It isn't just fans and media comparing Colorado Avalanche's Gabe Landeskog to Peter Forsberg ... Jean-Sebastien Giguere does it too.
You don't want to put too much on the kid, because no matter how he looks, no matter how he plays, he's still only 19 years old.
You don't want to keep comparing him to Peter Forsberg, his childhood hero, just because Forsberg was Swedish and played for the Colorado Avalanche. You don't want to keep comparing him to Jeff Skinner, either, just because they played together in junior and remain close friends.
It's too easy. It's not fair.
"You see it. You see that he's hungry for the net. You see that he's going to be …"
Pause.
"He reminds me a lot of a guy like Peter Forsberg."
The debate about whether or not NHL players should be heading to the Olympics in 2014 might get heated.
While Lowe and his management team will have the luxury to choose from the best players in the NHL whose teams didn’t qualify for the playoffs, it hasn’t yet been determined whether that will be the case for Sochi.
"I also want to make it very clear that Hockey Canada certainly hopes that NHL players will be playing in Russia in the 2014 Olympics, but it’s not Hockey Canada’s decision," Nicholson said. "This is a decision that will be made by the National Hockey League (and) the National Hockey League Players’ Association through their collective bargaining agreement."
Yzerman believes he will be able to assemble another team comprised of Canada’s best.
"I think at the end of the day everyone will agree that it’s good for the game and we’ll work something out," Yzerman said. "Obviously if the NHL isn’t involved, it’s going to be a dramatically different tournament. You’ve got to figure out who will coach, who will play, but we’ll work that out."
CBC - the television station that hosts Hockey Night in Canada - isn't making friends with the NHL.
Cherry tailored the facts on Saturday about Burke trying to have him fired. It’s not simply the Maple Leafs who are carrying a grudge over his flamboyant and persistent criticisms of the NHL and its product. When CBC executives made a pilgrimage to the NHL board of governors, they were rudely greeted by criticism of Cherry and MacLean from the Ottawa Senators and Vancouver Canucks, whose complaints about biased coverage and editorial failings have been voiced on other occasions.
The league, too, has been less than enthusiastic about Cherry’s demeaning of the new rules, discipline czar Brendan Shanahan, and the refereeing. Commissioner Gary Bettman appears to be boycotting Hockey Night in Canada after several contentious interviews with MacLean. Some of this is predictable, of course. As the expression goes, journalism’s goal is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
But it is becoming clear that CBC may pay a price for countenancing the Ron ’n’ Don agenda of old-time values. NHL officials would not comment publicly on whether the pair would be an impediment to CBC retaining all or some of the next national TV rights package in Canada, which begin in 2014.
One last thing, we expect to hear word about Steve Downie 's injury later today.