CSS (not the fancy codey kind) midterms...

It may be the beginning of the NHL season, but it's already midterm season for the youngins  And by that you should know I mean draft rankings.

While the Jones/MacKinnon drama rolls on and the Q holds five of the top 10, Nikolas Brouillard, who was all sorts of fantastic on Sunday against Val-d'Or, is listed 148th among North American skaters.

Louis-Philip Guindon, for his part, is twelfth in terms of North American goaltenders. (The only Graham on that list is Charlie from Belleville. Oops.)

It's early yet, there are a lot of games still left to play. Including:

Rimouski: 28-11-1-4, 61 points, 4th in the league, 170 GF, 140 GA, won their last three straight, Peter Trainor is third in league scoring with 30 goals, 37 assists. Their netminder, Philippe Desrosiers, has a GAA that leads all rookies and is seventh overall (2.97), and he has a .905 SV%.

Drummondville: 24-15-2-1, 51 points, 8th in the league, 140 GF, 142 GA, just won 5-2 against Val-d'Or, Verrier still leads the team with 48 points in 42 games, and Guindon is the second-best rookie with a 3.19 GAA and .880 SV%. Domenic Graham is behind him with 3.26 and .872, and the most recent win under his belt.

Head-to-head: The only game opposing the two teams this season was a 7-5 Rimouski win where Verrier and Malouin each scored twice.

From midterms to exams (of a medical nature): Frédéric St-Denis is now among the group lining up to take a physical for his part in the extremely brief training camp currently being held by the Habs. He and Louis Leblanc, Patrick Holland, Michael Blunden, and Michael Bournival are lining up in a scrimmage to be held Thursday at the Bell Centre, along with Gabriel Dumont (among others). Other ex-Volts that got called up to participate in camps include Mike Hoffman and Sean Couturier. Meanwhile, André Bouvet-Morrissette is now in Milwaukee after being called up, and with the Springfield Falcons losing some of their players to training camp, maybe they can finally test Scott Howes and see what he's capable of...

Where irrational happiness reigns

The following is happening tonight:

Photo: L'Express' archives from about a million years ago, please don't sue me, I wasn't at the Q draft of 2006 so I don't have my own pictures.

Of course, the two men pictured here (although to be honest I still have trouble believing Dumont isn't 16 anymore) will be on different sides. As for which one will come out of it smiling, this has yet to be determined.

Also yet to be determined is the number of public disturbance complaints I am getting tonight (my guess is 21 272).

The Value of St-Denis

Tomas Kaberle is a baby-daddy as of yesterday. Because there seems to be a fascination about how the Habs seem to randomly overload on defensemen, another call-up was made, this time to Frédéric St-Denis.

(Hey. No complaints here.)


Steady Freddy is an interesting case. He's been around, which is quite a change considering he stayed put in junior. Since his overage year he's made stops in Hamilton, Cincinnati, Houston, invited to whatever team is under Houston (sue me, I forgot one), Trois-Rivières, and now I've managed to get myself lost. Don't trust the order of this, either. Especially since the day he randomly signed a contract in Hamilton after I expected him to go back to the Wild organization was like a BOOM in my head followed by three sprinted laps of my living room. There may have been some damage caused (more in my head than in the living room, fear not).

Basically, he's back to being Steady Freddy and staying put in one place. Except yesterday, he was up with the Canadiens, which drew comments like "why can't Kaberle have babies more often?" ...the thought of which is frightening, but strangely flattering.

His stats are clean and empty across the board, which is his trademark (but remember that time he scored against the Canucks?!) 0 0 0 0 0, and then a shot on goal. The 0 in the +/- column was threatened a few times, but that tends to happen when your new blueline buddy is Campoli. Crisis averted, however. Ottawa Senators 2, Montreal Canadiens 3.

Meanwhile, in Hamilton: St. John's IceCaps 6, Hamilton Bulldogs 0.

Not that blowouts are an alien concept to the Habs' farm club this season. But a + sign on the end of that "useless/overvalued" stat is, especially on D. Bulldogs' captain and fellow savvy defenseman Alex Henry and St-Denis combine for a -4, but the rest of the Hamilton blueliners? -68.

I'm just poking around here (I haven't had fun with math in over a decade), and I'm well aware that my bias is super apparent. But I bet you can ask anybody in a Hamilton jersey how much they missed Freddy yesterday and they will tell you: A LOT.

Alum-notes: Not much today, but the fact that Ben Bishop is in Ottawa is looking like a healthy kickstart for Jake Allen. He won again yesterday, making 38 saves, including 18 in the first period alone. Meanwhile, former teammate Ondrej Palat, who these days can be seen in Norfolk, picked up an assist on Evan Oberg's 6th of the season in a 4-1 win over Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Couturier's former partner in crime has 20 points in his AHL rookie year.

ETA: Alex Comtois is singing.

Around the league: Benoit Groulx is PISSED.