Here are your Puck Previews: Spotlighting the key games in NHL action, news and views as well as general frivolity. Make sure to stop back here for the nightly Three Stars when the games are finished.

Preview: Toronto Maple Leafs at New York Rangers, 7 p.m. ET

Who'd have thought, going into this season, that this game would feature a Leafs team that looks like a playoff lock and a Rangers team desperate to hold onto eighth place? But here we are in bizarro world.

Preview: Boston Bruins at New Jersey Devils, 7:30 p.m. ET

What an awful time for the Devils to go on a losing streak. They've lost seven straight, and now sit 10th in the East. But all is not lost. A win versus the Bruins and a Rangers loss and New Jersey is back in control of their own destiny. They'll have to hope Boston's six-goal outburst Monday wasn't a sign they've found their offence.

Preview: Vancouver Canucks at Calgary Flames, 9:30 p.m. ET

Cory Schneider makes his 12th straight start for the Canucks, (Update: he's sick. Luongo starts.) who come into Calgary having won three straight. Calgary is without Jiri Hudler and Matt Stajan. Even worse: the only team Calgary can beat these days is Colorado, who account for both wins in their recent 2-6 stretch, and Vancouver is not Colorado.

(Ed Note: Mike Snee is the Executive Director of College Hockey, Inc., a nonprofit group that promotes Division I men’s college hockey. Among the group’s goals are to encourage schools to consider adding Division I hockey programs. Anyone interested in contributing an article, column or post to the blog can pitch yo stuff here. Now, here's Mike.)

By Mike Snee

The Frozen Four field of UMass Lowell, Quinnipiac, St. Cloud State and Yale may not grab the attention of casual sports fans like it should, and it may not produce the TV ratings those of us who love college hockey feel it deserves.

It should, however, capture the imagination of any forward-thinking university president or athletic director who wants to raise their school’s profile.

As college hockey fans have long maintained, there is tremendous opportunity for schools that want to pursue Division I hockey. With only 59 programs nationwide and the talent pool growing, the chance to compete for national championships has never been better.

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KHL goalie Edgars Masaļskis, worm sex enabler.

Andrew Ference may be hockey's most well-known environmentalist, but he's hardly the only guy in the game looking to do his part for the earth.

And sure, he's restoring the Brazil's Atlantic forest with every Tyler Seguin goal, but there are much, much weirder ways for Ference to go green. Over in Latvia, four KHLers just invested over half a million dollars into an earthworm breeding program.

Yes. Earthworm breeding. Helping earthworms get busy. Ria Novosti, on hockey's real green men:

The worm breeding ground, which will produce vermicompost by feeding organic waste to worms, will be part of a facility for pioneering agricultural practices under construction in the village of Malpils, Mixnews.lv reported.

Among the investors will be hockey players Edgars Masalskis, Janis Sprukts, Olegs Sorokins and Martins Cipulis, the report said, citing Rihards Pulturs, who heads Latvia’s earthworm breeding association.

The players, who are interested in green technologies, will sink 300,000 lats ($560,000) into the earthworm facility, Pulturs said.

Two things: First, I'm genuinely upset that none of these guys are named James, because then we could call him Earthworm Jim and that would be awesome. Second, speaking of awesome things, Latvia has an earthworm breeding association.

I say good. Someone has to help these things back into each other.

For the uninitiated, vermicompost is basically the manure worms produce after they process compost. It's been shown to reduce the levels of contaminants and infuse into the compost, making it a fantastic organic fertilizer and soil conditioner. Of course, in order to produce enough of this for the agriculture industry, you need a great deal of worms, which means someone has to convince a lot of worms to hook up and one assumes it's slightly more difficult than spinning some Marvin Gaye and dimming the lights.

Thankfully, these four hockey players are willing to help make it happen.

If you're interested in learning more about the use of vermicompost in sustainable agriculture, here's a lengthy essay with that exact title.

Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.

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• Zack Kassian and Rob Klinkhammer in Swan Lake. Get that left arm into third position, Kassian. [PITB]

• Bryzgalov's napgate is far from over: the bottom of this post features video of him dozing off on the bench versus the Jets, and here's what an anonymous player told Frank Severalli. “Whether he was actually sleeping or not, no one knows for sure. It seemed like he may have been doing it to get a rise out of other players. I’m not really sure why he did it, or if he was faking it. Either way, it seemed to catch and lot of people by surprise and angered a few people.” [Philly]

• Ilya Bryzgalov on the buyout option: “To be honest, I don’t care. Really, I don’t care. I have no control on this, so why should I care?” He's got a point, which is why this quote is here and not in its own post. [Courier Post]

• Allan Muir on Bryzgalov's buyout comments, which he believes weren't reportedly all that fairly. [SI]

• Josh Harding is back practicing with the Minnesota Wild after missing much of the season due to complications with his multiple sclerosis medication. [Star-Tribune]

• The Montreal Canadiens have re-signed Peter Budaj to a two-year extension worth $2.8 million. [Canadiens]

