Less than 24 hours after coach John Tortorella declared that Henrik Lundqvist would start the final game of this three-game trip, he reversed gears and said backup Steve Valiquette would be in the nets for his second consecutive game. “Vally is going. It’s just rest for Hank,” was all Tortorella would say, but the Rangers No. 1 goalie is fighting a nagging injury.

Lundqvist (8-5-1, 2.52 GAA) mentioned the other day that the ice pack on his “stiff” right upper thigh/groin was for something minor, and indeed, both goalies participated in the skate at the Saddledome and Valiquette left the ice first while Lundqvist chatted at center ice with Sean Avery and other players. In the dessing room, Lundqvist removed his equipment and disappeared for treatment for more than an hour. When he emerged he said that was pretty confident that he would play against Atlanta on Thursday, a nine-day layoff.

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For about six years now, Jonas Gustavsson has been skinny. Not slender, just skinny. His legs are skinny. His waist and chest are skinny. And even his face is skinny. Dress him in a skinny black tie and a skinny black suit and Gustavsson would not look out of place in a jazz club full of New York hipsters, circa 1955.

“It doesn’t matter how much I eat or how much I practise—I get stronger, but I just can’t get any bigger,” says the Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender who begins each day with bacon and eggs, toast and an assortment of fruit, and ends it with a bedtime snack. “Everything I eat, I burn away. But I think this is the right way for me.”

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Washington puts Michael Nylander on waivers.

His salary cap hit is almost $4.9M and it runs thru the end of next season.

The NHL season is far enough along to get a feel for how teams are distributing their power play minutes.  In most cases, it’s obvious, or at least readily apparent, who is going to get that precious playing time, but here are some observations with regards to each team’s power play ice time.

ATLANTA
Despite little production, LW Vyacheslav Kozlov ranks third on the Thrashers with 3:57 of power play time.  D Tobias Enstrom is the mainstay on the blueline (4:48), with Zach Bogosian (2:00) and Pavel Kubina (1:59) splitting time.  Ron Hainsey (0:59) is pretty much on the outside looking in.

DETROIT
Removing an injured Johan Franzen from the equation, LW Dan Cleary ranks sixth on the Wings in power play time, with 3:10 per game, yet has just two points with the man advantage.  Jonathan Ericsson, who leads Red Wings defencemen with eight points, has a total of one second on the power play.

read on for a look at every NHL team…

More than two months after their contract ended, Versus and DirecTV remain at distribution loggerheads, their impasse showing no signs of subsiding.

However, a pair of external factors - negotiations toward a long-term expanded distribution package with Dish Network and the potential union of Comcast with NBC Universal - could exert pressures that facilitate a resolution.

Comcast’s national sports service has been off the No. 1 DBS provider’s air since their contract expired on Sept. 1. In the meantime, the parties have continued to negotiate a four-year deal, but remained locked in their stances over price and positioning, while Versus continues to ring up Nielsen advances.

The ratings amelioration has come without DirecTV’s 14 million-plus homes, as much of that subscriber loss has been made up by sneak previews on a number of cable operators and Dish Network, which has provided Versus a full berth of its homes. As such, Versus’ sub count has only declined to 71 million homes from 75 million, before the DirecTV drop.

The Dish free preview, though, is slated to end on Nov. 30. However, sources familiar with the negotiations indicate that Versus and Dish are moving toward a more permanent, expanded placement for the network.

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What they need is someone with a hockey background who has played on both sides of the street. The best-case scenario is that he’s a lawyer, has worked in the NHL front office, must have held an executive position with an NHL team to understand the players’ needs, and has to be strong enough and knows enough about what goes on within league ranks to play on a level field with Bettman.

He has to know what is needed by the players, know what the game itself needs to grow.

The man I have in mind who is eminently qualified for the post is out there. Trouble is, nobody associated with the NHLPA’s search committee is aware of it.

Don’t ask me who I would go after. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.

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Even Holland conceded that for the first time since he has been in Detroit, the Red Wings are no longer thought of as championship contenders.

“It’s a long-term plan,” Holland said prior to tonight’s game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. “If you just hang onto the old guys, eventually everyone’s play falls off at the same time and it’s a long way back. What we’re trying to do is put a team on the ice that we think is going to be capable of being a playoff team. At the same time, we’re trying to get some younger people going.

