Elliotte Friedman, Chris Johnston along with host Ron MacLean discussed- Injuries around the league, Dubois trade update, Winnipeg canceled practice today and Edmonton's goalie situation.  Ken Holland did call Jimmy Howard, sounds like Howard will announce retirement in coming days. Plua a few more topics. via Sportsnet,  

from Phil Mushnick of the New York Post, Back to the Garden, where Rosen, apparently ordered to enter without his dignity, was forced to bang away some more in pursuit of more suckers. Over a DraftKings graphic encouraging viewers to “Place Your Bets Now,” Rosen was stuck reading ad copy about how one could still win money betting this game. Rosen: “Here are the DraftKings live odds. Download the top-rated DraftKings app and bet live during the game. Plus, for the first two games of the season, when you place a $25 bet on any hockey game, you get a free $10 bet.” Not for a second would anyone who has experienced Rosen’s straight-arrow approach since he began calling MSG’s Rangers games in 1984 believe he personally endorses in-game gambling on hockey, or any other kind of sports gambling. He deserves better. But at 73, Rosen must remain a company man, and if that now includes being a gambling shill, so be it. It doesn’t matter if he takes his orders from Gary Bettman — pronounced “Bet, man!” — or Jimmy Dolan, who has fought substance addictions, Rosen doesn’t fit the role of a bad-odds cash hustler. I’d never put Rosen on the spot to ask him to defend himself. more

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post, Apparently the folks at the league were unable to find clear evidence that Staal’s head was the main point of contact, though Dowd was assessed a minor for an illegal check to the head. Which raises the question: What is a legal check to the head and why on earth would anyone even countenance the suggestion that there could be such a thing in 2021? Why would the league want to encourage cheap shots like this? Why would the players want to camouflage predators in their midst? Who is in favor of the manner in which supplemental discipline, and specifically as it relates to head shots, is adjudicated in the NHL? So the Department of Player Safety couldn’t find “clear evidence?” Why must perpetrators be judged under the criminal court standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt?” Why not under the civil court mandate of “preponderance of evidence?” The time has come, has way past come, to eradicate hits to the head. That starts by punishing the perps. more topics including the AHL players are facing financial hardship...

I know, I know. It’s been 310 days, give or take, since the last time the Wings took to the ice. So what. It's still the same. Instead of the slightest improvement, it looked at times as if there had been a regression in all areas of play, with the exception being goaltending. There have been a few changes in the on ice personnel, but, the one constant is the Coaching. Bad habits are hard to break, and, the more you lose the easier it becomes. Get it together. Otherwise, this shortened season will be another long, long, bad season for Wings fans. It’s a Live Blog!

from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun, - ... On another channel there is football Hall of Famer and Super Bowl champion, Troy Aikman, calling a game. And when baseball playoffs were on just a few months back, there was Frank Thomas on the panel with Alex Rodriguez and Big Papi, David Ortiz, three of the greatest hitters in recent baseball history, now broadcasting. The new star of hockey broadcasting in Canada is Kevin Bieksa. He is refreshingly honest, original and quirky, and once he finished 18th in Norris Trophy voting. The more established star broadcasters among former players are Ray Ferraro, Eddie Olczyk, Craig Simpson and Keith Jones. All of them decent NHL players themselves, none of them all-time anythings. Which begs the question: What is it about hockey — the sport, the culture, the product — that doesn’t attract playing stars to the broadcast booth?... - The NHL season will be five days old on Sunday and I’ve already watched Leafs, Habs, Oilers, Canucks, Jets, Flames, Senators, Blues, Avalanche, Flyers and Penguins — some of them twice, some three times by Sunday morning. I’ve never consumed this much hockey, this quickly, this enthusiastically. - I seem to be in the minority on this, but I would have brought Mike Milbury back to NBC hockey. I thought he brought an edge to their between-periods panels that they don’t have anymore. more on the first topi and other notes too...

via NHL.com, Jared McCann will have a hearing with NHL Department of Player Safety on Saturday. The Pittsburgh Penguins forward is facing discipline for elbowing Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim on Friday. Watch the elbow below.

