Puppies rule

I did little to nothing this weekend aside from relax, visit family and drink beer outside. It was pretty darned great. All of this was made better by having my puppy with me when we went out to visit family and drink beer. Grandma has a massive back yard that backs onto a park so we had a great time playing out there (on a side note, I also discovered that grandma has an outdoor hot tub that needs tending to... hmmm...). Anyways, puppies are great and make summer weekends even better. So I share a video of a cute shiba inu puppy above. One of these days I'll manage to take video of Keiko doing something cute and post it, but today is not that day. Instead, I just give you what few hockey links I was able to find and plead, again, with Ilya Kovalchuk to sign with the Kings already so that the rest of the NHL can get on with their lives.

• Simon Gagné à Tampa Bay?
  Yes, it's in French - but RDS is reporting that the Tampa Bay Lightning are in talks with the Flyers over Simon Gagne.
• It was more than "truculence" in the 1970s; before the "Broad Street Bullies" came the "Big Bad Bruins"
  VLF gives us a lesson on tough teams from the 70's.
• 5 Fighting To Be Leafs
  Yakov Mironov looks at Hanson, Caputi, Aulie, Holzer and Irwin, and their chances of playing for the big club this year.
• Impending Doom Through the Looking Glass
  raskofalltrades tries to think of where the Leafs could be in two years, if the League's owners reduce the salary cap to 48 million, as rumours suggest.
• Could Stempniak come back to St. Louis?
  St. Louis Game Time reviews the possibility of Stempniak returning to where we got him from.
• And now something completely different
  Our own sleza brings us a map of Europe, from a Swedish hockey perspective.
• Colton Orr wins the Probert Award for Fighter of the Year - HockeyFights.com