Donald Fehr has Gary Bettman fuming. Considering it's Bettman that usually has everyone else feeling that way, it's a nice change.

After Fehr met with the media last night to say the two sides were "close", only later to find out by voice message that, in fact, they weren't, Bettman responded with a press conference of his own and ripped the NHLPA.

For a man usually composed and collected, Bettman was visibly angry, the stream practically pouring out of his ears. He did his best to spin the NHLPA's spin, all the while conveniently forgetting to disclose the fact that talks fell apart once the players decided to bring in Fehr to close the deal (because that's his job, you know).

The whole scene may as well have been a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum on the playground because little Donnie wasn't going to hand over the best parts of his lunch just like Gary demanded. "No no no no no, I wanted all of the Dunkaroos, three of the cookies, and only half of the sandwich. What don't you get? I want it noooooooowwwwww."

It was bizarre theatre.

But it's Bettman that usually makes fans infuriated, so to see the NHL commissioner meet his match, find someone who vexes him to no end, is satisfying.

Despite fan antipathy towards Bettman, today for The Good Point I wrote that his long-standing tradition of handing out the Stanley Cup should persist, boos and all.

Barring a shocking lockout resolution after today's "secret" bargaining session, the closest thing to NHL hockey is taking place in AHL rinks across the continent.

And although AHL hockey is great, it can't replace NHL hockey. Sure, I want to see the Marlies do well, but I don't hang on every shot like I do with the Maple Leafs. In fact, I'm largely watching the AHL to see if the players can eventually help the Leafs.

Many Leafs fans clung to the fact that the Marlies made last year's Calder Cup Final as evidence that the future was bright for the parent club. A slow start to the season doesn't have everyone putting the same stock into results, which made me wonder how predictive AHL success is of NHL success.

Today's post at The Good Point looks at how well AHL success translates into NHL success. Do NHL teams that have good farm teams eventually become better teams themselves? Is the relationship between the two stronger after a lockout?

Click the link to find out!

But...I also have some additional content on the matter. If a strong AHL team means a strong NHL team, which teams will follow the path set by their AHL counterparts and blaze a trail into the playoff? More specifically, which NHL teams that were bad in 2011-12 (ala Toronto) will reverse the trend and play hockey in the spring?

Gabriel Landeskog has topped off his Calder winning season with another accolade: He's now the youngest captain in the history of the NHL.

In most cases I'm all for conservatively bringing along young players in the NHL, not giving them too much responsibility before they are ready, and putting them in the best possible position to succeed. Draft picks are too valuable to just throw an 18-year-old to the wolves and hope he can figure it out for himself.

That's why you might think I would be against Colorado's decision to name Landeskog their new captain, what with the added pressure and responsibility that comes with the title. But for certain special players, the choice is obvious. No one batted an eye when Jonathan Toews was named captain after his rookie season because he was such an obvious choice, he just oozed leadership (pesky teenage hormones). Landeskog is from a similar mould and as history has shown, young leaders work.

Check out The Good Point to read more.

Amazingly, this picture was not Photoshopped.

Labour negotiations between the league and the players' association are still in their infancy, despite the lockout deadline looming ever larger. The two sides are set to meet again today after the league tabled a new proposal that is much softer than their initial ludicrous demand. It still likely isn't going to go over well with the player's association, but it's a start.

The league's offer would cut the salary cap to $58 million next season, down more than $12 million from the current figure. As it stands now, there are 16 teams already over that limit, yet the league's offer did not include any sort of salary rollback. How are teams supposed to become cap compliant? Well, a contract amnesty would be a good start.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article for The Good Point on the benefits of a one-time contract amnesty. With the league's proposal there would have to be a five-time contract amnesty for some teams (looking at you, Calgary).

"I'm done. Good luck with Niklas Kronwall as your No. 1 defenceman."

It's a sad state of affairs when every article has to be prefaced with "if there is a season." It makes reading and writing about hockey almost a futile venture, unless of course you're actually reading and writing about labour negotiations (and I'm with most fans in the 'wake-me-when-it's-over' boat).

But in the face of an impending lockout, I'm taking the stance that there will be a season, facts be damned. The league is making too much money to throw it all away with another lost season. I'm sure the Sept. 15 deadline will pass and the players will get locked out, but this won't be a repeat of 2004, when the season was eventually cancelled.

So if there will be a season (and there better be), I might as well act like it's going to happen. Here's an article I wrote for The Good Point looking at a group of teams that are poised to drop in the standings this season (you know, if there is one).

Five Stanley Cups put Edmonton on the map, helping it land the nickname 'The City of Champions'. But if you listen to Oilers' owner Daryl Katz and Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel it's going to take a brand-new rink to put Edmonton on the map. And who should pay for that rink? Why not billionaire Daryl Katz, but rather the good people of Edmonton. What a surprise.

