When we last were able to watch NHL hockey, Pittsburgh Penguins star Evgeni Malkin owned the title of "Goal of the Year" after he took the puck from his own blue line and knifed through the entire Tampa Bay Lightning roster to score the second goal of a hat trick during an 8-1 rout.

These days Malkin is locked out and playing back with Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the KHL. During today's 3-0 win over Amur, Malkin just embarrassed Alexander Osipov for another beauty:

It was a tough game for Osipov. He took a hit from Nikolai Kulemin earlier in the period and landed face first into the side boards. For Malkin, the goal was his second of the KHL season and he has 9 points through 9 games for Magnitogorsk, two behind the immortal Cal O'Reilly.

The list of NHLers heading to Europe is growing daily. As the CBA talks drag on and we miss more and more of the 2012-13 season, YouTube and live streams will sadly be our best friends if we're to watch many of our NHL favorites on an ice sheet this year.

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

Getty ImagesHenrik Zetterberg of the Detroit Red Wings has been one of the most active players on the NHLPA negotiating team (at least in public) and a player that had been treating a European departure as a unfavorable option for the last month.

On Monday, EV Zug in Switzerland announced that Zetterberg had signed for the duration of the lockout. Uh-oh.

From Helene St. James of the Freep:

Zetterberg, who turns 32 on Tuesday, said as late as last week that he wasn't eager to go anywhere. During the lockout in 2004-05, he played for his old club in Sweden. But that wasn't an option this time around because he has $50 million left on his contract, requiring heavy insurance.

He said he'd only consider a place in Europe where neither the insurance nor the taxes would be devastating. He found the answer with Zug, home to Red Wings signee Damien Brunner and Montreal Canadiens defenseman Raphael Diaz.

Well, at the very least, Season 2 of Fake Henrik Zetterberg will to increase its travel budget.

JJ from Winging It looks at the bright side:

It's hard to argue with this. Zetterberg has been very active for the NHLPA's player negotiating committee. The fact that he's planning to head overseas now doesn't bode well for negotiations. The bright side is that he'll get time to get acquainted with new Red Wings signing Damien Brunner. It will be interesting to see the dynamic of the two, as both are known for a propensity to shoot the puck.

Zetterberg's decision is a little discomforting.

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.

In an effort to fill the void in hockey fans' lives and potentially capitalize on whatever vague remaining interest they may have in Alex Ovechkin's exploits — and let's be honest, for almost all of us, that interest is waning about as rapidly as his goal totals — ESPN recently announced that it would begin airing KHL games on whatever it's calling its ESPN3 platform these days.

In addition, they will also air a game on ESPN2 — actual hockey on an ESPN television property! — at 1 p.m. Tuesday, and then again at 8 p.m. that night.

A great idea for disenfranchised hockey fans in theory. Hockey fans are starved for the sport, since the season was meant to have started in just five days, and apart from the AHL, which has its own broadcast things going on, the KHL is undoubtedly the best league on the planet. As an added bonus, it has no connection with the NHL, with which the Worldwide Leader in Sports is current embroiled in a bit of a Cold War, but does feature a number of very recognizable NHL players.

Alex Ovechkin is one. Jakub Voracek, Zdeno Chara, Evgeni Malkin, Pavel Datsyuk and Pekka Rinne are others. These are people ESPN knows hockey fans might tune in to see. At least they could be. Maybe. If fans are really bored.

The problems with this whole thing are three-fold, and each is why it's odd to me that ESPN would pursue this other than as an "eff you" to the NHL.

(Coming Up: Bobby Ryan calls out the Euro NHLers during lockout; Bryz says KHLers might not return; Nathan MacKinnon's brilliant goal; Nashville, Carolina keep the fans engaged; Mikhail Grabovski's apathy; Blackhawks on the fence about leaving; Mikael Granlund and Alex Steen, killin' it; Kevin Bieksa is charitable; Braden Holtby is human after all.)

Yes, indeed, despite the promise of impending labor Armageddon and a prolonged work-stoppage, your friends at Puck Daddy are previewing the 2012-13 NHL season (whenever the heck it starts). Why? Because this is the most important election in the history of all-time ever, and you need to know the candidates — like the Vancouver Canucks.

It's a testament to the skill of the Canucks that you can say a season in which they won the Presidents' Trophy was also a season of underachievement, but it was.

Fresh off an appearance in the 2011 Stanley Cup Final, expectations were sky-high in Vancouver, and despite the team winning the regular-season, these expectations went severely unmet.

The five-game postseason probably had something to do with that. Sure, there was no stopping the juggernaut that was the Los Angeles Kings, but that's little consolation for a franchise that was one season removed from being a juggernaut themselves.

But the Canucks' problems went beyond running into a team of destiny. The Sedins became somewhat stale, and by virtue of that, their entire offense did too, especially on the powerplay. Ryan Kesler wasn't the same player. Sami Salo aged out of the top four, and Alex Edler looked lost without him. Alain Vigneault retreated back to a defensive shell and the team lost some of their identity.

A year removed, the Canucks are hoping they've addressed all of these problems. If they have, it could be a fun year in Vancouver. If they haven't, they could be caught by several of the Western Conference's other improving teams. Then fans might not even get a third Presidents' Trophy to belittle.

Are the Canucks still an elite team?

THE VENT is a forum to rants, raves, pleas and laments from hockey fans across the world about the NHL lockout. It runs every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. If you've got a take on the lockout and need to let it out, email us at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com, Subject: The Vent.)

