from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- Questions are being asked internally and externally about the Staal brothers in Carolina and why they aren’t producing more regularly.

- The pro-fighting types will tell you that hockey needs to police itself. Isn’t it quite evident, that with or without fighting, hockey can’t police itself. That’s for the on-ice officials and league headquarters, neither of which is doing enough to make the game safer and more sensible.

- An enlightened NHL general manager went to a presentation recently made by a group trying to sell an analytics and advanced statistics package to the team. The GM was impressed with what he saw, was ready to make a deal, when he asked the question:

“If I hire you to do our team and every other team in the league, how will I know the compilation of statistics won’t vary from market to market?”

The answer was that they couldn’t guarantee that. So no deal was made.

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