from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- McDavid has already had four 100-point seasons in his young career. Should he remain healthy, this will be his fifth. That will tie him with Jaromir Jagr and put him one behind Steve Yzerman, Phil Esposito, Joe Sakic, and Mark Messier. He’ll need a few more to catch Marcel Dionne’s eight 100-pt. campaigns. McDavid is scoring now at two points a game and should he finish with 156 points or more, that will be more than Jagr, Messier, Dionne, Yzerman, Sakic or Esposito ever scored in a single season, and scoring was easier to do back then.

- Every once in a while a name appears and you don’t necessarily know him. For me, it’s Troy Terry of the Ducks. He has 11 goals in 14 games. I needed one phone call, one text, and hockey reference to figure out he might be real.

- Must be a strange weekend for Hossa, who played eight years for Stan Bowman and Joel Quenneville in Chicago, won three Stanley Cups and neither his GM nor his coach will likely be welcomed at any Hall of Fame festivities.

- As someone who has been sued and has sued in his lifetime, I find it amusing to watch sports reporters comment on the ongoing legal proceedings against the Blackhawks as if they’re doing play-by-play of a game. Lawyers say outrageous things in closed-door meetings, never expecting a word of it to get out. They ask for what’s impossible, scream a little, and then find a place to settle. What’s said on any given day is rather meaningless until the suit is eventually settled, usually with some kind of non-disclosure clause.

- here is no way of knowing if Carey Price will be healthy enough, well enough, or engaged enough to be able to play goal for Canada at the Winter Olympics.

And it has to be Price’s call, no matter how you view this.

If he’s able and willing, he’s the Canadian goalie in China. If not, general manager Doug Armstrong and staff need to come up with alternatives, and really, for the first time since NHL players were invited to the Games, Canada is thinner in goal than it has ever been before.

Armstrong’s goalie in St. Louis, Jordan Binnington, would likely get the call as the starter should Price be unable to play. That’s OK, but it’s hardly Price from Sochi, or Roberto Luongo and Martin Brodeur from Vancouver or even to go back to ‘98, Patrick Roy and Brodeur and were the Nagano goalies.

more on the last topic and other hockey notes...