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Richards' hit was clean; the head part was accidental. He had initiated a hit that would hit the puck carrier, Booth, shoulder-to-shoulder, when Booth suddenly changed his position, lowering his head into Richards' hit. Happens a lot of the time. Granted, intentional hits to the head happen a lot as well, but Richards was throwing a clean check that went wrong due to Booth's change of position. Think about Pronger trying to hit Yzerman. Pronger missed Yzerman because Yzerman pretty much dodged the hit. What if Yzerman doesn't make it out of the way and suffers a career-ending injury because of his unusual position? While Pronger was not exactly throwing the cleanest of hits, he wasn't trying to end Yzerman's career. I suppose it's like the high sticking rule. If I am trying to get out of a corner scrum because the puck has been kicked out, but my stick is being held against the boards so I have to lift it and I catch the guy in the chin, what happens? More often than not, I go to the box for two. If he's cut, that's an automatic four. Even if it was all a result of what should have been either a 'holding the stick' or 'interference' penalty on him. Proper discretion as to whether the head hit was intentional is important. The "effect equals suspension" is crap. What happens if a guy trips me on a breakaway. Two minutes, right? Then later, I trip the same guy on a breakaway and he wrecks his knee on the goal post, missing two seasons? Am I suspended for two seasons also, even though the situation was exactly reversed with the same players, only one resulted in an injury? The "intention" thing must be solved before the "hits to the head" can be solved. Unless you want to watch soccer on ice.

The "big five" should have gone as such: (winners underlined, nominees alphabetical): Hart: Ilya Bryzgalov, Ryan Miller, Henrik Sedin Norris: Drew Doughty, Duncan Keith, Nicklas Lidstrom Selke: Ryan Kesler, Jordan Staal, Henrik Zetterberg Vezina: Ryan Miller, Evgeni Nabokov, Tomas Vokoun Calder: Jimmy Howard, Tyler Myers, Tuukka Rask

July 1st looms, but they are still RFAs afterwards as they have been tendered qualifying offers. They can go ahead and leave the deal on the table if they like, but they won't be playing NHL hockey this season if they do.

McLellan took away everyone's letters, not just Marleau's. It wasn't a reflection of his captaincy ability per se, rather a coach wanting his captain to be the team's leader. Marleau did wear an 'A' this past season and is probably the most likely candidate to receive the 'C' as he has the respect of his teammates and is a leader on the team. Blake got the 'C' last season because he was a veteran leader with Cup experience. Now Blake is gone, and Marleau is the team's leader. He gets the 'C' back. Honestly? It would have been better IMO for team morale to decide on who were going to get the letters, and once Marleau was among them, for Blake to have just received an 'A' as he would have been able to talk with refs and such when necessary, but there wouldn't be any "Why did San Jose strip Marleau of the 'C' " questions.

Green plays quite a bit, this is true, but let's take a look at something: Atlanta's starter: Ondrej Pavelec Nashville's starter: Pekka Rinne Islanders' starter: Dwayne Roloson Hurricanes' starter: Cam Ward Caps' starter: Jose Theodore Theodore was the best starter based on save percentage; technically equal to Rinne, but Rinne saw far fewer shots per game in a comparable number of games. Only Nashville and the Isles had worse penalty killing, so that part of your argument is only really applicable to Suter as the other teams had notably better PK units despite much worse goaltending. So remove Suter, and replace him with Ehrhoff, and let's see how you call that one? Luongo was no better than Theodore this past season. The big thing about Washington is not that any of their players played particularly good defense but rather that the team had the puck so damn often. That's why faceoffs are important; if you have the puck, they can't score. Unless it's the playoffs and you have Dan Boyle near your net and Evgeni Nabokov in it apparently. Green is one of the better defensemen in the league. But he should not be a Norris nominee. That's like nominating Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin for the Selke. Very good player, but not deserving of consideration for the award.

It should be noted: Yzerman scored 155 points the season after wrecking his knee in 87-88 (102 points in 64 games) when he was on pace for 63 goals and 127 points He also scored 127 points (89-90) and 137 points (92-93) later on in his career. He was on pace for 35 goals, 84 assists, and 119 points (3rd in the NHL) in 1993-94 but he missed 26 games due to a serious neck injury. 1994-95 (38 points in 47 games) would represent one of only two seasons between 1996-97 and 1983-84 when Yzerman did not score at least a point per game.

