stop the best goalscorer in the league from nailing a laser during a 4-on-3 that resulted from a blatant dive? Honestly after that dreadful 1st period we should be delighted with a point.

Does this mean Pav is about to come back?

Either way, there's only 4 more games left before the break now, but he's been out long enough now that he's going to need every one of those games if he's going to have any semblance of conditioning for the Olympics.

I'd love Sutter, just for the hilarity of him trolling the media

Our Swedes are more in danger from having to play 5 games in 3 days than they are from terrorists.

Under contract.....and no NHL games scheduled. And an international agreement between the NHL and the IIHF. And a commissioner who ​loathes the winter olympics, and has consistently, throughout his entire rein, tried to stop NHL players going. He's already started on 2018 FWIW.

So how exactly will the NHL stop players going to Sochi? Are they going to take Datsyuk's passport off him?

High end talent, nothing more, nothing less. We don't need depth or role players, we've got plenty of talented kids to give us depth. We need another high quality top-6 forward and a high quality top-4 dman. Neither is likely to be available in FA, but like last summer there may be someone available via trade. Kenny missed out on Ryan, Seguin, Ericsson and Edler last summer. If anyone of that level of quality is available again he needs to be prepared to let some of our assets go in order to get them.

You gotta think this pretty much rules him out for the Olympics. Which sucks for Franzen as he wasn't part of 2006, but at least the Olympic break will give him another 3 weeks to heal up.