from Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet,

- Columbus GM Jarmo Kekalainen prefers to do things quietly. He can’t be thrilled with what’s been a “noisy” season, from Pierre-Luc DuBois to John Tortorella to Patrik Laine to Mikko Koivu’s sudden retirement. The Blue Jackets need the Laine deal to work; it’s critical. Everyone saw some kind of coach/player skirmish occurring — it was pretty much inevitable. But Kekalainen hoped it wouldn’t be so quickly.

Tortorella said Laine’s benching “wasn’t because of the missed assignment” on Brock McGinn’s 2–2 goal Monday night, and multiple sources indicate it happened when Laine blew off one of the coaches who tried to talk to him about it. Tortorella has his code, and that would violate it.

There’s a theory Tortorella wants out, that he’s forcing the Blue Jackets to fire him. Everything I hear is that’s absolutely not the case — he feels a loyalty to the organization and the players there who’ve supported him to find a way to overcome all the challenges they’ve faced.

- This story will continue to unfold on Wednesday, but post-game media availabilities following Vegas’s 5-4 win over Anaheim on Tuesday night were prematurely terminated. As I write this, there’s no clarity on why Tomas Nosek did not return for the third period, but it’s clear there’s concern about how this unfolded.

The Golden Knights will not practice and have no availability on Wednesday, suggesting another shutdown is possible. There is a lot of worry about the new B1117 COVID strain, how aggressive it is, and what it can mean. It’s why the players are being asked to consider specific testing to find out which strain they are infected with, if they do test positive.

- Home-ice records are better than ever, and here’s an example: Carolina has three losses. All of them are in the second of two-game road series: 4-2 at Detroit; 6-4 at Chicago; and 3-2 at Columbus. In that Central Division, road teams have just three wins in more than 20 such situations. They were stuck on one until two Tuesday-night victories: Tampa at Nashville; and Chicago 2-1 over Dallas. (The other was Florida in Detroit.)

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