"Hey! We're watchin' hockey over here!"

Been watchin' hockey all night while camped out with my laptop pretending to edit medical research, and we haven't mentioned it all night.

So... Aboot the league we go!

The Dallas Stars won their second road game in a row by attacking the Blue Jackets -- and all-world rookie goalie Steve Mason -- early and often. Mason was on the bench halfway through the first period and the Stars cruised to a 7-3 win. Rookie James Neal scored twice, and the Stars are now part of a four-team 53-point logjam at the bottom of the Western Conference playoff bracket. They have games -- plural! -- in hand on two of those teams, and a whopping four games in hand on Anaheim, who are two points ahead of them. After a truly embarrassing start to the season, the Stars are actually in a pretty decent spot as far as their playoff chances go.

Jeff Carter of the Flyers re-took the league lead in goal scoring with two on Friday night at the St. Petersburg Times Forum (conveniently located in Tampa), but held it for all of about 16 hours before Alex Ovechkin potted two in a 4-2 Caps win over Detroit. Detroit, which lost to the Stars at home on Thursday night, is a pedestrian 4-4-2 in its last 10 games and leads the red hot Flames (hardy har-har) by only 5 points for the second seed in the West.

A Caps tradition continues tomorrow -- a home game in the afternoon of Super Bowl Sunday. Matty and I attended one of those, versus the Flyers, on January 30, 2000, during a day-long snowstorm. With about a foot of snow on the ground that night -- and still falling heavily -- and having to go to work Monday morning, I decided I couldn't stay in DC for the whole Super Bowl, and my friend Aaron and I drove three-plus hours back to Philly. Just as the Titans were driving toward the tying touchdown (trailing by seven, 23-16) with the clock running out, we were approaching the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore. Not wanting to lose the AM radio signal, we pulled over and listened as Mike Jones ankle-tackled Kevin Dyson at the 1-yard line.

The Vancouver Canuckleheads -- still winless at home since the return of Mats Sundin to the NHL (and the return of Roberto Luongo from injury immediately thereafter) tied the Minnesota Wild on a goal by Ryan Kesler with 16 seconds remaining in regulation. However, one of the knucklehead Sedin twins took a dumb-ass penalty in OT and the 'Nucks lost AGAIN. Do you hear that giant sucking sound? With the OT point, the 'Nucks creep within a point of the aforementioned Western logjam.

For the life of me, I can't figure out how the St. Louis Blues suck so god-awful bad. Every time I see them -- which amounts almost strictly to games against the Stars and Flyers -- they play an extremely tough, disciplined game. They dumped the Flyers 4-0 tonight. It's hard to generalize based on tonight's game, which was dominated more by the officials than by the Blues, but do the Blues ever beat anyone other than Dallas and Philly?

With 5 minutes left in regulation, the Blackhawks hold a 4-2 lead in San Jose over the Sharks, who they haven't beaten on the road in approximately 6 years. They just got caught on a slow change and gave up a breakaway goal, but they've played brilliantly for the most part and are poised to hand the Sharks only their second home loss in regulation all season.

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