Welcome back NHL...hockey pool!

Yay.
Overwhelming enthusiasm.
Sleepless nights staring at nothing.
And that's just my wife's reaction when i told her hockey is back.

Here are my bold NHL hockey observations for 2013.

Is it just me, or has everyone on the Vancouver bandwagon overlooked the one huge glaring fact about Cory Schneider being promoted to #1- his overall record as a starting goalie is 1-2.
To me that's a pretty big indication of 'lack of winning'.

Sure, a lot of unproven goalies have gone on to #1 status the following year, but usually it's after a long Cup run, like Patrick Roy in his first year or even Antti Niemi for the Blackhawks when they won in 2010 who basically let him go to San Jose so they could use the much more pronouncable Corey Crawford in net.

Yes, Luongo is an all-star goalie who, like pretty much every goalie in Toronto and Vancouver, has proven to be fallible and amazingly patient with reporters stupid and predictable questions. It's a team game and it's not that he let more goals in than the other guy, it's that the other team scored more goals than his team. Maybe he's just tired of being the blame guy when it comes to every Canucks loss.  Maybe, just maybe, it's not always his fault when Vancouver loses. Here's a guy that gets railroaded into being a 'choker' because he was only able to win 15 playoff games in 2011.

While there are quite a few people that will be happy to see the Canucks return to 'average' this year, including me, it's sad that when they start losing and start laying the blame on goaltending that they will be looking to Luongo and wondering...maybe we gave up on him too early. I hope he gets out of Vancouver, calls up Pavel Bure and they have a long drunken night together on the beaches in Florida exchanging horror stories. Then they make prank calls to AM 1040.  

So my bold prediction this year;
it's a total crap shoot. LA won't repeat. Vancouver won't get past the quarter finals. Minnesota's double signing which was one of the final straws leading to the lockout will do nothing for them in the standings. St. Louis will go far in the west while Pittsburgh will forget that they have to win in the playoffs while Philadelphia doesn't. Winnipeg may surprise to the delight of Canadians everywhere but the Canadiens won't, to the shock of Canadians nowhere.