Hockey Rambling

My Stanley Cup pick - the St. Louis Blues - are out in the first round. No shame in that, since they lost to the defending champs and in my opinion the fourth best team in the league. It does drive home the fact that you can't put a price on experience. With the Blues [...]

When it's the dead of August and, rather than enjoying time with family and loved ones, you're complaining about another slow hockey news day ("oh wow, a European player said something not all that tactful to the foregin press" "how much did x-player post himself dead lifting on Instagram, crazy!"); remember April 26th.    Four [...]

  Dobber here. I'm running a little UFC 'pick'em' pool in the forum - have some fun and throw your hat in the ring here!   *   First Ramblings for me in several months, so hi again everyone!   Three games were on the slate for Friday evening, and although all were of vital [...]

Henrik Zetterberg made his return to the Wings lineup last night. They had him playing wing on the top line with Pavel Datsyuk and Justin Abdelkader. He skated pretty well but looked limited all the same. He’d be playing center if he was truly ready for heavy lifting. Still, that line was very effective.   [...]

Dobber here - I'll be taking your fantasy hockey questions all day today. Simply follow this link and ask away. Registration takes approximately 10 seconds - 12 seconds if you type slow or want a long user name.   ***     Well, it finally happened. The annual Marc-Andre Fleury meltdown has begun. Or he [...]

Is Ben Bishop a "sell high"? In a word - no. While he may have peaked last season at 37 wins with the nice stats to go with it, the "sell high" window was in-season. Now, in the offseason, he won't get the respect he deserves. Because I think he'll still be a 35-win guy, [...]

It looks like the key to winning in this Columbus/Pittsburgh series is don’t get a 3-1 lead. The Blue Jackets blew one this time around as the Pens scored three third period goals to steal Game 3.   Pittsburgh out shot Columbus 41-20, despite an early surge from the Blue Jackets that put them in [...]

As I noted in the forum, I didn't feel that the Seabrook hit should result in a suspension. He got three games. And after much discussion with other folks, I have to agree that it was a head shot and the NHL is clamping down on that so…okay. But consider - the hit was not [...]

There is just nothing better in professional sports, in my humble opinion, than NHL playoff hockey. And even within the general awesomeness that is NHL playoff hockey: the first round is king.    We've seen proof of that already this week, and there was more of the same on Saturday. For example, I think it's [...]

Montreal grabbed a 2-0 series lead with a 4-1 victory over Tampa. I think the Lightning really needed to steal that opening game when Carey Price wasn’t quite up to par. He was much better on Friday and down 2-0 heading back to Montreal is probably going to be too much to overcome for Tampa. [...]