Mike Ribeiro will be a healthy scratch for the Stars tonight. He is being benched for “disciplinary reasons” as he missed a team meeting on Sunday.

The Leafs have now made their splash into NCAA free agency – you knew it was coming. They signed 6-5 power forward Brady Irwin. The 23-year-old led the U. of Vermont in scoring, but as a senior that is to be expected. He holds fantasy value in penalty minutes and it looks like he holds third-line upside. He was Stalberg’s teammate last year (Stalberg outscored him 46-11 in points that year).

Kristian Huselius has 17 points in 15 games under the new coach. Voracek has 21 in 18. Vermette 19 in 18.

After starting his LA tenure with four points in five games, Freddy Modin is now pointless in seven and a minus-4.

There is talk in Ottawa about Jared Cowan joining the club if his junior team gets eliminated from the playoffs next game. Cowan has no fantasy value, but Sens fans may be interested in that.

The Sens have signed NCAA free agent Bobby Butler to a two-year deal. Butler has 29 goals this season for U. of New Hampshire. The Sens anticipate that he will play for them at least a little bit this season and they hope he will make the team next year and provide secondary scoring. He is worth keeping an eye on, as some of these college players are starting to make a real impact (i.e. Tyler Bozak).

This was under my radar when it happened late last week – but David McIntyre has signed an ATA with Lowell of the AHL. He was a dark horse of mine last summer, but wound up staying in college for another year. New Jersey will give him a long look in the fall. McIntyre already has two points in six AHL contests.

Patrik Berglund overslept and missed Saturday’s practice, so the coach scratched him from yesterday’s contest.

Our own Alessandro Seren Rosso is reporting that Linus Omark has left the KHL, taking advantage of his out clause. The highly skilled (though very small) Oilers prospect has Edmonton bent over the barrel one year later, as they stumble to a 30th place finish in dire need of his skills. He is ranked 71 on my fantasy prospects list.

Angus here – we had a three-way tie atop the leaderboard for Week 2 of the ‘Down the Stretch’ contest. The three winners each received photos. There will be no contest this week, but there will be one starting next Monday for the final week of NHL action. Brian Gionta (18 shots on goal) and Patric Hornqvist (17 shots on goal and two penalty minutes) were the highest scoring players.

Mikael Samuelsson could return on Tuesday, about a week ahead of schedule. This may impact Michael Grabner, but it shouldn’t. Grabner has been very, very good skating on the second line with Raymond and Kesler. Samuelsson and Demitra may slide in to flank Kyle Wellwood on a potentially potent third offensive unit. Update: Samuelsson skated with the Canucks today at practice, but didn’t take any contact.

David Booth is out for the rest of the season with his latest concussion. He is on Tim Connolly watch – too good to drop, yet virtually untradeable in keepers. This may be one of those things where it is three years before you see him play the full year (similar to Connolly).

Joe Thornton missed Sunday’s game with an LBI, ending a streak of 398 straight games. Perhaps taking a few games off will be just what he needs to finally show up huge for the postseason.

Kevin Porter has seen his ice time inch upward and the result has been a three-game point streak. It was starting to look as though he would need to refine his role to that of checker – something that he is certainly capable of doing – but he refuses to quit. He seems to really want to be a top sixer. It’s a long shot, given all the young talent on this roster, but don’t write him off just yet. Let’s see where the chips fall come training camp.

Peter Mueller was back in the lineup after missing one game. Ho hum, he scored twice. I wonder why he was too injured to play against his former team, but 24 hours later was fine to play against San Jose? In 12 games, Mueller has 17 points. That’s how many he had in Phoenix, except that was in 54 games.

So Calgary wins convincingly and the Avs lose. Just four points separate the two, but the Avs have a game in hand. Still, it will get very interesting.

With JVR out (knee injury – took a shot off it against PIT on Saturday), Ville Leino played 15:32 and notched two points. He also saw the second most PP time of any Philly forward. Looks like business is picking up for Mr. Leino. It was the third straight game that he saw that kind of ice time, so it will be interesting to see if this means that he has his legs/timing back after sitting out so many games.

Good news – Jeff Carter’s foot surgery was successful. That breaks a long string of unsuccessful surgeries that teams keep reporting to the media.

With Brooks Laich out (cheekbone – should be back soon) and Brendan Morrison out (leg), the Caps recalled Mathieu Perreault. He scored in the loss Sunday. I have said before that he is a great dark horse for next year. If the Caps don’t sign a second-line center and let him take a crack at it, he will surprise.

In the last three games that he started, Devan Dubnyk has allowed just five goals on 92 shots. He’s playing better than JDD right now and could finally be turning the corner.

Patrick O’Sullivan scored his first goal since January 16 and it was a beauty. He is still recovering from a hand injury (he lost a fingernail – OW), but showed good hands on that one. I’m about the only one left on this planet who still has faith in him. I’ll give him one more year. With Hemsky, Khabibulin, Eberle and Hall the team around him will be better.

Baseball season is just a week away – pick up the DobberBaseball Fantasy Guide today!

Thanks to Yabda in the forum for this clip. Jim Playfair is extremely happy with the ref in a recent AHL game and clearly wants to shake his hand and give him a hug…