Here are your Weekend Puck Headlines: A glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.
• You're David Frost. You're a former hockey coach and agent who was just acquitted on sexual exploitation charges involving teenage players, in a trial that featured salacious details of threesomes. What do you do? Declare yourself "hockey's number # 1 bad boy controversial figure" and start a Web site called Hockey God Online, of course. With the promise of photos featuring "hotties," and a monthly column from former New Jersey Devils and St. Louis Blues forward Mike Danton, who is currently in a U.S. prison until about 2010 ... for a failed murder-for-hire plot that allegedly targeted Frost, his former coach and agent. This story takes disturbing and disgusting to impressive new levels. [Ottawa Citizen, via Kukla]
• Seven reasons why Boston Bruins fans should believe that their team is a Stanley Cup contender this season. Reason No. 8: Every other team in Boston has a done the world championship thing in the last few years. Hell, even the Revolution were MLS Cup runners-up. [Boston Globe]
• Alexander Ovechkin? Evgeni Malkin? Ilya Kovalchuk? Pavel Datsyuk? Alexander Semin? Evgeni Nabokov? Who can be called the best Russian player in the NHL? [IIHF]
• Larry Brooks of the NY Post feels that players have become too big for fighting to continue in the NHL. Yes, that would be the same Larry Brooks who last year wrote: "Fighting is a part of the sport's heritage and remains a necessary component of a game that, at its most intense, is part Wild West." [NY Post]
• Say what you will about Brian Burke, but the man talks one hell of a game for the Toronto Maple Leafs: "Changing the general manager doesn't change the team. It is going to take some time and some patience. Changing the general manager does not change the roster we are going to dress tonight. It doesn't change the record of our team and it doesn't change the chapters of history with unfulfilled expectations that preceded today. What it does represent is the turning of the page." [National Post]
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• Coach Terry Murray sees Jason LaBarbera and Erik Ersberg each playing 10 of the next 20 games for the Los Angeles Kings. [Inside the Kings]
• A change in student ticket policy has produced a rare sight for Minnesota Golden Gophers games: Empty seats. [MNdaily.com]
• Pierre McGuire calls Montreal Canadiens forward Tom Kostopoulos "a monster," "a bulldozer" and "a spectacular guy." In some countries, that meets the conditions for a common law marriage. [Montreal Gazette]
• Attention stat geeks: You may be interested in what the PDO number is, what whether it can predict the last three-quarters of the season. [mc79hockey]
• Who's a soft European? Milan Michalek of the San Jose Sharks is getting his hands dirty this season, with more hits, blocked shots and penalty kill time. [Fear the Fin]
• Scotty Hockey breaks down an embarrassing 4-0 defeat to the Florida Panthers for the New York Rangers at home. [Scotty Hockey]
• Finally, it was Sci-Fi Night at the Minnesota Wild/Nashville Predators game last week. Which meant it was time for the local "Star Wars" costuming society to send one of its own repelling down from the rafters, dressed as Boba Fett. (Around the 2:00 mark.)
