Rankings/List

As training camp grows closer and the heat of the free agency period in the NHL winds down, the list of available players still on the market has begun to dwindle.

With Ilya Kovalchuk finally settled on a contract with New Jersey, there are just 11 forwards and four defenseman on the list of remaining UFAs who scored double-digit points last season, in addition to only two goalies who started more than ten games.

The arguments will continue on which is more important, the goalie or defencemen? 

This appears to be the defencemen era as a majority of teams are investing an immense amount of that little cap money into their top four defencemen these days.

Last year the Chicago Blackhawks invested in Duncan Keith for the next 13 years.  To no surprise, Keith brought home the Norris Trophy Award for the most elite defencemen in the 2009-2010 season.

Can he bring it back to Chicago again?

Last week the NHL's new crop of rookies gathered to get their pictures taken for their rookie cards.   To most this was a great honor because most kids have some kind of childhood memory involving collector cards.   This event also marks another step towards the NHL becoming a reality. 

Not all rookies will survive training camp and make the big club, but with the youth movement in full effect there should be a lot of these youngsters who will see NHL action this season.

The tunes played at most NHL arenas are getting old and uninspired. The same songs are blasted at every game. These songs tend to annoy the crowd more than inspire them. As a music director of an NHL team, your only focus is to get the crowd involved, not get them to say "oh, here is THAT song again." What follows is a list of ten songs I would play if I ever landed the gig as music director for an NHL team.

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There are several heralded rookies that could break into the NHL this season with the Edmonton Oilers, led by Taylor Hall, the first overall pick in the 2010 draft.

But the other four teams of the Northwest Division also have their own prospects ready to play a role in the NHL this season, such as Cody Hodgson (Vancouver Canucks) and Mikael Backlund (Calgary Flames).

There are different types of players in the NHL today.

In order to be a successful team, more often then not you need a good mixture of a-lot of the different player types in the NHL.

There are the play-makers, think Sidney Crosby, Henrik Sedin, Nicklas Backstrom, Joe Thornton, Marc Savard, Martin St.Louis

There are the power-forwards, think Dustin Byfuglien, Dustin Brown, David Backes, Troy Brouwer, Milan Lucic, Rick Nash

There are the tough guys, think Colton Orr, Derek Boogard, Jody Shelley

This is Part One of a two-part series dealing with Darcy Regier's player acquisitions over his tenure as the Buffalo Sabres' General Manager.

Last year, I looked back into the history of the Chicago Blackhawks, an Original Six franchise, and ranked the top players in the organization's great history.

Some of arguably the best players to ever play their position wore the Indian head sweater, but the Blackhawks weren't ever able to get over the hump. For 49 years, Chicago was without the Stanley Cup.

But in the spring of 2010, the Blackhawks won it all.

When then-Flyers forward Arron Asham shook hands with Sidney Crosby at the end of the 2009 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, neither had any idea that Asham would trade in the orange and black for the black and gold for the 2010-2011 season.

Likewise, Martin Biron probably wasn't even considering going from Long Island to Broadway after the 2009-2010 campaign drew to a close.

Asham and Biron are two of the players who have signed with their former teams' biggest rivals to get a fresh start.

Last season many teams had a rookie emerge as an impact player.

Players like Matt Duchene, John Tavares, and Tyler Myers have become the foundation upon which their team will build upon.

Lesser-known rookies like Colin Wilson, Dmitry Kulikov, and Matt Gilroy gave fans reason to believe that they have a bright future in the NHL.