Both the Stars and Flames are in for some serious evaluation -- in Dallas, it starts in the front office; in Calgary with a veteran roster that may require turning iconic captain Jarome Iginla into trade bait. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

While everyone is talking playoff matchups and predicting the number of stitches that doctors will need to close the combined wounds of the Penguins and Flyers, there are 14 other clubs who are packing up for the summer and planning for next season. Here’s a roundup of the NHL’s also-rans and what might be in store for them during the offseason. We’ll start at the bottom of the league and work our way up.

Columbus – Yes, the Blue Jackets won seven of their last 11 games and ownership continues to back the hockey department, but the team’s dreadful start when so much was expected, its last place finish, the coaching change, the fan protest, and the Rick Nash mess all made for a dreadful season. The future of interim coach Todd Richards is uncertain, but the huge question mark is Nash’s fate. If he is traded — which is widely expected — what will embattled GM Scott Howson get in return? Will it be enough to reverse this club’s direction and win back the many discontented fans? Michael Arace of The Columbus Dispatch summed it all up over the weekend.

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Steven Stamkos still has a legitimate chance to become only the second 60-goal scorer since 1995-96. (Scott Audette/Getty Images)

Should a player whose team fails to make the playoffs get consideration for the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP? That’s a question voters for the award may be faced with this season because Steven Stamkos of the Tampa Bay Lightning has been so valuable player to his club.

It’s possible that the question won’t need to be asked, though, because Tampa Bay’s improved play during the last six weeks has given them a shot at the postseason. A main reason they have, however, it is Stamkos.

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Not many deadline deals work out as well as the Islanders' acquisition of forward Butch Goring in 1980. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

It wasn’t always this way, this craziness around the NHL trade deadline, when all the talk turns to who might be headed where and the actual games — yes, the regular season is still going on — seem to take a back seat to all manner of rumors and speculation. Once upon a time, the trade deadline came and went with little fanfare. All that changed on March 13, 1980, thanks to Islanders GM Bill Torrey when he acquired Butch Goring, the final piece in what became a great dynasty.

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If ever one needed a visual representation of what separates hockey from other sports, Thursday night’s little rumpus at Madison Square Garden could be Exhibit A. Showboating and taunting, while discouraged in other sports, is more strictly verboten in hockey. And when someone crosses the hotdog line, the game’s vigilante impulses kick in.

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First-year coach MIke Yeo has quietly made his low-profile Wild into an early Western Conference leader. (Brace Hemmelgarn-US PRESSWIRE)

Far away from the glaring spotlight of expectation that will shine on high-profile first-time NHL head coaches Dale Hunter and Kirk Muller, a little-known former Penguins assistant is doing some pretty special things in his first crack at running a team.

Mike Yeo, the NHL’s youngest coach,  has his Minnesota Wild tied with the Chicago Blackhawks for first place overall in Western Conference after a 3-1 win over Tampa Bay on Monday night.  Yeo may be less celebrated than the two former NHL captains who were newly installed in Washington and Raleigh, but they’d be happy to have his level of achievement after their first 24 games.
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In one of the season's most bizarre scenes, Braydon Coburn and other Flyers defensemen simply held the puck while waiting in vain for the Lightning to abandon their 1-3-1 trap. (Photo by Chris O'Meara/AP)

One of the most anticipated topics discussed at the GMs meetings in Toronto on Tuesday was the fallout from the Flyers-Lightning game last week.  The managers declined to consider any new rules in response to the bizarre scenes  in which Philadelphia refused to advance the puck after Tampa Bay went into its 1-3-1 defense. No Lightning player pressured the puck and the closest Tampa Bay skater was back on the offensive blueline, but the Flyers refused to move. That could change if we see a re-run of that strangeness in the future.

Most interesting were the remarks of Flyers GM Paul Holmgren, who indicated that he was not comfortable with the passive way his team responded to the trap. “To me, it just didn’t sit right,” he said of the  ploy.
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Isn’t that video above terrific? On Wednesday night, Tampa Bay’s 1-3-1 defense against Philadelphia forced Mike Milbury to storm off the set in Versus’s studio during the second intermission, and that’s reason enough for us to nominate the Lightning’s Guy Boucher as not just NHL Coach of Year, but also for the The George Foster Peabody Award for distinguished and meritorious public service to television.

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On Monday night, the new-look Panthers took full advantage of the struggling Lightning in a 7-4 win. (Chris O'Meara/AP)

If the Avs are the NHL’s big early season surprise team, the two Florida clubs also have to rank as surprising, but for different reasons.

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Solid gold: Nashville and the Predators will be showing their new colors next season. (Mark Humphrey/AP)

Let’s take a skate around the NHL and look at some news on this summer day.

The biggest item comes out of Columbus, well, Sweden actually, where Blue Jackets forward Kristian Huselius, who was recovering from April hip surgery, tore a pectoral muscle while weightlifting and will miss four to six months. He had surgery Thursday morning in Columbus and is lost to the club until November at the earliest, January at the latest. GM Scott Howson tweeted that “surgery went well,” and added “We r looking at options to help get us through.” Read More…

Brad Marchand and the Bruins gave as good they got in the playoffs, but in the end, Boston was mentally tougher than its opponents during the long march to the Stanley Cup. (Anne-Marie Sorvin/US Presswire)

While joy justifiably reigns in Boston, the Bruins and their fans are the only group that gets to celebrate. Like the notes of support that people are still leaving on Vancouver police cars, there are some important leftover thoughts to express in the aftermath of the B’s seven-game Stanley Cup triumph, many about what we’ve learned about the state of the game this year and where things might go.

Some of that concerns hockey’s fan culture, one we all celebrate for its loyalty and passion but one that also engenders such hostility that fans rioted in the aftermath of Game 7, making the championship a secondary story. It gave a wonderful city a huge emotional wound and tarred hockey in the process.

To the world at large, hockey fan violence was the culprit. A lot has been written and speculated about what occurred last Wednesday night in the streets of Vancouver. And what I’ve read and watched from afar indicates that while the instigators of this terrible event were not necessarily hockey fans, but organized criminals who would have rioted win or lose (as they apparently tried to do at the Vancouver Olympics, but were thwarted due to prior police knowledge– they adjusted their tactics and such to avoid detection this time), fans certainly joined in, swept up in the mindless mob mentality of the moment.

But they don’t get sucked into that vortex quite so easily if the passions around the game don’t overflow out of control into such extreme blind rage and what was really mass insanity.
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