Craig Anderson, along with backup Robin Lehner, is putting together a spectacular season in Ottawa. (Jay Kopinski/Icon SMI)

By Allan Muir

An annotated guide to this morning’s must-read hockey stories:

• Craig Anderson and Robin Lehner are on the verge of crafting the best season of goaltending in modern history.

• Roberto Luongo and Ilya Bryzgalov top the list of likely compliance buyout candidates this summer.

• They talked Olympics, Carl Soderberg, Filip Forsberg and the NHL setting up shop in Las Vegas on The Hot Stove.

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It’s been a tough season and Ilya Bryzgalov knows the score, but he does care. (Scott Levy/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

At this point, Ilya Bryzgalov may not care whether he wears black and orange or some other team’s colors next season. But that’s not exactly what he said on Tuesday to Courier-Post writer Randy Miller.

In fact, Bryzgalov, whose loquaciousness makes him just about the best friend a journalist could ask for in this game, was wronged by the editor who cobbled together the headline for Miller’s piece in today’s Courier-Post piece: “Bryzgalov on staying a Flyer: ‘To be honest, I don’t care.’”

No surprise that the phrasing caused a bit of controversy online. Short of suggesting that the best cheese steaks are found in Pittsburgh, lacking passion for the privilege of being a Flyer is just about the best way to get under the skin of one of hockey’s most devoted fan bases.

It’s a provocative hed. I got sucked in by it myself when I was putting together this morning’s Top Line column. But what Bryzgalov really said was something different.

First, he was asked about the possibility of being a buyout candidate this summer.

“To be honest, I don’t care,” he said. “Really, I don’t care. I have no control on this, so why should I care?”

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A wall of a local zinc plant is shown after being damaged by a shockwave from a meteor in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, on Feb. 15. (Oleg Karogopolov/Getty Images).

By Allan Muir

It’s not just bears in the forest that frighten Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov now. It’s unstoppable meteors hellbent on destroying the earth and taking our attention away from hockey.

Bryzgalov, appearing on the Mike and Ike Show on Philadelphia radio station WIP this morning, was asked for his thoughts on the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, last week.

Seriously, we need to treasure this guy.

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Should he stay or should he go? Roberto Luongo is valuable to the Canucks either way. (Bob Frid/Icon SMI)

By Allan Muir

• Maybe they can get that Strombone guy in return. If Vancouver GM Mike Gillis is saying on record that there’s a provisional deal in place for Roberto Luongo, the early season’s biggest drama must be about to close. Or not. Who knows. Key point is buried at the end of the column: Luongo’s been the consummate pro during all this trade speculation, preventing the process from turning into a soap opera. This time around, being the anti-Tim Thomas is a good thing.

• Let’s not discount this free beer idea. The special warmup jerseys and pregame speeches were swell, but the healing process actually began with a competitive effort last night in Columbus. New GM John Davidson promised that his team wouldn’t be outworked, and the Jackets backed him up in theirt 3-2 shootout loss to Detroit.  A consistent, focused effort will go a long way in C-bus…at least for now…

• Must be the cooking. The Leafs have lost 12 of 14 at the ACC after being dropped 2-1 by the Sabres last night. At least it was a freebie for season-ticket holders.

• All things being equal, I’d take the blond. Ian Mendes has the scoop on the best behind-the-bench distraction since Taylor Stevens.

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Capitals owner Ted Leonsis is widely rumored to be in the group of hardline owners who are prolonging the lockout, but is he really trying to get out from under the fat deal he gave Alex Ovechkin? (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

On Wednesday’s blog post, we touched on the unity of the players and their rising anger level during the lockout. It prompted a comment regarding the unity of the owners. “You write about the possibility of players getting angry but what about the owners?” asked the reader who goes by JamesLandonJones. “How long until the owners in small or non-traditional hockey markets, or with otherwise shallow pockets and bills to pay, begin to apply pressure on Bettman? If this happens, where will the cracks first appear? How long before it begins? Has it already begun? Fehr has shown great skill and foresight in rallying his union. Does Bettman have the necessary skills to do the same with ownership?”

