Sean Tomlinson

Our current hockey climate is starved for its superstar, causing every morsel of news, and every tweet that starts with “UPDATE” to be heavily magnified. We want Sidney Crosby, need Sidney Crosby, and were left feeling empty when Crosby vanished from the 2010-11 hockey season shortly after his magnificent 25-game point streak ended last December.

We’re sure he’ll be fine, but we just don’t know, because you never know with head trauma. Add it all up, and a mini Armageddon occurs with every report of a potential Crosby setback, followed by someone in the Pens front office dousing the burning flames with their industrial-sized bucket of water.

Start filling that bucket again, Ray Shero, because CTV Atlantic has started another raging inferno…

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We’re all remembered for something when we leave our jobs after years of diligent work, and logging hours to serve the man. Maybe it’s that time you filed a really good TPS report, or maybe you were that guy who always made sure there was paper towel on the roll in the office cafeteria. Everyone loves that guy.

Chris Drury announced his retirement today, and despite a successful if not spectacular career during stops in Colorado, Calgary, Buffalo, and New York that ended with 255 goals and 615 points over 892 games, the 35-year-old will be remembered for being an obscenely over-priced disaster in New York. But that legacy isn’t his fault.

Thanks, Glen Sather.

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An NHL without Teemu Selanne just doesn’t feel like an NHL at all. It feels cold, dark, barren, and empty. It feels like the 2010-11 Florida Panthers.

This isn’t necessarily because Selanne is still the same superstar he was when he first broke into the league in 1954 (that’s possibly off by a few years, but only a few). He isn’t, but amazingly at the age of 41 he’s not off by much. Selanne has averaged 35.4 goals per year over his 19 seasons, and he scored 31 times last year to go along with 80 points over 72 games.

That’s pretty damn good for a forward who played his first NHL game in 1992, the same year the world gave us such modern pop culture icons as Selena Gomez, Taylor Lautner, and most importantly, Kate Upton. He is the league’s bionic man, periodically missing time with injuries, but always recovering and reverting to his typical goal-scoring form.

So if he’s going to wait until September to tell us if he’s coming back for a 20th season, that’s just fine.

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This is also the exact face that Ryan Callahan made when he was handed over $12 million this afternoon.

Now they just need to avoid having to squeak into the playoffs, and generally stop being known more for winning free agency battles off the ice than winning anything of consequence on the ice. No big deal.

After avoiding arbitration with Brandon Dubinsky and Brian Boyle, Glen Sather found his money bag just before another arbitration hearing. The clock was ticking down to Ryan Callahan’s appointment with an arbitrator tomorrow, but New York secured the RFA just as his agent was getting ready to board a plane to Toronto.

Callahan will remain a Ranger for the next three years with a contract worth $12.825 million, and an annual cap hit of $4.275 million.

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