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Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear Internet instead?

There is always that debate about hockey players and the quotes they give.

"Oh y'know, I just uhh went hard to the net and fortunately my linemates were able to get me the puck so I was just glad to be rewarded for sticking to my game. Tip your hat to him, he's a great goalie, and they're tough to play against, but we're just trying to take it one game at a time, and we were the better team tonight."

And so forth. Boring. Tells you nothing.

We wonder why the media even bother talking to them, other than the fact that they had the game-winner or the shutout or scored a hat trick. We opine that guys aren't better quotes, and revere those who will be honest about themselves and their games. It's great to hear a guy say, "We just flat-out sucked tonight," because it likely validates what we were also thinking about their game.

But alas, hockey players, like most professional athletes, make a habit of saying nothing at all, and that's by design.

The reason is obvious: The way things are these days, the slightest controversial statement gets blown up in the media, and especially on Twitter. Statements are examined endlessly, and oftentimes, the guy will be condemned by whomever, even if they were just expressing their opinion. How dare Alex Semin, just as a for instance, say that he thinks Patrick Kane is better than Sidney Crosby?

At the end of the day, having an opinion and saying interesting things isn't as important as having the right opinion and saying interesting things about yourself only.

Which brings us to the radio interview Cam Janssen did on the "Thom and Jeff Show" earlier this week (this is not in any way safe for work).

It was, in a word, revolting.

Getty ImagesHello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

One player put up 21 goals and 54 points in 77 games last season. Another has 30 goals and 59 points in his last 82. One more had 31 goals and 57 points in 82 games.

One of these players has been talked about endlessly for months, the other has only more recently become a topic of conversation. However, both are locked into contracts for at least the next three years, meaning that any general managers interested in acquiring their services will have to give up a certain amount of picks, prospects and players to do so.

The asking price for either of them is, as you might imagine, quite high. Both will require GMs to part with players they think are going to be excellent down the road, and both will require that their teams enter a bit of a win-now scenario, or at least, one that dictates a win-within-the-next-few-years mentality. The thinking is that when you have the ability to acquire perennial 30-goal-scorers like Rick Nash and Bobby Ryan, you do it.

But of course, all this goes without mentioning the first player, who is obviously Alex Semin. There are very, very few right wings in the NHL as good as Semin, but many have wondered aloud exactly what reason it is that he can't get any takers at all.

The obvious answer is that he seems to be a pretty big pain in the ass.

(Coming Up: Mitch Albom is insipid; how Suter and Parise ended up in Minnesota; Crosby's next winger; the Flyers' Plan B; Devan Dubnyk's value;  Mikael Backlund's last chance; Bobby Ryan derby; YouTube phenom turned Ducks pick; Shane Doan watch; Jay Bouwmeester to the Blues?; and a creative Roberto Luongo trade proposal.)

Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

Our long international nightmare is over, and the offseason's two biggest free agents have decided to make their homes in The State of Hockey.

The pursuit, dogged and endless, of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter on the part of as many as 10 million NHL teams ended with the two players laughing side by side, hockey bags assumedly stuffed with wads of hundred dollar bills.

Both, somehow, signed with the Minnesota Wild.

But for me, their decision left me with a lot more questions than answers, many of which have gone largely unaddressed in the days following hockey's answer to The Decision, in which the entire hockey media played Jim Gray's role.

Why Minnesota?

We knew the offers were going to be massive and that, at the end of the day, they'd all be for similar values, and so the real question became what peripheral considerations would they take into account? Would they sign with the Red Wings and chase history with the greatest franchise of the last 20 years? Would they choose to play alongside Sid Crosby and Kris Letang for the remainder of their careers and chase Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh? Would they value their time served with the teams that drafted them, valuing loyalty above all else?

As it turned out, the most important consideration after sifting through multiple hundred-million-dollar offers was the ability to go home.

Even beyond that, both apparently took the time to closely examine the Wild's prospects for the future. They liked what they saw from Mikael Granlund, Charlie Coyle, Matt Dumba, Jarrod Spurgeon, and so forth and think this is a team set up to be competitive for some time.

