I would have lowish expectations on this one – but Fabian Brunnstrom has agreed to a tryout with the Red Wings. He would have to nudge some homegrown talent to get there, but I think a likely scenario is that he impresses enough to play for Grand Rapids and then gets his share of call-ups, similar to Ville Leino a couple of years ago.

Ahhhh. That's what I get for doing the ramblings on the road. I screwed up a link on Nino Niederreiter and I was far too hasty with my Florida Panthers statement. Then, the registration security question actually asked the "baseball" question, but expected the hockey answer. Oh man, a lot of emails about that. It's fixed now and working beautifully – since 2pm Sunday, when it was fixed, I have had zero spam registrations. And then to end my fine weekend away, the DobberBaseball site has all the links go wonky. Good to be back!

Here is the Nino article.

The Panthers, I saw that ESPN thing and I did a double-take. Wha? First? Tenth, maybe… But then throughout the morning I got to thinking. Huberdeau and Gudbranson were obvious. Howden and Bjugstad are good prospects, but all teams have a couple of those guys. But then I realized – Markstrom. So now we're talking about a blue-chip forward, d-man and goalie 1-2-3. Now Bjustad and Howden look a lot better and are quite possibly the best No.4 and 5 prospects on any depth chart. So I realized that, while I still like Edmonton's farm system the best (ESPN had them No.2), Florida has a Top 5 system. I'd like to do an organizational evaluation someday – from a fantasy slant, of course. Thank goodness everyone knows that I'm only right 52% of the time, eh?

And here we go – Sidney Crosby may not start the season at all. So now what? Where do you take him? End of the first round? Second round? I had him for 72 games, I have just downgraded that to 65. That will be in the updated Guide, which should be up by Tuesday. But this also impacts Neal, Kunitz and Sullivan. Hell, this may mean that Malkin remains at center and thus Staal goes from having a superstar winger to, uh, Tyler Kennedy. Domino effect.  Anyway, at this point, in a one-year league I would be extremely reluctant to take him in the first round. If your first-round pick misses the season, you don't win your league. Simple as that. Even though 102 points (my new prediction) is up there in the Top 5 still…I would be hard-pressed to choose him eighth in a 12-team roto-league. Ninth maybe, due to the fact that my next pick is just seven picks away.

I haven't given Joe Thornton love in awhile. Top 10:

Keep firing me YouTube clips!