In The Crease

Oilers restricted free-agent holdout Bill Guerin may be sitting home for a long time if his agent, Bob Murray, insists on comparing Guerin, a righthanded-shooting winger, with Hurricanes holdout Keith Primeau, a lefthanded-shooting center. General managers and coaches place a much higher value on big two-way pivots ( Primeau is 6'4" and 210 pounds) than on wingers....

The Rangers were the first NHL team to travel with a portable satellite dish so their coaches could watch whatever games they wanted in their hotels. The Red Wings have recently followed suit....

Look for crease-crashing forwards Tomas Holmstrom of the Red Wings and Ryan Smyth of the Oilers to benefit greatly from the new rule doing away with video review of goals for crease infractions. Those players had 15 and seven goals, respectively, wiped out last season because they were caught with their skates in the crease....

Referees note that during games in which they're the lone ref (strangely, there will be two referees in only 700 of the league's 1,148 games this season), they have to skate more, position themselves differently and retrain their eyes. Wouldn't it be helpful if the NHL kept referees in a one-official rotation for several games at a time instead of bouncing them from one-to two-referee matches?...

Mighty Ducks tough guy Jim McKenzie lost a lot of respect among his peers last week when he pummeled Stars backliner Darryl Sydor, who rarely fights....

So far this season three young defensemen have stood out for playing with maturity beyond their years: 24-year-old Nolan Pratt of the Hurricanes, and 22-year-old Christian Laflamme and 25-year-old Jason Smith of the Oilers. They have read the rush well, played physically in the slot and moved the puck crisply out of their end.