Sidney Crosby is on pace for his best season ever and the fans are noticing.

Crosby leads all vote getters in the NHL All-Star Fan Balloting Presented by XM with 118,755 votes. Chicago defenseman Duncan Keith is second with 82,968. Nicklas Lidstrom (80,723), Alex Ovechkin (80,169) and Jonathan Toews (79,953) round out the top vote getters with more than 3.62 million votes already cast.

Montreal's Carey Price leads in the goalie category with 71,199 write-in votes. Flyers rookie Sergei Bobrovsky is second behind Price among netminders with 58,101 write-in votes.

Voting continues through Jan. 3. The 2011 NHL All-Star Game presented by Discover will take place Jan. 30 in Raleigh, N.C., and the three forwards, two defensemen and one goalie with the most votes in their respective categories will be named the first All-Stars. The NHL Hockey Operations Department will select the remaining 36 players for the game.

PHILADELPHIA -- Claude Giroux offers only a wishy-washy answer when he's asked to tell precisely when his confidence started to grow, precisely when he figured out he could have some serious success at the NHL level.

"At the end of the season last year it just started clicking," is all Giroux offers. "Since then we haven't stopped."

Giroux uses the plural we because he wants to include his teammates, but the Flyers' run to the Stanley Cup Final this past June and their successful first quarter this season has as much to do with Giroux as it does with anyone else in that dressing room.

MONTREAL – While Jaroslav Halak was charming the entire hockey world this past spring by hoisting the eighth-seeded Montreal Canadiens on his back and leading them to the Eastern Conference Finals, no one had a better seat from which to watch the coronation than Carey Price.

The one who was once considered a can't-miss prospect, who was supposed to be the latest in a long line of dominant goalies for the Canadiens, was sitting on the bench as an unheralded goalie from Slovakia stole his spotlight and the hearts of the team's fans.

The chosen one had become the forgotten one.

When all was said and done -- after Montreal's Cinderella run ended against Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference Finals -- it was clear to everyone that the Canadiens would be forced to choose between the playoff hero and the supposedly washed-up 22-year-old wunderkind.
Most everyone in the hockey world figured it would be Price, and not Halak, who would be forced to change addresses during the summer.

While many rightfully will point to lower-body training as the most important aspect of any hockey player's regimen, upper-body training can not be ignored.

Boston forward Mark Recchi remains competitive at 42 because he spends a ton of time doing explosive sprinting exercises to work on his speed and complements that work with various other lower-body exercises. But after two decades of NHL battles, Recchi also is smart enough to understand his training would not be complete without a good deal of upper-body work, as well.

Always looking for an edge, Recchi spent a summer afternoon at a Reebok training shoot picking the brain of Jeremy Frisch, a strength-and-conditioning coach who recently left the College of the Holy Cross to become a personal trainer.

In many ways, Frisch, who has been in the business for the past decade, is an old-school trainer. He does not put much stock in a good deal of the new-fangled workout machines flooding the market. To him, the best workouts are the most basic workouts.

Home, away … the Columbus Blue Jackets are winning everywhere these days.

Steve Mason made 27 saves for his first shutout of the season and 16th of his career, and Rick Nash had a second-period goal and the Blue Jackets earned their fourth straight win with a 2-0 victory against the Nashville Predators at Nationwide Arena on Monday night.

"Obviously a shutout is a total team effort and tonight, much like we have had in our past couple of games, the defensemen have been great -- a lot of big blocked shots -- and they are really making both goaltenders jobs easier," Mason said.

NEWARK, N.J. -- Washington rookie goalie Michal Neuvirth went from probable starter to emergency backup to a scratch in a matter of hours Monday, and it created some confusion about the Capitals' goaltending situation.

Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau confirmed after Monday's 5-0 loss in New Jersey that Neuvirth "tweaked something lower body" during the morning skate so he was not able to play. Braden Holtby got the start instead, but the Capitals felt Neuvirth's injury was serious enough that he wouldn't even be able to go in a backup role, so they summoned Semyon Varlamov from Hershey.

Calgary Flames captain Jarome Iginla, along with teammates Mark Giordano and Rene Bourque will be in-studio on NHL Live! Tuesday, scheduled from noon-2 p.m. on NHL Network and NHL.com and broadcast on XM Radio.

Iginla, 33, has six goals in his last three games. He had Calgary's lone tally Monday night, a 2-1 loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. He is now tied with Bourque for the team lead in goals (9), while Giordano is 2-6-8 in 20 games.

Sometimes very good isn't good enough.

Such was the case with the play of defenseman John-Michael Liles last season -- after six seasons with the Colorado Avalanche.

There was a new coach in Joe Sacco, a new general manager in Greg Sherman and some very different expectations for Liles, an Indianapolis, Ind., native -- especially after management shelled out a new four-year, $16.8 million contract to keep him in Denver.

More production was expected for the price.

As a result, Liles was a healthy scratch four, five, maybe six times -- the first time he had experienced sitting while healthy. After an offseason to think about what had happened, the 30-year-old defenseman raised his own expectations. Six goals and 25 assists were not good enough for Liles.

One of the best rivalries in the NHL surrounds two of the League's marquee players, Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. It's a major event any time the two players come together on the ice, and never will that battle take more of the spotlight than at the 2011 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic.

However, that rivalry got its start five years ago today.

On Nov. 22, 2005, Ovechkin and Crosby met on the ice as NHL stars-in-waiting for the first time, and neither disappointed.

Crosby scored the third goal in the Pens' four-goal first-period outburst. Ziggy Palffy backhanded a pass off the right wall to Crosby, who kicked it onto his stick at in one stride was at full speed. He split a pair of Capitals defenders, deked goalie Olaf Kolzig out of position and roofed a backhander.

PHILADELPHIA -- Rookie defenseman P.K. Subban is just doing what he does best on the ice these days for the Montreal Canadiens.
 
And if that means raising the ire of Philadelphia Flyers captain Mike Richards, then so be it. But keep in mind Subban is tied for the scoring lead among Montreal defenders with 8 points while sporting a plus-6 rating.
 
It was only six days ago Richards told Montreal radio station Team 990 AM that Subban needed to earn the respect of his peers before engaging in any extracurricular activities on the ice.
 
"He's a guy that's come in the League and hasn't earned respect," Richards said the day after a 3-0 Flyers loss in Montreal on Nov. 16. "It's just frustrating to see a young guy like that come in here and so much as think that he's better than a lot of people.