None. They are all one or more of the following groups: 1) RFA 2) Too expensive. 3) Not good enough to waste $500k-$750k on for 5-7 minutes per game in 10-25 games played.

Ehrhoff was a close cut on my top ten. But his minor offensive advantage over Kubina and Suter doesn't makeup for their advantage defensively and physically. Streit and Pitkanen also actually outperformed Ehrhoff offensively. As far as Boyle v. Ehrhoff, Boyle had an equal if not better defensive season than Ehrhoff also, and was much better offensively. Green had a very good season offensively again, but his defense is still a joke. He plays worse defensively than Brett Lebda. Defense is important too BTW. Plus/minus is not a measure of defense. If two players play identical shifts for five games with identical ability each shift against the same players, but one team has much worse teammates, one player will end up with a lower, possibly MUCH lower, plus-minus. Plus/minus is a player stat that is affected by teammates to a great degree. Honestly, I would rank Green behind Lidstrom, Kronwall, and Rafalski. He's a speedy, highly skilled playmaker with a good shot who ended up playing as the top offensive defenseman for a team with great offensive forwards.

No such thing as a front-loaded cap hit. Front-loaded contracts have a high salary value early and then a low salary value later on so that the cap hit is lower. An 8 year, $24m contract will have a $3m cap hit for all 8 years no matter what salary is being paid in any given season; it could be $1.5m for the first 2, $1.25m for two, $1m for two, $750k for two, and $500k for two or it could be $1.5m, $2m, $2.5m, $3m, $3m, $3.5m, $4m, $4.5 and the hit would be the same $3m in all 8 seasons.

Zetterberg is Datsyuk's equal at least defensively. He scored exactly the same amount of points as him last season. He is FAR more clutch. As far as "nobody for quite some time" you must not have been watching hockey terribly recently. You know who Sergei Fedorov is, right? At his best, Fedorov was one of the league's five fastest skaters. He also had one of the hardest and most accurate shots, was a phenomenal playmaker, and was the league's top defensive forward. Fedorov also played a more physical game than Datsyuk does, although neither has ever been a Brendan Shanahan or Wendel Clark.

Marleau is San Jose's best player, and was better than Kovalchuk offensively this season in addition to consistently being one of the league's better defensive forwards. Yes, playing with Thornton may have helped his numbers, but I would argue he was the best player on that line. He's not scoring just because of Thornton; when it happened, the Thornton trade actually caused Marleau's scoring pace to slow down during the 2005-06 season. Marleau has consistently been a very good scorer.

There were some serious flaws with the All-Star teams. I would have ranked the top five at each position as follows (ten for defense): C: H.Sedin Zetterberg Crosby Datsyuk Kopitar RW: Gaborik St. Louis Heatley Alfredsson Iginla LW: Ovechkin D.Sedin Marleau Kovalchuk Parise D: Keith Lidstrom Doughty Pronger Weber Chara Streit Kubina Pitkanen Suter G: Ryan Miller Tomas Vokoun Evgeni Nabokov Henrik Lundqvist Ilya Bryzgalov That's seven out of twelve selections I disagree with, two I GREATLY disagree with (Kane and Green). As far as simply players selected, it's 4 I disagree with, 2 of 4 I greatly disagree with (Kane and Green)

The Wings lost 66 goals from 08-09 to 09-10 in the regular season. Consider about 40 more pro-rated between Franzen and Holmstrom if healthy, minus 6 from Williams if he's scratched for terrible play as a result, and minus 3 from Abdelkader, who would have spent more of the year in Grand Rapids. So that's a loss of about 30-35 over 82 games. Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg combined for 13 fewer goals than the previous season. Bertuzzi scored 5 fewer than Hudler. So 7-12 goals difference if equally healthy. Chicago will survive, don't worry.

