from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- I want to see hockey. I’m selfish that way. I want the see playoffs in August. But I want them played under safe and healthy circumstances. And I don’t care where. Once the games are played, it won’t matter if it’s Toronto or Edmonton or Chicago or wherever. The arenas will be empty. The situations will be similar. The great hub-city dance is basically meaningless to most fans who will turn on their television and watch, no matter where the games will be played. The local economy will benefit for being a hub city. The fans will see games no matter where they happen to be played.

- There are MIT graduates who couldn’t explain the NHL’s draft lottery Friday night in less than 100 words. And try telling someone that some team won, we just don’t know which one. Weird stuff in the weirdest season in history.

- This is what the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee should do in the future: Publish the voting results. Not with names, with numbers. We know Jarome Iginla got 18 out of 18 possible votes. That’s obvious. But we don’t know who got in with 14 votes and who may have lost out having only 13 or 12 votes. You need 75% to be elected. The Hall should be more open with its disclosures. What it should announce every year is who was nominated and how the voting went. You don’t have to identify who voted for whom. The numbers will do and it will serve the hockey public well to know who didn’t get voted in and who wasn’t nominated at all. In baseball, we see the voting. In football, we find out who got in and who didn’t. In basketball, everybody gets in so it doesn’t matter. In hockey, we’re on the outside looking in.

a few more hockey blurbs....