from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- Depending on who you follow, listen to, or read, the Maple Leafs will be acquiring Ryan O’Reilly, Timo Meier, Bo Horvat, Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Max Domi, John Klingberg, Jake McCabe, Vladislav Gavrikov and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at or around the NHL’s trade deadline next month.

That is today’s world of fantasy sports meeting online reporting meeting guessing and hoping, meeting insiders with the occasional decent tout, and all of this intersecting on a mythical graph at a time when the sports world and Leafs Nation are playing along at home.

Trade talk in a challenging period of salary cap staleness is probably more difficult than it has ever been before. The day of the basic-need hockey trade — I’ll send you my defenceman for your forward — is all but over. Now, it’s about salary and salary cap and term and rental prices and openings and whether you can find a way to injure enough players to make a deal happen....

- The NHL coaching fraternity — and many of them are close — are down on Jimmy Rutherford for the manner in which the Bruce Boudreau situation was handled by the Vancouver Canucks. Even friends and former colleagues of Rutherford are having difficulty defending the club president for the very public and improper way the popular Boudreau was dismissed. More than one current coach is blaming ownership in Vancouver for the Canucks sloppiness. “Everyone knows what the problem is,” the coach texted me. “I don’t get why the story isn’t the owner (Francesco Aquilini).” Some coaches insist the NHL should force Aquilini to sell the Canucks the way it has been done in other leagues.

- Why is Jennifer Botterill so vibrant, energetic, and full of information working games live for TNT and so seemingly stale on the Hockey Night in Canada panel?

more on the first topic and additional notes too...