So I looked it up and apparently Bettman got a 5 year deal in late 2010, is there any chance whatsoever of that getting voided somehow?

So, channel one cup started today. Russia is testing out what's looking like an Olympic roster. First game against Sweden.

What do you guys see as last possible day for deal to be made for a partial 2013 season?

Can they go past mid-January?

Tough one. 1994-1995 the lockout ended January 11th, they started January 20th and played 48 games. Not sure how much shorter than that they'd go, but probably not much. I'd say mid-January.

Few stories in the last 24 hours about Euro teams and various agents preparing for the lockout to end in the next week or so and for the season to start Jan 2nd.

http://gonepuckwild.com/2012/12/13/n...gent-think-so/

Plzzzzz

And now Mark Cuban has spoken, always entertaining.

http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl...GlvbnM-;_ylv=3

Excuse the ignorance, but is this really the strongest team you guys would be able to ice at Sochi? Uber loaded top 6 and then...?

Surely Yakupov and Kuznetsov would be in the 2014 lineup, right?

yeah those two will probably make the roster, but yakupov is at camp for the world juniors. and there's no problem trying out kuznetsov/tarasenko again in the third eurotour stage and the world championship. zinatula needs to have kovalchuk/datsyuk/malkin/ovechkin to play with their possible linemates and this might be the last opportunity to do so for awhile.

plus they are quite obviously focusing on an incredibly shut-down defensive system right now (think tikhonov, not dale hunter). i guess if you believe that datsyuk/kovalchuk/malkin can pretty much create it all by themselves in the O-zone, and you are worried that you might not have enough D-corp, that's a reasonable strat.

best thing to happen to the nhl this week is it is being compared on hftards as practicing a form of fascism.

ETA: yes, i am aware it probably gets compared to it every week, in-season and off-season, in-lockout and not.

There aren't as many Russians in the NHL as you think. Also remember how stacked Canada is. They cut a point per game defenseman last time.

re: the Cuban article there

looks like it might not happen this go around, but thoughts on the league trying to implement some kind of soft cap/luxury tax system. it would allow the teams who really wanna spend to spend (and maybe keep a good team together). and the luxury tax money could be shipped to the poor teams and allow the league to lower the floor somewhat.

i mean, come up with some kind of system that reflects the realities of the league, that there are haves and have nots. but i suspect that the rich teams rather enjoy being preventing from over-spending (and being pressured to do so), and also don't care much for the problems of the poor teams. it also allows rich teams to lean on guys to "take less" in order stay or keep a team together, in certain spots.

yeah there's a reason why they're called defensemen, not offensemen

no chance. bettman is just doing the owners' bidding in these negotiations. no reason to think they're dissatisfied with him.

But who is the civil war between? It's owners v owners, north v south. The league is profitable. It's just not well distributed.
Ironically, the only group who proposes increased revenue sharing is the nhlpa. At what point do all the lower revenue teams rise up together to force the issue?

Oh, I realize that, and I had to tell my buddies that back in 2010.

Still, that blueline has Tyutin and Emelin as current NHLers, and that's it. Unless what sylar's saying is able to actually work, not just in theory - bottom six playing very defensive-minded and helping the blueline out as a unit - those guys are gonna get carved by just about anyone's top six from the top 7 countries, not just Canada.

I mean, not sure if he's injured or whatever, but if Dmitri Kulikov wasn't picked ahead of some of these guys, that's just lol bad.

I dunno, maybe I'm ignorant to the true value some of these seasoned international vets like Mozyakin and Tereschenko bring to the table, but we saw how that worked out in Vancouver.

If I was Bilyaletdinov, I wouldn't be omitting guys like Alex Burmistrov in favour of them, as an example.

Also, no Semin?

sylar obv has a better clue about this than me, but have they ever experimented with balancing their lines? like put 1-2 defensive-minded or all-around players with each of the star guys? obv Datsyuk is great all-around, so he can center whoever (Kovalchuk or Ovechkin), Malkin you might want to give a little help tho. Radulov obv isn't a great defensive player, and so on.

it's just that if you load up a line with Malkin centering some combination of Ovechkin/Kovalchuk/Radulov (no clue about the all-around games of Yakupov/Kuznetsov yet) then i think they're likely to come out behind against a lot of elite level competition. sure they'll have the games where they explode, but doing it 2-3 times in a row in the KO stages of the Olympics? maybe on home ice yeah...

and yeah, their D might be something of a problem as well...
(but it's obv made worse bc so many of their forwards don't play well without the puck)

72o: Malkin playing with long-time Russian vet Sergei Mozyakin at this tournament

kulikov is probably going to make it anyway. also nikulin is at least an nhl'er. having medvedev/kalinin on the blueline on international size ice is significantly better than say voynov/orlov, who are simply more valuable in the nhl.

mozyakin is playing really well with malkin. you might say he punched his ticket. he wouldn't make it to the nhl for sure, but there is a ton of value for that sneaky guy to support malkin while he is being forced to the outside by a double-team.

tereschenko is world-class two-way forward. not sure why you are hating on him.

sylar,
odds Cup winner slava voynov gets a call?

Can Galchenyuk play for Russia?

i like burmistrov but i've never seen him play on international ice. i suspect that would be a problem for a guy like bilyaletdinov. semin is being semin. there's nothing on torpedo even resembling nhl level and he doesn't do it all by himself.

unlikely.

he could back out of his WJC commitment and then eventually play for russia. but he won't. that's probably a bad thing from the Habs point of view as he'll see lower level camps over the next few years, but on the other hand they won't have to deal with Russian Federation bs every so often. probably a wash or some negligible effect.

pretty sure he's proud to be a US American

they are already doing that. they are not stacking top-6 and then have checking lines.

malkin is not going to center some combo of ovechkin/kovalchuk/radulov often. maybe in some specialty situations, but just not going to happen on the regular. he's already playing with mozyakin and some shutdown-type F3 and D-pair.

ovechkin so far has seen a ton of o-zone, and with a roster this deep he should be more protected than ever. tereschenko and zherdev all looked good with him.

radulov/datsyuk make sweet-magic love on the ice every other game. i expect them to jizz buckets over every finnish/swedish/czech/canadian/american goalie they face. it doesn't matter who they will play with, but personally i'd like to see them get a true sniper on their line. shirokov is a natural fit.

tarasenko needs to work to get to sochi and also he seems to work well with kovalchuk. no idea who would fill out that line, but kovy is pretty versatile.

From what I've read, USA Hockey definitely has the inside track on Galchenyuk, and it's been that way more or less since he came over to play midget with the Chicago Young Americans organization.

Pretty sure I got blocked on Twitter by S.te.ve Da.ngl.e because I said the criticism of Rutherford giving Semin $7 mil had a lot more to do with diminishing returns in his last 3 seasons than it did with xenophobia (even though it's a freeroll for Carolina, really). That got a very butthurt reply and that was the last time he's ever replied to one of my tweets. Anyone who still follows him, is he still rehashing the same lolFlames/Dennis Wideman jokes? Those got old in a hurry.