Chris Nichols

­Chris Nichols is Sportsnet.ca's fantasy hockey writer.

@Nichols_NHLPool on Twitter for timely NHL & poolie info, along with occasionally snarky comments.

Live blogging nightly: line combos, defensive pairings, analysis, statistical trends and more from every game on the NHL docket. Refresh the 'Live NHL Recap' page while the games are on to get new info as it is added.

Send in a brief fantasy hockey question, including all relevant league info, and it may be included in a future Hockey Hearsay blog during the week. One per person, please. Send it via Twitter for a possible response in the blog, or send via email (include your first name and hometown to represent!) if you'd prefer. chris.nichols@sportsnet.rogers.com

The 2011 All-Star rosters have been announced and in case you missed it, here's a quick rundown:

Forwards: Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Evgeni Malkin, David Backes, Matt Duchene, Patrik Elias, Loui Eriksson, Claude Giroux, Ales Hemsky, Jarome Iginla, Patrick Kane, Ryan Kesler, Phil Kessel, Anze Kopitar, Rick Nash, Alex Ovechkin, Corey Perry, Brad Richards, Daniel Sedin, Henrik Sedin, Patrick Sharp, Martin St. Louis, Eric Staal, Steven Stamkos.

Defencemen: Kris Letang, Duncan Keith, Dan Boyle, Brent Burns, Dustin Byfuglien, Zdeno Chara, Tobias Enstrom, Mike Green, Erik Karlsson, Nicklas Lidstrom, Marc Staal, Shea Weber

Goaltenders: Marc-Andre Fleury, Jonas Hiller, Henrik Lundqvist, Carey Price, Tim Thomas, Cam Ward

Rookies, who will only take part in the SuperSkills: Logan Couture, Evgeny Dadonov, Jordan Eberle, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Tyler Ennis, Cam Fowler, Michael Grabner, Taylor Hall, Tyler Seguin, Kevin Shattenkirk, Jeff Skinner, Derek Stepan

The Vancouver Province spoke with the Sedins about the All-Star game (they were named to the team with Ryan Kesler) and how the event has lost its lustre and that the Winter Classic has become one of the league's best marketing tool. Maybe the fantasy draft format will help?

"I think they need to do something because I don't know if the interest is that big right now," said Daniel. "This [format] might be it, but we'll see how it turns out. The Winter Classic is very good and you can see the interest in that and the HBO 24/7 series.

"The Winter Classic needs to be the important game and stay the way it is."

Added Henrik: " I believe the Winter Classic is great and it's something I look forward to watching, more so than the All-Star game. They've got to do something because it's not a great game to watch."

According to The Edmonton Journal, Taylor Hall is either a quick study or Edmonton Oilers' coach Tom Renney is a mad scientist because he’s thinking of moving the rookie over to centre after only 40 NHL games.

Hall, who has been on the left side of the Oilers’ first line with either Shawn Horcoff or Sam Gagner, was at centre with Ales Hemsky and Dustin Penner at Monday’s practice. Renney cautioned that he might change his mind before tonight’s game with the Dallas Stars and keep the teenager where he is. But the experiment may have legs, and Hall’s are plenty fast enough as long as the 19-year-old has the head for the switch.

The article notes that Mark Messier did it after being a left-winger for his first four years and an NHL first-team all-star twice before moving to centre to tag-team with Wayne Gretzky. Nobody’s saying that he’ll be the second coming of the Moose, who took the heat off Gretzky and was a physical force against Bryan Trottier and the New York Islanders in the Stanley Cup final, but it’s worth a shot with Hall.

“Messier and Taylor are kind of the same ilk ... at the end of the day, I think Taylor’s a kid who could play all three positions. He’s a bonafide adult in this game. I have no doubt he could do it. He’s been very responsible defensively, but what I don’t like is we haven’t got him the puck enough and maybe if we can start with him having it and he can dish it off and jump into the holes, we may have something there,” said Renney.

Horcoff, who is out for another 10 days with a right knee sprain, told The Journal that it’s the play away from the puck that’s the biggest adjustment for a centre.

“It’s a different world,” he said. “There’s no rest anymore. It’s constant work, no down time. You’re up the ice playing offence or in your zone playing against the other team’s good lines, trying to contain them.

“But the kid has plenty of legs. We’ll see what he’s like down low. The biggest thing for any centre is to stay between the puck and the net. When the puck comes inside the danger zone, that’s when you really have to engage. Everything has to go through the centre. Sounds easier than it is.”

