The Early Holiday Post

A few scraps last night.  Brendan Witt went twice for the Isles.  His first scrap against Scott Walker was a good one, and is the newest Youtube preview on the videos page.  In the non-Witt bout of the night it looked like Alex Svitov surprised Ryan Kesler.

It’s time to take a holiday break.  I’ll answer as many emails as I can, and try and update the log after tonight’s big schedule, but this will be the last video update until after the weekend.

So Happy Holidays!  Wait, hold on, Wal-Mart says it’s cool to say Merry Christmas again - so Merry Christmas!  Today’s the last day of Hanukkah, so Happy Hanukah! as well.

Remember that NBA highlight you saw a week ago (“brawl”, some called it)?  In Detroit, Drew Sharp is writing how the NHL would love that publicity, negative and all, because eyes are eyes at this point.  It seems all in Detroit agree things aren’t as good as they were before.

According to Bob McKenzie and TSN, the NHL is considering “significant overhaul”, but changing (I won’t say fixing) the schedule, or division alignment and playoff seeding doesn’t increase real flow of the game, help bring back passionate play or prevent the back and forth special teams games we see now.

However, if the NHL is truly considering going back to four divisions, don’t change unbalanced schedule too much.  Instead, keep it division heavy (8 games to 7 or 6 games is fine, especially with the increased number of teams per division), and don’t use conference seeding.  You want rivalries, go back to top 4 from each division make it.  Nothing like playing a team that knocked you out of the playoffs the year before.  Also, bring the real names back, especially if geography is going to become as warped as it could be.  Don’t modernize them.  Patrick, Adams, Norris and Smythe work just fine.  “Casual” fans don’t pay attention to division names anyway.  I’ve never had a fan tell me hockey was suddenly easier to follow once the Atlantic came to be.

Anyway, enough of that.  Get your fight fix, watch a few games tonight and then take a break, it won’t be long until we’re all back here.