A few Tuesday afternoon links

• Yesterday's Ottawa Citizen had a fantastic article about Brian Elliott and his journey to get to where his is today; it's a must-read. The Ottawa Citizen also evaluated Sens players at the all-star break, and here's what they had to say about Els:
  

  Brian Elliott, 3-1-1, 2.18, .924: It's tough to think that a ninth-round draft choice can spin some magic in the NHL, but maybe Elliott can. He has certainly played well so far, he played well in Binghamton and he was an outstanding college goalie at Wisconsin, winning the NCAA championship in 2006. So it doesn't look as if he's a fluke. If he demonstrates he can play well consistently, Ottawa might find the goalie it lost through the misadventures of Ray Emery.
  

• Last week the Ottawa Citizen had an article on Dany Heatley that I didn't stumble on until today. Here's what Heater said going into the all-star break:
  

  "I think I've felt a little better with the puck lately," he said. "That's the way it goes. Some people get on you when it's not going in the net, and you just got to understand sometimes it doesn't go in, sometimes you don't get a bounce here or there, and that's how it was going there for a little while. It's nice that it's going in again."

• The Worcester Telegram & Gazette has a nice article about Don Granato and his return to Worcester for last night's AHL All-Star Game. Granato, of course, was head coach of the PlanetUSA All-Star team. Prior to his diagnosis with Hodgkins lymphoma, Granato was head coach of the Worcester Ice Cats.

• Todd Milewski has a whole bunch of alumni links, as well as alumni and recruit stats.

• Todd also has an article about how Brendan Smith has been handling being injured. Smith won't play this weekend, and he may or may not be back next weekend. The article also mentions the benefit of last week's bye for younger players, including Derek Stepan and Jordy Murray.

• The Badger Herald has an article that talks about some of the same things. In regards to the bye week, Mike Eaves responded as follows:
  

  “Today we came in, had a workout this morning to get rid of some of those cobwebs physically,” Eaves said in his weekly press conference Monday. “Hopefully we’ll be mentally fresh to come back on the ice and be productive. … History tells us that sometimes it takes a period [to shake the rust off.] You may look sluggish for a period. When we come out of that period tied, one up or one down, we’re going to know we’re in pretty good shape.”

  Well, I sure hope the boys are ready to go this weekend; I'm not sure that they can afford the luxury of shaking rust off during the game. Andy Bohmbach told the blog that the team's goal is to get to DC and win the title. Well, if that's their goal, and if they're going to drop 2 games to Northern and give away a game to CC (not to mention dropping all those games at the beginning of the season), they can't really afford to drop points to UMD because they're rusty. But you know, from what I recall, the Badgers didn't look all that rusty in the opening Showdown game after being off for several weeks, so they should be able to come back from 1 week off just fine.