Daily Cupcakes - Links from around the locked out NHL - September 27th, 2012

Shane O`Brien 's thoughts on the lockout can be summed up in a very short sentence. "It's crappy."

Port Hope native Shane O’Brien is experiencing his first National Hockey League lockout.

O’Brien was playing professional hockey in 2004/2005 — when a full NHL season was washed away — but he was with Cincinnati of the American Hockey League as a prospect of the Anaheim Ducks at the time.

"Being a young kid I didn’t really care about the lockout because I was in the American league and there were a lot of good players that would have been in the NHL, but came down and made the (AHL) a better league," O’Brien said over the phone from Newport Beach, California on Tuesday.

Update on an ex-Avalanche player: Warren Rychel. He owns and runs an Ontario Hockey League club.

Ranked an A-list prospect by NHL Central Scouting on its preliminary players-to-watch list, Rychel hopes to be taken in the first round of the 2013 NHL Draft. It would be a significant achievement for Rychel, whose father was passed over twice in the draft before working his way through the International Hockey League to the National Hockey League, where he forged a 406-game career spread across nine seasons with five teams, including a spot on the 1996 Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche.

"It's just one of those things where he's done all the work to put himself in that position," Warren Rychel said of his son. "It would be pretty neat. I'm sure we'll be there as a family.

An article about the way the NHL'ers will get paid if there is no hockey in October.

NHL players won’t receive salaries if the lockout extends into the season, but 15 of the league’s 50 highest-paid players will get money from their teams because of bonuses or injuries.

When Shea Weber signed an offer sheet from the Philadelphia Flyers, it included a $13 million signing bonus that he received once the Nashville Predators matched. He’ll miss out on $1 million in salary while locked out.

Zach Parise and Ryan Suter each got a $10 million signing bonus from the 13-year, $98 million deals they signed with the Minnesota Wild.

Nail Yakupov isn't feeling the love.

In the case of Nail Yakupov, the first pick in the 2012 draft, it came in the form of getting his skates tangled in red tape — a somewhat fitting introduction to a league that currently has locks on its doors.

The Edmonton Oilers prospect, who had played two games for Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk of the KHL this season, was suspended Wednesday and the Russian hockey federation fined about $5,000 by the International Ice Hockey Federation after it was revealed that Hockey Canada had not signed his international transfer card releasing him from the Ontario Hockey League’s Sarnia Sting.

Apparently some people still have issues with the way the 1972 Summit Games were played!

Esposito is more likely to be apoplectic if you criticize what went down between Canada and the Soviet Union during the eight-game series as going far beyond the rules.

"We were going to do whatever it took to win. It didn't matter," Esposito said of series, which celebrates the 40th anniversary of its conclusion Friday.

"People nowadays are ridiculing us -- I had some people send me mail saying, 'I'm so ashamed you're Canadians because you didn't play fair and were dirty.' Those people don't understand. We did whatever we had to do.

"It was f---ing war."