The Montreal Gazette observes that for the past three games, Canadiens forward Lars Eller has sat in the press box – maybe or maybe not a healthy scratch - watching his teammates down below.

And the 21-year-old is brutally candid when he considers how much he learned about hockey in this thinner air.

“Not a whole lot,” Eller said with a tight smile Monday. “You get hungry, you want to get out there. I watch every game on video. It’s not like you learn a whole lot (in the press box).”

Eller returns to action Tuesday, skating in the place of ailing Michael Cammalleri, when the Canadiens take on the Rangers in New York. The youngster was in Cammalleri’s spot on a line with centre Tomas Plekanec and winger Andrei Kostitsyn.

Does he have anything to prove to anyone in his first game back?

“I want to prove something every game. I want to make a statement every game,” he said. “I’m well rested. I’m fresh, have good legs and I feel good. I haven’t played in a week and might be a little rusty, but there’s no excuse. We’re pros.”

The New York Post believes that with one move yesterday, Rangers general manager Glen Sather accomplished two goals.

By trading veteran defenceman Michal Rozsival to Phoenix for 24-year-old forward Wojtek Wolski, the Rangers not only found a replacement for Alex Frolov, who was lost for the season with a knee injury in Saturday's 2-1 win over St. Louis, but also opened up more playing time for the organization's group of young defencemen.

"We've been trying to build this team around the youth," Sather said. "And when a player like this, who's 24 years old, who's 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds and has been a very good, prolific goal scorer in the past, and you're moving a guy that's 32-years-old with this year and next year left on his contract, it was a good opportunity for us to get younger and bigger, and give the kids the opportunity in defence to play."

The deal also gives the Rangers some additional cap space to play with. Wolski has a $3.8 million cap hit for this year and next, while Rozsival's cap hit over the same period is $5 million.

Sather offered this to The Post on his new forward: "He's got all the talent in the world. The opportunity is gonna be here for him to play in a pretty good position, and we look forward to seeing him play."

On Rozsival, the GM said this: "I was very happy with the way [Rozsival] played. He's a good player, he's durable, he works hard, he's played through a lot of pain in his career. . . . We have nothing but good things to say about him."

Along with replacing Frolov, the move also opens up an opportunity for the Rangers to bring defenceman Michael Del Zotto back from Connecticut, who has two assists in three AHL games since being demoted earlier this month.

On the Phoenix side of the coin, The Arizona Republic reports that Rozsival will join the Coyotes in Columbus today and fly back with the team to Phoenix after the game against the Blue Jackets. He is not expected to play, struggling with a pulled muscle near his rib cage. The earliest he could slip on a Coyotes jersey is Thursday at Jobing.com Arena against the Toronto Maple Leafs. A more realistic debut is Saturday against the Anaheim Ducks. Rozsival is a piece Maloney has been searching for during the past two months. With the team's top four defencemen averaging between 21 and 24 minutes a game, Maloney needed a veteran to ease the load.

"We do everything by committee around here, and I think right now I felt we're overplaying our top four defencemen," Maloney said. "What he'll be able to do is share the minutes. He can play power-play minutes. With all the games we play and the way the schedule is, I felt we're living on the edge of the cliff here.

"We're waiting for an injury to happen because we're overplaying the top four and the other three are sort of evolving players. They're capable players, but it comes down to finding people that can play those heavier minutes, those minutes against top three lines. That's the trick."

Quick note: The Rangers, by the way, held an optional skate this morning ahead of the Habs tilt. Wolski was not on the ice for that, but I'd imagine I'll have the line projection for him this afternoon on Twitter. At the latest, you can obviously find it in tonight's live blog. As I tweeted following the deal yesterday afternoon, it'll only be a matter of time before he's tried with Marian Gaborik and Wolski should be able to earn PP1 time here. In PHO he was generally getting PP2 minutes this season. Ideally Wolski will be able to have the sort of impact he had with the Coyotes after being dealt from Colorado last year, where he was a point-per-game player, but Wolski's young career has been plagued by inconsistency so who knows?

The talent is there. He'll be given a shot. The rest will be up to him.

The Washington Post reports that Michal Neuvirth will get the start tonight against the Florida Panthers in what may be a more important game for the Capitals than simply meets the eye. With Tampa Bay inactive tonight and waiting for Washington arrive on Wednesday, the Capitals could take a one-point edge on the Southeast Division lead heading into that showdown at the St. Pete Times Forum.

