2012-13 NHL regular season discussion

Last year I started this thread way later than usual. Now I'm starting it way earlier than usual.

The annual draft was started last night and even before it started the questions weren't focused on what team is drafting who but what's going to happen to Jordan Staal, a year left on his contract with the Penguins and just 24 years old. Staal had always been an outside consideration with this team, always third fiddle on the depth chart at center, and besides flashes of brilliance he never carried the team, even when he was needed to when Crosby and Malkin were injured. Maybe that's not the kind of player he is? Well, he apparently wants to be something bigger than what he had been in Pittsburgh, and he's going to get his chance.

I'm not holding onto the idea that the Pens would be better with Jordan Staal (who was shipped to Carolina for the eighth pick overall plus some other guys; Zbynek Michalek was also traded), but I guess it all depends on what we get in free agency. Maybe the goal-scoring winger Sid really needed, Zach Parise? Those two, plus Malkin-Neal could be hilarious to watch. And after Parise shunned division rival Rangers, he'd go to another division rival in Pittsburgh? Penguins still need defensive help, and though trading off Michalek goes the other direction (and drafting a D-man with the eighth pick probably won't help this year), maybe they can sneak one in (Ryan Suter please!).

Free agency starts a week from tomorrow.

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We just traded Staal and basically gave away Michalek for Sutton and cap space that probably won't come in handy this year.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't have a problem with the Wild getting Parise and Suter, since the rest of the team doesn't scare me at all. The Wild were dead last in goals per game last year and were in the middle third for goals allowed per game. If nothing else, Wild fans can only hope that the theory of great players making lesser players better applies with those two.

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Honestly, I'm not too pissed about the season possibly being canceled. Yeah, it's one less year that the Penguins get a chance to try for the Cup, but I don't think the NHL is ever going to just disappear and maybe, possibly, like what came of the NHL after the last lockout, things might get better? I get the impression that there is very little optimism about what will happen after this lockout, like this is the lockout that will never end.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm not sure about the wiping out of scores of fans. Yeah, a lot of people probably got turned off by the lockout but glancing at attendance figures for the league in for the 2003-04 season and last season makes me think the league has gotten more popular over the last 9 years.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Well you can't really compare TV ratings before and after the lockout because, for one, the NHL went from ESPN to Versus for its weekly coverage. But, since you mention it, I remember reading that the last few Stanley Cup Finals had some games that saw the highest ratings for NHL games in history (back to the 1970s). Attendance falling directly after a lockout is an expected loss. I don't expect this time around to be much different.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

(Sorry Angel of Light; you're going to have to be reminded how much the Maple Leafs suck again.)

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