 NBC made it official this past week and said it would not bring back Mike Milbury for commentary and analysis around this year’s NHL action. Milbury made a glib on-air comment about player behavior during the playoffs last summer that some, particularly in the NHL front office, interpreted as sexist. The bar of tolerance for such thing is set very low these days, so Milbury was as good as gone halfway through uttering his comment. He opted not to comment when contacted this past week by the Globe. The read here: After 40-plus years of witnessing young male professional athletes on the road, I found Milbury’s comments on target and not objectionable. Meanwhile, the broadcast is a cold cup of decaf without Milbury, particularly now with the great Doc Emrick no longer handling play-by-play. -Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe where you can read more hockey topics. If you need your memory refreshed on what Milbury said...

Hello, Saturday! Get ready for 10 games, including matinees in New Jersey and Arizona along with three games on Hockey Night in Canada. #NHLStats pic.twitter.com/LMbiVliqDu — NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) January 16, 2021

Marc Staal, then Jeff Blashill below.  

I will update here with any news from the skate. Below, watch the Morning Skate.

THREE HARD LAPS * Sportsnet’s Hockey Night in Canada will make its season debut with a trio of matchups from the Scotia North Division, the first all-Canadian division in NHL history. * The Avalanche matched their franchise record for power-play goals in a single game en route to erupting for a League-high eight goals against the Blues. * Travis Konecny netted his first career hat trick and recorded the Flyers’ second four-point performance in as many games as Philadelphia took a 2-0-0 lead in their season series with Pittsburgh.

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post, But on the heels of a performance in which Quinn, both immediately following the match and then again on Friday, said, “There wasn’t anything good that happened … in any capacity,” the player combinations were less the issue than the team’s intent and preparedness. And for sure, the coaching staff shares responsibility for the team’s total eclipse of the heart.... Other than the Chris Kreider-Mika Zibanejad-Pavel Buchnevich unit, the remaining three lines were flexed as well. Most noteworthy, Quinn moved Alexis Lafreniere up and across to right wing on the 1A line with Artemi Panarin and Ryan Strome, while Kaapo Kakko was dropped to a remodeled third unit with Filip Chytil and Phillip Di Giuseppe. I spent the summer lobbying for Lafreniere to be awarded an immediate top-six spot, and I think he deserves it. But this move will be viewed more as a demotion for Kakko than as a promotion for Lafreniere. If that is the case internally, it could backfire. The Rangers simply cannot afford to diminish Kakko at this point before he’s even had a chance to establish a foothold. “This is his second year. Everybody here thinks he’s a really good player. We just need guys to show up night-in and night-out, compete night-in and night-out, and he’s no different,” the coach said of the 19-year-old winger. “He was on a crowded bus of guys who didn’t have good nights, so he’s got to be better, but everyone has got to be better.” That’s just it. The Rangers have to be better. Much better. The route to getting there will be paved with choices. Selecting the wrong ones could invite long term consequences. more

from Lance Hornby of the Toronto Sun, Was it just a couple of weeks ago that general manager Kyle Dubas insisted a tenet of the 2021 Maple Leafs would be “competitiveness, physicality and structure … defined by our ability to make it more difficult to get to our net and fight for space?” Just how nine goals against in the season’s first six full periods follows that credo is a little cloudy. After giving his team defence a pass in the sometimes sloppy opening overtime win over Montreal, coach Sheldon Keefe’s COVID-19 mask looked ready to fly off with rage the way his law was churning. The Ottawa Senators owned the Leafs in their own end, 5-on-5 and on special teams in the 5-3 win. continued Game highlights are below.