I laugh at the "Hawks traded their future!" thing. The Hawks traded a forward who was scratched for almost the entire playoff runs the past two seasons. He is also an RFA and would not have been on the regular roster this coming season anway, given the cheaper, better players the Hawks do or will have. Ben Eager is the same thing. The Hawks getting value for nothing. It would be like the Wings trading the rights to Ole-Kristian Tollefson. He's NEVER going to play a game for Detroit. Detroit only took him as cap relief for Philly so they could take on Leino; and in turn Detroit because he immediately went to Grand Rapids because Leino was only traded to activate Franzen. Tollefson=bag of pucks as far as that deal was concerned. Philly didn't care about giving him up, and Detroit didn't care about taking him on. If the Hawks had traded Toews for a 3rd round pick, THEN you could make the "future" argument. But he's signed for long enough that he will be a bargain at that price for most of his deal. Kane might never really be worth it, but he's a flashy goal scorer so he can be dealt for much more than he's worth if Bowman or his successor is ever willing to trade the stupid f*****.

Chicago currently has 9 forwards, 3 defensemen, and 1 goaltender under contract. After bonuses, they have about $1.99m in cap space. That's tough. Realstically, Hendry will probably cost them around $850k-$1m, Hjalmarsson $2.5m-$3m, and Niemi $2.5m=$3m. Crawford makes $850k, and is a solid tender. So they're $4m-$5m over the cap with 9/5/2 if it's still Niemi/Huet, and they are $2.2m-$2.7m over with Huet/Crawford. So they need to add four forwards and two defensemen while dropping anywhere between $2.5m-$5m in cap hit. I expect their lines based on current signed players (and players expected to be retained), playoff combinations and performances to look something like this, without potential trades or free agents: Versteeg/Toews/Kane Kopecky/Sharp/Hossa Brouwer/Bolland/????? ?????/Reasoner/????? ????? Seabrook/Keith Campbell/(Hjalmarsson) (Hendry)/Lalonde Connelly Niemi Crawford Even this roster, which assumes Huet being sent to the minors and all of the spots with players yet to be signed are at league minimum - not an unlikely proposition on its own - the Hawks are still around $2.5m over the cap. So we can expect to see at least one more move, unless NHL revenues increased by 10% or more; which is not impossible but fairly unlikely. If the Hawks can't find a taker for Campbell, then Sharp seems the most likely candidate, with a guy like Mike Comrie, Brendan Morrison, or Robert Lang perhaps filling the gap left on the second line for $1.25m or less if they would take it.

Too bad he won't. Repeatedly winning an award that's put in place sixty years after the league started that is often awarded to "good" defensive players who have strong offensive seasons ahead of "great" defensive players who aren't as offensively productive is hardly an indication that a player is the best two-way player in history if said player is one of the league's better offensive players. The Selke started out being given to the best defensive forwards, but in recent years has trended more towards being given to a guy who is among the league's better defensive forwards and has a good offensive season. Doug Gilmour and Kris Draper are the biggest examples. Michael Peca is another; he won the Selke in two of his three best offensive seasons, was nominated in the other one, finished fifth two other times. He was always a very good defensive player, penalty killer, and physical player, He wasn't significantly better defensively in 1997 or 2002 than he was in 1996, 1999, 2004, or 2006, yet he won in 97 and 02 and wasn't even considered in the other years. 2007-08 is the only time in his 14 year NHL career where he scored better than 0.5 points per game and did not finish fifth or better in Selke voting; he finished with 0.5 points per game. His offensive prime was a streak of seven seasons with four Selke nominations and two wins, but his worse offensive seasons did not see a significant defensive decline, yet saw Selke voters ignore him completely. Offense has a significant effect on the Selke. A further example? Yes, I will say Datsyuk. The year before he won his first Selke, 2006-07, he finished 20th and scored 87 points. Zetterberg finished 7th with 68 points (in 63 games), and Draper finished 8th with 29 points. The year before that? Dats scored 87 points and received no votes, Draper finished 6th with 32 points, and Z 9th with 85 points. Then Datsyuk scored 97 points and placed 4th in the league, and he wins the Selke. Odd, don't you think? Not saying he isn't excellent defensively; just odd that he suddenly puts up almost 100 points and boom, he has a Selke ahead of eight other teammates who recieved votes, two who is of similar age and received first-place votes, after Dats had been an afterthought for the award, only receiving a single first-place vote in his career. Personally, I think Z should have won the past two and Kesler this year. Dats is good but not the best, regardless of his awards. If he continues his great play, he'll be a lock for the HOF, and having won the Selke or not won't make a difference. Draper was a sub-30 point defensive specialist who is receiving secondary consideration. Suddenly due to team injuries he scored 24 goals and 40 points in 67 games and wins it. He goes back to his normal output and isn't near the Selke leaders ever again.

