Derek Stepan is just one of 8 former college players listed in today's Transactions. (Photo: BroadwayHockeyDaily.com)

Thursday’s start to the NHL Free Agent signing period was a nice pace of busy – just enough to keep die-hards engaged, but not so much as to seem like free agents were being tossed like slippery fish in Pike’s Place Fish Market in Seattle.

For us college hockey fans out there, many of the giant moves of the day had little to do with college hockey alumni. That isn’t to say that college hockey alumni stayed still – some moved, one officially left early, and we found a blog favorite swapped right before bedtime on free agency eve. A few quick notes for college hockey fans looking to keep up with Day 1:

- University of Vermont hangs with the Gophers and Badgers. Of the eight college hockey players (my own hand count – feel free to call me out if I’m wrong) changing hands or signing deals since late Wednesday evening, two were from the University of Vermont: Martin St. Louis (whose four year contract extension with the Lightning was previously announced but officially went through today) and The Swedish, blog favorite Viktor Stalberg (who found himself a part of a giant deal where he was swapped with others by the Maple Leafs in exchange for Chicago Blackhawks Kris Versteeg and Bill Sweatt, a Colorado College alum.) The Catamounts tied with the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota for the most amount of former college players listed on the transaction wire in the past 24 hours (2 each). Now about that “former players” bit, Badgers….

- Derek Stepan officially ended his college career today. Stepan, the WCHA leader in points and assists this past season, ended his collegiate elgibility by agreeing to terms with the New York Rangers (quite the college hockey friendly franchise, eh?) He played two seasons for the Badgers, and captained the victorious squad at this year’s World Junior Championships. Not a shocking early leave, but still a early college departure in a season chock full of them…

- The State of Hockey gets one of their own. St. Cloud State alum Matt Cullen was signed to a three year deal by the Minnesota Wild today, after playing with the Carolina Hurricanes and Ottawa Senators this past year. Cullen is from Virginia, MN, giving him what is sure to be the “Little Boy In Minnesota” dream trifecta: grow up in Minnesota, play college hockey in Minnesota, then play professional hockey in Minnesota. Awww. I’m such a sucker for those stories.

Your list for Day 1, with help from TSN.ca (Happy Canada Day!)

- Toronto swapped Viktor Stalberg (UVM-Hockey East) and two others for Bill Sweatt (CC-WCHA) and Kris Versteeg from Chicago.

- Martin St. Louis (UVM back during the ECAC days) signed a four-year contract extentsion with Tampa Bay.

- Derek Stepan (Wisc.-WCHA) agrees to terms with the New York Rangers officially, thus ending his elgibility two years early.

- Matt Cullen (St. Cloud State – WCHA) signs a three year deal with the Minnesota Wild.

-Adam Burish (Wisc. – WCHA) signed a two year deal with the Dallas Stars after spending three seasons with Chicago.

- Jordan Leopold (Minn. – WCHA) signs a three year contract with the Buffalo Sabres.

-Jonathan Matsumoto (Bowling Green – CCHA) signed a two-year, two-way contract with Carolina. He’s spent his four pro seasons in the Phantoms organization in the AHL.

-Paul Martin (Minn. – WCHA) signed a deal with the Pittsburgh Penguins, after spending his entire pro thus far with the New Jersey Devils. (I initially forgot this, and didn’t see it listed when I was investigating the TSN transactions list Thursday evening, but big thanks to Laurel for reminding me.)

While I seriously lack any unique knowledge or insights, I wanted to share some of the story lines, Twitters and blogs I’m following as the draft unfolds this weekend.

- Are the NHL scouts as high on Charlie Coyle as we all are?

Could BU bound Charlie Coyle be the first college player taken in the draft? the most optimistic of projections have him going in the late first round, and even the college-player-shy Boston Bruins have worked out and dined the Massachusetts local. Will Coyle be the sixth BU player to be the first college player picked in the draft in history? (Fun facts provided by these interesting-to-college-hockey-geek-me College Hockey News charts.)

Not so fast, says SB Nation’s In Lou We Trust. While the rest of the media have been touting Coyle’s upside, this New Jersey Devils blog is a great summation of some realistic reviews of his ability. Will his offensive playmaking translate over from his EJHL days? While I believe the dismissal of the EJHL as a “weak league” is incorrect, I may agree with In Lou We Trust that Coyle’s talent on bigger stages may not be easily predictable.

