NCAA Hockey 101 is a weekly feature on U.S. Division I college hockey. Stick around and you just might learn a thing or two.

For those of you who don't know what the Beanpot is, I guess the only thing I can say is "lucky you." Allow me to explain for the uninitiated: The Beanpot is a tournament played on the first two Mondays of February between Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern and Harvard.

And it is the single worst tournament in sports.

People make kind of a big deal about it in Boston because it dates back far enough that there aren't many that remember a time without a Beanpot (the tourney turns 58 this year) and it started when all three of the Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins were pretty bad.

So what, exactly, is so awful about it? BU wins it half the time.

No joke, they've won 29 of the 57 Beanpots that have been contested. And if BU doesn't win, then BC probably does. They've won 14 of the remaining 28. Then Harvard has 10 titles. Northeastern has but four.

But the

Hello, 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.

I had written a bunch of words about how the Sedins are really underappreciated that was set to lead this week's edition of WWL. Then I kind of tripped over this post while looking for a story about the Sabres, and it unfortunately forced the Sedins to the backburner in a hurry:

Lindy Ruff was the first to see it, as he began to laugh sitting at the front of the bus. Gradually, the rest of the team began to see what caused his reaction.

A horse. Well... a man dressed like a horse, was exiting the hotel lobby. ... Apparently we stumbled onto a mascot convention that was being held at the hotel. The technical term, we soon found, was a "furry" convention.

I'll repeat: the Sabres' hotel ahead of Saturday's Sharks game was also hosting a furry convention.

NCAA Hockey 101 is a weekly feature on U.S. Division I college hockey. Stick around and you just might learn a thing or two.

We're now a few weeks deep into the second half of the season and for some teams things are starting to fall apart, while for others, they're coming together.

Some of the teams that are starting to get their acts together have been doing so, quietly, for a little while now and that's starting to have an impact in the national rankings. Take, for example, Union. The Dutchmen aren't exactly whispered in the same breath as Wisconsin or Michigan when it comes to legendary programs. But they are tops in the ECAC with an undefeated league record of 7-0-3 and have one loss in the last 13 games. They should be especially dangerous come tournament time, though. They're 8-1-1 away from home.

The same is true of Ferris State, which just had an 11-1-2 run snapped via a two-game sweep at the hands of Miami. This is just the Bulldogs' third winning season in the last seven

Hello, 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.

Because it felt like it hadn't caught enough heat this over the whole late-night talk show fiasco (I'm with CoCo by the way), the National Broadcasting Company began anew its run of pandering, infuriating, self-aggrandizing broadcasts of games featuring the Red Wings, Penguins or Rangers yesterday afternoon.

Here's a shocking revelation: I have, in the past, been critical of NBC's broadcasts. It's true. The NHL has rearranged the schedule for the Stanley Cup Finals in hopes of pulling in an extra few hundred thousand fans (on a Friday and Saturday night). It has dumbed-down its coverage to such an extent that hardcore hockey fans have complained about it pretty much since games began on the network. In short, it has bent over backwards to be mistreated by

Hello, 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.

Well, Boston, that's going to just about do it for you. Teams can withstand injuries to some extent, but the Bruins have lost important player after important player in a very small window and now the roster is spread disconcertingly thin.

It's so thin -- and will be at least until the Olympic break -- that their 10-point deficit in the Northeast will now almost certainly widen and prove insurmountable, as they keep dropping games to teams like the Rangers and Buffalo keeps on 'not-losing.' The Bruins are currently fifth in the East, but that playoff spot, or really any, is in serious jeopardy as well.

Mark Stuart(notes) has been out since mid-December, and there's talk that he has an outside chance of playing in the third game of the team's upcoming road

BOSTON - David Warsofsky is not unaccustomed to winning.

Since last February, he's won a Beanpot, a Hockey East regular-season title, a Hockey East tournament title, an NCAA championship, a World Juniors gold medal Tuesday and now a game at Fenway Park.

After a late game in Saskatoon on Tuesday and a travel day full of delays, cancellations and layovers, he said he was just trying to get his feet back under him.

"I practiced today and I practice yesterday, so it didn't take too long," he said. "The hardest part was getting my legs back. I didn't get much rest after the game we won in Canada and the flight home was canceled and we had layovers so the hardest part was just getting my legs back."

He got them back in a hurry. He scored the game's opening goal at 6:58 of the first period (and celebrated with a sweet home run swing to boot) as his BU Terriers rolled past Boston College before 38,472 fans at Fenway Park, 3-2. The crowd had 360 more fans in it than the Winter Classic.

"We

NCAA Hockey 101 is a weekly feature on U.S. Division I college hockey. Stick around and you just might learn a thing or two.

Oh, you thought you were done watching hockey games live from America's Most Beloved Ballpark? Think again, buddy.

Later tonight, a week after the Winter Classic, there will be two games at Fenway Park, one contested between the women's teams from UNH and Northeastern at 4 p.m. EST (the first-ever outdoor women's game), and one a Beanpot warmup game between Boston College and Boston University at 7 p.m. EST. Both will be broadcast on NESN for all New England viewers and on the NHL Network for those farther out in the country.

For those that have a vague or even non-existent interest in the college games, know this: where the Winter Classic between the Bruins and Flyers will only go down as being memorable because the home team staged a dramatic late comeback - the game itself, after all, was pretty dull - there's a legitimate chance that these games, especially

Hello, 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.

Do yourselves a favor: Go to Vegas right now and put every cent you have on the Western Conference champions winning the Stanley Cup.

The League average for games played is now 41 games, and thus we have a fairly good picture of the 2009-10 version of the NHL. That picture is not pretty for the Eastern Conference.

If you look at the entire league table, you'll notice that nine of the top 15 teams in the NHL are from the Western Conference. That doesn't sound like a whole lot, of course, but if you whittle it down to the bottom 10 in the league, seven are in the East.

Yes, before all the New Jersey and Washington fans start emailing me death threats (again), those are two perfectly fine teams you have there. They would certainly be competitors for home ice