"We embarrassed ourselves tonight. That was very disappointing. The thing is, we came into the game and you could tell we didn't have the detail in it. The little things steamrolled into big things. It was everyone. I thought 'Binner' played outstanding the time he was in the net. He made some huge saves, but once they got that first one, we just tightened right up. We lost the details and it just steamrolled from there. "We're embarrassed. That was not what we do. We stick with it and we compete to the end and we didn't. It's my fault, it's some other guys too. We have to find a way to get something out of it. It's very disappointing." -Ryan O'Reilly, captain of the St. Lous Blues after an 8-0 loss to the Colorado Avalanche.  Lou Korac of Inside The Slot has more reaction and watch the game highlights below.

from David Staples of the Edmonton Journal, This in from the Edmonton Oilers, news that back-up goalie Mike Smith needs to go on Long Term Injured Reserve, meaning he will be out at least 10 games. “The Oilers have placed goaltender Mike Smith on Long Term Injured Reserve & have reassigned Olivier Rodrigue (currently in the Austrian National League) to the club’s taxi squad, pending quarantine protocols.”... Oilers GM Ken Holland is now on the hottest of seats. Other NHL GMs know he has in great need of a back-up goalie. What’s he going to do? Over pay? Patiently wait for some goalie to pop up on the waiver wire? In the next few weeks, Holland will be tested to come up with the right goalie at the right price. Good luck to him. It’s a tall order to fill. more

NEW YORK (Jan. 15, 2021) – The National Hockey League today announced updates to the 2020-21 regular-season schedule. The Dallas Stars will now open their regular season on Friday, Jan. 22 at home against the Nashville Predators. All updates are listed below. The complete 2020-21 NHL regular-season schedule can be found at NHL.com/schedule.  The following games have been re-scheduled:

from Stan Fischler at The Hockey News, James Norris was not fooling around that April morning in 1935. The 56-year-old Montreal commerce czar had just bought Detroit’s NHL club – then called the Falcons – and phoned Jack ‘Jolly Jawn’ Adams, the coach-manager he had acquired in the franchise purchase. “I’ll give you a year on the job,” Norris warned him. “You’re now on probation.” Those who knew Norris best translated the “probation” part to mean win a Stanley Cup, pronto, or else. If that wasn’t intimidating enough, there was the new owner’s physical presence: very scary. “I remember the afternoon we met,” said Adams during an interview in 1961 when he was 67. “Norris was bald and he had heavy black eyebrows and a round face. His nose was broad and flat, like somebody had hit it.” While he was at it, the new boss laid a few other things on the line with his new employee. “We’ll call the team the Wings. In fact, we’ll call it Red Wings. Our emblem will be a winged wheel which ought to sit good with Henry Ford and the car people,” Adams recalled. The habitually argumentative Adams instantly realized he should never quarrel with his new boss – just do what the millionaire said and quickly go about the business of making him happy. The results were amazing, to say the least. He gifted Norris with back-to-back championships, while earning a second nickname, ‘Trader Jack.’  continued

Bobby Ryan first, Jeff Blashill below.  

from NHL.com, The return of the NHL and the first games played in the Scotia North Division drew record TV ratings in the United States and Canada on Wednesday. The opening game of the season, between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers, averaged 972,000 viewers on NBCSN in the United States, making it the network's most watched regular-season game ever. NBCSN's opening night tripleheader, which included the Chicago Blackhawks against the Tampa Bay Lightning and the St. Louis Blues against the Colorado Avalanche, averaged 774,000 viewers, making it the network's most-watched multigame opening night on record. The first two games between teams in the North Division, made up of the seven NHL teams based in Canada, drew record numbers on Sportsnet in Canada. continued

via Ansar Khan tweet, Bobby Ryan no longer in orange non-contact jersey, so might be ready to play tomorrow vs. Carolina. Updates as needed.