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NHL arenas will be quiet and empty on the league’s originally scheduled opening night, and likely for some time as the lockout drags. But thankfully, hockey’s landscape is vast and full of alternative action. (Bill Streicher/Icon SMI)

Hockey Fix Guides: MUIR: Canadian Major Juniors  | CAZENEUVE: AHL, ECHL, U.S. juniors | BAUMGAERTNER: KHL, Euro leagues | KWAK: 2012-13 NCAA men’s and women’s ice hockey

By Stu Hackel

It’s time for Plan B.

Like many of you, I had planned to watch opening night of the NHL season, probably switching between the Senators-Canadiens game and the Bruins-Flyers tilt in the early evening and doing the same for the two late contests, the Canucks taking on the Flames in Calgary and the Blues battling the Avalanche in Colorado.

Thanks to the ongoing lockout, we won’t be doing that. So the search for hockey — in person, on video screens and computer monitors, on this continent or elsewhere — is on.

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Fan memorials to the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team that perished in the 2011 KHL air crash began immediately and will continue with a march through the club’s home city as a new season dawns. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

They had bright hopes for a new season. They rolled down the runway, taking off for their opening game, which was to be played the next evening in Minsk. The entire playing roster, plus four members of the youth team as well as the coaching and training staffs were on board, as was a crew of eight. Their plane ran off the runway before takeoff, didn’t gain much altitude, hit a signal tower and fell into the Volga River just over a mile from the Tunoshna Airport. All but one person, a flight attendant, were killed.

Friday marks the first anniversary of the worst tragedy ever to hit the hockey world, the Yaroslavl plane crash in which 37 members of the Lokomotiv KHL team perished . A silent march through the streets of Yaroslavl, a true hockey town long devoted to the club, will mark the occasion. But Thursday, the re-formed Lokomotiv team returns to playing its KHL season opener, visiting Sibir Novosibirsk.

UPDATE: With three second period goals, Lokomotiv defeated Sibir 5-2. More details below.

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High-priced goalie Ilya Bryzgalov is the obvious scapegoat, but the Flyers’ demise was a true team effort. (Len Redkoles/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

There’s no brotherly love in Philadelphia today. All three of the city’s major sports teams dropped games on Tuesday night: the Phillies blowing a 4-0 lead to the Mets, the 76ers failing to clinch their series against Chicago, and the Flyers being eliminated by the Devils. That last one is, as hosts Mike and Ike said on their WIP Radio midday show, “the deepest wound of all.”

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Brian Elliott’s sudden reversal of form is the last thing the Blues need in their 0-3 hole against the Kings. (Harry How/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

It’s a cruel world in which goalies live. The numbers may tell us they haven’t been this good since the days of Georges Vezina, George Hainsworth, Tiny Thompson and Frank Brimsek but — then as now — gaudy regular season stats are meaningless when the playoffs roll around. The Blues’ Brian Elliott may have posted eye-popping numbers between October and the first round, like a 1.56 goals-against average and .940 save percentage, but in his last three games against the Kings, his  performance has been abysmal and will likely leave a lasting impression.

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Long a lightning rod for the Sharks’ ongoing postseason disappointment, Patrick Marleau may have cost his team its series against the Blues by taking a boneheaded penalty at a particularly important time. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

We’ve heard, read and written a lot this week about discipline — or lack of it — in the Stanley Cup playoffs, almost all of it due to the unprecedented manner in which the opening round has unfolded. There has been an elevated number of suspensions for illegal dangerous play and fights. “This was the time of year when you saw the best players playing the best hockey,” Pat Hickey of The Montreal Gazette wrote earlier this week, reflecting on the unusual course most series took in the early going as compared to the norm. “The emphasis was on skill. There was defence and hard hitting but clean hits were the order of the day because nobody wanted to leave his team vulnerable by taking a dumb penalty.”

Dumb penalties come in many varieties. Besides the sucker punches and hair pulling, we’ve also seen selfishly brandished sticks to faces, elbows to skulls, helmets grabbed and a head smashed into the glass, and leaping late head shots. So it was almost refreshing on Thursday night to see a plain old stupid interference penalty at a critical moment that cost a team the game. Almost refreshing…but not really.

Patrick Marleau, come on down.

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