Sure, a nice, fancy, new arena would be a whole lot of fun, but when the public is held hostage by owners and made to subsidize the cost, which inevitably go way over budget, it's a scam.

Check out today's post at The Good Point to read more.

Unlike last year, this year's free agent market hasn't produced a feeding frenzy like everyone expected. Zach Parise and Ryan Suter got paid, but no team has taken the Florida Panthers approach of overpaying every average player available and hoping it's enough for the playoffs (I still can't believe it was for Florida).

Sure, the Flames overpaid both Dennis Wideman and the soon-to-regress-terribly Jiri Hudler, but that's just the Flames doing Flamesy things. Jay Feaster doesn't think he overpaid either of those players; in his mind the Flames got a steal. It will be interesting to see what the team does when the cap drops from $70 million. I want a camera there when someone tells Feaster he's over the cap by a good $5 million.

Yesterday at the Good Point I wrote about whether the big hold up on the UFA-front is due to the CBA that will expire at the end of the summer. I also speculate about whether a certain Tim Connolly, and players of his ilk, can be traded (hint: yes).

Building a team capable of winning the Stanley Cup is hard; building a team capable of doing it year after year is even harder.

The model franchise in the regard is the Detroit Red Wings, a team that won four Stanley Cups in the past 20 years, not to mention to other appearances in the Final. They’ve built a team about as close to a dynasty as you can get and are the type of organization that others try to emulate.

This year’s Stanley Cup Final pits two teams that could head in different directions after Gary Bettman hands over the silver mug. One, the LA Kings, have all the necessary ingredients to stay atop the NHL for the foreseeable future, whereas the other, the New Jersey Devils, may wind up being a one-and-done contender.

Check out yesterday’s post at The Good Point to read more.

It's not every year that the draft is brimming with talent. In 1999, aside from the Sedin twins, the draft was so barren that GMs were better off trading their first-round pick. The best players taken in the first-round, other than the Sedins, were probably Tim Connolly and Martin Havlat, two players so injury-prone teams have never really been able to count on them.

In other years, like 2003, you would have to be stupid not to draft a future cornerstone in the first-round. That year was so deep players like Ryan Kesler, Mike Richards, and Corey Perry went late in the first-round. Of course, that year the Leafs didn't have a first-round pick, thanks to the much complained about trade for Owen Nolan. So failing to find an elite player could have been due to stupidly trading your first-round pick, not just general draft stupidity.

Another year that is proving to be a bonanza is 2008, especially if you were looking for a defenceman. Toronto traded up to take Luke Schenn fifth overall that season, thankfully avoiding selecting someone like Nikita Filatov, but missing out on other game-breaking talents. Schenn has had an up-and-down career so far, but is only 22, an age in which many defencemen are just breaking into the league, whereas Schenn just completed his fourth.

Today's post at The Good Point takes a closer look at the 2008 NHL Entry Draft and compares the three elite defencemen that came out of it.

A smile only a hockey fan could love.

Despite my outward hatred for the Flyers, I have a secret to confess: They have a really likeable team. It is a team that has everything: size, speed, power, and finesse. Well, everything except goaltending that is. The only thing that isn’t likeable about them is that they are THE PHILADELPHIA FLYERS! Satan’s henchmen, I say.

But temporarily putting aside how loathsome the Flyers are as an entity, their players are awesome to watch.

Claude Giroux is fantastic, both offensively and defensively. He’s a great centreman, which is even more impressive considering he isn't your prototypical hulking centre. Philly could have 10 Zac Rinaldos and they would still be secretly likeable if they still had one Claude Giroux.

Wayne Simmonds is a big, strong, power-forward, who goes to the dirty areas and has even scored a goal with his face. I’m convinced that the only hockey player (not goon) that can counter Milan Lucic is Simmonds. We might even get to see that play out in round 2.

Danny Briere is a big-game, money player, which is always a cool narrative to see actually play out, unlike other “big-game” players (hint: Marc-Andre Fleury) that are only clutch in reputation.

Plus, they have Schenn the Good, or Good Schenn, depending on your dialect. Sure, watching him makes me a little sad on the inside as Nazem Kadri rots in the minors and Luke Schenn gets crushed by all the buses he’s under, but that doesn’t deter me from cheering for Brayden.

But the player that has most impressed me is Sean Couturier. It’s amazing to think the Blue Jackets traded both Couturier and Jakub Voracek for a couple months of Jeff Carter—a couple of injury-filled, petulant, unproductive months.

Read my latest post at The Good Point to find out what young Couturier has done to win me over.