“Obviously, we’ve played at a high level for a long time. We lost all the offence in the offseason. And some of our key guys are getting older. Nick Lidstrom is 39 and turning 40 in May. The expectations are at some point in time we’re going to decline.”

It has been a while since “decline” has been in the Red Wings’ vocabulary.

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Craig Leipold admits he often isn’t thrilled with what he sees when he watches the Wild from the owner’s box at the Xcel Energy Center.

Leipold’s team has won just five of 15 games this season and, as it did during the first period of a 5-2 home loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday night, there are times when it seems no one is in sync.

“I’m thinking just like every other fan was,” Leipold said Friday, shaking his head.

But Leipold, who purchased the Wild in January 2008, said that with new general manager Chuck Fletcher and new coach Todd Richards running the show, things “don’t change overnight.”

When Leipold hired Fletcher last summer, he said he expected the Wild to become a contender for a playoff spot. With the team instead contending for the basement of the NHL in points, you wonder if he’s becoming impatient.

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Lafleur and Roy were the last two of what could be called the iconic players of the most legendary franchise in the game. While the Canadiens have had whole buckets full of stars and Hall of Famers, there have been no more than five towering figures who made the team what it is today.

Howie Morenz. Rocket Richard. Jean Béliveau. Guy Lafleur. Patrick Roy. They were the players who in their day electrified an entire province and reached such status that it was possible, with a straight face, to call the Forum St. Patrick’s Cathedral. If hockey is a religion in Quebec, these men are its high priests.

And three of them – Richard, Lafleur and Roy – saw their careers ended in a sad, bungled fashion.

The Rocket left at a desk without a job, until he walked out to make his living selling fishing line and heating oil.

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Tampa Bay Lightning rookie defenseman Victor Hedman will not play in Saturday’s game with the Canadiens because of a concussion sustained in Thursday’s game with the Senators on a brutal hit by Ottawa’s Chris Neil.

Hedman’s next chance to play will be Thursday at home against the Wild, but coach Rick Tocchet said he could not say for sure if Hedman will be ready, and that the team will be very cautious.

“Back in the day you’d throw water on your back and go out,” Tocchet said. “But now, with those lingering effects you just have to be very careful. You got to make sure. Lucky that’s his first one, and hopefully it’s just a mild concussion. It’s one of those things you’ve got to go through the whole process and when they say he’s ready, we’ll play him."…

“I feel good, very good,” Hedman said. “It was a big hit. it was a clean hit. ... I was trying to pass the puck to (defensive partner Mattias Ohlund). I tried to reach for it and he just came and run over me. I was a little shaky there, so day to day, you can’t rush things just take it slow.”

Opinions, however, were still divided in the locker room over if the hit was clean.

more & if you missed the hit, watch it here…

Some sports business experts and Coyotes fans believe Phoenix is less of an NHL market and more of a minor-league hockey market in terms of fans’ demand for tickets and interest in the sport.

The American Hockey League is hockey’s equivalent to AAA baseball. AHL teams serves as feeders to NHL parents. The league has teams in some larger cities such as Houston, Toronto and Milwaukee, and in some smaller markets including Syracuse, N.Y., Hershey, Pa., and Austin.

AHL ticket prices are lower than the NHL’s. Coyotes tickets run from $15 to $100. Lower-level seats with extra perks, including club and suite benefits, run $180 to $330.

By comparison, tickets for the San Antonio Rampage (the Coyotes’ AHL feeder) range from $10 to $40. The AHL’s Houston Aeros price their tickets between $13 and $70, and the Texas Stars charge $9 to $65.

Rich Ettenson, a business professor and sports marketing expert at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, said AHL teams do not have the cost pressures of player salaries that hit NHL team’s bottom lines.

“They don’t need to fill a stadium of 15,000 or so to make it a go,” said Ettenson, adding there can be enough loyal hockey fans to support a AAA team.

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So when top center Jason Arnott misses six games or agitator Jordan Tootoo misses the opening month of the season, yeah, the Preds feel that. But they survived the opening month of the season, winning their last three games in October to get back to the .500 mark.

Somehow, the scrappy Preds are hanging in there.

“We’re actually hanging in there quite well,” Nashville coach Barry Trotz told ESPN.com this week. “We’ve learned to be really resilient. You can get it done, but it’s got to be a group effort.”

Having one of the best coaches in the game in Trotz helps, too; year after year, his staff squeezes juice out of a rock. And veteran GM David Poile has a keen eye for talent and maximizes the pennies afforded to him.

