With the demotion of goaltender Maxime Daigneault, Tarik El-Bashir has deduced that the Caps will use Maxime Ouellet as Olie Kolzig's backup for the coming season. Hard-hitting investigative reporting, considering that the move left the Caps with only two goaltenders in camp. According to the snoozer of an article in the WaPo, Ouellet could see upwards of 20 starts.Dave Fay wasted less space saying the same thing and spent the remainder of his article talking about how the rule changes are good for hockey. Zzzzzz.
CNNSI.com's Darren Eliot has his preview of the Caps up.
There's also a disturbing rumor floating around that Alexander Semin played for Lada last night and is going to stay in Russia. Will the saga with this kid ever end?
Monday's Scoreboard:
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Columbus needed a shootout goal from Jaroslav Balastik to beat Pittsburgh 3-2, despite having 16 power play opportunities (and scoring on just one). Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 31 of 33 shots for the Pens, who played without Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby, among others.
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Martin St. Louis picked up where he left off last year, scoring a goal and adding two assists in Tampa's 5-3 win over Detroit. Freddy Modin and Kris Draper each had a pair of goals and an assist for the 'Ning and Wings, respectively, and John Grahame beat Manny Legace in a battle of two netminders fighting for their team's starting job.
- The Devils have to cut $2.22 million in salary over the next two weeks to get under the salary cap. Likely candidates to be shipped out of the swamp for a bucket of pucks are Viktor Kozlov, Sergei Brylin, Jeff Friesen and/or Jamie Langenbrunner.
- Avalanche wing Milan Hejduk has undergone arthroscopic knee surgery and will miss four to five weeks.
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Pavel Datsyuk is back with the Wings. Can Ilya Kovalchuk's return to Atlanta be far behind?