NHL Team Canada

Next year, the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships will be held in Regina and Saskatoon, cities in the Saskatchewan province of Canada. To honor the province and their CFL football team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Hockey Canada has decided to unveil a green version of the team's jerseys to be worn twice during the tournament.

In a press release, Hockey Canada COO Scott Smith had high praise for the jerseys. "We believe fans in Saskatchewan, and throughout Canada, will rally around the green jerseys prior to and during the 2010 IIHF World Junior Championship," he said.

They're rallying all right, but it's not the kind that Smith had in mind.

The NHL could be home to quite the comeback story this season.

Longtime star forward Theo Fleury faded away a few years back, thanks in part to a track record of substance abuse that led to his suspension from the NHL. Recently, word got out that Fleury wanted to play again. Now, the 41-year-old, who played in 455 games over his NHL career and took part in eight international competitions as a member of Team Canada, has been cleared by the NHL to come back.

The offseason sure has been interesting for the Minnesota Wild. The front office was overhauled, with former Pittsburgh aide Chuck Fletcher taking over as general manager and hiring Todd Richards as head coach.

Changes have come to the Wild on the ice, too, but one of the more notable developments of the offseason involves a player who has been with the Wild ever since he was drafted.

USA Hockey knew what it was doing when it named Brian Burke to run the national team. As they try to build the team on the ice into a more serious international contender, Burke will keep them in the headlines. After a relatively silent experience at the IIHF World Championships, where Team USA placed fourth, Burke is back in midseason form.

In Chicago for Team USA's orientation camp in advance of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Burke spoke Tuesday about what fans can expect to see from the Americans. Needless to say, he spoke with brutal honesty, something that fans can equally appreciate and despise.

It's been said for years that the way to get a sports fan hooked on the NHL is to get them into an arena to see a game live. After all, it's one thing to "know" that NHL players are bigger, faster and stronger than the rest of us, but to appreciate the speed and violence of a collision sport like NHL hockey you need to get a look at it up close.

Then again, it's another thing entirely to understand just how dangerous a shift on the ice can really be. During my own decidedly mediocre recreational hockey career, I had a near death experience with a slap shot off the stick of a former small-time college hockey player, and after having the life nearly scared out of me, came away with a new appreciation for players who regularly throw their bodies in the path of a piece of vulcanized rubber traveling at better than 100 mph.

Which leads me to the story of an old friend of mine, Jeff Grimshaw, a man who got a chance to experience first hand what it's like to get crushed by an NHL player, something he experienced at the hands of one of the game's greatest tough guys, Willi Plett.

As we've noted before, what Russian hockey players say to the Russian press oftentimes is far more revealing than the story told by their North American counterparts. Once again, we're privy to an English translation of an interview between Alex Ovechkin and Pavel Lysenkov of Sovetsky Sport. The topic: last night's incredible goal that everyone in the NHL can't stop talking about.

Thanks once again to Sovetsky's Washington correspondent, Dmitry Chesnokov, for sharing his translation. The full Q&A comes after the jump.