“Could we be a team that was top level if we added an extra $12 million to our payroll? Yeah, absolutely,” said Trotz. “We could add a brand new lineup front. But that’s not reality for us. We’ve got to do it by drafting and developing players, by finding the next Joel Ward or the next Dan Ellis or Chris Mason, those types of guys.”

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After last Saturday’s 3-1 win in Calgary, Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said, “For the first time all year we were a five-man unit, we made some nice plays. It was impressive. We looked like a hockey team.”

That served as an ominous warning to the league that, despite a slow start, reports of the Wings demise are rather premature.

The Wings returned home and dispatched the Bruins 2-0 then beat San Jose 2-1 in a game they deserved to win before the shootout. They’ve won three in a row and four of five.

So what’s got the winged wheel rolling straight again?

continued and a look at the HNIC matchup tomorrow between the Leafs and Wings.

The only thing more damaging than being middling is being boring.

This was supposed to be the season that the Bruins lifted themselves squarely back into the discussion with the Red Sox, Patriots and Celtics. They were coming off a season in which they led the Eastern Conference in points and won a playoff series for the first time since 1999, sweeping Les Canadiens last spring before losing in seven games to the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

It was something to build on and hope that Boston could be the Hub of Hockey again.

Instead, 15 games into 2009-10 it looks like the same old Black and Gold, except their scoring touch has gone ice cold.

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Tonight, the Leafs and Hurricanes, boasting two of the league’s worst offences, will clash in a battle for the basement in the NHL and Carolina coach Paul Maurice thinks he knows what will happen.

“(It will be) 9-8, that’s the prediction,” he said with a smirk. “They’re going to try and manufacture goals, just like we will.”

Ron Wilson, his Toronto counterpart, was incredulous.

“If he wants to give up eight or nine goals, we’ll take that right now,” said Wilson. “He hasn’t watched us play much if he thinks we’re capable right now of scoring eight or nine goals.”

There is a sense among the Leafs, both the players and management, that they are heading in the right direction with points in five consecutive games.

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• The early-season leader in what may be a crowded Calder Trophy class may be the Philadelphia Flyers’ James vanRiemsdyk, the second player chosen in the Patrick Kane (2007) draft. VanRiemsdyk spent two years at the University of New Hampshire and had a brief seven-game taste of pro last spring with the Flyers’ AHL affiliate. After Mike Knuble left as free agent and Joffrey Lupul went west in Chris Pronger deal, van Riemsdyk received a chance to play in a scoring role and is making the most of his 13 or so minutes of ice time per night, scoring 13 points in his first 10 games).

• Road warriors? After a light early-season schedule that saw the Calgary Flames play eight of their first 12 at home, they now face a daunting 13 of their next 17 away from the Pengrowth Saddledome.

more hockey notes plus a look at Brett Hull…

Money, of course, was a top reason listed as to why people aren’t showing up as much right now, and I can certainly understand that.

But it’s obviously more than just money why people aren’t showing up right now to see what is a first-place team. Lots of people are tired at the lack of feeling that they are being heardby the Avalanche – be it by the team management or the ticket offices or the game-night entertainment staff or wherever.

A lot of you think the Avs just don’t care all that much about what you have to say. I think this can be more broadly accused, though, to the parts of the organization not having to do with the actual hockey operations. And I don’t want to just sit here and take cheapshots at them. There are a lot of good people who work with the Avs and they’ve been a pretty darn successful organ-i-zation over the years, and they’ve given back a lot to the community.

But I still hear complaints all the time about the lack of coherance about ticket prices/policies, etc. when they call the ticket offices. I hear a lot of complaints about the awful music that is blared into their ears at the Pepsi Center. I hear a lot of complaints about how nobody seemed to care when they, as a longtime season ticket holder, complained that lower bowl seats were sold to new customers at cheaper prices than they’ve paid for years – even in the upper bowl.

read on

There is a time in a season when a player has that moment that changes everything.

I wonder whether Carey Price had his Thursday night in Boston. His 42-save performance lifted the Montreal Canadiens to a 2-1 shootout win over their rivals.

Hey, I know the Bruins were missing Marc Savard, Milan Lucic and David Krejci, and I know how their offense has dried up mightily in the last little while.

But Price delivered a dynamite effort in enemy territory as the Bruins launched everything but the kitchen sink at him. And that’s why I consider this game meaningful for Price.

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