Lockout Update: Day 3 - There is still a lockout.

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The first second 10 names have been drawn for joining the Entry Tier of my annual invitational. See the bottom of the ramblings for the first 10 20 winners. It is 5pm ET, I will try to draw 10 names every six or seven hours over the next day. So 20 names are below.

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Fantasy Guide update - The guide was last updated September 14.  My annual 3-Tiered Invitational will go on, and invites are being accepted until last night at midnight I'm extending this until 11am ET today. If you bought the guide and you want to join this pool, enter the draw by This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with the subject line Enter me in the Pool! and include your name in the body. I will announce the winners of the draw in 10-name spurts throughout the day.

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You can bet on the lockout! Check out the odds - you can get 2-1 if you bet on the season getting wiped out and it actually gets canceled. Very tempting. I'll be out a big percentage of income this year, especially if the season goes bye-bye…so perhaps I should hedge my bets and put a few grand on the season going kaput? Naw, I'm too chicken.

Other interesting bets include "will Crosby play in Europe next season at any point", as well as the over/under on the players portion of the agreed upon revenue split. The over/under is 50.5%

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Here is a great rundown of the KHL by the Litter Box Cats. Some notable names on each club.

From that rundown I picked out a few new names I didn't note yesterday - Andrei Loktionov, Anton Khudobin, Jakub Voracek, Lubomir Visnovsky, Sergei Bobrovsky, Fedor Tyutin, Ilya Kovalchuk, Sergei Kostitsyn.

Add Nikolai Kulemin to the list, he joins Malkin and Gonchar with Metallurg. He clicked with Malkin years ago - if he can find some of that magic again, he may have some momentum when he returns to play for the Leafs.

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How did Evgeni Malkin not crack the Top 10 most sold jerseys of last season? I mean, a guy who doesn't even play for that team anymore made the list (Jaromir Jagr). A partier who had an off year (Patrick Kane), a goalie who wanted to take the year "off" (Tim Thomas) and a player who missed most of the season (Sidney Crosby) - all made the list.

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Rick Nash and Joe Thornton have joined the Swiss League, and Big Joe has convinced Logan Couture to go there as well, albeit on a different team.  Mark Streit will also head back to Switzerland for now.

Add Roman Cervenka, Jiri Tlusty, Michael Neuvirth and Vladimir Sobotka to the Czech League.

Other names off to European leagues include Christian Ehrhoff and Jason Demers.

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AHL training camps open on September 28. Countdown to AHL training camps!

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My eyes popped out of my head when I read that the Wild were offering season ticket holders 10% interest on their money, if the Wild can keep that money rather than refund it. I'm kicking myself for not investing in tickets. That's pretty lucrative.

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The Leafs' goalie coach, Francois Allaire, chose not to return next season. Great reputation as one of the best goalie coaches, and perhaps there is some merit to that. But it has to be the right goalie, one built to properly learn his style. He wrecked Jonas Gustavsson, which was the perfect square peg-round hole example. Getting away from him is the best move Gustavsson made. I think James Reimer was a fit, but in his first full season under Allaire he was hurt... and took a long time to recover. So we'll never know.

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Here are winners (so far) - the following will get an email with an invite into the Entry Tier, as well as details, etc:

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He's gonna lock you out! Gary says lock you out!:

Comments (5)

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smack said:

	Dobber Entry League It seems as if you're name is Chris, you got great shot of getting in. 4/10 right now - Great odds.
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September 18, 2012
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Michael Bird said:

	Just my luck The lockout year is the one I get drawn into the Entry Tier.
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September 18, 2012
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grits207 said:

Re: Allaire I'm sure Francois Allaire can be a good goalie coach in the perfect situation but any positives he brings to the table are outweighed by his massive ego and diva attitude. The fact that he has been so quick to throw out excuses and blame everybody else for his failures in Toronto just go to show the organization is better off without that type of personality around their young players. The fact of the matter is James Reimer, Jonas Gustavsson and Vesa Toskala all got progressively worse the longer they worked with Allaire so it's hard to see how he could still have such an absurdly high opinion of himself. I'd rather have a middle of the road goalie coach who can work with any goalie than the "the best goalie coach in the world" (at least in his mind) who can only work with goalies who are perfectly tailored to him and ruin everybody else.

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September 18, 2012
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rob2kx said:

	comish Problem is, at such a high level of the game, players can't not play somewhere and then expect to come back to the NHL without missing a beat. They could practice with their teams, but not playing in high level game situations for a while would erode their skills.
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September 18, 2012
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The Comish said:

... re: Malkin The reason he didn't make the top ten sold jerseys is because of a little thing I like to call "personality". While he very well may have one, it doesn't translate well into jersey sales. I personally hate NHL players going overseas to take the lesser players jobs away in circumstances like we have right now. I realize that it's a dog eat dog thing and if the guys who lose their jobs to the NHL stars were more talented, then they wouldn't have to worry about a job. I know it's only a temporary thing (very likely anyway) for the NHL player, but it's another players livelihood that he's taking away. Talk about being completely selfish. Seriously, if veteran NHL star Joe Millionaire didn't put away a little something knowing that the NHL could be locked out, then he's just looking out for number one and that makes him a big number two in my books.

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September 18, 2012
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