General Sports Water Cooler

Its cuz he has a vag. I hope he ends up retiring.

Bad off-season for enforcers

Nice.

Great choice on Callahan, though I'm more than a little surprised that Dubinsky didn't even get an "A". I hate the Rangers but Callahan and Dubes are probably two of my favorite non-Caps in the entire league.

They are denying it now, but it wouldn't necessarily surprise me. They are in a relatively big hockey market and were 25th in the league in attendance last year, in a fairly new arena. Plus they spent right to the cap.

Don't think they anticipated losing like they did, and NJ fans didn't want to come watch a losing team.

A couple other things of note today:

Bob McKenzie is reporting on twitter that Tavares and Tyler Myers are on the verge of signing long term extensions.

TSNBobMcKenzie Bob McKenzie
Both deals are expected to be in 6 year range, give or take a year, and worth an average of $5.5M, give or take a few hundred thousand.

I can see it for Tavares, but that is a lot of money and term to commit to Myers IMO. He still has a year left on his entry level deal, I'd let it play out and see if last year was an aberration or not. If he returns to his rookie year level of play, I'd imagine the money and term would be similar for him at that point. Just let it play out.

Also read on BM's twitter about Doughty's negotiations:
TSNBobMcKenzie Bob McKenzie
LAK adamant on 2 things with Doughty: deal needs to be at least 7 years long and cannot be more than $6.8M, same salary as Kopitar

That is the starting point for the KINGS side of the negotiation, just crazy. Doughty's good but that is a lot of money to commit.

just picked up NHL 12, essentially the same as last year, winter classic is tight. They don't have Winnipeg's jersey and the announcers can't say "Winnipeg" yet either. shame.

Tavares signed 6 yrs 5.5mm to stay on the island.

Myers's deal won't kick in until next year against the cap. Regardless, CapGeek has them over the cap by a few million even with Myers's rookie contract being his cap hit.

I'm guessing some combination of Boyes, Kotalik, maybe Hecht have to get assigned/traded/released? You only have 7 NHL defensemen, and all the high $ earning forwards have a lot of term left on their deals.