I did speak with one person deep in the know in the EJHL last Friday who says that BU fans won’t be disappointed in Coyle, and that he is quite fun to watch. Could it be that Coyle is one great college hockey player – one BU fans sorely need after having all the fun sucked out of their 2009-10 season – but not first or second round draft pick worthy?

- Joe Pereira’s brother could be really good/UMass-BU games will be interesting…

UMass Amherst bound Mike Pereira, little brother of BU captain Joe, is being brandied about as one of the best New England nurtured players in this draft. His strong individual performances leading Avon Old Farms to a championship has scouts interested. According to New England Hockey Journal’s analysis, the younger Pereira sounds like the selfish, more competitive, big-playmaking version of his older brother. Both brothers have serious speed, but similar size doubts.

While I had heard snippets about Pereira here and there for the past year, I hadn’t yet found any great analysis of his abilities until this week. Most of this is thanks to @fearthetriangle, a UMass Amherst hockey blogger/Twitterer, who has been all up on the UMass Amherst player draft coverage. Two thumbs up.

- Why this Bruins fan is watching the Thrashers and Panthers this weekend?

Both the Atlanta Thrashers and Florida Panthers have new leadership – Thrashers with former Boston Bruins assistant Craig Ramsay as their head coach, and the Panthers with former Chicago Blackhawks General Manager Dale Tallon now serving as their GM.

As a Rochester Amerks fan, I want to see what talent the Panthers could send up to my hometown to develop next season. With the Amerks fan base hanging on a thread, will the 2010-11 edition of the team have enough talent to follow a great start all the way through the playoffs?

As a college hockey fan and one who is quite critical of the Bruins lack of development or interest in college players, I’m interested in seeing if Ramsay brings a similar disdain to the Thrashers. The Thrashers as a franchise keep continuing on the road to obscurity, but a team made up of dynamic young prospects is the only way their fate in the Atlanta area could change for the better.

Even as a Bruins fan, the Sequin-Hall debate is tired. Both are great players now, both with the real possibility of busting big time. Sequin didn’t make this year’s Canadian World Junior Team. While that allegedly motivated him to perform better, who is to say he won’t regress and or not be motivated to improve in the future? Hall has speed and has developed to a great all around player, but is used to making plays on his own and may struggle chemistry wise with older NHL players who won’t stand any twinge of selfishness or flashiness from a teenager. Then again, I’m not even a serviceable hockey scout, so what do I know?

What I do know is that when it is all said and done, the Edmonton Oilers effectively make two picks – their own and the Bruins’. Watching what a team’s new leadership does or what a team seeking a new identity does in a draft is more interesting to me. As a hockey fan, I’m more interested in picks that will paint the picture for an organization, not just add a stroke.

A fountain Dr. Pepper machine. (Photo: sage.kitamorn.com)

While trying to hatch up some tough college hockey related NHL playoff trivia questions for my gig managing the Rival Films Facebook page, I noticed a press release on the Pittsburgh Penguins team page regarding the beverage contract for their new arena. The Consol Energy Center will have an exclusive beverage contract with Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, which means RC Cola, Dr. Pepper, A&W Ro

ot Beer, and 7Up will be flowing out of the concession stand fountain machines, and Snapple and Fiji water bottles will be available along side them. This is the first beverage deal for the Penguins in quite a while, and is one of the first I’ve ever heard where the exclusive beverage rights were given to someone who isn’t Coca-Cola or Pepsi.

Dr. Pepper? Fountain soda Dr. Pepper? Alongside hockey? Well, wrap me up and ship me UPS to Pittsburgh.

If there is a weakness I have in life, fountain soda/pop is undeniably it. Don’t even begin to tell me how awful it is for me – I am more than fully aware. Even a year working in the Campus Center Dining Hall at Ithaca College, where I was often made to change the disgusting looking syrups for the fountain soda machines, could not dissuade me. Before I became addicted to coffee, the rare occasion I had fountain soda was my vice.

