- Bob Hunter of the Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson on his struggling team, “We’ll be active.”
“The first six or seven weeks of the season, it was too disjointed,” he said. “We had (James) Wisniewski out. We had (Jeff) Carter out. We had (Radek) Martinek out. We had (Mark) Dekanich out. … It was just too disjointed to get a clear picture. The picture is becoming clearer now. We aren’t playing well enough and … me as management has to find a solution to help the team.”
“Everything’s on the table,” he said. “We’ve got to look at everything. We’ve got to seriously look at everything. Now that’s different than saying, ‘I’m going to phone every GM tomorrow and say who do you want, (Rick) Nash, Carter or (R.J.) Umberger?’ but we’ve got to look at the whole situation and we’ve got to consider everything.”
- David Pollak of the San Jose Mercury News: Sharks management have their mid-season meetings on Jan. 14th, where they make some decision on what they’ll do before the Feb. 28th trade deadline.
“We’re carrying three goalies now and we can’t predict the future,” said Wayne Thomas, who doubles as the Sharks’ goalie coach and assistant general manager. “We can’t predict other teams’ needs, we can’t predict our needs. What we try to do is just keep all three of them ready. That’s the job.”
- Jim Jamieson via twitter: Roberto Luongo will start in net for the Canucks against the Sharks. Cory Schneider will start on Thursday or Saturday.
- Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News: Stars goalie Kari Lehtonen should be ready to go tomorrow against the Blue Jackets. Lehtonen will need to be activated from the IR. As a result, Andrew Raycroft has been informed that he’ll be put on waivers today. Richard Bachman will be the backup after going 5-2-0 with a 2.76 GAA while Lehtonen was out.
- Erik Erendsson of the Tampa Tribune: Lightning forward Martin St. Louis must wear a full cage for the next month as he recovers from an eye injury. Once he’s able to remove the full the full cage, he’ll be putting on a plastic visor for the 1st time in 15 years.
