By Allan Muir

Is there anything Mike Fisher can’t do? First he does most of the heavy lifting for Nashville’s offense. Now he has to carry the team’s marketing department as well.

Facing a run-off this week against Detroit forward Pavel Datsyuk in the EA Sports NHL 14 Cover Vote contest, Fisher took it upon himself to pitch the big ideas needed to win fan support.

He’s ready to ride the coattails of pop culture trends (“How about battle axes? Game of Thrones is kind of a big deal right now.”), enlist celebrity friends (“I thought we could get a couple guys…Paisley, McGraw…”) and take shots at his opponent (“I don’t see Datsyuk coming up with any ideas, do you?”).

And if it comes down to it, he’s not afraid to ask the tough questions (“Do you think Queen Elizabeth has Google?”) or to carry a man purse. Yes, a man purse. Hey, if you were that dreamy, you could get away with it, too.

It all makes his wife laugh. It’ll probably make you laugh, too. And if it makes you want to vote, you can do it here.

By Allan Muir

Hockey is a game of mistakes. Passes through the middle of the defensive zone, missed assignments, lazy penalties…stuff like that happens all the time.

But it’s not often you’ll see one like this.

With the Oilers and Predators locked up at one midway through the third and the puck in Edmonton’s zone, Nashville’s Sergei Kostitsyn has a pass bounce over his stick above the circles. He races Sam Gagner to the loose puck, but the Oiler beats him to it in the neutral zone.

Kostitsyn pursues for a moment…and then pulls up and goes to the bench, allowing Lennart Petrell to join and create a two-on-one rush that he finished to give Edmonton a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

There are mistakes. There are bad mistakes. And then there are, “Would you mind telling me what the hell you were thinking?” mistakes.

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By Allan Muir

There are blown calls every single day in the NHL, and as long as we’re sticking with human officials that’s not changing any time soon.

But blown calls are one thing.

This is something else.

As one veteran hockey official told me after watching the play tonight, “First thing I thought: we won’t be seeing [linesman Derek Amell] in the playoffs.”

Amell was in perfect position as the play unfolded directly in front of him, unscreened, and yet somehow missed that Colorado’s Matt Duchene was about five feet deep in the zone before the puck followed him across the blue line. Duchene was actually looking back at the puck the whole time.

Unbelievable.

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The Minnesota Wild made a summer splash by signing prize free agent defenseman Ryan Suter (as well as winger Zach Parise, not pictured), but the team may have to make just as big a splash on the ice this season. (Jim Mone/AP)

By Stu Hackel

Every NHL season starts with expectations and conjures up predictions about where teams might finish, but this is a season like no other. You can’t even compare it too closely to the lockout-shortened 1995 campaign, one played with a 26-team NHL, a different conference alignment and playoff format, no shootout or “loser’s point,” and far less parity. And even in a normal season, there is so much uncertainty in sports that preseason predictions are a waste of time.

SI.com colleagues Brian Cazeneuve, Sarah Kwak and Adrian Dater have their thoughts on the upcoming season and you can find them here:

Power Rankings | Milestones | Central | Northwest | Pacific | Southeast | Atlantic | Northeast

Our favorite preseason pastime at Red Light is trying to boil down each team’s success or failure to one or a few essential themes. Each club has them and the answers to these questions, theoretically at least, should go a long way to determining if it plays up to expectations and potential. Keep in mind they all take place within the framework of the shortened season imposing its own unique characteristics on the playoff chase, which we pondered in this post.

Yesterday we visited the Eastern Conference. Here are the essential questions for each team in the west and some post-lockout thoughts after that:

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Until last season’s playoff run, their first berth since 2000, the Panthers were a mediocre to poor club and tough box office sell, factors that have nothing to do with the NHL’s expired CBA. (Eliot J. Schechter/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

On Monday, we looked at Jimmy Devellano’s strange remarks about NHL players, who he suggested are viewed by ownership as “cattle.” How many owners actually feel that way might be in question, but another of his remarks might be a more accurate representation of this group’s sentiment as the lockout continues. “The owners simply aren’t going to let a union push them around,” Jimmy D. said. “It’s not going to happen.”

And, apparently, they are going to assert themselves even if it means losing another entire season — or maybe even two, or however long it takes until they can get the players to yield. When former Florida Panthers executive Stu Siegel writes in this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated that he’s “depressed” to see another work stoppage and notes “there’s plenty of blame to go around,” you have to take into consideration that the owners’ intransigence is a big component.

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Defenseman P.K. Subban is a desirable restricted free agent, but the Canadiens are not an easy franchise to raid. (Minas Panagiotakis/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

Among the most buzz-y stories this week has been the plight of Pernell Karl Subban, the Canadiens’ restricted free agent defenseman who remains unsigned. It’s worth questioning, however, if this story is worth all the buzz, although almost everything involving P.K. grabs the hockey world by the lapels and screams for attention, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

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The Predators opened up the wallet to match Shea Weber’s 14-year, $110 million offer sheet from the Flyers. (US Presswire)

By Stu Hackel

If the Predators’ decision to match the Flyers’ $110 million RFA offer sheet to Shea Weber late Tuesday wasn’t quite a declaration of independence for Nashville’s hockey team, it was something close to that. No longer will the Preds be a slave to pro sports’ small market mentality, forced to surrender top-tier and complimentary players when they can no longer afford them.

That had been the Preds’ way, sadly, for too long. Their difficult financial picture (made even worse at one point when a California con man didn’t have the $23.5 he was investing as an ownership partner) always meant that when important players neared the end of their contracts, they’d end up elsewhere. They were always saying goodbye, it seemed: Kimmo Timonen, Dan Hamhius, Scott Hartnell, Andy Delmore, Cliff Ronning, Vern Fidler, Tom Fitzgerald and probably a few more I can’t recall at the moment. Nashville was a team they loved and they left.

But no more. It started last fall when the new ownership group, headed by Tom Cigarran, and GM David Poile locked up goalie Pekka Rinne for seven years at $7 million a season. They pledged they would do everything they could to keep their top defensive tandem — Weber and Ryan Suter — together regardless of the cost. They said they’d spend to the cap limit, if they needed, to make the Preds a Cup contender. This was a different message, a brand new tune, coming out of Nashville and the fans loved it.

They have to love it even more today. These guys were true to their word. They did everything in their power to hold on to Suter, but couldn’t compete with the lure of family, friends and familiar surroundings in Minnesota. For once, it wasn’t about the money.

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Rick Nash will boost the Rangers offense, but some say Columbus didn’t get enough value in return. (Reuters)

By Stu Hackel

There are two ways to evaluate any trade, as Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson reminded everyone on his conference call Monday following the deal that sent Columbus captain Rick Nash to the Rangers. “Any trade gets evaluated initially,” he said, “but the real evaluation comes after a year or two or three, after you see what everybody’s done in their current places.”

Well, the immediate evaluation on the deal overwhelmingly criticized Howson for not getting more in return, a chorus that included my friend and SI.com colleague Adrian Dater and, strangely, the man whose own failures as the first Blue Jackets GM played a large role in their perpetual futility, Doug MacLean (via Twitter), who is now a hockey analyst in Canada.

Of course it may turn out in a few years that the chorus was right and Howson’s deal of Nash, large minor league defenseman Steve Delisle and a conditional third-round selection for Brandon Dubinsky, Artem Anisimov, Tim Erixon and a first-round selection in 2013 turns out poorly for Columbus. But we can’t know that yet.  And many of the instant analysts have overlooked some other things when assessing this deal.

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The Flyers gave Shea Weber a 14-year offer reportedly worth up to a stunning $110 million. (Matt Kartozian/US Presswire)

By Stu Hackel

Time to check in with two NHLers — once considered loyal beyond question to their teams — who may or may not be changing addresses in the near future. We’ll know about Shea Weber, and whether the Predators match the Flyers RFA offer sheet, no later than Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. As for Shane Doan, and whether he decides to forsake the Coyotes and sign elsewhere as a UFA, the timeline is far less certain.

The latest on Weber, who Philadelphia signed to a stupendous offer last week, is a report that the Flyers and Predators are working on some sort of trade that would end up with Weber moving to Philly but the Predators getting players instead of the four first-round draft choices in return.

Weber leaving Nashville is still a dizzying situation to contemplate and something he might not have considered had Ryan Suter not signed with Minnesota, although relations between Weber and the team could have been strained last year when they went through arbitration. Now, the Predators’ loyalty will be tested: If the Preds decide to remain true to their pledge not to lose top players to another team for financial reasons, then you can forget all this trade talk.

If, on the other hand, Nashville believes matching the offer sheet would cripple their franchise going forward, Predators GM David Poile would probably prefer to acquire NHL-ready talent now rather than draft picks later (as much as four years later) who may never pan out and certainly not for years down the road.

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The current NHL is really just a rough battle between “haves” like the Flyers and “have-not” teams like the Predators. (John Russell/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Much of the discussion surrounding the Flyers’ offer sheet to Predators RFA Shea Weber centers on whether Nashville will match it — and many believe they must and will — but Philadelphia’s stab at snaring the All-Star defenseman also tells us a great deal about the negotiations between the NHL’s owners and players for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Yes, the talks are between labor and management, but the Weber situation reveals that the basic issue confronting the two sides is actually the owners vs. themselves. It’s their collective inability to figure out how to solve their business problems that have been created by their own record revenues. The solution in their opening proposal seeks to shift the burden of fixing them onto the players. and as long as this remains their course, the problems of inequity among the 30 franchises probably can’t be solved.

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