If my actually being able to have a fountain soda before college was a rare occurrence, finding Dr. Pepper on tap was even rarer. Ithaca had Mr. Pipp, its inferior counterpart, on one fountain in the dining hall. It sufficed. Binghamton didn’t have it at all on tap. It’s near impossible to find here in Boston. Dr. Pepper is just difficult to find in fountain soda machines in general, and the whole idea of a entire arena filled with them is simply glorious.

And why Dr. Pepper? Dr. Pepper was Everyone’s Favorite Mormon Quarterback, Steve Young’s, own vice. Mormons are forbidden from having caffeine (which just about cut Brigham Young University from my college list as an 18 year old, which made my Catholic parents happy), but in a Sports Illustrated profile in 1994 or 1995, Young was caught drinking Dr. Pepper. The writer questioned him about the transgression, and Young mentioned that it was a weakness he had, one he usually hid from others. Tweenage/teenage me was sold. My mega-crush drank Dr. Pepper, and now I needed to.

My parents were nonplussed, and entertained my newest obsession with a single 2-liter of Dr. W, the Wegmans brand version of Dr. Pepper. The real stuff was too expensive, they told me. I could be happy with this one allowance, and then go back to drinking multiple Tupperware pitchers of cheap knock-off Kool Aid that lined the top shelf of the old fridge.

So of course I take some perverse pleasure in finding a fountain Dr. Pepper machine somewhere in my adult life. Thirteen year old me urges me to indulge, and fourteen year old me attempts to egg me into texting my mom and telling her, “Nah, nah, nah. I’m having real Dr. Pepper, and you can’t stop me because I’m in my late twenties and live 7 hours away.”

Perhaps a roadtrip to the Pens new arena is in order.

(Have you noticed that I’m on a blogging redesign/relaunch yet? Two days, two posts….get excited for the official relaunch in the coming weeks.)

NHL: St. Louis Blues

Last night, the St. Louis Blues mixed their St. Patrick’s Day commemoration with environmental awareness, and gave away a “Green Game” t-shirt to all fans in attendance (quite a risky claim to advertise – from personal experience, you should always give an exact number of giveaways, a la “first 5,000 fans”). The shirt giveaway was sponsored by Monsanto, a Cambridge, MA based agricultural innovation company with an emphasis on sustainable practices. This was the second year for the Blues promotion.

Shirt Grade: B I like the muted, antiquey kelly green shirt and faded style of the print. It also helps that the Blues’ team colors happen not to horribly clash with green. Kudos for using that to their advantage and not changing the logo’s colors for the holiday’s sake. Environmental awareness initiatives during games are the new “it” thing to do in sports marketing – trust me, I participate in one – but the giveaway needs to be backed up with sustained, but subtle, green initiatives, otherwise it is just a t-shirt giveaway.

AHL: Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins

The Baby Pens (speaking of, we are long overdue for an edition of The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Watch, but that’ll be another post) are selling two St. Patrick’s Day long sleeve shirts in their online store. The 2009 edition ($20) features their mascot, Tux, skating with a four leaf clover in the background on the front. The back reads “Happy St. Patrick’s Day.” The 2010 version ($22) features the logo in what appears to be a very dark green (nearly black), with a four leaf clover on the sleeve. Long sleeve shirts are always key in that part of Pennsylvania, where the damp gray chilly days seem to out number any other weather.

Grade: C The effort is there, but the execution is not. The 2009 version is too campy, and the 2010 version shows promise, but the green seems too dark. Kudos, however, for the 2010 edition’s four leaf clover on the sleeve.

ECHL: Gwinnett Gladiators

The ECHL Gwinnett Gladiators teamed with Old Time Hockey, the same Salisbury, MA based company who partnered to create some of the NHL’s 2010 St. Patrick’s Day gear, to create a green t-shirt to sell this March. The shirt ($20 with free shipping through today) features a rather disturbed and surly looking leprechaun brandishing a hockey stick, with a small Gladiators logo by his right foot. The all-caps font is rather 1950s style, and arches above Surly Leprechaun’s head.

Grade: A This is the first ever St. Patrick’s Day shirt I would ever consider purchasing, and not just because I’m in the market for a shirt from the team where two of my most favorite former BU hockey alums play. What sold me was the 1950s fonts – I’m a sucker for fonts. Plus, I feel like Surly Leprechaun is going to hurt me with that hockey stick if I don’t like the shirt.

