The calm before the storm.

"I won't rest until I win the Stanley Cup". That was a quote from Patrick Lalime, goaltender for the Ottawa Senators, a team that almost every prognosticator except me is picking to win the cup. My reply to Lalime quote: Well Patrick, you're going to be a very tired man until the Sens fire Jacques Martin. That's right. The Dungy Theory carries over from last year and is in full effect. For all you doubters of the theory I'm planning on ordering in a big shipment of crow at the end of the season when the Sens fall short yet again. My only question is how do you like you're crow prepared? Well done? Rare?

	Even with the loss of Ray Whitney, Columbus will improve this year.

My Acne team of the year…….. or the team most likely to breakout: I was going to say Atlanta here but the unfortunate car accident left the Thrashers in a mental and on-ice state of disarray. Hopefully Heatley can bounce back from this injury because with Dan Snyder's unfortunate passing it may be very difficult mentally for Heatley to refocus on hockey. Hockey will not exactly be the focus for Heatley as the mental distress of Snyder's death, the rehab needed to recover from his own injuries and the necessary investigation and judicial process are the most prevalent issues. Instead I'm picking Columbus as my breakout team. They've added some good veterans like Todd Marchant from the Oilers, Trevor Letwoski from the Canucks and Darryl Sydor who will help tutor Rostislav Klesla. Marc Denis is solid in net and Rick Nash provides creativity and scoring. Making the playoffs may not be a possibility this year; that will likely come next year when rookie Nikolai Zherdev joins the team.

	The originator of the "bald part".

When in doubt do as the NFL: This year home teams will no longer sport white jerseys. Instead they'll opt for coloured jerseys which makes sense because then they can crack out their alternative jerseys at home without having to clear it with the road teams. Prior to this year road teams had to be notified so they could bring their road and home jerseys in the event a home team wanted to wear a coloured jersey. It just makes sense to wear alternative jerseys in front of home crowds. I mean that's who is going to be purchasing the jerseys. There's no other purpose for third jerseys other than the extra revenue stream from sales. It took awhile for the NHL to catch onto this concept that was popularized by the NFL. Basically anytime a league is in need of a good idea they should just raid the NFL because they are the most sound league from top to bottom…..well other than officiating. You're penalizing Simeon Rice for having good vertical? Shouldn't other leagues pay royalties to the NFL for using their ideas, similar to how Justin Timberlake should pay royalties for the use of the bald part that Mike Tyson popularized?

Armageddon?: Maybe they can bring in a team of deep-sea oil drillers to save the CBA talks. Put Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis with Gary Bettman & Bob Goodenow for a few days and I'm sure this thing will be resolved in no time.

Steve Yzerman is possibly playing his last year. It would be hard to see Yzerman sit out for an entire year if there ends up being a lengthy lockout. I mean it's a miracle the he's even walking. He had his knee cap realigned and the doctors basically stuck a door stop in his knee to realign it and take pressure of it. Yzerman will never get the respect he deserves and it's because he broke into the league when Lemieux and Gretzky were dominating. Yzerman and fellow soon to be retiree Ron Francis are perhaps the two most underrated players in the NHL.

Seriously, how much is Marian Gaborik asking for from Minnesota? For a team that has little to no offense to begin with they don't have very strong leverage in these negotiations. What do they plan to do? Hope to force a 0-0 tie in each game? The Oilers and Senators can afford to take a harsher stand with Mike Comrie and Martin Havlat because those teams won't miss their presence as much. Comrie and Havlat's holdouts make as much sense as the MLB trade deadline. Anyone want to explain how Brian Giles gets traded to the Padres a full month after the deadline?

As long as the Rangers don't bring in any more bodies they should have a good year. They've had a chance to gel and create some chemistry and they look to have two pretty good scoring lines (Nedved-Kovalev-Hlavac & Carter-Lindros-Rucinsky) plus a tough checking line of Chris Simon, Matthew Barnaby and Bobby Holik. The defense is still suspect but on the overall they're much better than at this point last year.

Colorado Situation: These guys will end up scoring more than a rock band backstage. It's tough for me to cheer for a team that is clearly taking one last stab at buying a cup before the NHL tries to institute some sort of salary cap. Plus Peter Forsberg has expressed desire to want to go back to Sweden to play some hockey before he retires altogether. How great must Sweden be to live in for Forsberg, Markus Naslund and Niklas Lidstrom to constantly tease the early retirement angle? Is there something about Sweden we don't know? I mean we don't see all the Czech and Finnish players clamoring to get back to their native countries. It's funny because when Dominik Hasek left Detroit last year he cited one of his reasons for retiring was the fact that he wanted his kids to grow up and get an education in the Czech Republic. Twelve months later I guess mauling other roller hockey players got tiresome and boring and a move back to Detroit suddenly took major precedence over his children's education.

Enjoy the season as I leave you with my Cup predictions:

Safe Prediction: Detroit Red Wings vs. New Jersey Devils
Bold Prediction: St. Louis Blues vs. New York Rangers