from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- The book on Murray then was he was great when he had to scrap for his position and not great when he didn’t. That eventually prompted the Penguins to trade him to Ottawa, where the Senators chose to build around him. But, after two seasons, the goalie had lost the trust of the front office, the coaching staff, and the fans. There’s nothing worse for a hockey team than a goaltender no one believes in.

And now here are the Leafs with Murray as their likely No. 1, with the goalie having been traded twice in the past three seasons, with Pittsburgh and Ottawa looking elsewhere in net — and with him possibly in competition with the equally wayward Ilya Samsonov. Two lost goalies fighting for one spot — or a tandem situation of the broken....

- Brendan Shanahan played alongside Steve Yzerman in Detroit and Joe Sakic on Canadian Olympic teams. Now Sakic has built a Stanley Cup winner, Yzerman all but built the Tampa Bay Lightning. Shanahan, with gold medals and Cups as a player, is still looking for Sakic, Yzerman results as an executive.

- The Foster Hewitt Award goes annually to a member of the broadcasting world for his/her contribution to hockey. Essentially it is Hall of Fame recognition. But the NHL Broadcaster’s Association, which votes on the award, has deemed that the award will only go to play-by-play announcers and game analysts. This means broadcasters such as Dave Hodge, Ron MacLean, James Duthie, Don Cherry, and Scott Oake will never be considered. How do you have a Hockey Hall of Fame for broadcasters without those men recognized? The Hall needs to step in and change the rules here to open it up to all broadcasters.

- An NHL man who has watched Victor Hedman’s entire career insists the Red Wings rookie of the year, Moritz Seider, is ahead of where Hedman happened to be at a similar age. There is a remarkable number of game-changing NHL defenceman under the age of 25: Seider, Norris Trophy winners Cale Makar and Adam Fox, Miro Heiskanen, Quinn Hughes and still waiting for Rasmus Dahlin and Bo Byram to totally hit their marks.

more on topic #1 plus a few more hockey notes