News of the Colorado Avalanche - Links from around the NHL - March 6th, 2013

First up, I wanted to wish DDC a happy birthday.

Ryan O`Reilly still is a character guy, he is still a total rink rat.

Forty-five minutes after the first guy had left the ice, the last guy was still out there. Some members of the Colorado Avalanche were already showered, dressed and boarding a team bus while Ryan O’Reilly did one of his funky drills – taking a pass, popping the puck over a stick shaft, maneuvering it around a water bottle, firing a shot. Everyone was gone by the time O’Reilly did the last of his gassers.

Ryan O'Reilly wants to be a go-to guy in all situations for the Avs. (Getty Images)O’Reilly was doubled over, stick on his knees, when a maintenance man pushed a stepladder across the ice, now an empty, choppy mess. Was it a hint to get the heck off so someone else could work?

“Guess so,” O’Reilly said with a smile.

Globe and Mail has an interesting article based on some new research.

We have known for a decade that there are fewer collisions on the Olympic ice than on the NHL ice. In 2004, Toronto Western Hospital neurologist Dr. Richard Wennberg published a study that analyzed video from two recent Stanley Cup finals and compared them to play at the world junior championship and Olympics on the larger ice.

The average NHL playoff game had 264 hits; the average international game 170. The intensity of a Stanley Cup final accounts for some discrepancy, but international playoff hockey can be intense as well.

There is undeniably a difference, as confirmed a year ago by Alexei Kovalev, who returned to Moscow to play following 18 seasons in the NHL.

Stephen Weiss is injured.

Stephen Weiss may have played his final game with the Florida Panthers, with the team revealing on Tuesday that the veteran forward is expected to have season-ending wrist surgery.

Weiss will have the surgery next week, said Panthers general manager Dale Tallon.

“Not good news,” Tallon said in Sunrise, Fla., after the Panthers completed a game-day morning skate. Florida was preparing to host Winnipeg at home later Tuesday night.

A member of the Calgary Flames almost played for the doomed Lokomotiv team.

As soon as he heard of the crash which killed all but one member of the KHL's Lokomotiv Yaroslavl squad, Joey MacDonald immediately thought of his friends who were killed.

Lokomotiv coach Brad McCrimmon was an assistant coach the season before with the Detroit Red Wings, who MacDonald played 15 games for the previous season.

Ruslan Salei was also a teammate with the Red Wings.

Fellow goalie Stefan Liv and he were teammates in Grand Rapids back in the 2006-07 campaign.

Eventually, MacDonald had another thought.

"Someone was looking out for me," he said.