Reporting from between the benches has its risks. Occasionally, you can find yourself caught in a war of words between coaches. Claude Giroux might break your watch. And, of course, your bird's eye view of the action means that there is always the threat that a puck will strike you in on around said bird's eye.

That's what happened to MSG's John Giannone late in the second period of Thursday night's match between the New York Islanders and New York Rangers, when a Mark Staal attempt dump-in left the playing area and hit Giannone's face area:

I love the play-by-play team here. "It hit our buddy."

[Related: Winger Milan Lucic puts the big and bad in the Boston Bruins]

"Oh no! John Giannone got hit? Oh mannnnnnnnnn."

Al Trautwig's stunned reaction is great too. "Did I just see that?"

But what a gamer Giannone is. Not only did he not leave the benches to get patched up -- he continued to provide colour while the cut on his face did the same.

Let this be a lesson to everyone: Hockey players are tough. But so is hockey media.

s/t to Islanders Point Blank.

Follow Harrison Mooney on Twitter at @HarrisonMooney

Getty ImagesOf the players who took part in the NHL's CBA negotiations, Chris Campoli was one of the prominent faces on the union's side. He spoke often and was out in front in fighting for the NHLPA. He did all of that without the safety net of an NHL contract.

Almost a month into the 2013 season, no NHL team has taken to signing the unrestricted free agent to add to their defensive corps, so Campoli is taking his game to Geneve-Servette of Switzerland for the remainder of the season, according to The Geneva Tribune (via the Canadian Press).

Campoli played 43 games with the Montreal Canadiens last season.

(UPDATE: Campoli confirmed the move during an interview Friday on HockeyCentral on the FAN590 in Toronto.)

Campoli took a big role in the CBA negotiations knowing it could cost him a job in the NHL, as he told Sportsnet's Michael Grange last month:

"If it affects me in a negative way I can look in the mirror and know that I did the right thing," he said. "Some people may say I'm crazy, but at the end of the day I spent numerous hours with some amazing people and have relationships that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

"[But] it could cost me -- if someone held it against me -- it could cost me a job. I hope they don't look at it that way."

Campoli's still young, just 28 years old, so he has plenty of hockey left to play. He told Grange that the lockout opened his eyes to life after hockey, and given his service to the NHLPA, once his career does come to an end, it wouldn't be a surprise to see him in transitioning into a role with the union.

(UPDATE Feb. 10: Sportsnet's Nick Kypreos reports that due to visa issues, Campoli's deal is off and remains a UFA.)

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

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.

via @TomUrtzNYR

The Y! software tends to confuse Tim Thomas the NHL player with the one from the NBA (I'll hazard a guess that it's doing it right now). Clearly, it's not just us. But the accompanying photo makes it way worse.

Preview: Washington Capitals at Pittsburgh Penguins, 7 p.m. ET

These games are certainly more exciting when both teams are good, and that's not really the case right now. The Capitals are playing some abysmal hockey these days, and the Penguins are the winners of four straight. Moreover, the Penguins are scoring a lot and defending well, while the Capitals are doing neither of these things. So you can see how the outcome in this one might not be as difficult to predict as it once was. Still, the bad blood between the Penguins and Capitals still makes this one pretty close to a must-see.

Preview: Tampa Bay Lightning at New Jersey Devils, 7 p.m. ET

New Jersey has been one of the league's stingiest teams so far this season. Can they shut down the Bolts, who are averaging an absurd, league-best 4.44 goals per game? If not, they'll need help from their top scorers. It would be helpful, for instance, if Ilya Kovalchuk could break his 6-game pointless streak, his longest stretch of unproductive play in over two years.

Preview: Detroit Red Wings at St. Louis Blues, 8 p.m. ET

There's no time for Detroit to get the warm and fuzzies over Wade Redden's 1000th NHL game. They have some shutting down to do. The Red Wings have struggled mightily to keep the puck out of their net versus St. Louis this season. In the season opener, they allowed 6 goals in a 6-0 romp. Next game, they trimmed the goals against to 3 in a 5-3 win but still didn't look defensively settled. 6 of St. Louis's 9 goals in this season series came on the powerplay, so if the Wings are looking for a place to tighten up (apart from everywhere), it's there.

When Tim Thomas informed the Bruins that he had no intention of playing the 2013 season, there was immediate speculation that a small market team with a small payroll might acquire his contract. He's suspended for not reporting, so the team wouldn't have to pay his salary. It would just count towards their cap, and if they were struggling to get above the cap floor, this would be like lowering it by $5 million.

Sure enough, that's exactly what's happened. As first reported by Eklund (which shows that even a broken clock is right twice a day, so Eklund still doesn't come correct as often as a broken clock), the New York Islanders have acquired Thomas and his phantom cap hit in exchange for a conditional 2nd round pick.

Boy, the Islanders are all about acquiring guys that don't want to play in the NHL this season.

Before you flip out about the fact that the Islanders just traded a second round pick in exchange for the right to not play a guy, remember that it's a conditional pick. And, according to Bob McKenzie, the condition is that Thomas plays. If he does (or if the Islanders trade his rights again), the Bruins get the Islanders' second. If he doesn't, the Islanders just acquired him for free.