• John Davidson cites culture change as a reason why the Blue Jackets' situation down the stretch is good no matter what. It's not often they're in meaningful games at the end of the season. "If we had kept going and gotten into a situation where there was no pressure on our team for the last six weeks of the season, that's lost time. Wherever this goes we're going to — for sure — have gotten something out of it, and that's just the fact that it's a very good culture, it's a very good locker room and it's a team that's developed because of playing pressure games down the stretch." [CBC]

• Karl Alzner was on Marek vs. Wyshynski. Go listen. [MvsW]

• Elliotte Friedman on the NHL in the Olympics: "Insurance is an even bigger issue. A friend of mine, who works in the industry and has done some business in sports, said Saturday that the explosion of long-term NHL contracts in the past few years will make this, by far, the most expensive tournament to protect." [CBC]

The Chicago Blackhawks are already closely associated with a few musical numbers. There's classic J. Swayzee tune "Here Come the Hawks", the club's official fight song. There's "Chelsea Dagger", the obnoxious Fratellis hit the team plays after goals.

And now, if we're lucky, there's "Blacky Hawky Spider", a strange and bewildering tune sung here by Dr. Matthew Stewart, a man that appears to be equal parts Red Green, The Dude, and Hulk Hogan.

Man, screw "Here Come the Hawks". "Blacky Hawky Spider" is way better. And is J. Swayzee a doctor? Because Dr. Matthew Stewart totally is.

Now, if you're a fan of another team and you're envious that this gentleman has bestowed this incredible musical triumph on Chicago fans and Chicago fans alone, fret not, because the good doctor's song and accompanying construction paper spider are completely adaptable to other teams.

In fact, he's already got a few other "Itsy Bitsy Spider"-themed pump-up songs at the ready. My friends, I give you, "Mapey Leafy Spider".

Eric Wellwood of the AHL's Adirondack Phantoms is currently in hospital recovering from surgery after suffering a gruesome skate cut Sunday afternoon versus the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. In the second period of the game, Wellwood fell into the boards, somehow slicing his lower right leg with his left skate.

As of right now, there doesn't appear to be video of the incident. But, lest we fail to understand the gruesomeness of the injury because we didn't see it, Wellwood's teammate, Danny Syvret, tweeted a photo Sunday night of Wellwood's "Curt Schilling skate":

Egad. Wellwood apparently cut an artery in his calf, which would explain the severe blood loss -- Wellwood left a trail of blood all the way to the locker-room door -- as well as the fact that it was a bright rather than dark red.

The NHL lockout wiped out the 2013 Winter Classic in Detroit, but on Sunday, the league announced that the marquee game would return to the same place in 2014.

However, the Winter Classic wasn't the only relatively new NHL tradition wiped out by the lockout. So too were the league's Premiere games, which for the last five years have sent NHL clubs to Europe to open the season in places like Helsinki, Stockholm and Prague, and unlike the Winter Classic, these games aren't coming back.

From Larry Brooks at the New York Post:

The future of the Premiere Games — which opened five straight NHL seasons before being wiped off the map by the lockout — will become part of the broader conversation between the league and the union regarding a comprehensive international program.

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly wrote in an email that the league intends to have “planning discussions with the NHLPA in the near future.”

Those discussions would include reviving the World Cup of Hockey as a midseason tournament to be played every four years between Olympics, thus guaranteeing a defined cycle of international best-on-best competition with which to showcase the sport.

We bet teams were just lining up to go to Europe, seeing as how the last four NHL Premiere Games series showcased the soon-to-be Stanley Cup champion for that season.

The NHL and NHLPA are still working with the IIHF and IOC to finalize a plan to send players to Sochi for next year's Winter Olympics. Who will pick up the costs of insuring players is a big hurdle still to be resolved. Incorporating a World Cup into the league's international calendar would benefit their ability to maximize profits and control such things as game times and content use, something, for the moment, that is in the hands of the IOC.

While 2014 is the focus for now, what about 2018 when the Winter Olympics are in Pyeongchang, South Korea, 13 hours ahead of East Coast time? It's not ideal for the NHL to promote those games being played at early morning times, as opposed to a World Cup, held (mostly) in North American arenas that can be broadcast on primetime.

Clearly, there's still a lot of work to be done, but the next step for leagues like the NHL, NFL, MLB and NBA is to further their international footprints. Their brands are already global, but there is still a great deal of growth to be had with the right plan.

Unsurprisingly, Ovechkin scored here. Great photo by Eliot J. Schechter.

No. 1 Star: Alexander Ovechkin, Washington Capitals

Ovechkin was in on all four Capitals goals in their 4-3 win over the Florida Panthers, picking up his second hat trick of the season, as well as an assist.

Ovechkin's third goal was also his 23rd of the year, putting him just two behind Steven Stamkos for the NHL goal-scoring lead. In other words, he's still good.

No. 2 Star: Henrik Lundqvist, New York Rangers

Lundqvist was nigh unbeatable in the Rangers' 4-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes, stopping 48 of 49 shots. “That’s the best I’ve seen him play since I’ve been here," said John Tortorella after the game. Rick Nash had a goal and an assist for the Rangers as well.