But couldn't they have succeeded for a long time just as easily, if not moreso, with, say Pittsburgh, which has a deep well of stars and seems poised to be very good for some time?

Perhaps it's an issue of them wanting to be able to step into a team where they can be The Guys, and they're doing so essentially for the first time in their careers. Parise was New Jersey's captain but it's arguable that he was ever really it's biggest star — that would be possible best-goalie-ever Marty Brodeur — and Ryan Suter always seemed to play second fiddle to perennial Norris Trophy candidate Shea Weber for the terribly obvious reason that he's not as good as his long-time defensive partner.

And now they step into a room where they're… well, they're not the captain. That's Mikko Koivu, who has been told he'll stay in that role.

So, family then? That's never a draw for Ontario-born players. It just seems very strange.

Getty ImagesHello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

Around 3:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, the Free Agent Frenzy died down somewhat as it was revealed that both Zach Parise and Ryan Suter were likely to make their decisions on Monday. At this time, Jim Rutherford was feeling pretty good about himself.

He had acquired what he believed to be a top-line center in Jordan Staal and signed him for a long time and a lot of money. Rutherford noted that the team's desire to pay nothing short of a king's ransom for a guy who had previously been a third-line center -- and then give him a decade-long deal -- had "totally changed" the way Carolina was perceived around the league.

Bringing aboard a player like Jordan Staal was, he noted, "a game-changer for us."

And hey, he's the one getting and making the phone calls. He would know. But there is an important distinction between being a team that's perceived as a desirable destination just because you're willing to splash the cash on players who may or may not deserve fat paydays, and actually being a team that's capable of competing within the National Hockey League in any sort of serious way.

Sure, the team announced it had put in serious bids for Suter and Parise, though how seriously they were considered is of course another matter entirely. And as for Rutherford's intent to suss out another top-flight wing to play with the Staal brothers, well, it's a nice thought. A few people have noted they're now in on discussions for Rick Nash, as a sort of hedging of their bets when Parise goes elsewhere; meanwhile, a tumbleweed blows through the offices of Alex Semin's agents. (Perhaps, though, they don't want someone to kill Kirk Muller so early on in his tenure.)

But didn't we all see this last summer, too?

(Coming Up: The good, bad and ugly of Day 1 of NHL Free Agency for all 30 teams; and stop being critical of Brian Burke.)

Getty ImagesHello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

"Mike has become an integral part of our core group and we are extremely happy to have him under contract long term." - Paul Holmgren, Dec. 12, 2007.

"We're happy to have Jeff signed for the foreseeable future. He's an integral part of the core of our hockey team." - Paul Holmgren, Nov. 13, 2010.

"Over the two years I've been here, and even prior to that when I was with the organization, I've seen how well they treat their players and how highly everyone around it talks about it. … I think it's a very fair deal for both sides and I'm happy to be committed here for the next six years." - James van Riemsdyk, Aug. 30, 2011.

At this point, you have to expect that no one is safe. The old adage in hockey is that if Wayne Gretzky can be traded, anyone can, and Paul Holmgren seems more than a little determined to prove it right.

It took him just 222 days after signing Jeff Carter to an 11-year, $58 million deal to trade him to Columbus, and now another 298 to unload James van Riemsdyk after he signed a six-year, $25.5 million contract. And at some point, one has to expect that players will stop seeing Philadelphia as a place you can play for a long period of time.

(Coming Up: NHL Draft Winners and Losers for all 30 teams.)

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Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

Not to kick up another big old fuss about Russian players getting mistreated in North American hockey, but it seems that lately, these guys just can't avoid it.

Earlier this week, Damian Cox of the Toronto Star tweeted that he had spoken with an unnamed Western Conference general manager about why Mikhail Grigorenko's draft stock was dropping so precipitously over the last few weeks, and found out it's a question of age.

"I think he's 20, not 18," the GM reportedly told Cox.

