A couple of afternoon notes – Jonathan Toews was in practice this morning. I would guess that his concussion (that I’m guessing that he had) was a mild one, easily cured by having a Cup-winning game ahead.

Down Goes Brown is at it again – hilarious. Ranking the 20 awkward Gary Bettman Cup presentations.

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The draft this weekend, being all crammed into a single day, is really messing with my personal plans with the family. The domino effect from the lockout continues… and will continue until I get the Fantasy Guide out on August 1. Then it will be back to a “normal year”. But it really has rained havoc, in terms of shrinking my window to work on the Prospects Report, put together the Guide, etc. I can only imagine what NHL GM’s are going through. So does this mean more mistakes being made in terms of signings, drafting, and trade talk? Or does it eliminate the over-analysis and allow for better moves by your local GM?

Of the recent game of “musical coaches”, I think the best signing come April will be – Dallas Eakins. He’s a great coach who will have no problem pushing this young team to the next level. And talk about winning the lottery! His getting this job ranks up there with Stan Bowman sliding into the GM post in Chicago after Dale Tallon already built him a Stanley Cup champ. Eakins is set up to succeed. And what’s more, he’s set up to have this amazing win/loss record in his first 200 games coached. You watch.

Still waiting for the Oilers to pull the trigger. The last GM was fired for not moving one of his 50 young offensive forwards to bring in some veteran help on the point. He sat on his hands for too long, so out the door he went. I suspect Mac T is waiting for the goaltending issue to be solved first, as I’m guessing he is going after a netminder.

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Funny story – funny for anyone but Michael Amato, that is. But he fired off his Wild West article to me Sunday on potential Jonathan Bernier destinations. Minutes later, the trade was announced. So he wrote the piece for nothing, and now it will remain in fantasy-hockey purgatory.

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And speaking of Amato, he (The Wild West) and Steve Laidlaw (Cage Match) have been hired on as Associate Editors for DobberHockey. You have already seen some sneak peeks of what they can do when they’re given the ramblings. As Jeff Angus winds down his management role here, Amato and Laidlaw will transition their way in. Starting this Saturday one or the other will be taking over for Angus.

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Either today or tomorrow, I’ll be flipping the switch on DobberHockey. Those who follow Dobber Sports on Facebook knew this weeks ago, but we have been optimizing the site for mobile use. So you’re going to see some funky changes on the general look of the site – just a very crisp appearance. And say bye-bye to the spinning sun behind the Dobber head in the logo – that’s “flash”, which is a no-no for smart phone loading. So it will stop spinning. The ramblings box on the home page goes from the right side to the left. And so forth. If that goes off without a hitch, we start rolling in the other sites.

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The consensus around Toronto is that the No.1 job is Jonathan Bernier‘s to lose. No big shocker there. But despite what ‘officially’ comes out of the mouth of Carlyle or Nonis, just stick to this mantra.

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Adrian Dater muses here on a Dion Phaneuf for Paul Stastny trade. The Leafs could definitely use Stastny, but they need to upgrade their defenseman and as much as the haters are down on Phaneuf, I like him. Sure, he misses the net with every shot and makes the odd bone-head defensive mistakes, but 95% of the time he’s a stud at both ends of the ice who gets 50-plus points and dishes out some huge hits.

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Buyout new continues to leak. So far I have Daniel Briere, Tomas Kaberle, Mike Komisarek. Lots of other rumors floating around, but nothing solid. Be on the lookout for some of these guys maybe going:

Shawn Horcoff, Ville Leino, Ed Jovanovski, Rick DiPietro, Matt Stajan, Erik Cole, Martin Havlat, John-Michael Liles, Keith Ballard, and – dare I say it – Brad Richards.

The underrated player I think could do well on another team is Leino. I don’t believe he’s as crap as he’s been in Buffalo and I’m also not very shocked that he was so bad there. But he plays Game A and the team plays System B. No match. He needs a situation that fits, and he could be a 60-point player. He and PA Parenteau could just as easily had switched spots and switched results, but Parenteau picked the right team to sign with. I blame the agent for decisions such as these.

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Here is the much ballyhooed hit of Boychuk on Toews that knocked Toews from the game: