from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- By all rights, it would make sense for Steve Yzerman, general manager of the talent hungry Red Wings, to make an offer sheet play for Tampa forward Anthony Cirelli, who is a restricted free agent. Yzerman drafted Cirelli initially and has watched him blossom into a strong contributor on a Stanley Cup winner. So why hasn’t there been an offer made? The suspicion around is that Yzerman has too much respect for Tampa’s owner, Jeff Vinik, whom he worked with for many years, to move in this direction. Tampa Bay has salary-cap issues, the Red Wings don’t: The timing would be perfect for an offer-sheet. Just not so long as there are friendships involved

- This is the agreement for NHL players: No matter how many games the regular season happens to be, players will earn 72% of their contracts. There is no pro-rated salary structure on a per-game basis. But say, if you’re a million-dollar player, you will only be paid 72% of your money, 20% of that to escrow, before taxes, and you will take home around $360,000 for the season. That may be a huge amount of money for you or me, it’s a very small amount for a professional athlete.

- Will a half-season lost to lockout and two shortened seasons defeat Alexander Ovechkin’s chances of catching Wayne Gretzky as the all-time goal scorer in the NHL? Ovechkin has 706 goals and needs 188 to catch The Great One. That would mean four more seasons of 47 goals or five seasons at 37 or 38 goals a year. It’s not impossible, but having lost an accumulated total of an entire season to lockout and pandemic this coming campaign, it’s certainly going to test the fortitude of Ovechkin to catch Gretzky at around age 39.

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