Quick Hits: 10/6

Time until the puck drops on the 2010-11 NHL season is getting down to being measured in hours instead of days.  Tomorrow kicks off the NHL season proper, but who cares?  Our Red Wings play their season and home opener Friday Night.  Meanwhile, let's take a look around and see what's up out there in the blogosphere.

First up, Red Wings News:

If This Is It...Farewell To An Original Grinder:  If you haven't read A2Y's piece about Kirk Matlby's career with the Red Wings, you should fix that immediately.  [Abel to Yzerman]

The Lilja Debacle: Did Detroit Lowball Him?: Chris from NOHS discusses the Andreas Lilja situation by taking on a commenter who feels a 1-year, $1M offer for $250K less than his last deal for the defenseman who's now two years older and a big concussion risk was an insulting lowball offer for the guy whose agent it seems talked him out of two NHL contracts. [Nightmare on Helm Street]

The Jonathan Ericsson Watch: Well, it started its career as an egg timer and is now trying to adjust to counting UP; it does have a nice big hand though.  No.. sorry, that's not what this is about.  Ellen wants to know how long you think Jonathan Ericsson will keep his starting job over Jakub Kindl.  Nobody has him lasting into November.  Quelle surprise [Big Red Machine]

TP:60 - Episode 1 (Part 2): if you didn't listen to part 1, which Graham linked to on Monday, you should catch up.  This season of The Production Hour is going to be fantastic [The Production Line]

Note from Khan - Red Wings Season Opener Pushed Back to 7:30: It's the last note in an article mostly about Ericsson's move to the first pairing with lidstrom, but it's important.  Reset your social calendar for Friday Night back a half an hour. [mlive]

Elsewhere Around the League:

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Accept The Shane O'Brien/Ryan Parent Trade: Dirk Hoag digs into relative Corsi and other fun sta..zzzzzzzz....*snort*..huh?  Oh, sorry.  Bottom line is it seems Nashville's defense got technically better on the bottom, but also more likely to take penalties and possibly harder to control in the locker room.  With Barry Trotz and Shea Weber calling the shots, it doesn't seem like that would be a problem, but O'Brien isn't the only attitude reclamation project on that squad [On The Forecheck]

Erik Johnson Reaches Turning Point Of Short Career: The former first overall pick by the worst professional hockey team in Missouri (hey, I'm not wrong) is 22 years old and has the nice grown-up men at StLouisGameTime worried that he'll never be as good as promised before he was attacked by a golf cart. (My favorite comment from the article (responding to how he was drafted before Jordan Staal): "Jordon has been a bust though") [St Louis Game Time]

Is the NHL trending in the right direction?: Mike Chen takes a look at the state of the NHL in several different areas: the on-ice product, player safety, the international game, TV broadcasts and business.  I think he glosses over the problems some of the smaller markets are having in favor of looking at the big picture in giving the business rating, but he's not wrong that in general, the NHL is moving in the right direction from a growing-the-market standpoint. [From The Rink]

Scab Officials Will Not Be A Necessity: In something of an underreported story, the NHL and the NHL's Officials Association have reached a deal that will keep professional refs on the ice for the upcoming hockey season.  We give the pro refs a lot of grief for their mistakes, but you can't imagine how bad it would be with scabs in their place mucking up calls.  NHL-paced refereeing is incredibly difficult [SB Nation NHL Page]

The Oregon Trail: Sports and the City takes Brian Burke and the Maple Leafs through the Oregon Trail.  Many oxen were sacrificed and at least one crap-eater got dysentery.  Find out if they made it. [Sports And The City]