Fantasy Guide can be found here.

HUGE announcement from Jason Arbuthnot in our Frozen Pool section (just click “Fantasy Tools” in the Nav on the left or in the tab up top). He has put together FANTASY MANAGER tool in which you enter in the roster of your team and it immediately spits out all their stats – including salary. What’s more is that it KEEPS your team so you can check in another day, add/subtract players and check it out again. Truly fantastic. You can find it HERE.

La version Française du Guide des Poolers est maintenant mise à jour.

It’s funny how the IIHF decided not to give Jiri Hudler his transfer card when Detroit and the KHL were both fine with the move and he wasn’t signed to a contract, yet with Radulov the IIHF hardly batted an eye (IMO) – and that guy had a signed contract and Nashville protested profusely. I just don’t get it. Not that I’m against this decision, but I wish they were this tough with the Radulov case. Hudler may not be allowed to play in the Olympics if he does not play for Detroit now. The Preds should be kicking up a stink over this one. And does this force the Red Wings to “walk away” from the arbitration settlement? If they accept it, then they are over the cap (I believe – I’m sure my man fzusher will correct me below if I’m wrong). If they walk, then Hudler becomes unrestricted and will get his transfer card. And if THAT happens, would another NHL team give him a big contract and can he get out of his KHL one (out clause)? Lots of interesting dominoes that could fall.

I can’t wait until the morning I look up how many points so-and-so got last night, as opposed to how many signatures were on contracts last night.

Speaking of the Preds, they are reportedly interested in Chris Chelios. That might be a pretty good solution to their youth in the bottom three of their defense corps, as I’m sure Chelly would be willing to play just 50 games.

Barry Trotz told John Glennon yesterday what I have been telling anyone who will listen – Joel Ward will not be on the second line and there is a second-line spot open. Jones, Hornqvist and Mike Santorelli will compete for the spot. The latter is a dark horse, whereas Jones is a tweener who could eventually settle in as a third-line guy. Hornqvist SHOULD take that job, but he proved last year that scoring in the NHL is not as easy for him as in other leagues. Trotz went on to say that the third-line center will either be Wilson or O’Reilly. Put me down for Cal.

Site problems, as you know, have been on and off for the last five weeks. To explain – I had a web programmer (WP) who did not test changes in a test environment, but bulldozed them through in a live environment. Most of the time, it worked okay but occasionally it didn’t. After the first couple of downtimes, I insisted on a test environment, but the programmer never complied. For a couple of weeks, trying to get my money’s worth, I continued to go to this WP with minor issues that needed fixing and for the most part the WP fixed them and quickly – which only convinced me to stick with them. But in the end, I can’t have my website go down with such frequency. It’s happened about eight times in the last five weeks for a total of about 18 hours. In the year prior to that, the total downtime was probably not even three hours. Bottom line: I have a new WP who assures stability, and will ensure that no more spammers can register to the forum, etc. This will all be done within seven days – there may be one or two more “down times”. But after that the nightmare will be over. Just to keep everyone in the loop.