Sunday's Daily Dosage - Thomas/Rask, Kovalchuk, Morin...

Bruins coach Claude Julien with some encouraging words for Tuukka Rask owners and vice-versa for fans of Tim Thomas:

I think it's pretty obvious that Tuukka has to take a bigger bite this year... That's not a secret. I don't plan on making that a secret. Tim is a great goaltender. But Tim is a goaltender that understands, too, that he can't play 70-plus games in a regular season. He's had a long playoff.

And it's not like Thomas was even playing 70 games, he only played in 57 regular season games last year.  So it sounds like we could be seeing more like a 50/50 regular season split between these guys.  This hurts as in a lot of leagues that reward goalies that rack up a lot of saves, Thomas' value drops even further, and getting Rask as insurance becomes even more vital.

The Devils will start with Parise-Elias-Zubrus on the top line which leaves Ilya Kovalchuk to deal with the scraps youngsters like Jacob Josefson, Mattias Tedenby & Nick Palmieri on the 2nd line... very ouch.  I like Kovy to bounce back as I think he's much better than he showed last year but he's going to need better linemates (the Zajac injury really hurts) and lots of PP production.

On the flipside, Jaromir Jagr starts training camp on a line with Claude Giroux and James van Riemsdyk.  I'm in the camp that Jagr still has a lot to give but I wouldn't expect more than 60 points out of him this year, even on this line.

Jets Coach Claude Noel states that he wants his 3rd line to be a scoring line instead of a checking line... which sounds a lot better than it looks when you see who his options are for that line. [via Arctic Ice Hockey]

Nathan Horton is 100% recovered from the concussion he suffered in last year's final and says that he doesn't worry about the injury at all.

From the ominous signs file, Jarome Iginla couldn't finish the first day of training camp due to back spasms.  Iggy is usually an 82 game player so I wouldn't be worried about this but just imagine how bad the Flames would be if he was out for any stretch of time.

This concerns me... Hawks prospect Jeremy Morin is being held out of training camp as he's still suffering from post-concussion syndrome that goes back to January. [via NHL.com]

Tom Poti failed his medical exam on Friday and will go on LTIR due to his recurring groin injury... everyone knew this was going to happen so it doesn't really affect the team and you shouldn't be counting on him to play this year.