This set of back-to-back contests provided the perfect opportunity for coach Bruce Boudreau to get Neuvirth back in net for the first time since Dec. 23 against Pittsburgh. Boudreau indicated that he plans on starting Semyon Varlamov, who is 4-0-1 in his past five starts, against Tampa Bay as he continues to try to manage the young goaltenders' workloads during their first full NHL seasons.

Neuvirth and Varlamov's youth, with only 47 regular-season games in the NHL each, is "why I don't want either one of them to start playing 10 or 12 games in a row," Boudreau said. "Because we've seen what's happened, more to Varly than Neuvy, when he's played long stretches of games in a row he gets tired and you can see trends of when he's letting soft goals go in. That hasn't happened yet, so we want to keep him fresh and ready to play" Wednesday.

The Post indicates that despite Varlamov's recent success, coach Bruce Boudreau maintained that the competition between Washington's 22-year-old netminders remains as close at the halfway point of the season as it was at the outset.

"He hasn't given up much and he's played great, but to be a great goalie in this league you have to do it for more than five games," Boudreau said. "You've got to do it over a season, two seasons - then you've got the reputation of being a very good goalie. Especially for the young guys, I hope they don't rest on their laurels of what they've accomplished so far, because we really haven't accomplished anything tremendous right now."

There's also the consideration that both goaltenders have each played just 47 career regular-season NHL games. They are both still in "the development stage," said Capitals goaltending coach Arturs Irbe, and they need experience and games to progress.

"It's a really interesting situation, because they've shown they can play in NHL," Irbe said. "It's really up to them to each show they can move beyond that."

The Buffalo News indicates that it's been 19 days since Buffalo Sabres' leading scorer Derek Roy suffered his season-ending knee injury when he was crunched into the boards by Florida Panthers defenceman Dmitry Kulikov. Thirteen days since Roy had surgery on the knee. What looked like the best season of his career was cut short in an instant, and Roy is still trying to accept that fact.

"You spend all summer getting ready for the season and 35 games into the season, you're out for the rest of it," Roy said in his first public comments since the injury. "It's definitely tough. A little fluky injury flying into the boards like that. You run in the boards a lot and nothing happens and all of a sudden that one time and you're out for the season.

"It's definitely tough. I was going at a good pace and feeling good about myself and my game, and then this happens."

The News points out that Roy will be out for the seventh straight game tonight when the Sabres host the Philadelphia Flyers in the arena. Oddly enough, Buffalo is 4-1-1 in his absence. Filling the void of a No. 1 centre who was averaging a point a game looked to be insurmountable, but the best hockey of the season from the likes of Drew Stafford, Jason Pominville and Jochen Hecht is helping to keep the Sabres afloat for now.

Roy, for his part, refused to completely rule himself out for the season. The timeline remains four to six months, but Roy said he's hoping to fast-track himself, and four months would be around the second round of the playoffs.

He has had limited mobility in the leg since the surgery but said he's embarking on light exercise movements to prepare himself for the rigorous rehabilitation process.

"I feel pretty good. I got to bend it today," he said. "I haven't got to bend my leg in three weeks. It's a good feeling. It was a great feeling to be around the guys. I was kind of nervous coming down to the rink today.

"I can walk on it but bending it is obviously an issue. I've never dealt with anything like this and they said it's going to get harder and harder and I'm ready for it. I've got all the guys behind me so it's going to be an experience."

The Dallas Morning News writes that back in the day, the Stars might have mastered the dynamic of the second line as well as any team in the league.

Taking a former 50-goal-scorer with plenty of mileage left on the tires (Joe Nieuwendyk), they found the perfect balance with a hungry young winger (Jamie Langenbrunner) and a gritty, smart veteran (Dave Reid).

The key to it all might have been the humility of Nieuwendyk to accept the secondary role after having a strong run as a No. 1 centre in Calgary.

Fast forward a decade later, and the Stars might be duplicating the feat. While it is a stretch to say Mike Ribeiro has accomplished what Nieuwendyk had at the time, he was the Stars' No. 1 centre and has had to accept the move "down" to the second line.

"Ribs has done a great job of improving his overall game, and I think one of the things that has helped him is he really hasn't seen his minutes or scoring opportunities fall all that much," said Stars coach Marc Crawford of Ribeiro's 19:12 of average ice time. "I think when you mix that in with the players he's playing with, it really has become a good mix."

The Morning News says Ribeiro worked hard in the summer to improve his defensive game, and that was part of coming to grips with the fact he was going to play behind Brad Richards, who had 91 points last season and is on pace to hit that total again this season.

"You don't talk about it much, but it was something I had to deal with in my head," Ribeiro said. "You always want to be the No. 1 centre, and when you're not, you have to accept that and find a way that you can help the team. So I worked on a lot of different things this summer."

And, now, Ribeiro is seeing that maybe the second line isn't the worst place in the world.

"You definitely get a few breaks out there, because the first line has to see the top 'D' or the checking line more," Ribeiro said. "And when that happens, you want to take advantage and make the other team think about their strategy. If you do it right, they don't know who to check."

The Nashville Tennessean notes that coach Barry Trotz has a specific way that he wants his Predators to play. Over the past 11 days, he's seen it translated onto the ice again and again.

Entering tonight's game against the Wild at Bridgestone Arena, the Predators are riding a five-game winning streak. It isn't just the streak that has Trotz smiling, however. It's the way the Predators are winning — defence, stellar goaltending and a resurgent offence.

"We know we have to keep it fairly tight to the vest. That's been our identity," Trotz said. "When we get away from our identity, we get in trouble. Right now, guys are really digging in and the defence corps is playing pretty solid. And we're getting big saves right now."

Long known as an organization that stresses defence, the Predators have allowed only six goals during their five-game winning streak. The main reason is the All-Star caliber play of goaltender Pekka Rinne, who started four of the five games and allowed only one goal per game.

"It's a sign that the whole team defence is really working well," Rinne said. "Even though we've been giving up a few more shots than we would like, we've still been able to keep them outside (the net). I've been able to see the puck, and that's made my job a lot easier."

The Tennessean points out that even when Rinne is given a game off, Anders Lindback has proved he is a more than capable backup. At Los Angeles last Thursday, Lindback stopped 24 of 26 shots in Nashville's 5-2 win.

Rinne has been the team's best player during the streak, since missing several games with injury. He has a 2.16 goals-against average, fourth best in the NHL. His save percentage (.926) is fifth best.

"For sure," Rinne said, "I probably feel the best I've felt this year."

Defenceman Shane O'Brien said the Predators have allowed too many shots in recent games, but he believes the blueliner corps is near elite status.

"We're as good and dependable as anyone in the league," he said.

Brandon: "Hi there, i read your blogs quite often and im currently stuck on a couple trades.

My Malkin, Kessel and Myers for Backstrom, Hossa, and Ehrhoff

My Rask, Visnovski and Selanne for Goligoski, Brodeur and Kronwall

Goalies: G (10) A (5) W (3) SO (2) OTL (1) Skaters: G (2) A (1) SH (2) PP (1) GW (1)

would love to hear what you think... thanks."

Chris: Is that Backstrom the centre or Backstrom the goalie? I'll assume the centre since there's no goalie on the other side.

With any trade, you need to look at what it can do for your team. If there's a clear advantage to it, great. If not, I generally tend to favour standing pat.

In the first trade, you'd upgrade Myers by getting Ehrhoff. I actually like Backstrom and Hossa vs. Malkin and Kessel in general, but the latter two might pay off more in your format. Maybe the D upgrade is worth it though and all in all, I really wouldn't have a problem with you doing that one. Malkin should take off soon, but I think Backstrom will as well and I'd take Hossa over Kessel despite Kessel's recent hot streak with points.

With the second trade, despite this being a good time to get Brodeur in any format, I don't necessarily see a reason to make that deal. Rask is beginning to get more starts. Visnovsky has been fantastic. Selanne is a goal-scorer and your format rewards them. I'd like to see you add Brodeur, but not at that price.

G in Toronto, ON: "Chris, I used a reasonably high draft pick on Marty Turco and have been disappointed to date. I am in a roto league which counts W, GAA, SV% and SOs. My other goalies are R Miller, Bobrovsky and Niemi.

Available on our wire is Raycroft, Boucher, Garon, Lindback, Schneider and Theodore. I was thinking of dropping Turco for Boucher and rolling with Miller, Philly duo and Niemi. My fringe forwards are Coulture, Downie, Pavelski and J Williams. Other forwards available are Stafford, Recchi, Clutterbuck, Bertuzzi and Steen. Make a move?"

Chris: In this case, since you have reasonable options, I could actually see dumping Turco and going with Boucher since you already have Bob. The Flyers are for real, so you may as well solidify the tandem since Boucher has been faring fairly well and is getting starts.