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Nightly Hockey Hits

Nightly Hockey Hits: Surprises, busts and playing for free

Some great reads on this eventful Tuesday night, including: news on Nikita Filatov, Forsberg and Naslund playing for free, Brendan Shanahan’s retirement, why Jay Bouwmeester chose Calgary and much more after the jump.

Word from around the hockey blogosphere:

  • Brendan Shanahan has called it a career and Eric Duhatschek puts his career into perspectiveHe played the game the right way.  He was old fashioned in his style of play, stuck up for his teammates, went to the net, could hit, could shoot and great in the locker room.  Shanny will be missed.
  • Peter Forsberg and Markus Naslund have agreed to play for Modo in the Swedish Elite League for freeSweden’s Olympic entry just got a lot more dangerous.  Good for them.
  • Michael Farber of Sports Illustrated goes over the season’s biggest surprises so far.  Good for Farber to give some attention to Andy Greene who has been playing great hockey under the radar in Jersey.
  • Farber gave surprises, so Orland Kurtenblog is countering with the top disappointments this season.  Big bust list there–I would add Bryan Little to that group too.
  • Dmitry Chesnokov interviews Nikita Filatov for Yahoo!  Great work getting the interview of Filatov.  I think Columbus is very, very unhappy with this decision.  Something tells me (maybe it is Filatov!) that he is gone as long as Hitchcock is coach.
  • Elliotte Friedman with his 30 thoughts of the weekIf you haven’t read it before, it is the best new article on the internet.  Interesting notes in there about Miikka Kiprusoff, Brian Burke, Jay Bouwmeester and David Booth.
  • Is there such thing as too many rookies on one team?  I think teams that have a lot of rookies are forced to play them out of necessity more than anything.
  • Who will be the number one pick at this upcoming summer’s Entry Draft?  With the first pick in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft, the Boston Bruins select…

Remember that tomorrow night is the IllegalCurve.com Radio Show.  Tomorrow night’s guests are Craig Custance (The Sporting News) and David Pollak (San Jose Mercury News).