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post, This was a performance that wasn’t worth even a 24-hour wait, let alone the 313 days between appearances at the Garden by the Rangers. But then, this wouldn’t even count as an appearance by the Blueshirts — who pulled a no-show in the season opener, losing 4-0 to an Islanders team that essentially had a 60-minute stroll through the park on Thursday. If you’re looking for an excuse for this debacle — in which Igor Shesterkin allowed goals on the third, fifth and seventh shots he faced while his teammates lollygagged — don’t bother. There are no excuses for the Rangers, spared the indignity of being booed out of the building only because customers are not permitted at the Garden. This was an amateurish performance by a team that was not prepared to compete against the conference finalists. continued Watch the highlights below.

Kirill Kaprizov with the game winning goal in OT against the LA Kings.  

My dad was a salesman and I grew up in Detroit. I’m a first-generation American. My parents both came from Germany right before the war. He would occasionally get tickets to sporting events by some of the people that he worked with. And my fondest memories are him taking me to Red Wings games when I was 7, 8 years old. And that was the glory years, some of the glory years for the Red Wings. When they had Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Alex Delvecchio. You know the list, I don’t have to tell you. And some of the great contests when they were winning the Stanley Cup in those days in the Olympia arena. The Olympia was a great old arena. You were right over the ice. We were up in the rafters but my God you could smell the sweat of the players. So it was fabulous just to be part of it.... -Jerry Bruckheimer, movie/TV producer and part owner of the Seattle Kraken.  Scott Burnside of The Athletic has much more (paid) in a Q & A with Bruckheimer.

from John Niyo of the Detroit News, Look, this is still likely a bottom-five team in the NHL we're watching here in Detroit, though hopefully one with more lottery luck in the end. But there’s plenty of room for improvement, which is really all general manager Steve Yzerman admits he can expect at this point in a rebuild. And more than enough opportunity to show it, playing a 56-game schedule over 115 days, starting with a rematch with Carolina in less than 48 hours. And after no games for what felt like an eternity, that felt good — and different — Thursday night, even if the loss didn’t. more from Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press,

First up is Mickey Redmond with his recap, below is Dylan Larkin. More coming. added 10:44pm, Mathias Brome below. added 11:11pm, game highlights below.  added 11:32pm, Jeff Blashill below.  added 11:39pm, Thomas Greiss below.  

THREE HARD LAPS * The opening night of the 2020-21 NHL season drew record-breaking viewership both stateside and north of the 49th parallel. * Connor McDavid scored the first hat trick of 2020-21 while reigning Art Ross Trophy winner Leon Draisaitl had four assists on another high-scoring night in the NHL. * Tim Stützle, who turns 19 today, is expected to make his NHL debut in this season’s first ‘Battle of Ontario’ game as Ottawa becomes the final Canadian team to hit the ice in 2020-21.

Why are teams calling the Panthers about forward Aleksander Barkov? What options do prospects have to showcase their talents? How will John Tortorella's recent comments affect Columbus' approach to Pierre-Luc Dubois? TSN Hockey Insiders Pierre LeBrun, Darren Dreger and Frank Seravalli discuss this and more. Watch at TSN

Good evening. It’s a brand new season for the 19! Welcome back to one and all, from the long absence of Detroit Red Wings Hockey. It’s been far to long since we’ve all hung out together to have what I hope will be a good time, and, a good season for all of us. I hope that everyone, and, your families are faring well, staying healthy, and, sane. I’d prefer if possible, keeping thing’s upbeat, and, not dwell on the past year, at least for now since this is our first game back. The big news. Finally, finally, finally, Dylan Larkin has been named Captain of the Detroit Red Wings, and deservedly so. Steve Yzerman has made some additional moves in the off season that we all hope will pan out, and, make watching the Wings, let‘s just say, “more fun,” than watching the way the Wings have played the past few seasons. There are a few new faces on the roster as well as our familiar favorites. Tonight, and most nights, I hope this place that we all have come to call home, will also serve as a much needed useful distraction. With the Yzerplan starting to take shape, one can only hope it will give us something to look forward to. To keep us out of the doldrums, to cheer on, and, as always, the possibility to cringe. It should be interesting if nothing else. Maybe, we’ll all be able to witness some pleasant surprises along the way. Okay, that’s probably raising the bar a bit, but, what the heck? Why not? Welcome back 19! Drop the puck! It’s a Live Blog!

