from Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet,

- A smaller system change in Boston, where the Bruins tweaked how they face an aggressive two-man forecheck. They basically moved one winger from a stationary position along the boards to a more aggressive sweep through the middle.

The biggest challenge for Boston will be that some of their defenders aren’t speed demons, and you’ve got to move quickly. That’s why opponents went from sending one attacker to two.

- The Sharks “now play a simple game” according to one opponent. “Up-and-down, and quickly. They will make you chase them.”

- It was a quiet summer for the Predators, with a couple of depth moves. That was by design.

“We were happy with the first three-quarters of the season,” said GM David Poile. “It was as good a year as you could hope for. Then, the last quarter, there was a drop-off.”

Losing in the first round can be a tough sell, but Nashville fell to the eventual Stanley Cup champions in a brutally hard series. Sometimes, it’s not when you lose, it’s who you lose to. As he thought about it, Poile looked back to 2011-2012, a season where he added Paul Gaustad, Hal Gill, Andrei Kostitsyn and Alexander Radulov. “Too many moves,” he says now. “If I could do it over again, I’d know I went too far. Too much change.”

much more