ST. PAUL, Minn. — The night before Ryan Getzlaf signed his eight-year, $66 million extension with the Anaheim Ducks, he called Corey Perry.

The Ducks gave Ryan Getzlaf (L) a massive new deal. What will they do about Corey Perry? (USA Today)They had won a Stanley Cup together with the Ducks. They had won an Olympic gold medal together with Team Canada. They were tearing up the NHL again on a line with Bobby Ryan. And now it was time to talk about the future.

They had talked about it before – last summer, during the lockout – but one what-if was about to be answered. One would be left.

Getzlaf knew his contract would affect Perry, a pending unrestricted free agent. He also knew Perry’s decision would affect the Ducks, the team of which he is captain, the team to which he was making a long-term commitment. He wanted to break the news to Perry himself.

“That was a phone call that I wanted to make before I did what I did,” Getzlaf said Tuesday. “I made it clear to him what I wanted.”

Getzlaf told Perry that he wanted to stay in Anaheim – and that he wanted to stay in

The Chicago Blackhawks are good, but they’re not this good. They might be the best team in the NHL, but they aren’t this much better than the rest of the league.

Daniel Carcillo is mobbed after scoring game-winning goal against the Avs. (AP Photo)I mean that as a compliment.

Because when you put it in context, you realize just how incredible their 21-0-3 start has been. Even with their superstars, even with their supporting cast, even with their goaltending, this should not be happening. The talent is too even. The games are too close. The schedule is too crazy.

The reason this is so impressive is not because the Blackhawks have shown they cannot be stopped. It’s because it’s so improbable.

The streak doesn’t mean the Blackhawks will win the Stanley Cup. But it could help them in the end.

“It’s an amazing run,” said Blackhawks senior advisor Scotty Bowman, who coached some of the best teams in NHL history and has just about seen and done it all.

The Blackhawks are halfway through this lockout-shortened 48-game season without a regulation loss. It would be

One day, the NHL might have 32 teams. It might be split evenly into two 16-team conferences and four eight-team divisions. The top four teams in each division might make the playoffs and face each other in the first two rounds.

The Florida Panthers aren't too happy with the NHL's new realignment plan. (Getty Images)One day. But not next season, and not the season after that. For now, it's just a vague vision. An NHL source insisted Thursday night that expansion is not in the works and won't happen for four or five years, if ever, despite all the talk about Seattle and suburban Toronto and Quebec City. The league has too many things to iron out before it can grow.

And so, in the meantime, we're going to have to live with a realignment plan that is an improvement, but imperfect. The NHL Players' Association has decided to give its consent, but only after heavy internal debate, only for the short term and only because this is the lesser of a few evils. The NHL board of governors is expected to approve the plan soon, but not without some dissension.

The NHL currently

Nicholas J. Cotsonika's weekly Three Periods column will appear on Thursdays. This week's topics include fighting’s place in the NHL; Marc Staal’s eye injury and the visor debate; the case for cut-resistant socks; Brendan Shanahan and the department of players safety have a perception problem; coaching legend Scotty Bowman on the best young defensemen in the league.

FIRST PERIOD: Time to bring down the curtain on staged fights

Fighting is one thing. Staged fighting is yet another. There is no need or excuse for what happened Wednesday night, and if it dredges up the same, old tired debates, well, good. It should.

Senators rookie David Dziurzynski was knocked out cold in his first NHL fight. (Reuters)The Toronto Maple Leafs’ Frazer McLaren fought the Ottawa Senators’ David Dziurzynski. They squared off, fists up. Then they danced, grappled and swung wildly. Finally, McLaren caught Dziurzynski with a right, and Dziurzynski dropped to the ice, face first, out cold. He suffered a concussion.

It became the talk of the NHL at a time when the Chicago Blackhawks are on a

DETROIT — Forty-five minutes after the first guy had left the ice, the last guy was still out there. Some members of the Colorado Avalanche were already showered, dressed and boarding a team bus while Ryan O’Reilly did one of his funky drills – taking a pass, popping the puck over a stick shaft, maneuvering it around a water bottle, firing a shot. Everyone was gone by the time O’Reilly did the last of his gassers.

Ryan O'Reilly wants to be a go-to guy in all situations for the Avs. (Getty Images)O’Reilly was doubled over, stick on his knees, when a maintenance man pushed a stepladder across the ice, now an empty, choppy mess. Was it a hint to get the heck off so someone else could work?

“Guess so,” O’Reilly said with a smile.

This is who O’Reilly is, in one sense. He’s a first-one-on, last-one-off kind of guy. He’s always staying after practice and coming up with creative drills, developing skills you didn’t know were skills, and he takes pride in his conditioning. Veteran goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere called him the Avs’ hardest-working player “by

They met for three days early in the summer. Then they met for three weeks leading up to training camp – or what was supposed to be training camp, anyway.

Montreal Canadiens head coach Michel Therrien has brought life back to the Habs. (USA Today Sports)Michel Therrien and his coaches knew what they were getting into. They were taking over the Montreal Canadiens, the 24-time Stanley Cup champions, after the team had fallen to last in the NHL’s Eastern Conference. They were going to a city that expected to win after the team hadn’t won. They would have little time to get to know each other, get to know their players and install their systems if there were a lockout and the season started late. To satisfy the fans, to turn this around, they needed to get to work. Now.

They studied the roster. They watched video of last year’s team. They went over everything methodically – player by player, system by system. D zone. Neutral zone. Forecheck. Trap. Power play. Penalty kill.

“We tried to see each guy,” said assistant coach Gerard Gallant, “and tried to figure out how he plays and

Nicholas J. Cotsonika's weekly Three Periods column will appear on Thursdays. This week's topics include solutions for NHL realignment; Andrei Markov’s savvy rubs off on P.K. Subban; the aging Red Wings are suddenly too young; Simon Gagne’s memorable return to Philadelphia; and Roberto Luongo’s eight-goal Twitter joke.

FIRST PERIOD: Unsolicited solutions for the NHL's realignment proposal

The NHL expects an answer on realignment from the NHL Players’ Association by the end of this week. It remains to be seen what that answer will be, even though the league and the union have been working on the issue for three weeks and the league wants this settled so the schedule-makers can start on 2013-14.

Columbus and Detroit would move to the East in the NHL's realignment proposal. (Getty)The snag: The NHL’s new proposal did not fix a key problem the NHLPA had with the initial proposal. The league just changed the look of it.

Under the proposal passed by the NHL’s board of governors in December 2011, there would have been four conferences based on time zones – two with

DETROIT — Did you know Damien Brunner is one of the leading goal-scorers in the NHL? No? That’s OK. Until someone told him the other night, Brunner didn’t realize it himself.

Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk welcome Damien Brunner (L-R) to Detroit. (USA Today)“I am?” he said.

He is. He has 10 goals in 19 games for the Detroit Red Wings, tied for seventh in the league, four off the lead. But it has been a blur coming out of nowhere – Switzerland, specifically, where they play two games a week, maybe three, and ride a bus around a little country.

“I have to be honest with you,” Brunner said with a laugh. “Since I got here, I feel like I have no time to study the stats because I’m always sleeping and recovering and eating. I know that I have 10, but I have no idea who’s leading the league right now.”

Let’s look. Steven Stamkos entered Wednesday night in first place with 14 goals. No surprise. Next were James Neal and John Tavares with 13, Thomas Vanek and Patrick Marleau with 12, and James van Riemsdyk with 11.

Then there were seven players with 10. All