Brough: The NHL, if they bail on the Olympics. Look, I understand the owners’ reluctance — really, I do — but the fans want it and the players want it, and that goodwill should mean something beyond the bottom line. NHLers have been going to the Olympics since 1998. It’s part of the international schedule now, and to take it away is going to upset a lot of people, including one of the league’s marquee players, Alex Ovechkin. So go to South Korea in 2018, then go to Beijing in 2022 and try to make inroads into a huge Chinese market. In the process, make your customers and employees happy.

Gretz: Radko Gudas. After a suspension last season and a couple of other incidents that probably should have been suspensions he opened this season with a six-game ban for yet another bad hit. The problem with Gudas isn’t necessarily that he sometimes crosses the line with his physical play. It’s that he doesn’t need to cross the line. He has become a good enough player (and he is a pretty good player) that he can still play physical without resorting to the stuff that makes you scream, “What are you doing?!” He is the otherwise good kid that every once in a while ends up with a detention for something completely stupid. Sometimes that gets you coal.

Alfieri: I still can’t believe Cody Eakin only got four games for charging Henrik Lundqvist. I felt like the NHL had the perfect opportunity to send a message with a stiff punishment and they failed to do so. Thankfully, the Rangers goalie was able to return to the game, and he even shut out the Stars in the process. I realize that had Lundqvist been seriously injured, the NHL would have handed out a longer suspension, but I just don’t get that. Sorry Cody, you’re getting coal.

Tucker: Islanders general manager Garth Snow. Let’s just say some of the decisions that organization has made over the past several months — letting Kyle Okposo and Frans Nielsen go as free agents, for starters, and then the recent Cal Clutterbuck contract extension — shouldn’t exactly inspire a festive spirit for Islanders fans.



O’Brien: The big bullies on either side of the “traditional” vs. “fancy stats” debate, particularly as it pertains to the Florida Panthers. Even if you disagree with how to build a team/how to play the game, why does it almost always devolve into personal insults? Sometimes it feels like especially grumpy people are expecting the “nerds” to force them to crack open a calculus textbook or something. Sports are supposed to be fun, gang.

Halford: Ignoring what the dork above me wrote, nobody deserves coal more than Patrick Roy. Are the Avs a bad team? Yes. Did he have the right to walk away? Also, yes. But there’s a way to do things, and the time to do them — and Roy picked the worst way, and the worst time. Bailing on the team six weeks before training camp was bad enough, but the fact he did it after Bruce Boudreau, Guy Boucher, Randy Carlyle, Mike Yeo, Glen Gulutzan and Todd Richards all had new jobs was especially brutal. Galling, really. Colorado is a troubled franchise, no doubt, but a coach should never quit on his team. That’s Bobby Petrino stuff.