The Jets decided to send Mark Scheifele back to junior. Winnipeg fans have reason to be excited for his future though. While it certainly seems to be the right decision now, I kind of wonder if this scenario would have played out differently had Evander Kane not been so “off” early on. Had Kane enjoyed a better start and had that pairing stayed together on a line, who knows? Maybe it’s a different conversation now. Either way, no reason for Scheifele to be down on himself. Time to go tear it up against the guys his own age.

The Habs added Petteri Nokelainen and blueliner Garrett Stafford from Phoenix in exchange for Brock Trotter and a 7th rounder in 2012. Stafford will go to Hamilton. Trotter to Portland. Mike Blunden has been recalled from the Bulldogs too, while Andreas Engqvist and Aaron Palushaj have been sent down.

David Backes is sore and stiff from that Chris Pronger hit last night that left Backes with an “upper-body” injury, but no word beyond that so far. Hopefully we’ll know more on that front sometime Monday.

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Jack Johnson had no GWG before this season. After seven games now in ’11-12 he has three of them.

The Rangers’ Twitter feed had this info on Henrik Lundqvist leaving the Oilers game early: He explains that he left game due to pain in left foot due to excess pressure from equipment in his skate. Lundqvist calls problem with skate “fixable” and adds “it’s a little sore now, but tomorrow I will be fine”. Also, “It was bothering me the whole game, we tried to fix it during the intermission..in the end it was just too painful”

Did you hear about Petr Sykora’s penalty box trickery tonight? Funny stuff, depending on your perspective.

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In case you missed it earlier tonight when the bulk of the games were getting underway, Vancouver acquired David Booth, Steve Reinprecht and a third round pick in 2013 for Mikael Samuelsson and Marco Sturm.

Great for Booth, who has been miserable so far this season. His +/- can only improve in Vancouver and he should be able to get back to his shooting ways with the Canucks. SOG was a driving force of his game once upon a time. He's slated to play with Ryan Kesler, who has had Chris Higgins and Cody Hodgson on his wings.

Samuelsson should easily be a top six regular with the Panthers and can still make that 40-50 point range, but potentially with a more harmful +/-. Sturm. I'm just not a big Sturm guy for poolies. There have to be better options, unless your league is incredibly deep. The Panthers have been using a first line of Fleischmann-Weiss-Versteeg for awhile, which could put Samuelsson on the Upshall-Goc line in place of Kopecky. But Versteeg also isn't a legit first line winger, IMO, so Samuelsson will likely end up on L1 at some point.

I'm not sure where you fall on the Dion Phaneuf love/ hate spectrum, but I for one am pretty happy to see him thriving in Toronto. I never thought he was as good as he was hyped during his glory years in Calgary, but I also never thought he was nearly as bad as people made him out over the past few seasons either. And from a standard league fantasy perspective, he can be one of the better ones when his overall game is flowing this well because he chips in across the board. I did a phone interview with him before he got to the NHL and even back then, he was exactly as surly as you see him now.

You know how there are certain parts of your life that can be considered fork-in-the-road moments? Jonas Gustavsson signing with Toronto instead of San Jose in the summer of 2009 coming over from the SEL was such a moment in his career. Good grief. He seems to have so little confidence right now and while it's impossible to say, you'd have to think his path would have been dramatically different – and better – had he signed with the Sharks when he hit the NHL. He would have been eased in that first season as the back-up behind Evgeni Nabokov – also allowing him time to adjust to NHL rinks – and then, at the very least, would have had a real shot at starting for a contending team with more support. Now that the Leafs are actually a better team, he's long-since lost his mojo and needs to figure out how the hell to get it back. James Reimer, incidentally, was apparently pulled from this game tonight as a precautionary measure because of whiplash symptoms.

You know how you can see your iPhone's battery charge percentage level rise when it's plugged in? If there was a way to quantify a rise in hockey IQ while listening to any Mike Babcock interview, that'd be the best way to demonstrate it. Can't get enough of that guy. Conversely, your actual IQ shows a similar decline for every 10 minutes of Jersey Shore watched.

Nice quote from Tomas Vokoun tonight after the Caps smacked the Wings hard, 7-1. “We've been on a roll. It's a good feeling, trust me. I've been playing losing hockey for a long time and it's really tough. No matter how we win I enjoy it."

Saturday's a total gong show so I'm not sure how long these lasted, but the Flyers began with some tweaked lines. Scott Hartnell – Claude Giroux – Jaromir Jagr/ Brayden Schenn – Danny Briere – Wayne Simmonds/ James van Riemsdyk – Matt Read – Jacob Voracek. The big story this past week was how little ice time Hartnell in particular was seeing.

Jackets' reporters were noting on Twitter tonight that Ryan Johanssen looked much more comfortable this evening (his first NHL pointage) than he has in recent weeks. This was his fifth start, so we're getting closer to when they'll have to make a decision on him.

Martin Havlat quietly has two points in two games since being healthy enough to play for his new team, the Sharks. He was a -29 over his two years in Minnesota and it's safe to say that should not be an issue on San Jose. He's playing with Ryane Clowe and Logan Couture on the second line, although it's only a matter of time until he spends time with Joe Thornton too.

T.J. Oshie's points haven't been too consistent this season and it looks like he was benched for a long stretch in the middle of tonight's game in the second period. Patience with him. He can still have a good season for fantasy owners and the Blues. Oshie offered up a "no comment" after the game and Davis Payne said, “Just an in-game decision. I make a lot of decisions based on how guys are playing.”

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