Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Thanksgiving Eve Hockey Thoughts

11/22/2017 at 9:29pm EST

from Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet,

- Ekman-Larsson was expected to be the Coyotes’ captain this season, but that didn’t happen. It’s clear there’s a harder-than-expected feeling-out process between him and coach Rick Tocchet. Tocchet came from an intense, driven team led by players who pushed themselves and each other to be better. He didn’t like what he saw in Arizona and made that very clear in the pre-season.

I’ve believed for awhile now that Don Maloney, Dave Tippett, Jim Playfair — even Shane Doan — needed a change. They gave it a run in the desert and beat the odds for awhile, but it was time to be re-invigorated with new challenges. It happens to all of us. Tocchet is trying to re-light that fire under Ekman-Larsson. It’s like John Tortorella/Vincent Lecavalier. As an old exec friend says, “You can solve your problems or you can trade your problems. Always better to solve them.” We are in that phase now, trying to see if it works. I’m a big Tocchet fan....

- I could see Pittsburgh, which wanted Matt Duchene, keeping an eye on Max Pacioretty — if he becomes available.

- Not a lot of rules talk at the GM meetings as 100th-anniversary celebrations dominated discussions. But some of the things that could come up at the deeper meeting in March include: one-minute penalties, including anything called in overtime. (Some GMs also want that for puck-over-glass and face-off violations in regulation.) There will be talk about an automatic instigator for starting a fight after a legal hit. The other one I heard was the possibility of no line change by a defensive team if it is responsible for knocking the net off its moorings.

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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