Forward Alexei Ponikarovsky joined the Jets as a free agent last summer. (Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

Nothing breeds success like familiarity.

That’s clearly the thinking in New Jersey, where the Devils tonight announced the re-acquisition of forward Alexei Ponikarovsky from the Winnipeg Jets in exchange for a 2013 seventh rounder and a 2014 fourth rounder.

Ponikarovsky will be on his second tour of duty with the Devils. He was dealt there last season by the Hurricanes and was solid in the team’s run to the Cup Final, racking up nine points and a plus-eight rating.

He left New Jersey to join the Jets as a free agent over the summer. The Devils wanted to re-sign the 12-year-vet at the time, but the team’s focus on negotiations with Zach Parise led him to look elsewhere rather than wait for scraps.

“We really would have re-signed him except that at that time we were really waiting to see what we were going to be doing with another player and it held up,” said New Jersey GM Lou Lamoriello. “And I don’t think he could wait any longer, which I respected.”

Failing to get that deal done at the time cost them two picks now, but the Devils were desperate for another experienced forward having lost Dainius Zubrus for up to eight weeks. Ponikarovsky, who is expected to play Friday against Philadelphia, should make a quick transition to a familiar system.

“He played our style,” Lamoriello said. “He played in all situations. He was a player that played extremely well for us throughout the playoffs and just fit into the sort of culture that we have here in New Jersey.”

The Jets were looking to thin out their forward ranks after acquiring Eric Tangradi from Pittsburgh earlier today. Tangradi, a former second-round pick of the Pens, was a dangerous power forward with Belleville of the OHL, but couldn’t translate his game to the NHL despite multiple opportunities alongside Evgeni Malkin. They’re hoping a change of scenery will help him rediscover his confidence.

Corey Crawford’s stout defense has lifted the Blackhawks to an NHL-best 10-0-2. (Rich Lam/Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

You’ve seen the early results. The question is can you take them at face value? Here are 17 teams that have given us a pretty good idea of what they’re about:

The Real Deals

Boston Bruins: Outside of Shawn Thornton’s concussion, the beating that Buffalo laid on them last week was exactly what Boston needed. Their compete level is up. This team is deep and extremely well coached. Tuukka Rask looks like he’s up to the challenge of replacing the Colorado Kid. They’re going deep.

New Jersey Devils: My first mistake this year: Thinking it was finally safe to consign the Devils to the dustbin. This group is the ideal hockey team, so much more than the sum of its parts. Adam Henrique has been on a tear (4-2-6 in seven games) since returning from surgery, David Clarkson looks exactly like the guy who surprised everyone with 30 goals last season, and the defense is allowing a scant two goals per game. The Devils look more than capable of repeating as Eastern champs.

Chicago Blackhawks: I questioned his No. 1 potential after a couple of familiarly soft goals in Dallas, but Corey Crawford has silenced me and every other doubter with his focused play. With that type of goaltending, the Hawks are the class of the league. (HACKEL: Keys to  Chicago’s hot start.)

Vancouver Canucks: Don’t think you can say enough about what Alain Vigneault’s done with a team that has no second-line center, a faltering power play, a failing power play quarterback, and a raging goalie controversy, but still has the fifth-best record in the league.

Pittsburgh Penguins: They have issues, sure, but they’re better than they’ve shown. The Zach Boychuk experiment looks like a flop, so GM Ray Shero may have to find wing help somewhere other than the scrap pile. Sidney Crosby has been better than his numbers, and he’s healthy. He’ll lead a second-half surge to get the Pens back into contention for the conference title.

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It’s not unusual for the same player have make multiple shootout attempts in international hockey. After the first three shots, any player can step up over and over until the thing is decided. Repeating the best players makes for brilliant theater, as anyone who watched the epic duel between Jonathan Toews, Peter Mueller and Jack Johnson at the 2007 World Juniors will recall.

But second chances aren’t part of the NHL model. At least, until tonight.

Boston’s Tyler Seguin was the first shooter to face New Jersey netminder Johan Hedberg after the teams remained tied at one through overtime. His first attempt was a high-speed gallop capped off with a wicked wrister that beat Hedberg high glove. Boston went up by one.

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Alex Ovechkin has a new coach to get used to, and the Rangers may pay a price for their reliance on blocking shots. (Will Schneekloth/Icon SMI)

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.

Below are the essential questions for each team in the East and here’s the link for teams in the West:

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What a pain: the short schedule will magnify the time lost to injury by key players such as Kings center Anze Kopitar. (Ric Tapia/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

About the only thing one can say with certainty about the upcoming NHL season is that nothing is certain.

Each of the 30 NHL teams has specific concerns heading into the truncated 48-game schedule, but there are some questions every one of the will face. In our Friday post on training camps, we noted that NBC’s and SI’s Pierre McGuire has studied shortened seasons and it’s worth repeating the five things he believes teams need in order to be competitive: 1) very good goaltending; 2) a four-line attack; 3) a coach with an understanding of work-to-rest ratio so players don’t break down and risk injury; 4) avoiding prolonged losing streaks of five games or more; and 5) creative coaching.

That said, here are some of the major themes that could potentially color the competition in the mad dash to the Stanley Cup playoffs.

1. The Schedule — Only once before in the post-World War II era has the league played a 48-game slate — in 1995 due to that season’s lockout. Of all the wild cards in what could be a wild season, this is the biggest. Every aspect of the game will be impacted by the shorter, compressed schedule. Instead of 82 games in 183 days, or one game every 2.23 days, we’ll get 48 in 98 days, or one every 2.04 days. With play restricted to each team’s own conference, each contest means more since they are all essentially four-point games.

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One year after a tragic plane crash decimated the KHL team, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl returned to the ice. Colorado’s Semyon Varlamov (left, greeting former Capitals teammate Alex Ovechkin after a game) has been tending goal. (Photo by Yury Kuzmin/KHL Photo Agency via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

A big dark storm cloud lingers over any celebration of hockey in 2012. It’s the NHL lockout and it has been showering grief on the game and its fans for over three months. Now, it also makes my job here a bit easier compared to my colleagues who are covering other sports because so little has happened between June and December that the range of choices for my favorite stories of the year has been sliced dramatically. Still, I’d rather be burdened by having to choose from a full plate.

That said, here are my 10 highlights. (You can read other SI.com writers’ picks here and view a gallery of the 112 most amazing sports moments of 2012 here.)

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Hall of Fame defenseman Scott Stevens knew full well the motivational value of a big hit — in games or practice — while serving as the captain of the Devils’ three Stanley Cup championship teams. (Photo by Lou Capozzola/SI)

By Stu Hackel

Unless the owners and players restart negotiations, the closest that NHL fans may come to their favorite sport this season is by reading a book. If you are still stumped about what to give the fans in your life this holiday season, you might select one of these, or from our earlier list of gift books.

Wearing The C: Hockey’s Highest Honor, by Ross Bernstein. Triumph Books, 272 pages. $22.95 — The question of leadership among players has always been an essential part of hockey, often discussed and cited as a key reason why teams win or lose. “Putting a C on natural leaders,” Scotty Bowman says in this book, “is what sets average teams apart from the great ones.” There are different reasons why a player is selected to be a captain — some inspire and instill confidence with words in the dressing room and on the bench, some lead by example on the ice, some get the C on their sweater by virtue of their playing talent, some by virtue of their physical play — and this book explores all of that and more. Here’s SI.com’s photo gallery of its top 10 NHL captains of all time.

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The spirited sell-out crowd at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall was treated to a worthy substitute for the recently cancelled NHL All-Star Game, with the proceeds going to Hurricane Sandy relief funds. (Tom Briglia/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Once upon a time, some hockey executive — it might have been Phil Esposito — plastered a motivational phrase on the wall in his team’s dressing room that read, “Turn Every Negative Into A Positive.” Well, things can’t be much more negative for the NHL than this ongoing, ridiculous lockout and nothing’s been more negative during the last few months than the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy. Yet a group of locked-out players turned both things into a positive on Saturday night in Atlantic City.

To once again see Steven Stamkos slithering through defenses, Daniel Alfredsson making tape-to-tape passes through traffic, Martin Brodeur lofting the puck halfway down the ice, P.K. Subban dropping his shoulder and carrying the puck one-handed deep into the opponent’s zone, Simon Gagne breaking free from coverage, linemates Bobby Ryan and Corey Perry reading and reacting to each other’s moves, James Neal threatening to score every time he had the puck, and Kimmo Timonen making a perfect outlet pass felt like a reunion with an old friend.

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Current New York Rangers stars will be holding a clinic on Staten Island to benefit one of the area’s hardest hit places. (Photo by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

We’ll honor Day 60 of the NHL season being held hostage by not discussing the lockout but something more important, the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. This is out of the headlines in most places, but it remains a real problem for many people and, thankfully, some in hockey continue to pay attention.

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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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