The last time Raffi Torres and Marian Hossa saw each other, the seasons ended for both with the gut-wrenching image you see above, Hossa lying motionless on the ice, the victim of a devastating headshot.

Midway through the first period in Game 3 of the Phoenix Coyotes' first-round series with the Chicago Blackhawks, Hossa lugged a puck into the neutral zone, then dished it off and turned back, unaware that Torres had the Chicago forward line up. Torres launched himself into the hit, leaving his feet and putting his shoulder right into Hossa's head.

Hossa left the game on a stretcher. Torres stayed in the game (absurdly), but after much deliberation from the NHL's Department of Player Safety, he was handed a massive, 25-game suspension.

10 months later, both players are back in the lineup for their respective teams. Hossa spent months battling a concussion and was finally cleared to play in December. Torres appealed his suspension and had it reduced to 21. He returned to the Coyotes' lineup on February 2nd, in a 2-0 win over Dallas.

And on Thursday, for the first time since one of the 2012 postseason's scariest sights, they'll share the same ice surface (although share might not be the right word here, considering the bad blood).

Will there be payback?

It mustn't be easy as a fan of the Colorado Avalanche to reconcile with the fact that no iteration of the franchise will ever be as successful as the one that moved from Quebec in 1995, traded for Patrick Roy, then won two Stanley Cups in its first six seasons.

But the loaded squad of the Avalanche psuedo-dynasty is long in the past now, and they have to move forward with whatever pieces they have.

Or… not. Colorado was without indubitably its best two players -- as it has been for the last six games -- when they were shutout 3-0 by Viktor Fasth and the Anaheim Ducks.

The best player and captain of the new-look Avalanche is on the shelf with a concussion after sustaining a hit from Brad Stuart. Their second best player seems quite content to remain the last restricted free agent holdout.

I don't use the term "holdout" as a pejorative. The NHL fought during the lockout to reduce the second contracts of players like O'Reilly, but when Jamie Benn, PK Subban and Dmitry Kulikov are all playing—and playing well—for their respective clubs, you have to wonder how long the Avalanche are willing to remain steadfast in their opposition go pay the man what he's worth.

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.

"Fighting? Nooooo. We're just having a laugh between friends!"

• In effect, this poor guy is allergic to hockey. Worse than death? [The Star]

• Craig Heisinger on Randy Carlyle's legacy in Winnipeg: “He was an absolute prick." [Toronto Sun]

• The Philadelphia Flyers appear to be close to announcing a 1-year, $6 million extension for Kimmo Timonen. [Broad Street Hockey]

• Why the Capitals won't trade Alex Ovechkin. [Washington Post]

• Did the Capitals even need to get away from the system that was serving them so well in the Brouce Boudreau era? "As absurd as it might sound to change an entire system (that had, by any reasonable definition, been tremendously successful over the previous three years) based on a six-game losing streak, it's all the more absurd considering that even during that rough patch, the underlying numbers were still good - the Caps outshot their opponents 174-123 at even-strength during the first half-dozen games of the losing streak, meaning that the Caps took 58% of the even-strength shots on goal in those games. Results (and score effects - the Caps obviously trailed for quite a bit of the game time during that stretch) notwithstanding, the Caps were generally better than their opponents in those games, they just didn't have anything to show for it... other than equally unsustainable 2.9% shooting and .878 save percentages at evens." [Japers' Rink]

• Why the Panthers will trade Stephen Weiss. [The Hockey Writers]

• Speaking of the Panthers, things don't appear to be going well for Alex Kovalev in Florida. He'll be a healthy scratch tonight. [George Richards]

• I love this opening from Roy MacGregor: "It is an astonishing list of the accomplished that Austria has given the world. Composers such as Mozart, Strauss, Schubert, Haydn. Bankers like the Rothschilds. Mendel, the geneticist. The poet Rilke, Klimt the great artist, Otto Preminger the acclaimed film director, Thomas Vanek the leading scorer in the National Hockey League. [The Globe & Mail]

• David Poile responds to a question of whether the Nashville Predators can continue to get by without Shea Weber's production: “I’d rather answer that he’s going to produce ... I know that’s going to happen. Again, the way he bombs the puck -- he missed the net a few times -- being a little bit more accurate, he can beat goaltenders. They can’t contain the shot. There’s a rebound. It’s going to be there.” [Fox Sports Tennessee]

Wade Redden broke into the NHL in 1996 with the Ottawa Senators. In the 17 years since, he's played 1,118 professional hockey games.

But Redden didn't have much to celebrate when he cracked 1000 pro games back in 2010. It happened in the wrong league. After 994 NHL games, Redden was in the minors for the first time in his professional career. What should have been game 1000 in the bigs was actually game 6 of what would turn out to be an 119-game banishment to the AHL by the New York Rangers. Over the next two years, suiting up for the Hartford Wolf Pack and then the Connecticut Whale, Redden could only keep working and keep wondering if he'd be able to get back to where he once belonged and push his NHL totals over the hump.

He's done wondering. On Thursday night, as the St. Louis Blues play host to the Detroit Red Wings, Redden will finally hit 1000 NHL games.