Sakic is/was great, but he's not Yzerman. Part of what has to be remembered is that Sakic was playing the majority of his career on a powerhouse team with skilled linemates. He would only finish short of a point per game four times from the Lindros trade on; three being injury-riddled seasons, and one being a year where he still finished sixth in scoring with 79 in 82 games. Sakic played his career with much better linemates than Yzerman, and also had a much better team for much of the time. Yzerman's prime was spent dragging a collection of the league's worst players towards division titles. Sakic had, over his prime, players like Sundin, Kamensky, Duchesne, Ricci, Forsberg, Nolan, Ozolinsh, Deadmarsh, and Blake, which is a much better crew than what Yzerman had. Yzerman spent the years after his prime still playing very well, focusing more on defense than he had and being recognized for his efforts, in part because the Wings had been having more success due to strong drafting and very good leadership.

Mark Howe? Sergei Makarov? These guys deserve to be in WAY before Ciccarelli.

I still say: Hudler/Zetterberg/Franzen Holmstrom/Datsyuk/Eaves Cleary/Filppula/Bertuzzi Abdelkader/Helm/Miller? Draper??? Lidstrom/Ericsson Kronwall/Rafalski Kindl?/Stuart Meech/Janik/Lilja/??? Howard Osgood Ritola/Eaves/Miller and possibly even Helm/Draper/Abdelkader are included in a playoff for the last couple forward spots, possibly along with training camp invitees or prospects like McGrath, Emmerton, Oulahen, etc. Meech/Janik, possibly Lilja if retained, and/or any other potential UFA signing, plus any potential training camp invitee or prospect would have to fight for the last couple of defense spots as well. Figure if a guy like Ritola or Meech with skill and potential doesn't make it he gets dealt, so that might give them an edge if it's close, but likely works against them, if they are behind one or two guys.

Makarov had a good NHL career after his prime, and internationally he was considered one of the two best wingers to ever play (according to the IIHF centennial team recently named, Makarov and Kharlamov were named as the wingers with the best overall international careers) so acting like Dino or Gilmour or someone like that deserves it more than him is silly. Makarov should be more of a lock than just about anyone eligible.

