*An interesting look at the effectiveness of hockey helmets, and how so many helmets used even at the NHL level fail to reach the safety requirements.
*Brian Engblom took a puck off the head while working between the benches of the Penguins game on Sunday, but got stitched up and kept right on going.
*We’re in the sprint phase of the NHL regular season, and Adam Proteau of the Hockey News is absolutely loving what he’s seeing.
*A piece on Stanley Cup of Chowder about NHL teams “weaponizing” the media that I include because I found it be an amusingly paranoid take from somebody way, way on the outside (like in Europe rather than Boston, or even North America for that matter). If this person knew how things really operated between pro sports teams and the media, then they’d realize this column reads like somebody that’s watched a few too many conspiracy theory movies. These kind of things could have been a lot more prevalent when readers only had a couple of choices, like the Globe and the Herald, to go for all of their information about one of the Boston sports teams, but it’s just not realistic now. And If I were a “mouthpiece” for the Bruins organization, I wouldn’t be writing things like this, or probably this either. People need to get real, and this writer should actually do a little research before lazily throwing labels around without real evidence to support it. I get equal amounts of social media vitriol from Bruins fans accusing me of being a “Bruins homer” and a “Bruins hater”, which is further evidence that A) I’m doing my job pretty well and even-handedly and B) people in these kinds of situations usually only see what they want to see.
*Buffalo Sabres GM Tim Murray says that he “thinks too much” about Connor McDavid, and I’d say that is self-evident in the team he’s shaped in Buffalo this season. The Sabres could be pretty good next year with McDavid dropped in the mix.
*For something completely different: speaking of “weaponizing the media”, here’s an article on the story behind the Player Tribune web site kick-started by Derek Jeter that’s already made a pretty big splash in each of the four major sports.