I used two words a lot last season- offensively challenged. This season after the first game- still offensively challenged after a 3-0 loss to Carolina. The effort was there so maybe it's the talent level? We will find out more on Saturday. Detroit fight highlight below.  The Wings had 1 shot on goal in the first 18 1/2 minutes of the 3rd period.

from Luke Fox of Sportsnet, Which side of the thin line your sympathies lie depends on a list of factors as long as Zdeno Chara’s stick. The score on the board. The importance of the game. The amount of time left on the clock. Whether you view the NHL rulebook as gospel or guideline. The star power and grudge history of the specific players involved. The number and types of penalties previously called against each side up until that point. And, more often than not, the laundry you cheer for. Take another look at the stiff cross-checks NHL superstar Auston Matthews absorbed from Montreal Canadiens defenders Shea Weber and Ben Chiarot in the final moments of regulation during Wednesday’s season opener while trying to gain a scoring stance at the net-front during a tied-up tilt:... “Great to see NHL hockey back last night. Such amazing athletes & so much speed & skill in the game now,” tweeted Jeff Jackson, an Orr Hockey Group agent who help negotiate monster contracts for Canadian franchise faces Connor McDavid and Matthews. “But watching the abuse that star players take is hard to watch. Felt like the 80’s with the cross checks in the back & the hacking & slashing. NFL protects QB’s? Why don’t we?” read on

from Mike Chambers of the Denver Post, Opening its 25th-anniversary season at home with a new uniform ensemble didn’t go well for the Avalanche on Wednesday. Those Stanley Cup expectations might have gone to Colorado’s collective heads. “We just got outworked,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. The St. Louis Blues, those proud 2019 Stanley Cup champions, dominated the first period and scored twice in the third to skate away with a relatively easy 4-1 victory at Ball Arena. “We just didn’t have enough guys compete tonight,” Bednar said. “Right from the start, not ready to go. Lazy habits, hoping it was going to be easier than what it was. It showed.” continued Game highlights are below.

The Wings have a new streaming morning show called the Morning Skate and one of the nice features consist of interviews after the skate. Today they had on Jeff Blashill and Patrik Nemeth. Here are the archived interviews if you missed it live.  

via the YouTube page of Sportsnet, Watch the Tampa Bay Lightning unveil their 2020 Stanley Cup championship banner, and promise to raise it to the rafters once they can have fans in attendance.  

Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News with five predictions for the Wings, The Wings could have problems scoring goals, still. A lot depend on whether Robby Fabbri becomes an adequate, effective center who can create offense and provide a dangerous second line behind Larkin's line. Fabbri appeared to be developing chemistry with Filip Zadina during training camp, which is a positive sign. Zadina, also, is an important figure. If he can show glimpses of the offensive potential he has, it would be a major plus for the Wings. Ryan, signed as a free agent, was hurt for a portion of training camp, which could limit his availability early in the regular season. The pieces are there, but too many gnawing questions to assume the Wings are going to erase their offensive woes quickly and positively. more (paid subscription)

from Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press, The season is bound to be fraught with complications — already Darren Helm has been sidelined because of league-mandated COVID protocols, and the Dallas Stars, now in the Wings’ division, have had to delay their season because of positive tests — but against all the problems imposed by the pandemic, the start of the season is like a sunrise after a stormy night. “The beginning of the year is always time for optimism,” Blashill said. “This is different in the sense that appreciation would be a work I would use, appreciation that we get a chance again to go out and compete at the very highest level of our profession. We were shut down for a long time. We didn’t know if we’d get back going and we didn’t know when. You grow to appreciate what we get a chance to do. That appreciation is strengthened when it gets taken away from you.” more