In a move that surprised many, myself included, the league's department of player safety has decided that no further discipline is required for McQuaid and that his major and game misconduct were sufficient.

The article

Their argument does make some sense though in that the action was reactionary, not intentional and there was no intent to injure. Doubtless, the fact that Foligno finished the game with no apparent ill effect helped McQuaid avoid the hammer.

Now brace yourself for the return of Bruins-bias claim from the front office...

Carolina already gave up on their prized FA acquisition and sent him to Montreal for Jaro Spacek.

http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=382331

Spacek is on IR which tells you all you need to know about just how desperate Carolina was to get rid of Tomas. Cap saving move for them as well, as Spacek is in the final year of his contract and has a cap hit of 3.8M. Guess Montreal thinks Kaberle can replace Markov's expected production?

I had a discussion with some on here previously regarding fighters and the impending death of the age of the 'goon'.  My contention (and many others I am sure) is that fighting and enforcing is still an important aspect of the game but the players who fill that role must also bring something else to the table.

Sure enough, Scott Cullen at TSN comes up with a list ranking the NHL fights by their overall skillset! Now some of these listed aren't what I would consider fighters but the list still has value for comparing tough guys and assessing their overall impact.

http://tsn.ca/blogs/scott_cullen/?id=371668

I found it interesting and thought some here might as well. Unfortunately, I can't find Cullen's regular season player ranking in which he gives everyone a score (the same ranking methodology he uses in this article) so the comparison between fighter and non is harder to make.

Assistant general manager Mike Santos confirmed that the Panthers wouldn’t make contractual offers to restricted free agents Byron Bitz(notes) and Steve Bernier(notes), allowing them to become free agents. The Panthers got Bitz at the 2010 trade deadline from Boston for Dennis Seidenberg(notes). Bitz played in just seven games before getting hurt; he missed the entire 2010-11 season after having sports hernia surgery.

So anyone else think we should bring Byron back into the fold?  I certainly wouldn't be against it, even if only for more 'We want Bitz' chants...