Shrapnel - 1/2/12

For many, today is one last "bonus" day of the holidays where you can relax and enjoy your couch, but for Dan Craig and his crack team of ice ninjas, today is the busiest and most stressful day of the year.

On the plus side, game time was moved back to 3pm to make sure the Rangers and Flyers have the best possible ice. On the down side, it caused a bit of a TV schedule kerfluffle.

Back closer to home, Scott Arniel's press conference incident got more attention. While I suppose you can say there's no such thing as bad publicity, this certainly doesn't paint him in a good light.

The other big Winter Classic news is that "Mr. Universe" Ilya Bryzgalov claims he will not be the starter. Despite Peter Laviolette trying to downplay the Russian netminder's announcement by saying he hadn't spoken to either goaltender yet, it made sense given that Sergei Bobrovsky has been the hot hand of late. All credit to Bryz: I think this is the first press conference in some time that included Q&A on tea selections.

At Backhand Shelf, Ms. Conduct decided to rank the NHL teams by attractiveness. I highlight this only for the way she describes Aaron Johnson, which is both highly amusing and subtly terrifying at the same time.

At Crimespree Hockey they shared their thoughts about the WC alumni game and some hockey pet peeves.

We have a few more thoughts about New Year's Eve from LTL, Full Mental Jackets, and TMM. "Good Riddance" really sums it up.

In Montreal, Josh Gorges finally got his extension, Mike Rupp feels a bit bad about chirping Jody Shelley on national TV, and Ian Cole got a 3 game Shannaban.

Columbus Wired reacts more to Scott Arniel's "pile on" comments, and someone has broken ground on a new meme generator just for him..