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While watching the New York Rangers take on the Pittsburgh Penguins Monday evening on Versus, my friend Laurel wanted to look up Rangers rookie Michael Del Zotto’s exact age, so I pulled up the Rangers website on the good ol’ MacMini. A Flash overlay popped up immediately across the bottom of the page – one that included Boston University hockey alum Chris Drury doing his best James Bond impression.

The overlay was an advertisement for the Rangers’ Casino Night to benefit Madison Square Garden’s “Garden of Dreams” foundation. The event is February 8th, and it’s for high rollers only – tickets range from $500 to $2000, and attendees must be dressed to impress.

Drury has represented his country in the Olympics, fulfilled every dream of any kid who grew up playing hockey in New England, and now he gets a picture of himself looking like he’s about to order a “shaken but not stirred martini” at a swanky bar splashed across a NHL team’s website. Chris Drury, we salute you. Until Matt Gilroy starts busting Russian spies and jumping from speeding trains, you get the award for being the most Bond of any BU Hobey Baker Winner.

Matt Gilroy had been named the best rookie in training camp by the Rangers staff just 3 months ago. (Photo: SNY.com)

Wednesday evening, former Boston University captain and rookie New York Rangers defenseman Matt Gilroy was outskated by Chicago Blackhawks right wing Dustin Byfuglien (a last name more difficult than my own) to allow the game-winning goal in overtime.

Thursday morning, Gilroy was summarily dismissed  by the Rangers and assigned to the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack.

And Saturday evening, I got a Facebook notification inviting me to the group, “Put Matt Gilroy Back on the Rangers.”

“We want to send a message to the Rangers front office that they need to move Matt back up to the NHL!” exclaims the description for the group. Created Saturday afternoon, the group already has 377 members with a wide variety of loyalties. (It grew from 324- 377 while I was writing this blog post.) A few BU teammates belong to the group, quite a few BU hockey fans, some New York Ranger fans, and a large contingent of members with the last name of Gilroy. (Not surprising, seeing that the Gilroy family is rumored to rival the population of Syracuse, New York in numbers.)

As the news of Gilroy’s demotion hit Twitter on Thursday, I learned that Rangers fans are quite opinionated, and were blaming general manager Glen Sather for the move right and left. They were calling for other defensemen, such as Michal Rozsival, to suffer a benching or demotion. Even ESPN anchor Linda Cohn got into the action, tweeting, “Can somebody explain to me why in the world the Rangers would mess with the head of Matt Gilroy and send him down to Hartford?”

In comparison, the Facebook group is pretty mild. A group member actually spoke up to explain why moving Gilroy is easier than demoting a more seasoned player and possibly exposing that player to waivers. Others continue to express anger at Sather, and still others are writing “keep the faith” messages to Gilroy.

Whether Gilroy’s demotion was warranted after his Chicago gaff, or this was a move to get him more playing time, the progression of this Facebook group will be quite interesting to watch. Will Matt Gilroy himself join? Will it catch on further among the Rangers faithful? Or will it go the way of those ubiquitous “I lost my phone – can I have your numbers?” groups?

The Rangers must really want me to like them. I must resist. (Photo: Flickr user Bari D)

Note from 10/16/09: In this piece, I mention at the end that a bunch of my favorite players were picked up by the ECHL’s Charlotte Checkers. Two days after I posted that, nearly everyone was either released or put on injured reserve. So the whole last three paragraphs of this piece no longer makes sense. The rest of it is good though.

I typically despise anything New York City related. An ex-boyfriend dumped me years back because I was from upstate and he was from downstate, and thus the differences were too great to navigate. Rochester-born me wasn’t too fond of the metro New York area before that, and after that, really started to dislike the city that everyone else loves.

I moved to Boston, a place where everyone shares my general disdain for Jay-Z’s favorite city that doesn’t sleep, and have settled nicely into disparaging the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets and Knicks along with any anonymous person I run into on the street.

Until this month, that is.

You see, the New York Rangers are trying to win me over. First, they signed Matt Gilroy, the most revered Boston University hockey player of the last decade.  That alone wasn’t going to sway me. Then, they resigned left winger and Rochester-bred Ryan Callahan. Okay, fine. A Rochester kid is playing in the NHL. No biggy. He’s not the only one.

Then the Rangers actually kept John Tortorella on as coach, tantrums and all. Torts was my favorite Amerks coach of my Rochester days, leading the Amerks to a Calder Cup in 1996. Then Torts went and grabbed former BU center, Mike Sullivan, as his assistant coach. At this point, the Rangers began to really nag me, like Philip, the boy in my first grade class who kept trying to tell me he liked me by comparing me to the token females in old school Nintendo games. No, Rangers. Stop trying to suck up to me. Stop telling me I’m your Zelda and you’re going to rescue me from whatever. No, I do not want to attend your Mario Brothers birthday party and play Princess Toadstool.

Then I had to read over the program for Red Hot Hockey, the BU-Cornell hockey game that is being played at Madison Square Garden in late November (which, shameless self-promotion here, I did the player profile pages for) which includes many gratuitous mentions of Chris Drury and Gilroy both being former BU players, both being Hobey Baker winners, both playing for the Rangers, and being from the Tri-State area. Fine. I get it. They’re both good stories. Learning-to-read fiction material for 6-8 year old Canadian boys. Whatever, Rangers. Just let me be.

Then, Jason Lawrence gets a tryout contract with the ECHL’s Charlotte Checkers. (Yes, this blog has been in denial since the Providence Bruins released him, thus why it has taken me weeks to mention this fact.) On the Checkers are two other BU alums, Kenny Roche and Kevin Schaeffer, and Hockey East and Austin Prep (my adopted New England high school) alum Chris Capraro, and Rochester boy and former Michigan goaltender Billy Sauer. Fine, Checkers. Load up on six-degrees-of-Kat players. I don’t have a favorite ECHL team, so you just won the non-existant competition to be mine.

In researching my new favorite ECHL team, I looked up their AHL and NHL team affiliations. Not all teams have them, and some teams have multiple ones. The educated guess would be that a team located in Charlotte, North Carolina might be associated with the Carolina Hurricanes. But no.  That’s when I realized my several month long resistance was frutiless.

The Checkers are affiliated with…the New York Rangers. And now, whenever they aren’t playing the Boston Bruins, I might just have to root for a New York team. Might being the operative word.

Bruins rookie camp (Photo: Twitter @NHLBruins)

Readers of …On Being a Sports Girl are quite familiar with the reoccurring feature, “The Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Watch,” a series I began to follow the fledgling professional career of everyone’s favorite recent Boston University goaltender, John Curry.  While Curry will always be one of my favorite college hockey players, and I will never give up that feature, my other favorite has now turned pro, and will now get a series of his own.

Readers, welcome to my reoccurring look at the fledgling professional hockey career of former BU right wing Jason Lawrence, a series I have yet to find a good, non confusing name for. (I originally named it something else having to do with the wonderful and memorable restaurants of Lawrence’s hometown, which also happens to be the hometown of my fiance, thus I’m quite familiar with it. However, the name just didn’t work, and I am open to suggestions.)

Lawrence is currently taking part in Boston Bruins rookie camp in Kitchener, Ontario, one of eight invitees to the camp. The remainder of the camp roster is filled with drafted or acquired young players, such as Zach Hamill and Jamie Arniel. (On a side note, another rookie camp participant is 2006 sixth round draft pick Alain Goulet, which makes me picture Will Farrell impersonating Robert Goulet on hockey skates, crooning “Bob Goulet needs a second chance.”)

On Monday afternoon, the Bruins rookies took on the rookies of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the first of three games the rookies will participate in while in Kitchener. The game was live blogged on the Bruins website, and while doing work around the house, I would periodically walk by the computer and check out what was going on.

Everything seemed to be going fine for the Baby Bruins. Lawrence got an assist on a goal late in the first period. Then, I checked back a few minutes later, and saw the following live blog update:

15:48 – Lawrence to the locker room — under his own power — after a shot to the face. Wrister. The B’s training staff was right there and took care of him.

Great. The kid gets injured in his first game action as a semi-member of the Bruins organization. In his first almost-NHL action, he suffers a shot to the face. Remember, in college hockey, players have cages, while in professional hockey, they tend to not wear them. Although I can’t say for sure, because I wasn’t there, this may have been his first game action without the cage. Getting a shot to your face in your first game without a cage is irony at its finest.

Lawrence came back at the end of the second, leading to Bish, the Bruins live blogger, to write the following:

Lawrence is BACK! Thank goodness…

He then proceeded to start the third period with a penalty after he “held someone up.” How could he commit a penalty when he probably either couldn’t see clearly and/or probably couldn’t spell his own name at the moment?

The Bruins ended up winning a high scoring game in overtime, 6-5. No further word on the Lawrence injury was noted by the Bruins, but I imagine since he was playing through the third period, he’ll be fine to play during the rest of rookie camp. The rookie Bruins have practices Tuesday, then a game Wednesday against the rookies of the Ottawa Senators (aka, the future Binghamton Senators…my early condolences on having to play in the Broome County Arena. I don’t wish that arena on anyone.)

When rookie camp concludes later this week, some of the participants will continue on to full Bruins training camp, which starts this upcoming weekend. Those committed to playing major junior this season will go back to those teams. Others will be sent home by the Bruins, and still others will get to continue onto Providence Bruins training camp, starting September 21st. According to the Providence Journal, Lawrence will continue onto Providence camp after rookie camp concludes.

For more information on Bruins rookie camp as a whole, I encourage you to check out the Boston Bruins website. There are some great stories out of these campers, and the Bruins communications team is doing a great job with coverage (including an entertaining blog of the 12 hour bus trip from Boston to Kitchener.)

Marblehead to Lynnfield, MA is a short distance geographically, but Marblehead native Cory Schnieder and Lynnfield’s Chris Higgins couldn’t be farther apart in their professional hockey careers this week.

For Higgins, the starting left wing for BU last year (and the LW in my most favorite line ever – Higgins, Wilson, Lawrence), Labor Day weekend will bring about his first NHL rookie camp with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Higgins, who is expected to spend the start of the season in Syracuse with the AHL Crunch, has the opportunity to be a part of a unique NHL training camp experience.

As Yahoo Sports’ Puck Daddy detailed on Wednesday, the Blue Jackets have made the beginning of their training camp a “fantasy tournament.” Owners of the franschise get to assemble their own teams for use in a two day tournament from the actual roster of the Blue Jackets training camp. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Higgins was selected by majority owner John P. McDonnell for his tournament team. Considering he had little buzz around him as he was about to enter BU in the summer of 2005, Higgins has made the best of every opportunity during his college hockey career, and it will be interesting to watch how he does in training camp.

For Cory Schneider, on the other hand, discouragement must be the primary feeling this week. Schneider, a goalie for the Vancouver Canucks, and the college hockey example of Bill Simmons’ Ewing Theory (“he’s so talented, he’s so wonderful, oh, BC will win it all this year…”, and then they finally win the national championship the year he leaves college early to go pro), is now the backup to a goaltender with a new 12 year long contract. Once goalie-extraordinaire Roberto Luongo signed an over-decade long contract this week with the Canucks, with the earliest escape clause being five years in according to the Canwest News Service, Schneider became somewhat dispensable.  Not that Schneider isn’t used to being thought of by dispensable by the Canucks organization – he was frustratingly name-dropped as trade bait nearly all last season.

The Canucks also enter training camp with Andrew Raycroft on the roster, leaving a real possibility that Schneider could be sent back to the AHL’s Manitoba Moose to start the season again. Schneider told the Salem News on Thursday that he’s not taking Luongo’s mega-deal as a death knell for his career in Vancouver. “It really doesn’t make a lot of difference as far as my situation goes; (Luongo) was still going to be here even if he hadn’t signed an extension,” said Schneider to the paper. “If you’re always striving just to be a backup goalie, you’ll never be a No. 1.”

Schneider’s lessons in hard work and humility might be needed by his former Eagles teammate, Buffalo Sabre and Portland Pirate Nathan Gerbe. According to an interview with HockeyBuzz.com, Gerbe thinks he has done all he can in the AHL, and is out for a full-time call up to the Buffalo Sabres. “I’m not going back there ( to Portland ). It’s not going to happen. I’ll play whatever position they want me to play. I’m not going down.”

As much as I root for the little guy, and as much as I like to see young players with determination, one might want to tell Gerbe that one season in the AHL doesn’t necessarily make one a full-time NHL forward. Especially when he spent a portion of the season injured, and was relatively quiet during the small amount of time he was called up to Buffalo. Gerbe may want to prepare to spend at least the first few weeks in Portland with the Pirates, given that there are a few centers ahead of him on the Sabres depth chart. And anyway, Portland’s not that bad of a city. Sure, it doesn’t have buffalo wings, but it still has Tim Hortons.

