Chris Boyle is sunning it up in the Carribbean, but informs me that we will get his Top 100 roto players of the past month within a couple of days. What dedication! Another example of how freakishly obsessed we are with fantasy hockey on this site.

Alex Steen continues to be leaned on for offense in St. Louis and I’m starting to get the feeling that this trend is becoming a permanent shift. Not to the extent where he is a point-per-game first liner, but definitely to the extent that he has become a 60-point second-line type. His promising career seems to be back on track. He has 15 points in his last 14 games, including five multi-point contests.

Guillaume Latendresse also continues to roll. Another three goals for the big guy, which gives him seven goals and 12 points in seven games. It doesn’t get any hotter than that and his ice time last night (19:20) was a season high

Midseason Fantasy Hockey Guide – Details/Buy it here.

Yesterday’s THN article exploring Malkin’s bad season – and how it’s killing the chances of his owners for this year.

Pittsburgh prospect netminder John Curry was looking alright in net for the Pens until he gave up a late goal in the first and an early one in the second. He was pulled after the fifth goal, which came pretty quickly after the third and fourth ones. Junior goalie Alex Pechurski got into game and allowed a goal on 11 shots. Pittsburgh’s fifth-round pick in 2008 signed a one-game contract on an emergency basis. The 19-year-old Russian has two shutouts in six WHL games for the Tri-City Americans and, as will most decent Pittsburgh prospects, bears watching.

The Olympics are less than a month away, but the DobberHockey Olympics Hockey Pool is up and running. Powered by our friends over at ArmchairPools.com, it’s free. I put together the boxes myself, so I take full responsibility for the Mike Richards omission – I included 10 Canadian forwards, so several were to be left out, but putting in Morrow instead of Richards was an error. Naturally, since I put the boxes together, THN did their cover story on him and he had a big feature in yesterday’s Toronto Star. Had I put in Richards instead of Morrow…I’m sure Morrow would have then been the subject of all those features! Anyway, you can join it here – already over 350 of your peers have.

Those who didn’t catch Hockey Night in Canada last night, PJ Stock had an interesting note – Devin Setoguchi shaved his head. Who cares, right? Well, the bald Setoguchi scored twice yesterday. I’m hardly supersticious, but I do believe that a change in the way a player feels – and having no hair certainly falls into that category – has an impact on the ice. This impact seems to be positive.

Demitra was pointless and a minus-1 in his season debut last night. Then again, he played with Wellwood and Glass. This is positive news for owners of Raymond, Burrows and Samuelsson – the Canucks beat a strong team handily, and they did it without touching the first two lines when Demitra returned. It only makes sense that they will keep it at status quo as long as they play this well, which means Demitra won’t be knocking any of the aforementioned three guys off of their line.

Ed Jovanovski returned from his suspension on a mission, tallying four assists and going plus-4

The Preds have sent down Cal O’Reilly, which means that Jason Arnott is ready to return. He had three points in his latest recall and was a plus-3 (four games).

Another game, another six goals allowed by Steve Mason. That’s twice in two starts and five times on the year.

Marco Sturm is day-to-day with a leg injury, but I wouldn’t expect him back this week. David Krejci’s injury is undisclosed and he is also day to day, but at least he was in the pre-game warmups, indicating that he is close. Edit: Krejci did play last night and registered an assist.

A healthy St. Louis lineup, now that McDonald is back, brings you these line combos: Backes, with Kariya and Oshie; Berglund with Perron and McDonald; McClement with Boyes and Steen; Tkachuk with Winchester and Crombeen (ouch).

Drayson Bowman made his NHL debut last night, playing just over 10 minutes and earning a minus-1. He played with Brind’Amour and Kostopoulos. He is ranked 19th on my prospects list, and I still believe he has a better than even shot at making the team in the fall. At worst, 2011-12.

I lost my bid to replace Dan Sexton with Latendresse in the Expert’s League, but won my backup bid – Rusty Olesz. At the last minute, I changed my mind and decided to keep Sexton, believing that the change wasn’t an upgrade for now. Naturally, Olesz scores twice last night – and goals is the category that’s killing me.

Patrik Elias was hit high and hard by Ryan Wilson yesterday. He lay on the ice for five minutes – unconscious for much of it – before being taken off on a stretcher. The early word is a shoulder injury. A CT scan showed no serious injury to his head or neck. Here is the hit: