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 woke up on Sunday morning (we'll call it morning anyway, it was pretty close to noon) and started going through the inter-nettery I'd slept through. Most of my regular sites were quiet, it being Sunday morning and all. Same with Twitter.

Then I stumbled across this tweet by USA Today's Kevin Allen: "This morning I count 110 NHL regulars injured or ill and there are more I don't know about. That's roughly 18% of NHL players sidelined."

Eighteen percent? I knew my fantasy teams had taken a beating over the last week or two but the scope of that is just crazy. One out of just about every five players is so hurt or sick that they can't play. Let that sink in. Your favorite NHL team probably has four guys missing games right now.

And the names on these guys,

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

College hockey, like college football or basketball I guess, is usually about traditionally strong schools winning a lot, and schools that are traditionally weak, or even middle-of-the-road pretty much winning nothing.

Of the 58 teams in college hockey, only 18 have won national titles since the NCAA tournament began in 1948, and only 10 have won three or more. Michigan has nine, Denver and North Dakota have won seven each, Wisconsin has won six, and BU and Minnesota have each won five.

But things just feel different so far this year.

Merrimack, which has to have one of the worst records in college hockey over the last 10 years, went out to North Dakota and didn't look out of its depth, then came back home and won four straight, including demolishing No. 7 Vermont 5-2 last week. Lake Superior, a doormat the last two years with 21 combined wins, already has four wins

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.

We had a whopper of a three-day span for all you dirty hit lovers here in the NHL, as I'm sure you're all aware.

However, some hits were dirtier than others, as evidenced by the NHL's decision to suspend Tuomo Ruutu(notes) but not Mike Richards(notes) (Star players! Preferential treatment! Fan incredulity!). So as a way to help you, the average hockey fan, figure out your visceral gut reactions while attempting to feign impartiality, I think we should look at each hit together, figure out just how dirty they were.

That way we can begin to form a singular thought process and move one step closer to becoming the Borg.

[Coming Up: Sidney Crosby's(notes) new nickname; Breaking the bank on Bourque; Cal Clutterbuck(notes) needs to lie down; the latest Sens

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

Notre Dame has a problem.

While the Fighting Irish are 3-2-0 this year and ranked No. 9 in the country, they've lost to a pair of what you'd call weak teams, and looked pretty bad doing it.

They might have taken the season-opening loss to Alabama-Huntsville as one of those things where an inspired opponent snuck by a giant on heart and will alone. But the loss to Providence, one of the worst teams in the country last year, six days later? That's just inexcusable.

(Coming Up: The rising star of Stephane Da Costa; an awful start for UNH; and your national scoring leaders so far.)

Sure, they've now shut out two opponents in a row and climbed back above .500, but Tuesday's win over No. 3 Boston University might have been the worst-played game between Top-10 opponents this decade.

Yes, the Irish won 3-0, but the way they did it was just about as uninspiring and hollow as

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.

So I went to NHL.com yesterday to have a look at the conference standings. Why? I'm not entirely sure, since they don't even matter a little bit. Perhaps it's because they don't matter at all right now that they're so completely ridiculous.

The top of the Eastern Conference is, I guess, only a little surprising. The Rangers, after all, got off to a hot start last year and they've won seven on the trot. I think the real surprising thing is that they've averaged four goals a game and allowed less than two doing it. But at the same time, they're tied with a very good Penguins team for the NHL, conference and divisional lead, so that's not totally horrifying.

But then look at the rest of the East. Ottawa leading the Northeast, the Sabres and Thrashers with

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

UMass Lowell is hardly a perennial favorite in Hockey East.

In 2006 and 2007, the league’s 10 coaches picked the River Hawks to finish ninth, and last season they were slotted seventh in the preseason rankings. But owing to the team’s meteoric rise in the second half of last season, during which it went 12-5-2 in its last 19 games, it has been picked finish second in college hockey’s most cutthroat conference.

“We don’t want to put ourselves on a pedestal or anything like that,” says goaltender Carter Hutton after Lowell’s 3-0 exhibition win against Acadia two weeks ago. “I remember when I was a freshman here and losing 20 games. Being one of the favorites is a little different.”

A little, yeah. This is a team that was picked in the nation’s top 15 by pretty much every college hockey publication and is widely expected to make its first NCAA appearance since 1996, but

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.

Today is Columbus Day here in the US (Thanksgiving for our Canadian friends) and you know what that means: It's time for the media to drum an underperforming franchise out of the League.

Isn't that right, Adrian Dater?

For those of you, knowing Dater's credentials as a certified member in good standing of the Avs Media Pom-Pom Crew, that don't want to click the link and read this painfully rote article (I don't blame you), he asserts that "the Predators should get the heck out of the NHL" because they drew just under 15,000 fans last week -- roughly 2,000 less than capacity -- for the team's home opener against Colorado.

Without a hint of irony.

(Coming Up: Detroit's Afrogator yo-yo; The Disappearing Filatov; brutality in Philly; Cam Janssen's(notes) goon

Hockey 101 is a new, weekly Puck Daddy feature on U.S. Division I college hockey. Stick around and you just might learn a thing or two. Part one ran earlier today. Here is part two.

Hello again. Earlier today, we introduced you to 29 of the 58 teams in Division I, from Air Force to Michigan State. Here is the second part of that introduction, covering everyone else, from three-time NCAA champion Michigan Tech to the Yale Bulldogs.

Let's get right to it then, shall we?

Name: Michigan Tech Huskies

Location: Houghton, Mich.

Conference: WCHA

National titles: 3 (1962, 1965, 1975)

Alumni in the NHL: Damian Rhodes, Andy Sutton(notes), Randy McKay, Jarkko Ruutu(notes), Tony Esposito

2009-10 poll positions: No. 10/10 (media/coaches) of 10 in WCHA

Why you should care about them: Jarkko Ruutu and Tony Esposito went there.

Name: Minnesota Golden Gophers

Location: Minneapolis, Minn.

Conference: WCHA

National titles: 5 (1974, 1976, 1979, 2002, 2003)

Alumni in the NHL: Phil Kessel(notes), Tom