Contest #3 answer: Umberger, Callahan, St. Louis. Congrats to James Gorman. James – send me an email with your pick of something in the shop, and your mailing address (dobber @ dobberhockey .com) Contest closed For a free DobberHockey shirt or hat, if you haven’t won a prize yet – “Tweet” to me the Top 3 forwards in Blocked Shots so far this season (hint: Frozen Pool will get you this answer quickly)

For our grand prize (a free customized putter – as noted below), I will be drawing from several names. These names are entered if they win a contest. The first contest can be found here.

Announcement – want your own section in the DobberHockey forum? As you know, we have several spots in the “blog” section, including “Dobber’s Take”, “Angus Unleashed” and “School of Block”. How would you like your own section? If you are interested, create a thread in the lounge section of the forum (entitled “why I deserve my own section”) and tell us what you contribute and why you should be chosen. I will hand pick five of you and have the DobberHockey community vote on those five. The winner WILL get his/her own section in the best fantasy hockey forum on the Internet!!

Goldie says: Neuvirth starts Tuesday and Varlamov probably returns this weekend. Check out my scouting report on Holtby’s impressive win last night. Chris Mason starts on Tuesday for ATL. Brodeur didn’t practice again today. Leclaire is healthy but Elliott will continue to start. And here’s today’s Fantasy Mailbag!

Wade Belak is the player I ran into on that fateful day. His career goal total is – eight. nebnebneb21 wins Contest #2. He’s our third two-time winner in four days. New rule going forward – if you have won before, you can’t win again. Except for the putter from Musty Putters, our grand prize. You can still vie for that one. But with 20,000 people and just 17 prizes I need to spread them out!

Contest now closed. Contest #2 – For a copy of the book – He Shoots, He Skewers!, in the lounge of the forum, post the name of the player I ran into on my way out of the office three years ago when I decided to give DobberHockey a go full time – in the subject line. And in the body, give me his career NHL goal total.

The Dobber Nation Radio Podcast will make it’s return in January!

GM Gates wins Contest #1 – you can’t win twice on the same day so that’s it for him. Anyway, he wins the Easton Hockey prize pack. More contests still to come, and don’t forget that tomorrow – the grand prize. From the good people at Musty Putters, win a custom engraved (designed by YOU) putter worth nearly $300. That prize will be given away Tuesday.

Contest closed. Contest #1 – the question will be asked on Twitter at 9:45am. The winner will receive this beanie and this jacket from Easton Hockey

Ty Conklin’s shutout last night gave the Blues four in just 12 games to start the season, beating the previous NHL record of four in the first 14 games. Clearly the Blues are wrapping their strategy around defense and goaltending, so perhaps the potential offense that we all see will never come to fruition…

Shea Weber is a minus-7 since Ryan Suter got hurt, according to The Tennessean. Interesting.

The word on David Krejci is indeed a concussion. He will miss a week at minimum, according to the league rules. Seguin’s production just shot up for the near future. I don’t think a whole lot of Bergeron though. I think he was a 55-point player before and after this injury to Krejci.

Seguin was apparently benched in the third period on Saturday, and the Globe opines that he has struggled as a centerman. But his talent level is so high that I have faith in him – especially if the team leans on him more. The knock on Seguin has been the fact that he was buried behind so many top pivots. Well, now two of those pivots are sidelined. So problem solved, in my books.

While Anders Lindback didn’t play badly yesterday, he didn’t dominate and put the slumping Pekka Rinne’s job in jeopardy. He stopped 32 of 37 shots in Nashville’s loss and the starting job is still Rinne’s.

A good sign for the Preds – Patric Hornqvist found the net and picked up a pair of points. He’s streaky, so I’m sure we’ll see more of that over the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, Cal O’Reilly quietly chips in the points…He has 11 now.

Alex Steen now has six points in his last five games.

Andreas Nodl has quietly potted three goals and four points in seven games.  After being a career minus-17 player in 48 NHL games, he is a plus-3 this year. No sign of a step forward prior to three weeks ago. This is completely out of the blue.

Interesting that when the Rangers needed offense, they leaned on rookie Derek Stepan a little bit more than in recent games when the team was winning.

Shane Doan’s LBI has him “week to week”, which is never a good thing to hear.

Corey Crawford lost his fourth straight game. Although, the team hasn’t been scoring in front of him – except when he took over for Turco and the team scored enough to ensure that Crawford suddenly gets saddled with the loss. His 1-4 record is delaying any shot he has at stealing the job from Turco.

Shawn Horcoff left Sunday’s contest with an injury to his left leg. It appears to be a skate-cut, which may not be serious, but then again that is what knocked out Dion Phaneuf for a month. Stay tuned.

Braden Holtby Got his second career win in his first career start. Much like with the Flyers, any goaltender with the Caps will get wins. Holtby is a talent worthy of challenging either of Varlamov or Neuvirth and it is his presense that makes me believe that the team will deal Varlamov in 13 to 15 months. Do I think you should own Holtby in a keeper? Absolutely. In a one year? Yes, if you have bench room to sit on him for a couple of months. Just like Neuvirth had to wait for Varlamov to get hurt, Holtby will have to wait for Neuvirth to get hurt.

If you haven’t been by during any of the last three days, we’ve been celebrating the five-year anniversary of DobberHockey.com with great prizes and exciting announcements. The prizes – I’ll still be giving them away throughout today and tomorrow, keep checking in because – as much as I try to make the challenge last, people are getting the answer and fulfilling the instructions within 10 minutes of it being posted. Most of the prizes require that you post the answer in the forum, so obviously make sure you are registered. Occasionally it will involve Twitter – so make sure you sign up for an account there!

As for the announcements, I’ll summarize them here: DobberHockey.com’s traffic topped six million in one month for the first time – October, 2010. Also, we brought in a new writer in Tim Arnold – The Puck Dude. He’ll check in every Sunday with his take on the fantasy world. And finally…

Announced by Angus Saturday – A big DobberHockey Event in Vancouver on December 9! I’m interested to see who I’ll get to meet. Yes – I’m flying in and joining Angus for some pops and talk some fantasy hockey with all of you! The time? From around 6:30 to around 10:30. The place? Considering either Riverrock Casino (Richmond), or Ceili’s Irish Pub. Comment below for your preference, but one of the readers has a contact in Riverrock and can set that up.

More announcements still on the way…including the revival of a certain…

As some of you may (or may not) have noticed, DobberHockey has partnered up with CoolHockey to bring you custom hockey jerseys for a low price. Dobber took a smaller cut of sales in order to get the price down even further. And to celebrate DobberHockey’s fifth anniversary – until Tuesday – we will be offering an ADDITIONAL 15% off all hockey jerseys. Christmas is eight weeks away, so now is the time to buy – and this is the place! Browse the merchandise HERE and use coupon code: Dobber15.

Thanks to our sponsors for setting us up with some sweet stuff to give away!

John Scott pounds Zach Stortini: