Wait ’til next year: Michigan Stadium will finally get to host the biggest Winter Classic ever. (Paul Sancya/AP)

By Allan Muir

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

• The Toronto Star quotes sources as saying the Maple Leafs will meet the Red Wings in Ann Arbor for the 2014 NHL Winter Classic.

• Jannik Hansen of the Canucks has a 3:30 p.m. meeting today with Brendan Shanahan in the wake of what Hansen called “a hockey play.”

• The view from Vancouver: it wasn’t even a penalty. Maybe it’s just the cynic in me, but I’m guessing that they might have felt differently about the play had it been Henrik Sedin face-down on the ice.

• No link, just a repeat of a question I asked last night: I see players drop the gloves to avenge a fallen teammate after a hard but legal hit all the time. So where were all those honor-bound Blackhawks after Hansen’s cheap shot? Pretty pathetic.

• The headline in the New York Post after Montreal beat the Rangers said it all: Z’s the Day. Nice work by the editor who came up with that gem. And nice work by quote machine John Tortorella, who described it as “Two bad teams playing and we were worse than they were.” In Montreal’s room, there was praise for the two-way play of Lars Eller.

• The Sabres turned in “a mistake-filled, passionless” performance in last night’s 2-1 loss to Winnipeg. The clock is ticking louder in Buffalo…

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Hockey fans are never shy about expressing their feelings, especially in Philadelphia. (Chris Szagola/CSM/Landov)

By Allan Muir

So Forbes came out with an article detailing America’s 10 most disliked athletes. No surprise that hockey wasn’t represented on the list. I mean, “most-disliked” simply doesn’t apply to this game. We don’t deal in anything so namby-pamby. Hockey’s all about passion, about love and hate. So here are the guys you most love to loathe.

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The Red Wings wanted a quick spark and Jordin Tootoo provided it with his fists. (Kirk Irwin/Getty Imafges)

By Allan Muir

It took all of three seconds from the opening puck drop for Detroit’s Jordin Tootoo to drop the gloves with Jared Boll of the Blue Jackets on Monday night.

Three seconds.

Now, tempers can fray quickly in the NHL, but it’s hard for anyone to work up a good froth in that span, especially when the guy you’re baiting is stationed 30 feet away on the opposite side of the face-off circle. But that seemed like a leisurely, deeply considered pace compared to the single tick it took Joe Finley and Matt Martin of the Islanders to call out Pierre-Cedric Labrie and B.J. Crombeen of the Lightning earlier in the day. Or even the two seconds it took for Pittsburgh’s Tanner Glass to summon Rangers forward Arron Asham on Sunday.

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