Brind'Amour's defense to me has always been overrated. He's always been a good to very good defensive forward and one of the league's better two-way players... but Selke caliber? No. Even worse for the undeserving Selke winner is Kris Draper. Very good defensive forward, but why did he go from not getting serious consideration for the trophy, to winning it, to again not getting serious consideration? Was his defense really that much better in that one year than in other years? Nope; it was the 20-goal season. Yes, in other years Draper probably deserved more consideration than he was getting... but he was not even the best defensive forward on his team the year he won. With Brindy, it was partially that some of the better defensive forwards from recent years were retiring, (guys like Carbonneau, Otto, Tikkanen, Kurri, while the younger guys like Fischer, Sundstrom, Pahlsson, Madden, etc. had not yet established themselves as top-notch defenders. Moreover the fact that he's been very good defensively for a while and hadn't received serious Selke consideration but people felt he probably should have gotten more consideration earlier in his career. If Datsyuk only scored 50 points, he would get very few Selke votes. If Zetterberg scored 90, he'd win it by a landslide. Scoring affecting the Selke (Gilmour in 1993 over guys like Joel Otto and Guy Carbonneau? Hello, is this thing on? Oh, right, 127 points; surely that makes him great defensively.) It's like Mike Green. He's a Norris nominee because of the unwritten rule that you HAVE to include the top scoring defenseman somewhere on your ballot. He's not even one of the ten best d-men in the NHL, yet he might be a First-Teamer for the second year in a row. If you take a look back at the NHL awards you can see a lot of times a guy was awarded or considered for an award he shouldn't have even been close to. 1995-96 Hart is particularly amusing. Poassibly the best line ever created, and certainly the best OFFENSIVE line ever created (Lemieux/Francis/Jagr) played together all season. Lemieux won the Hart, Jagr finished 5th in voting. Francis did not receive a single first, second, or third place vote. The three of them finished 1-2-4 in scoring, with Joe Sakic's 120 beating Francis' 119. Francis and Lemieux tied at 92 for the league lead in assists, and Lemieux led with 69 goals and 161 points. Jagr was second with 62 goals and 149 points, and third with 87 assists. To my knowledge, this is the only line ever to have all three members over 100 points (LA's line of Robitaille/Gretzky/Nicholls in 88-89 was the closest I am aware of, with 46/54/70 for a total 170 goals and 98/168/150 for a total 416 points respectively) and the Penguins' line scored 69/27/62 goals respectively for a total of 144 goals and 161/119/149 for a total of 429 points. Amusingly, this was also the year Gretzky won the Hart by a landslide not winning the Art Ross (31 points behind Lemieux), Pearson (Yzerman), OR the First Team selection (Lemieux). Lemieux's linemates were Rob Brown and Dan Quinn, who totaled at 83-126-209 between them compared to Lemieux's 85-114-199. Yzerman's linemates were Gerard Gallant and Paul MacLean, who totaled at 75-89-164 compared to Yzerman's 65-90-155. Gretzky's Linemates were Luc Robitaille and Bernie Nicholls, who totaled at 116-132-248 compared to Gretzky's 54-114-168. The Wings also had the worst scoring depth while all three teams had comparable goaltending and defense. The Kings had the best offensive depth. It's hard to argue Gretzky was the most valuable when the Kings had three of the top six scorers at forward between the three teams, while the Wings only had Yzerman in the top six. The Wings also only had one of the top four scoring defensemen (Chiasson) and neither of the top-two starting goaltenders according to save percentage among starters. So based on first and second teams from these three teams, the Wings only have two players compared to Pittsburgh and LA each having 5. Just more proof that the Hart is not at all voted on as an "MVP" trophy but rather a "Player of the Year" trophy. And for anyone who actually read this far? Thanks for reading all the way through my rambling and ranting off into wild random directions.

Ericsson is still a pretty raw prospect. He has good skills, and the right tools to be a good defensive defenseman, the kind who keeps the Holmstroms and Buttugliens watching their backs. But he's still learning that aspect; not too long ago he was a forward who played an offense-first game. As far as the kind of defenseman he "could" become? He's probably the closest thing the Wings have had to Jiri Fischer since, well, Jiri Fischer. He needs to work on speeding up his release a LOT, and he needs work on his defensive positioning and playing a more consistent physical game - when he is 'on' he's a monster to deal with. Other nights, he's a pushover. I don't think he has Fischer's ceiling, but he definitely can be a good all-around top-four guy and his ceiling is first-pairing. Kindl is the real question. Similar size and defensive/physical questions, but better puck skills and a notably higher ceiling.

Jason Williams. Signed in 2000 as an undrafted free agent at age 20. Had name engraved on Stanley Cup at age 22. In post-lockout NHL, has played 325 games and scored 74 goals, 114 assists and 118 points for an average per-season rate of 65 games, 15 goals, 23 assists, and 38 points and an average of 19 goals, 29 assists and 48 points.

Carle's offensive output (in games with the Flyers) was basically the same considering ice time and games played. Pronger probably affected his plus-minus, but he still had quite a bit of trade value coming into the season. "Illusion" you say? Maybe. But not because of Pronger.

Saying that it would take time to remove hits to the head is accurate, whether it's a penalty or not. Removing the instigator won't do it, I mean cheap shots definitely didn't exist before the instigator was put in place. Ask Pierre Turgeon about that. Taking time to remove=won't go away right away. Cross checking, slashing, tripping, high sticking, interference, boarding? Do these things still happen? You bet they do. "But, but those are all penalized!" Yeah, so? "Take the instigator away, that'll get rid of them!" Cause they didn't happen before the instigator penalty was in place? Riiiiiiiiiight. Get real, people.