Dan Johnson opens this edition with some skeptism about the players' plight:

Paul Bissonnette, tweeted this back in early September to his twitter followers;

"Question to the fans. If a company you worked for was making money and they asked you to take a 24% pay cut would you do it?"

Every time I hear another story focused on the battle of wits and ultimate stalemate taking place in New York on a somewhat irregular basis, I think about this tweet.

And as much as I want to sympathize with the players in this dispute, it becomes harder and harder everyday.

Many of the most diehard fans of the NHL -- who stuck it out during the last lockout, only to come back and buy expensive jerseys, overpriced beers and even more overpriced tickets -- sit and watch their beloved league implode on itself, again.

Now many of these same fans watch as it happens again. This time is different though: In between lockouts we were faced with an even more catastrophic failure in the form of the recession. Fans, myself included, now are forced to see billionaires say they aren't making enough and millionaires argue that they can't afford to make any less doing a job they love.

We watch from our desks at jobs we never wanted, making paychecks with so few zeroes, they could have a place at a dollar store. A large number watch from their couches, hoping that good news will come from the one distraction they have to the mindless daily task of submitting resumes for jobs.

Many fans were asked that same question that "Biznasty" was asked by their bosses and, without the luxury of moving to Europe to work or holding high profile press conferences or living off of endorsements, were forced to say yes and ask if anything else could be done to keep their jobs. And yes, even then after that indignation, many lost theirs anyway.  Recent college grads, myself included, were forced to take internships, clerical jobs and odd jobs to pay bills, for significantly less than we had hoped in fields we had hoped to never work. Many have families, piling student debt and medical bills, and yet we still say yes. And yes, many of these companies are making more money and, unlike the players, each unemployed person doesn't have millions of loyal fans hoping they'll be able to work soon.

So to answer your question Mr. Bissonnette... Yes, we would. We wouldn't enjoy it but we would.

Especially if our "job" was a sport we loved so much.

The longer this lockout goes, one wonders who often will hear this from fans fed up with both sides.

Yes, indeed, despite the promise of impending labor Armageddon and a prolonged work-stoppage, your friends at Puck Daddy are previewing the 2012-13 NHL season (whenever the heck it starts). Why? Because this is the most important election in the history of all-time ever, and you need to know the candidates — like the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It was a disaster of disastrous proportions for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2011-12.

But it didn't start out that way. With another All-Star turn from Phil Kessel and a breakout performance from Joffrey Lupul, the Leafs got off to a hot start. As late as February 22, they were still in playoff contention, sitting in a three-way tie for seventh place.

Then bad things happened.

Toronto's season actually began to unravel a week earlier on February 14, when they lost their fourth straight game for the first time all season. They would win the next night, briefly assuaging fan concern, but then everything went to crap. The Leafs proceeded to rattle off six and five-game losing streaks over the next 13 games. Ron Wilson was fired at the beginning of March. The goaltending situation became untenable. Hair stylists in Ontario declared bankruptcy en masse because nearly everyone in the Greater Toronto Area tore every last follicle from their scalp.

Like I said. A disaster of disastrous proportions.

But hey. The Leafs have a new coaching staff, they made a big offseason trade, and the universe can't kick this franchise in the Charlie Browns forever, right?

Is this the year the Leafs finally end their playoff drought?

My brother-in-law is a Calgary Flames fan. He married a Vancouver Canucks fan.

This in itself isn't the end of the world. Inter-faith marriage is tough, but it can be done. Reasonable hockey fans are capable of reaching across enemy lines, and if the enemy occasionally rolls around naked with you, that makes the arrangement even more tolerable. But everything changes when kids get involved. Now my brother-in-law and his wife are expecting, and suddenly, their differing fandoms matter. For whom will the baby cheer?

It matters now because, in a great many cases, our fandoms are spoken into us by our parents. Some kids eschew these affiliations as they age, and occasionally, something they see (like, say, a logo of a skating, bescarfed penguin) moves them enough to win them over. But many are quite literally born into a fanbase.

One day they'll understand the generational curse they've inherited -- the fear, the self-loathing, the disappointment, the inevitable alcoholism. But these kids are years away from understanding the toolbar of despair that auto-installs when we download the teams of our fathers. For now, they're just babies in hats, and there's something about that innocence being draped in logos and colours with so much baggage that I find incredibly meaningful.

Mind you, it's also just really cute.

With that in mind, may I introduce "Ice, Ice Babies", the official home for photos of infants in NHL team gear. If you've recently turned your child into a living, breathing NHL gnome (since all babies look like old men), by all means, send your photos to puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com. And in the meantime, feast your eyes on this onslaught of adorability.

Yes, indeed, despite the promise of impending labor Armageddon and a prolonged work-stoppage, your friends at Puck Daddy are previewing the 2012-13 NHL season (whenever the heck it starts). Why? Because this is the most important election in the history of all-time ever, and you need to know the candidates — like the Tampa Bay Lightning.

After a memorable run to the 2011 Eastern Conference Final, the Tampa Bay Lightning had no magic left last season. They dropped 19 points in the standings and had to settle for watching the Stanley Cup playoffs last spring. Dwayne Roloson couldn't recapture the form that helped lead the Lightning to within a game of the Cup Final and the lack of depth production doomed Tampa.

The only real highlights were Steven Stamkos once again being Steven Stamkos by scoring 60 goals and winning his second Rocket Richard Trophy and the addition to the badass Tesla coils to the rafters of the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

With GM Steve Yzerman improving the goaltending over the summer and helping to fix a league-worst defense from a year ago, is there a return trip to the playoffs in the cards for the Lightning?