Well, that's not exactly a new revelation. Apparently, people have been aware of this rumor for some time. If it's true, it's a big deal. Think of how much better a 20-year-old would fare in the CHL than someone who had barely turned 18. Think about how much that would help his draft stock.

Unfortunately for Cox and any other rumormongers out there who might choose to run down Grigorenko on this basis, it simply isn't true.

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Puck Daddy's Ryan Lambert continues his annual tradition of celebrating and annihilating the NHL Awards.

Now I know what true pain is.

On Wednesday night, I had the monumental misfortune of sitting through the 2012 NHL Awards, a show as filled with dead jokes as predictable awards, and a truly calamitous television event. I can't imagine why anyone watched it for any reason other than their job necessitated it.

It lasted two hours, but with the awkward silence where laughter was intended to go, it felt like quintuple that. And that doesn't include a THREE-hour red carpet show that, as with last year's edition, pulled teeth by hand without Novocain; though it did feature Barry Melrose saying that Wayne Gretzky's favorite band is Abba.

There were a large, large number of problems with the show, and everything wrong with it was evidenced in the usually-hilarious Adam Pally's intro to a tedious highlight package that got no response at all. Sorry Bro.

To put everything in perspective, Nickelback almost — almost — wasn't the low point of the show. But I swear to you, there were some parts that nearly made me consider thinking about mulling over whether this wasn't the largest waste of time in my life.

They didn't succeed, of course, but here they are anyway.

Getty ImagesHello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

Ah, the time between end of the playoffs and the start of free agency. It's the time of year when NHL general managers can feel free to get extraordinarily ridiculous without being pelted with rotten fruit.

It was right around this time last year, you'll remember, that Mike Richards and Jeff Carter were traded out of Philadelphia, that Robyn Regehr was dealt with picks to Buffalo for alarmingly little, Christian Ehrhoff's rights traded hands twice in two days then Buffalo gave him $40 million, Florida gave Chicago a huge hand in taking Brian Campbell's contract, and so forth.

And fortunately, GMs league-wide seem intent on living up to that standard again this year, though with a good deal more subtlety. There is still, of course, the raving head of the group and this time it's Scott Howson, as if that should surprise you. Details have been filtering out over the last few days about exactly what Howson wants in return for Rick Nash and his contract, which costs $7.8 million against the cap for the next six seasons (and more than that in real life, because the deal is actually back-loaded).

And oh boy, is it ever insane.

Howson wants — and this is apparently a true fact — two good roster players (i.e. presumably not salary dumps) and two high-quality prospects. Speculation is that the Rangers are the front-runners, as they were at the trade deadline, the only other time of year when GMs get anywhere close to this nutty. You'll recall that, at the time, Nash was available for a presumptive asking price of Brandon Dubinsky, Chris Kreider, either Derek Stepan or Carl Hagelin, and either Michael Del Zotto or Ryan McDonagh. And with as many as five or six other teams in the running for Nash, which is far more than the number seen at the trade deadline, Howson might just find someone unwise enough to meet his demands.

See, teams have money in the offseason they might not have in February, and always seem more than willing to burn it on the first thing that comes on the market and is perceived as half-decent (see also: Richards, Brad). Plus, the salary cap keeps going up, up, up, and, if Peter Chiarelli is to be believed, labor talks might not go as bumpily as many experts project.

These guys know more than we do, or at least one assumes so; and as a result, they might have reason to deal for sizable contracts, no matter how big-money. Perhaps they believe that Nash's might even look like a decent deal depending on what Zach Parise and Ryan Suter pull on July 1.

But if a madman can ask for and potentially receive the moon from a handful of teams, what does that mean for the rest?

(Coming Up: The Los Angeles Kings' missing Stanley Cup puck; Sidney Crosby's throwaway years; Luongo to the Leafs; looking back at Nicklas Lidstrom; NHL Draft picks on the move; Bruins hanging onto David Krejci; Jay Bouwmeester watch; Sam Gagner's future; Pierre-Marc Bouchard update; the end of Evander Kane in Winnipeg?; and a trade proposal that would get the Oilers the top two picks.)