Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby listens to a reporter's question in the Penguins' locker room at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Thursday, May 15, 2014. When Crosby lifted the Stanley Cup in triumph on that warm night in Detroit five years ago, it was supposed to mark the beginning of hockey's next dynasty. That hasn't materialized. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

8. RFAs with big-money dreams

Ryan Ellis is, at this point, an outlier.

The Preds defenseman recently got five years for $12.5 million out of his team. And while only guaranteeing yourself $2.5 million per on average isn't great for an RFA who was once a first-round draft pick, you'd have to say he cleaned up in this economy.

Everyone else who hadn't signed to this point has fallen into line in the last several days, and almost all of them have taken sharp discounts. Torey Krug and Reilly Smith in Boston both only got $1.4 million for one year. Cody Eakin only got two years at $1.9 million per. Jaden Schwartz did a little better at two years and $2.35 million AAV. Pretty cheap for all four of them, all things considered, but it does set the table for them to cash in when their deals are up, either at the arbitration table or because they clearly agreed to the current deals with the understanding they'd be able to really get paid next summer (which is clearly the case with the two Bruins).

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That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for Ryan Johansen — who, to be fair, is better than all these guys — to argue he should get whatever money he still thinks he should get above the Blue Jackets' initial offer of $3 million per for the next two years. Or at least it didn't for a little while, before something bad happened to Boone Jenner.

7. When Irish Beanpots are smiling

Last week, Boston mayor Marty Walsh was in Belfast to do... something. While there, he talked with representatives of the Belfast Giants and said something to the effect of, “Wouldn't it be nice if our iconic college hockey tournament, which is played every February in a sold-out TD Garden, went to your fine city in 2016?” To which everyone in Boston collectively said, “Uhhhhh... no it would be bad???”

Walsh quickly walked that insane assertion back, saying he only meant a Beanpot-like tournament. A tournament like the Beanpot, you see. Not the actual Beanpot, guys. Come on. Don't take things out of context. A tournament like the Beanpot but not the Beanpot everyone likes. No no, never that.

Everyone saw that for the BS backtracking it was, of course. The Beanpot will never leave Boston. It will continue to be three bad and boring games played prior to an occasionally good and exciting one, played in Boston, in perpetuity. They'll be playing the Beanpot long after humanity has ceased to exist, thousands of years in the future. Northeastern and Harvard still won't have won one since 1993.

(And on that note, please keep in mind that college hockey is back this weekend and I am screaming and crying for how happy I am. If you are near a college hockey rink, you owe it to yourself to make an appearance at a few games at least this winter. Hell, buy season tickets.)

6. The Hurricanes' chances

The reality for the Carolina Hurricanes was that in a best-case scenario — in terms of their final position in the standings — they would finish somewhere in the 18-20 range, instead of being in the bottom five.

Then Jordan Staal broke his leg. I've seen more than a few articles in the last few days that said, “How will the Hurricanes replace this guy,” and the answer is that they obviously will not. Let's face facts here: He's their No. 1 center at this point, with all due respect to Eric, and is going to be actually impossible to replace.

The 'Canes center depth in the best of times is, shall we say, wanting. The Staals, then Jay McClement (who's not good), Elias Lindholm (who's super-young), with your last two options being Brad Malone and Riley Nash. Maybe you mix Victor Rask, whose production in the AHL last year decent but not great. Yikes.

Even if Anton Khudobin finally “wins” the starting job that should already comfortably be his from Cam Ward on Day 1 of the season, he'd have to stand on his head for 82 games for this team to threaten breaking into the 20-22 range. They're going to be dreadful.

5. Having a problem

People like to badmouth preseason hockey. They love it. And with some good reason: Preseason hockey features two things above all else. If you're not drawn in by bad players trying to do non-hockey things to make good impressions, you might like hilariously bad defending and goaltending. That's what you can expect.

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