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FREE Hockey Pool! My annual Playoff Box Pool is now open – pick players from the box right HERE. Prizes include a customized jersey from Cool Hockey, a free DobberHockey Ultimate Fantasy Pack, and an Armchair Pools subscription. Can you take me down? Naw, you can’t. Don’t even step into the ring with me.

Mikael Samuelsson was not at the Canucks’ practice. No word on why, but he did miss time recently with an LBI and has been ineffective since returning.

The Canucks have recalled Cody Hodgson and he practiced on a line with Mason Raymond and Jannick Hansen. Not draftable…unless it’s a deep pool and you have several Canucks already – and it’s the final round. Then sure, roll the dice.

The Wild have fired coach Todd Richards. He is the third coach to be fired in three days – with Ottawa’s and Florida’s coaches preceding him.

Crosby is still not cleared for contact. That pushes him back to at best Game 3. As a result of this news, and the Zetterberg news, I adjusted those two players in the Draft List and re-uploaded it. At this point, yeah, the Penguins should mail it in and sit their star until the fall.

Beatwriter Adrian Dater is 100 percent confident that Milan Hejduk will re-sign to play another year with the Avs.

Henrik Zetterberg will not be available for Game 1. He is out with a LBI (apparently his knee). Nik Kronwall probably will.

Jacques Lemaire will not coach the Devils next season. Kudos to him for going out on top with such a great reputation.

With the season finished, teams that are eliminated are sending their younger players back to the AHL for a playoff run there, including Ottawa (Bobby Butler) and Edmonton (Linus Omark).

So…did Montreal give Nashville their leading scorer for nothing?

Washington has re-signed Mike Knuble to a one-year extension. Kudos to him for extending his career a little longer yet. What a great career – he was a checker and fringe player, and then he clicked with, in order, Joe Thornton, Peter Forsberg and Alex Ovechkin. Playing just well enough to stay on those lines. The result is nine straight 20-goal seasons, peaking at 34 goals and 65 points. Before that, his best was 15 goals and 35 points.

I like this headline: Flyers have faith in Bobrovsky. Yeah. That explains why he was pulled in a 3-3 game on the weekend. Lots of faith.

I'll probably lose all New York based sales now when I say this, but the only team that I would have a problem with drafting from late in the playoff draft is the Rangers. Any other team, if I need to build around a third team or a fifth team (it depends on the depth of the pool) in the late rounds, I would take the BPA (best player available) and draft him. As always, any team has at least an outside shot. But for some reason, the Rangers don't do it for me. I don't like the way they backed into the playoffs and I love how Washington has spent all season preparing for this style of hockey.

Michael Frolik has been a 27-point player in Chicago, but has shown signs of late. He has 35 shots in his last 10 games and is plus-4. It's the four points in that span that disappoint. Let's see how this third-year player performs in his first postseason.

Chicago, Dallas and Carolina all blew their must-win games. They don't deserve to be in the playoffs and they certainly don't deserve to win a series. It was clutch time and they failed. But at least Chicago lost to a great team, what is Dallas' excuse? Minnesota? A team with nothing to play for?

Jiri Hudler, a minus-7 in his last five games, was down to 10 minutes of ice time yesterday. It's pretty clear that he is not the fantasy asset he could be on this team. When they have injuries and "have" to play him on the first line, he's a 65-point player. Otherwise, he's a 35-point 'minus' player. He needs ice time and responsibility and doesn't want to earn it.

Congrats to Jason Arbuthnot – creator of Frozen Pool – for winning this  year's Expert's League. Ryan "Wild West" Ma was second Ian "Expert's Audit" Fergusson was third. My own comeback attempt fell short – at the end of November I had 36 points and was about 70 behind first, sitting in 12^th. Various trades (getting rid of Kovalchuk and Lecavalier and turning them into Heatley, Bobrovsky and Tavares), grabbing some great wire players (Shattenkirk, Grabner, Pavelec), I was able to crawl up to 68.5 points, just 29.5 back and a sixth place finish. Sixth place is just the fifth place loser… but I was buried so badly that I took it as a personal challenge to save face. Besides, the bottom two get relegated to the Pro League – and we couldn't have Dobber go down there now could we?

I want to draw your attention to a cheap new tool that is available for the iphone. The Hockey Draft Buddy will track picked players, filter and/or sort in many different ways – the perfect help for you at the draft table. Just 99 cents – does money even break down into such small increments anymore? Anyway, pick it up, or read up on it – HERE.

Dallas deserves this taunt from the Wild fan:

I like how Peckham knew he was in for a fight after throwing this hit. Too bad the fight was nothing, but it was funny how, after throwing the hit, he saw Wilson coming and dropped the gloves immediately: