A Honorable Mention: Dallas at New Jersey, Friday at 7pm
The Devils have Niedermayer’s number retired and the Stars top player has been their breakout Goalie…who is a rookie!
Anaheim at Winnipeg, Saturday at 7pm
This is going to be a historical game and I urge all NHL fans to watch this game. Now everyone is shaking their heads wondering why this is important? One player makes this a special game: Teemu Selanne will return to the city in which he scored 76 goals as a rookie — and needless to say, he’s excited about it.
“When the season became public, then we needed a schedule, I marked the date in my calendar — even [though] I didn’t know if I can play still this year,” Selanne said on a mid-week conference call. “So obviously, I knew it’s going to be very special to have a chance to come back there and play.”
Boston at Philadelphia, Saturday at 1pm
This one’s admittedly lost some panache given Philly’s captain (Chris Pronger) and leading scorer (Claude Giroux) are out with concussions. But for the likes of Daniel Briere, Kimmo Timonen, Andrej Meszaros,Braydon Coburn, Scott Hartnell and James van Riemsdyk, it’s a chance to make amends for getting murdered by Boston in last year’s playoffs. Especially Briere, who went minus-6 with 1G-1A in the four-game sweep.
Plus with the Flyers and Bruins both cruising with winning streaks and look to be battling for the top spot in the East. I foresee this to get ugly quick.
Vancouver at Toronto, Saturday at 7pm
This one should hold special significance for the Leafs, because Vancouver has been kicking the snot out of them for a while now. The Canucks have won the last eight head-to-head match ups by a combined 34-16 score — guess when the last time Toronto beat Vancouver was? If you guessed November 2003, congrats. Gary Roberts and Mats Sundin scored for Toronto, Brendan Morrison countered for Vancouver. Tie Domi fought Bryan Allen (Bray May also fought some guy named Nathan Perrott), Marc Crawford was coaching the Canucks and Pat Quinn coached the Leafs. So yeah, Looooooong time ago.
Buffalo at Pittsburgh, Saturday at 7pm
I had to including this one, just to highlight who won’t be playing: Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang, Zybnek Michalek, Ben Lovejoy, Richard Park, Ville Leino, Jochen Hecht, Nathan Gerbe, Tyler Myers, Brad Boyes and maybe Patrick Kaleta. Injuries are the plague right now. I still believe that this will be a great battle.
Enjoy the weekend my crazy NHL fans! Remember to turn on one of these games this weekend and watch some great hockey and enjoy a great time with other NHL Fans!