Afternoon Scrum 1/5/10

As Hedley Lamarr would say: the internet is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought, cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. Let's get right to it Jackets' fans!

Hockey headlines for the CBJ and from around the league. Mmmmm... hockey

• The drum beats louder for Hitchcock to be sacrificed. Fellow bloggers TheCannon, DarkBlueJacket & PuckDaddy weigh in on the topic. And of course the issue is referenced in at least one article per day at the Dispatch. The natives are restless and with good reason. Personally, I see the problem being with the effort of the players, not the coach. I understand you can't fire a 23 man roster as easily as 1 coach, but you hate to see a man lose his job because of the under-performance of others. Such is the way of professional sports however, and without stringing together some impressive performances that are accompanied by wins, Howson may feel the pressure to fire Hitch too much to ignore.
• D Mike Commodore has decided to sit himself indefinitely. "Conditioning issues" is the stated reason. Really? A professional athlete has conditioning issues 44 games into the regular season? I want to take him at his word, but am having a very hard time doing so. May I suggest a second round of blood work?
• Almost forgot: the Jackets play a game tonight. Given the current state of affairs, no local television coverage and a 10:00 pm start, there will be a lot of Jackets fans happy to sit this one out. For the fellow die-hards (who else is reading this blog?) here are you game previews from the Dispatch & ESPN. Too make a point about how good the hockey coverage we get from the Dispatch is, I was unable to find a gameday preview from either the Vancouver Sun, nor theprovince.com. We have better coverage than at least one Canadian team. Amazing.
• Seems our old friend Nikita Filatov has quit on another coach. After a disappointing showing at the World Juniors and being stripped of the captaincy, Filatov and other teammates apparently stopped listening to their coach.
• Speaking of Filatov, LightTheLamp poses the question of what could the Jackets get for Filatov, a 1st round pick (sure to be a high pick at this rate) and a veteran? Maybe D Dion Phaneuf?
• USA vs CAN for the Gold Medal tonight in the World Juniors. 7:30 on NHL Network. At the rate the Jackets are going, they will be picking in the top 5 of the upcoming draft. You can scout a couple of top ranked prospects in Canada's F Taylor Hall and USA's D Cam Fowler.