from Jack Todd at the Montreal Gazette,

- The Anaheim Ducks, also-rans last year, are one of the two top teams in the Western Conference — led in part by ex-Habs Saku Koivu and Sheldon Souray, and abetted considerably by the 42-year-old Teemu Selanne.

- The Philadelphia Flyers, on everyone’s short list to make the Stanley Cup final, are awful. Not mediocre, not merely bad, but awful. Even with Ilya Bryzgalov playing sort of well, the Flyers right now look like a team that will miss the playoffs. The best thing you can say about Claude Giroux is that he wields a pretty mean slash. The defence is as lumbering as ever. There’s time to turn it around, but who thought the Flyers would NEED to turn it around?

- The New Jersey Devils and the Nashville Predators are pretty much the same teams they were before they lost Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, respectively. And the Minnesota Wild are pretty much the same team they were before they signed Parise and Suter. The Rangers, with Rick Nash but without Prust, are worse.

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