An individual player’s likeability, the way he performs his emotions, may contribute in some small, fractional way to his team’s success, but you know what contributes even more? Scoring goals. In fact, you might say that scoring goals contributes more to winning hockey games than pretty much anything else. Of all the tangible hockey skills, the measurable, definable, quantifiable things that contribute to winning, scoring is the most important, the rarest, and the most expensive. Guys who can smile in the locker room and be first on the ice in practice are a dime a dozen- or would be, if there wasn’t a League-mandated minimum salary. Guys who can put up 20+ goals and 50+ points a season? They’re five million per, and for good reason.

Steve Staios has announced his retirement as a player, but has already found his first post-playing gig in the front office of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Staios took the long road to the NHL, spending almost three full seasons in the minors before establishing himself in the NHL. He played his first full NHL season after turning 23, but would go on to have a splendid career that saw him play 563 of his 1,034 career regular season and playoff games with the Oilers.

I wonder whether the Stockton franchise will move at some point: perhaps sooner rather than later? There's probably a degree of exaggeration with the 'most miserable city' quote. But still, a bankrupt city with growing social and political issues can hardly be a good place for a minor league hockey franchise.

It was around the trade deadline that the Oilers, a team without great centre depth, traded Ryan O'Marra, who was finally looking like a decent fourth line NHL option (kills penalties, wins face-offs, good defensively, takes regular shifts), for Bryan Rodney, whose contract expired, and who they haven't even bothered to resign (probably a good idea). My only question is why make this trade?

Another OKC Baron has flown the coop (is that what the landed nobility do? Fly the coop?), as Mr. Keller is off to Genève-Servette of Switzerland's National League A. I am having trouble seeing this as in any way a good thing for the Barons in '12-'13 - didn't Keller get some consideration for a call-up to the NHL at one point last season?

The Capitals just haven't been nearly as good at controlling play the past two seasons as they were prior to that. There are myriad reasons why but, based on how dramatically Semin's Relative Corsi rate has improved, I think we can conclude that Semin isn't one of those reasons. He's still driving play at an elite rate 5v5 compared to his teammates (significantly better than he used to, in fact) but since the team as a whole has struggled, that hasn't translated into as many opportunities as Semin was once getting.

Semin’s scoring chance differential of plus-52 was more than double any other Capital player (Perreault was second at plus-24). With Semin on the ice, the Capitals generated 52 more scoring chances on net than their opposition did.

The concerns about Semin are familiar. "Soft", "bad teammate", "not a playoff performer" are cliché. With so much objective evidence in sports, critics must turn to intangible evidence to provide a logical reason to why they can't like a player.