Links around the League (Nov. 1)

Things look like they may pick up around CLS lately, so keep your eyes open and your RSS feeds refreshing.

I announced this fairly recently, but just to clarify CLS will begin collecting interesting stories from the league (and its divisions) with the hopes of eventually doing so on a daily basis. The goal isn't to match Kuklas Korner, Puck Daddy or any of the other blogs who provide links posts but rather to try to find a) things that fall through the cracks or b) things that are too weird/crucial/hilarious to ignore.

For the first week, however, I'm going to share links to posts from years past that made me more interested in hockey blogging or stuck with me for one reason or another. This will also hopefully provide a decent (though by no means rigid) guide for our other contributors.

Sacamano's Epic Beard Piece

On some level, the Oilogosphere's coverage of Edmonton's Cinderella run to the SCF may not ever be matched for its sheer hilarity and insane genius. One could devote many a post (and many links) to the great portions of comedy that resulted from that special time but it ultimately just makes me sad that most of those guys are long gone.

Why Sidney Crosby should embrace the role of villain

One of the reasons I run a general NHL blog instead of a Penguins-related blog is that Pensblog covers the bases I would attempt to as a Penguins fan: they write over the top, offensive and funny things about the Penguins and include professional wrestling references. This post is my favorite of theirs and is generally just full of genius. Bonus points for the hilarious Photoshop of a bloodied Mike Richards.

Rudy's Off-Season post about Dogs (and hockey)

I never actually watched a single episode of the show Rudy was talking about, yet I'll always go back to this post as a rebuttal for people who say that they can't write anything interesting during hockey's off time. This is one of the best posts to come out of BoC and it was during a dead time in the year. Rudy: "It's like someone put a camera inside my head and filmed my dreams."

Bird Watchers Anonymous with an in-depth look at drafting

Anyone who wants to contemplate how much of a crapshoot drafting can be needs to look no further than this exhaustive take on how each NHL team fares in the draft. It's also a great example of making deep stat analysis digestible for the unwashed masses.

Five Reasons Justin Bourne Loves Hockey

Puck Daddy often hits Internet-wide features out of the park and one of the best ones is their "Five Things I Love about Hockey" specials. What makes this piece especially interesting is that it takes a very humanistic approach to what makes hockey great and is written almost at a Ken Dryden's The Game-level. This shows that players can come up with some truly great stuff every now and then.

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Do you think that you've written something worthy of next week's list? Are you a reader of a smaller blog and feel it deserves some attention? Drop me an e-mail at cyclelikesedins@gmail.com and maybe you'll end up in the next Links around the League.