Rebuilding is easy. Just look at St. Louis and Ottawa. Bad one year, amazing the next. It works that simply, so why is it taking forever in Toronto.

Those are the two most oft-cited examples of how a rebuild can happen overnight. Unfortunately, neither of those rebuilds happened overnight.

St. Louis was awful the first season after the lockout, finishing last in the Western Conference. The team took a step forward in 2006-07, finishing 10th in the West, although that progress was short-lived as the 2007-08 Blues finished second-last in the West. The Blues surprised in 2008-09, grabbing the No. 6 seed, but lost in the first round to Vancouver. Instead of linearly progressing in the next two seasons, the Blues actually finished with less points in each successive season.

Now after six seasons, five of which were spent outside of the playoffs, and two of which ended in lottery picks, the Blues are the class of the NHL. That hardly resembles a rebuild overnight.

In Ottawa's case, there has hardly been any rebuild at all. The team that is currently fighting for the Northeast Division title is largely the same team that finished in a lottery position last year. It's not even because the spirit of Mike Green took over Erik Karlsson's body. Don't believe me? Read today's post at The Good Point.

Just a couple of nerds.

Sports aren't just for jocks anymore: the nerds are taking over. The nerdification of sports has become so mainstream that Brad Pitt starred in a baseball movie about stats, not baseball. Thank Moneyball.

After reading Moneyball a few years ago I began to heavily read about sabermetrics and became a full-blown disciple of Bill James. For my upcoming fantasy baseball draft I've been looking at advanced stats to see who is likely to regress and who is the real deal. I'm really nerding out and loving every minute of it. I still have to make notes to myself reminding me not to draft B.J Upton, because no matter what some stats say, there are still some players that draw me in. Likewise, I will select multiple Blue Jays way before any sane person would select them, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

My love of advanced stats has only somewhat transferred over to hockey, and my knowledge is still very much in its infancy, but I am trying to incorporate more than just goals and assists into my evaluation of players. I find I spend much more time scanning behindthenet.ca before writing a post that either trashes or praises a player because I don't want the nerd squad to throw someone's corsi rating in my face.

As my search to cram my head with more hockey knowledge than useful life skills continues, I've taken a bit of a harder look at some traditional stats that I was once willing to accept. One of the primary stats I've grown skeptical of is plus/minus, which I previously used to solely inform my opinions about a player's defensive worth. However, I'm not ready to totally disregard plus/minus, which might brand me a leper among the fancy staters, but I don't care.

Today's post at The Good Point looks at the situations when plus/minus can be informative, as well as when it is absolutely worthless.

One seventh-round pick was used in the making of this photo.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article comparing the rebuilding efforts in Edmonton and Toronto, with the basis being that there are many ways to build a team, and the traditional tank hard and draft high method isn't always a guarantee for success.

I've thought a lot about how teams go about building a contender, mainly because the Maple Leafs are so routinely whipped for Brian Burke's current rebuild, and that led me to examine the league's top two teams, the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings.

The last time either team had a lottery pick was in 1999, which is the year New York selected Pavel Brendl fourth overall. You have to go all the way back to 1990 for the last time the Red Wings selected in the top-5; that year they took Keith Primeau third overall.

Clearly, neither team has undergone the prototypical rebuilding method, which most fans view as the only true way to create a legitimate Stanley Cup threat.

Today's article at The Good Point looks at just how the Rangers and Red Wings came to sit at the top of the standings.

After taking a couple months hiatus, I am back writing for The Good Point. I should have a piece out every other Thursday.

Today I wrote about the sorry state of the Columbus Blue Jackets. The vultures are certainly circling as the team rots in last place, and plenty of Leafs fans have turned their dreams of Bobby Ryan and Ryan Getzlaf into dreams of Jeff Carter and Rick Nash.

According to Sportsnet reporter John Shannon, close friends of Nash are saying the star winger is willing to waive his no-trade clause, but won't outright ask for a trade. Whether true or not, it has certainly fueled the speculation that Nash is on his way out of Columbus.

Elliotte Friedman of CBC made an excellent point in his 30-thoughts column this week, saying that with the Blue Jackets hosting the All-Star game next season, how can they trade Nash beforehand? Who is going to get the home fans excited?

In my article for The Good Point I'm actually defending the Blue Jackets and saying that a rebuild now might be one of the worst moves the franchise can make. Seeing how Columbus is pretty much the antithesis to a model expansion franchise they probably won't heed my advice.

Last week I conducted my first real interview. The lucky interviewee? None other than four-time Stanley Cup champion Claude Lemieux.

Lemieux has teamed up with researchers are Brock University to help curb the incidence of foot injuries that are seemingly being caused by modern skates. The thinking that lighter is faster, and faster is better might not be true.

