It's been a long week.  But thankfully, it's over, and we can enjoy a couple of days off.  Just need to do some light house keeping and then we can get on with enjoying the weekend.

First off, I've got contributed a post to the Hockey Orphans series over at Cycle Like the Sedins, run by James O'Brien and a cast of thousands.  Despite their obvious lack of standards when it comes to contributors, it's a great site, bringing a lot of different points of view on various teams.  But what more would you expect from a Penguins fan who named his blog after a couple of Canucks?

Second, I couldn't overlook some statements in my old pal Barry Rozner's column today.  Now, it's kind of too bad for Rozner that hockey's becoming popular in Chicago again.  He's been one of the few guys who's written about the Hawks through the good and bad, and now that people are following the team again, they're bound to read his hockey stuff and realize that he has no idea what he's talking about.  To whit:

With an inexperienced team that's never been through the wars, adding center Sami Pahlsson is significant, assuming Pahlsson rebounds from mono sometime soon.

He was part of the Ducks' Cup-winning shutdown line two years ago, and while not sexy, not the size they still need in the middle, and nothing like Olli Jokinen, Pahlsson should help.

What scares you is Ducks GM Bob Murray is the architect behind the Anaheim championship, and he's fleeced Tallon in the past, so you wonder what he knows about Pahlsson that the Hawks don't.

Bob Murray built the Ducks 2006-07 Stanley Cup winning team and fleeced Dale Tallon?  I'm not clear on the fleecing, did Murray somehow pry away some of the Hawks brutal players from that era (I thought those guys were all too busy getting Trent Yawney fired)?  But more to the point, how the hell was that allowed to be printed?  Did the crack research staff over at the Daily Herald somehow overlook the fact that Murray's been the GM in Anaheim since only last November?!?  I'm sure Toronto is going to be extremely upset when they find out that all that money spent on Brian Burke was for nothing.

But Barry couldn't stop there:

All that said, Chris Neil sure would have been a comforting presence in the Hawks' lineup.

Seriously?  Chris Neil?!?  The same Chris Neil who didn't do a goddamn thing in last year's playoffs when (admittedly badass) octogenarian Gary Roberts basically challenged the entire Senators team (just ask our pal at Down Goes Brown)?

So here's tonight's Friday Night Fight between Chris Neil and 2nd rate enforcer Chris Dingman:

Who wouldn't feel comforted by having Neil's rugged presence on the ice?