The 2006 NHL regular season is over now, and it was much better having hockey than not having it in the previous year. News from the Leafs comes from Quinn where he says that the salary cap hurt the team. This sounds like a thinly veiled excuse from one of the richest teams in the league, although even if there was no salary cap, it is doubtful that the Leafs would have went Yankees-style and signed the best free agents.

The top ranked player on The Red Wins (my hockey pool team), Joe Thorton won the Art Ross trophy this year for the league scoring title. When the season started and he was with the Bruins, I thought my pick were wasted (don’t get my started on Elias, my 2nd pick in the auto-draft, he had Hepatitis A the whole season). Even Lindros, a waiver pick up was scoring more than him. But thanks to his trade, he helped me win my hockey pool by a fair margin.

I haven’t been paying enough attention to hockey this year to continue my trend of playoff predictions. But all is not lost, I will throw my hat in for my picks of who will advance past the first round: Ottawa, Carolina, New Jersey, Buffalo in the East and Edmonton, Dallas, Calgary, San Jose in the West.