Check out The Good Point for the full report.

The New Jersey Devils went through a disastrous season last year. They fell flat on their face and didn't put it all together until the new year, when they went on an impressive, but ultimately futile tear to close the season.

For the first time during the regular season the Devils also received sub-par goaltending from the immortal Martin Brodeur. Suddenly, after one season (and a brutal Olympic performance still fresh in everybody's mind), it looked like the game finally caught up to Brodeur.

Brodeur always seemed like the rock of those great Devils teams, and New Jersey continued to play well even after defensive stalwarts like Scott Stevens, Scott Niedermayer, and Brian Rafalski moved on, confirming as much.

So is this the end of the road for Brodeur? Or was last season just a minor bump in the road? Can we except a Roloson-like longevity out of Brodeur?

That's the issue I looked at for this week's article on The Good Point.

All the talk surrounding Rule 48 is that it's going to eliminate hitting from the NHL. That's a very knee-jerk reaction. More likely, there will be a temporary feeling out period between players and officials to deem what is and isn't legal. Eventually, players should become better hitters, without resorting to walloping each other over the head at every opportunity.

However, in the mean time, what does the rule mean for the big open-ice hitters in the league. Are they going to change their game in reaction to the new rule and how effectively will these players be with the new rule. Certainly, a player like Scott Stevens could never play in this NHL, he'd become a weekly guest star on Shanahan TV.

My post this week at The Good Point is on this very topic and how it relates specifically to Dion Phaneuf. How will the rule change affect Phaneuf's long road back the Norris calibre defenceman he once was in Calgary?

I also hope this is the last post I write on stupid head shots this season.

I could have become a Habs fan. A startling admission, I know.

My family is originally from Montreal and is full of die-hard Habs fans. But, for some reason, when my Dad was a kid he took no interest in le blue, blanc, et rouge (check out that awesome French I just pulled out). In fact, he was adamantly anti-Habs. Instead of cheering for the home town team who consistently won championships, my father decided to root for the Boston Bruins, the team that was consistently broken by the Habs.

Eventually, my Mother and Father moved to Toronto. The romantic in me likes to believe they moved to escape the oppressive Habs culture dominating their lives. This is unconfirmed.

It isn't hard to imagine if my Dad grew up a Habs fan he would have brainwashed me into the same cult when we were living in Toronto. Thankfully, he wasn't a Habs fan and didn't even attempt to brainwash me to become a Bruins fan.

So I merrily became a Leafs fan, aided by Doug Gilmour, Wendel Clark, Felix Potvin, and that upstart 1992-1993 team. I had a VHS copy of The Passion Returns that I taped off TV that I watched relentlessly. I usually stopped it before game 7 against the Kings.

This week for The Good Point I wrote about the state of the rivalry between the Leafs and the Habs. The family we still have living in Montreal are as Habs-centric as always, making family get-togethers full of good-natured ribbing. It's definitely more fun when the Leafs are doing well and I can do a little gloating (those being all but a distant memory now). The rivalry is alive to me. But is that still the general feeling around the league?

The Oilers are a team on the rise. They have Taylor Hall – who looks deadly, but sort of skates like he’s slack-jawed – and Captain Clutch, Jordan Eberle, which could become a pretty fearsome 1-2 punch in the near future. They also could have the ‘Nuge, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, but he’s about as heavy as a fart in a strong wind at this point, so he might not be making the team this season.

If the Oilers can only get some goaltending maybe they can make their big first step towards respectability this season. But if for some reason they have to actually play Nikolai Khabibulin more than 30 games this season they are headed straight for another 1st overall pick. Khabs is terrible. He can’t stop anything. It's amazing he stopped his car during that police check...

Check out The Good Point for my latest article looking at what's in store for the Oilers this season and beyond.

More than a few eyebrows were raised when the Flyers signed James van Riemsdyk to a 6-year deal worth $4.25 million per season. That sure seemed like a whole lot for someone who hasn't really done much in his career.

The deal has also emboldened some other restricted free agents, notably Kyle Turris. Sources told ESPN that Turris is now looking for a deal worth $4 million a season. Um, good luck with that, buddy. James van Riemsdyk has at least proved he's a quality NHL calibre player; Kyle Turris hasn't even come close to proving that.

My latest post at The Good Point tackles the JVR extension and argues that it's actually a lot more reasonable than people initially think. Sure, the Flyers are taking a risk. But they took the same risk with Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, and Claude Giroux, and those all worked out pretty well.

One final note: I have been named The Good Point's hockey columnist, which means I will have a weekly column that looks at some of the major issues in the NHL during a given week. The column will be published every Thursday, so set your clocks accordingly.

Once again, thanks for reading and supporting my writing.