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BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published April 7, 2011

It’s that time of year again. March Madness has come to an end so you might finally have time to get some work done now, right? Wrong. As I am sure all of you know, the NHL playoffs are just around the corner, so the playoff madness continues.

Now it’s been a busy year, so I understand if you missed a few hockey games this season; 82 games can be quite the time commitment. So just in case you haven’t been spending your free time (or that time you were supposed to have been working on your linear algebra homework) stalking hockey players’ Twitter accounts, here is a quick recap of some of the stories you need to know about for the 2010-11 NHL season to not embarrass yourself around the dip bowl at your Stanley Cup viewing party.

Ilya Kovalchuk mistakes NHL for Supreme Court, applies for lifetime position

Before games were even played, the season started out with a good old case of mistaken identity. An unrestricted free agent at the beginning of the season, NHL forward Ilya Kovalchuk left the Atlanta Thrashers and was looking for a new job. But he seems to have mistaken the New Jersey Devil’s Prudential Center for the U.S. Supreme Court, and attempted to sign for the hockey equivalent of a lifetime seat on the bench. NHL officials were quick to correct the 27 year-old Russian’s mishap by rejecting his 17-year contract request.

Instead, they insisted on only a 15-year contract. Of course, he will still be paid $100 million for those 15 years, which essentially makes it a lifetime contract. So maybe he wasn’t so far off mistaking the NHL for the Supreme Court; it appears hockey does offer lifetime appointments.

HBO shows hockey players are the new drunken sailors

To offer hockey fans and the other 99 percent of U.S. television viewers a glimpse into the NHL locker room, HBO did a behind-the-scenes mini-series of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals over the weeks leading up to the Winter Classic. The casual viewer took away a few important pieces of information about hockey from this series.

First, hockey players curse more than drunken sailors: players curse at each other, coaches curse at players, fans curse at anything that moves after having failed to drink away their team’s loss. Second, there really is no reason to worry about the other 28 teams not featured in this show, because the league really only consists of Sydney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin and those other silly people who always insist on being on the ice with them.

Lastly, if the NHL let HBO edit together the footage of all their games, maybe some of the casual viewers of the series would actually tune in to watch games besides the Winter Classic.

Ovechkin overjoyed at new All Star Game format

The powers-that-be in hockey decided that the old All Star format needed a facelift this season. Giving up hope of convincing the Eastern Conference that their Western equivalent actually existed and was not, as many assumed, an elaborate April Fools Day joke, the NHL gave this midseason showcase its own draft, and all the bells and whistles that come with it. Two captains were chosen who then took turns choosing the rest of their teams.

The most memorable thing to come out of the weekend was Alex Ovechkin’s delight in Phil Kessel being picked last. He decided to commemorate the moment by taking a photo with his camera-phone. The evidence of this act of kindness by Ovechkin, of course, became a more widely circulated story than Kessel getting a car in return for being the draft’s Mr. Irrelevant.

The Canadians are coming! The Canadians are coming!

When Sarah Palin said she could see Russians from her house in Alaska, most took it as just one of many ridiculous statements that came from the VP candidate. But it turns out there might have been something to this statement. Except it wasn’t the Russians, it was really the Canadians sneaking around Alaska in another one of their attempts to steal an NHL franchise.

This season has had no shortage of drama when it comes to the sale of the Phoenix Coyotes and the calls of Quebecers demanding their own team. At first it was just bringing more fans to a game between US teams than either of the actual teams did, but now they are actually building a new state-of-the-art rink, just in case a team gets relocated there. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is getting desperate to breathe life into his mid-west expansion teams, or to find someone with deep enough pockets to do it for him.

NHL makes scientific breakthrough: Getting repeatedly hit in the head bad for health

If there has been one story to come out of the NHL this season that has caught national attention, it has been about concussions. There have been a series of players who took hits to the head this season and been out with concussions for far longer than their fan bases were comfortable with. Paul Kariya has missed the entire season with post-concussion syndrome, the police were actually called to arrest Zdeno Chara in Montreal after his hit on Max Pacioretty and of course, the league’s golden boy, Sydney Crosby, has been missing since the Winter Classic due to a concussion.

Whether it has been players speaking out against too-lenient suspensions or fans bemoaning the loss of one of their favorite players, the press and NHL officials both have been busy dealing with the repercussions of the increase in concussions suffered by players this season.

Now that you have been caught up on the highlights for this regular season, you are ready for the playoffs. So grab some friends and choose a team to root for (from a completely unbiased position, I recommend the San Jose Sharks), because the road to the Stanley Cup is about to begin.

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