Afternoon News Roundup: Wings Players Play, Preseason Games Don't

Since yesterday morning, we've had three hockey games involving Red Wings players. Just like the last time, we've got one win and two losses to report.

Jakub Kindl's HC Pardubice is the hardest of the teams to track, but they got killed in front of a big crowd against the Czech Extraliga's Kladno by a score of 6-3, a team that coasted on having Jaromir Jagr, Tomas Plekanec, and a handful of other locked-out NHL players. Kindl was a -2 in the game and now sits as a -4 through his two games with zero points from Pardubice's blueline. From what I can gather of the translated interview with Ladsliav Lubina, Pardubice's assistant coach, the team was generally outclassed by superior competition and couldn't make up for a timid first period.

Pardubice plays again tomorrow against Slavia Praha, a club which includes St. Louis Blues' youngster Vladimir Sobotka.

Pavel Datsyuk's CSKA Moscow lost a bit of a heartbreaker today against Andrei Kostitsyn and his Traktor Chelyabinsk squad. Pavs assisted on the game's opening goal just 1:07 in and notched a second assist on a faceoff win turned into a bomb from the point by Evgeny Ryasensky which put CSKA up 2-1 early in the third. Three goals in two minutes followed which left the game tied at 3-3 for a majority of the third period. Unfortunately, a late Andrei Popov tally put Traktor up with only 1:30 to play. The next shift was dangerous for CSKA, but the danger subsided as the whistle blew and Alex Radulov got himself two minutes for slashing in a post-whistle scrum, and then got himself kicked out of the rest of the game when he shoved a linesman out of the way so he could verbally berate the ref who gave him the penalty. With Raddles in the dressing room and CSKA shorthanded, they were not able to pull even.

CSKA's next game is Saturday against Avtomobilist Ykaterinburg, which is Pavel's hometown team.

Valtteri Filppula's Jokerit Helsinki won their match against Ilves, although it took a shootout for a winner to be decided. Flip didn't factor into the scoring during regulation (he did score in the shootout), finishing at an even rating and four shots on goal, but by all accounts, he played well and was effective. Again, Filppula's older brother Ilari got on the scoreboard. Wings' prospect Teemu Pulkkinen also notched an assist, went +2, and got to serve a too-many-men penalty for his club.

Jokerit plays again on Saturday against HPK, who has a guy named Juuso Honka, whose name is great.

In Other News

The mothership reportings that the NHL has emptied the remainder of their preseason schedule.

The NHL canceled the remainder of their 2012 preseason on Thursday. This means that there will be no hockey through Oct. 8. The regular season, scheduled to begin Oct. 11, now seems in jeopardy.

This comes a little over a week after the league was forced to cancel all preseason games through Sept. 30. The cancellation of the preseason stems from the lockout of the NHL Players Association, which was enacted on Sept. 15 after the NHL and NHLPA failed to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.

I don't necessarily agree that the league was *forced* to cancel the games, but po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to on that one.

Both sides are also expected to meet tomorrow to discuss non-core economic issues such as contract lengths, arbitration, and just about anything other than the split of HRR.

While the cancellation of the remainder of the preseason isn't a good thing, the fact that both sides are at least finally talking about something is a positive. If nothing else, it puts all the bargaining chips where they belong so the two sides can more-clearly trade those in when it comes time to solve the most-contentious of the issues.