I must be pretty dense. All along I thought Ilya Kovalchuk was flirting with staying with his St. Petersburg SKA team because he loved his country so much and was finally eating his favourite foods again. It barely registered on me that SKA, and probably the KHL head comrades, were offering him millions to stay. [...]

I woke this morning to the news – that NHL brains have made a sharp u-turn and hockey will begin again, maybe on January 15, maybe on January 19. (Details can be found on 8,537 news and sports sites). I’m not ready for this. I’m not finished talking about Gary Bettman and rich hockey players [...]

St. Petersburg SKA cheerleader cheers her team on. Maybe she’s singing – “Rah rah sis boom bah, Let’s go comrades, let’s go SKA We need a goal, so send out Kovalchuk, And about the NHL – who gives a flying $#%^&” Photo taken by Denis Brel. And if you can read Russian, you can see [...]

Ilya Kovalchuk, Alex Ovechkin, Sergei Kostitsyn, Pavel Datsyuk and a few other Russians are now saying they might just stay in Russia. Are you feeling bad about this? Nobody forced these guys to come to North America, and when they did come, the vaults were opened and they dove in head first, drooling and panting. [...]

My Russian stepson Denis Brel went to a KHL game a few days ago in St. Petersburg, and it just happened to be Ilya Kovalchuk’s first game at his new home rink after returning to his homeland due to the lockout. Denis says the rink holds 12,000 people, but 14,000 squeezed in, because to see [...]

The New Jersey Devils edged Los Angeles 2-1 in a feisty and puck-bouncing game five, with pucks rattling off goal posts, sticks slicing people’s faces, and Martin Brodeur being great and also lucky. So the series continues, with L.A. now holding a slight 3-2 game advantage, and feeling not quite as good about themselves as they were a couple [...]

You haven’t asked but I’ll tell you anyway. I’ve got time after polishing off my cheez whiz on Russian rye and lemon drink concoction that is supposed to be healthy and kills enemy cells but I really have no idea. Would I like to see Alex Ovechkin play for the Habs? No. But I’d take Evgeny Malkin or Ilya [...]

Things are going as Hollywood producers might hope. Los Angeles on one coast and New York on the other take their openers in their bid to meet each other in the Stanley Cup final. The Rangers blank the Devils 3-0 on home ice Monday night, and regardless of how well the Devils played, as Glenn Healy kept reminding us, the name of the [...]

Montreal edged the New Jersey Devils 2-1 in this early 10 a.m PST morning matinee, and try as they may, they didn’t blow it. But could they have made it any harder on themselves? As so frequently happens with the Canadiens, they found themselves with the lead, 2-0 in fact, and as also happens, they [...]

What do you expect when the Canadiens play the New Jersey Devils in New Jersey? You expect a tight, low-scoring game. And if you’re a Habs fan, you expect a win of course. Which is what happened on this Saturday night in early April as the Montreal boys, led by Mathieu Darche with two goals, [...]