Welcome back hockey fans! It’s great that the National Hockey League is finally underway and we can all get back to eating, sleeping and breathing hockey. As many of you hockey fanatics here on Inside Hockey already know, the NHL kicked off its regular season this past weekend overseas. The Pittsburgh Penguins, Ottawa Senators, New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning played in Stockholm, Sweden and Prague, Czech Republic, respectively.

The league showed off its stars such as Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza, Daniel Alfredsson, Scott Gomez, Chris Drury, Markus Naslund and Henrik Lundqvist. The aforementioned stars all put in terrific performances (well, Spezza is questionable with his costly giveaway on Saturday that led to a Penguins’ OT goal) and showed why the NHL is the top hockey league in the world.

With that being said, I wanted to point out what I thought were the most interesting things to takeaway from this weekend with regards to the games played, as they were all close games and had many different storylines.

Without further adieu:

Tampa Bay Lightning Defense: Are they really this weak?

If it wasn’t for goaltenders Mike Smith and Olaf Kolzig and the Rangers inability to finish, the Lightning would have been blown out of the water in their two games this past weekend. The Rangers fired 80 shots on net and scored just four goals as they made Smith and Kolzig look like Patrick Roy and Dominik Hasek.

The Lightning let the Blueshirts to skate freely with the puck in their own zone and fire away on their netminders. The Bolts defensemen constantly allowed the Rangers to put bodies in front of Smith and Kolzig to create screens, pounce on rebounds and as Saturday showed, hurt their goaltenders as Smith was injured on a Dan Girardi shot from the point that he never saw.

Lightning head coach Barry Melrose clearly didn’t like what he saw and forced team management not only ripping into his hockey club, but also forcing them to make a deal. This past week, they sent defenseman Shane O’Brien and right wing Michel Ouellet to the Vancouver Canucks for defenseman Lukas Krajicek and minor league forward Juraj Simek. At 25, Krajicek is already considered a veteran and can play a lot of minutes on a weak defensive team.

If this team continues to allow shots in bunches, their goaltenders may call it quits! Look out folks. It could be a long year for the Bolts.

Dany Heatley: The Complete Hockey Player?

Ever since he came into the league seven years ago, Sens’ forward Dany Heatley has been a goal-scoring factory. He’s scored 224 goals in 427 career games and already has three goals this season but has added one more element to his game: leadership.

Prior to opening the season, new Senators’ head coach Craig Hartsburg named Heatley one of the team’s assistant captains. Heatley felt that at the age of 27, he was ready to take on more responsibility and be a leader of this hockey club.

Well, he certainly led his hockey this weekend by scoring when the team needed him and even sacrificing his body to block shots. If he can do this all year, and there is no reason why he won’t, the Sens’ will definitely be a better team than last season.

Goaltending Controversy in Ottawa? Say It Ain’t So!

It wouldn’t be hockey season if there wasn’t a goaltending controversy in Ottawa.
Martin Gerber and Alex Auld split the opening series against the Penguins this weekend with Auld coming out on top by winning yesterday and allowing one goal on 31 shots. Saturday afternoon was a much different story as Gerber started and allowed four goals on 30 shots, including one on his first shot when Penguins’ forward Tyler Kennedy beat him from a bad angle.

We’ll see how things pan out but I’m willing to bet that Auld ends up taking the starter’s role sooner than people think.

Let’s Play Hockey!

I hope you folks enjoyed the hockey this weekend and opening night as much as I did. I look forward to seeing how these three storylines play out over the course of the season and I hope that you’re all ready for a great season!