Truly these are the salad days of hockey linkerage. The season is but two days old, the hopes and dreams of the masses are still fertile and fruitful and Carlo Colaiacovo isn't on the Injured Reserved list

And still...well, and still we on the National Affairs desk ponder the bigger questions. Does Garnet Exelby have consciousness or just an ever-expanding array of questionable hats? If you place Sergei Kostitsyn in a box knowing there is a 50% chance that he will either be in thrall to Mafioso kingpins or else engaging in fist talk on the mean streets of Minsk - at what point can you be sure that he's run away to the KHL with hot bitter tears stinging his eyes?

These thoughts will comprise my latest dissertation, 'A Critique Of Pure Dread'. Or 'The Thoughts That Go Through My Mind When I Think About Ovechkin Versus Toskala This Evening'.