But then again, I’m a BU fan – I’m biased against Gerbe. Maybe he will crack the Sabres roster full-time….

For more hockey news, stay tuned later this weekend, as I kick off another regular series, one sure to rival my always popular, “Everyone’s Favorite Goalie” updates. Yes, it might have to do with Kane’s Donuts, Kowloon, the giant orange dinosaur, and the Hilltop Steakhouse (or the “Hilop Seakhos,” as its dying lightup catcus sign on Route 1 likes to call it.)  Stay tuned.

It's safe to say hockey fans are becoming obsessed with Fenway Park. (Photo by me.)

But although complete and official information about the 2010 Winter Classic and subsequent events will not be released until July 1st at the earliest, there is enough substantial information out there to piece together five nearly certain pieces of the  official announcement.

- The NHL game at Fenway Park will be the Boston Bruins versus the Philadelphia Flyers. After the owner of the Washington Capitals, the Bruins’ most rumored opponent, mentioned that the team had no plans to be part of a January 1, 2010 game last week, the Flyers have been the most reported and substantiated replacement.

- The ice at Fenway Park will be down for several weeks. Having the Winter Classic at a ballpark as opposed to an NFL stadium affords the organizers much more time to bring in the rink system, as the latest baseball runs is the first week in November. When the Winter Classic was held at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buf-town (which is what I’m allowed to call Buffalo because I’m a bitter Rochestarian), the major complaint is that event organizers did not have enough time to lay down the ice surface and troubleshoot any problems because of the NFL season ending only days before.  With Fenway Park the NHL’s to play with from mid-November on, not only can any system problems be fixed much before the main event, other events can use the ice surface.

- There will be a college game or two on the Fenway Park ice. You have ice down in “America’s Favorite Ballpark.” You have a city full of people who would pay $10 just to touch the building, so why not hold some more “once in a lifetime” events in there while you can? And with the growing popularity of the college game, especially with the media attention Boston University’s national championship has been given (which is what happens when a school’s alumni can be found in every facet of every major media organization in America), why not play a few college games on the available ice?

- Despite my previous concerns, Boston College will be included in any possible college game at Fenway. BC may be scheduled to participate in the Denver Cup January 1st and 2nd, but with the ice being down for a few weeks, this  supposed scheduling conflict is no longer an issue. The more I think about it, a college hockey game at Fenway could not take place without the Eagles, because Boston College has an existing relationship with Fenway Sports Group for the marketing and promotion of their Athletics program. BC was the cog in this whole college game machine – if BC wasn’t involved, college games would not be happening.

- Boston University will also be involved in any college game. It’s been evident for a while, as BU has not shown up in anyone’s holiday tournament schedule yet, and has seriously dragged its feet when it comes to releasing its own 2009-10 season schedule. Mind you, season ticket holders – moi included – have had to put down nice chunks of cash for next year’s tickets without a semblance of a schedule. This is unlike most programs, and unlike BU’s practice of the past three years.

The other two schools rumored to be participating are Providence and Vermont.

- Said college game will not take place immediately before or after the Bruins-Flyers tilt. See BC’s date in Denver, as well as NCAA precedent. You will not see a college hockey game share a bill with an NHL game. Logistically, Fenway Park’s small size, limited walkways, and reliance on public transportation make any type of doubleheader extremely difficult because of the challenge of vacating the park and surrounding neighborhood and cleaning the park quickly. Additionally, BC has already made a commitment to the Denver Cup, one of the most established college hockey tournaments in recent history. Lastly, there could be compliance issues raised with a combo ticket, doubleheader, or some other combined NHL-NCAA event. (And of course, do I have my rulebook with me as I write this? Of course not.) The Boston Globe reported a date of January 8th for any possible college game.

Will the NHL’s early July announcement definitely include these six aspects? I can’t say for sure, because I’m merely piecing together existing media reports. But if you look at the quality and reliability of the sources reporting these aspects and place all of the pieces together, I think you begin to have a clearer picture of what a Fenway Park Winter Classic program may look like.