Required Reading for Oct. 4th

Meet Paul Stastny (right) early season fantasy hockey wrecking machine. AP Photo/David Zalubowski

• Do we get to fight other customers? It's retail shopping, NHL style. The fine folks over at Pop Jocks have a look at the new NHL store opening in Manhattan on October 12th. By far the best feature is the "in-house Starbucks where men can dump off their girlfriends for a few hours." Why didn't anyone think of that sooner? It also goes to show that you cannot escape Starbucks no matter where you go. Soon they'll be installing a Starbucks in my house. That's the next logical step.
• Kings are Masters of the Obvious: Great post up at Battle of California. In case anyone had any doubts, a new TV spot clears things up; the Kings do, in fact, play in L.A.
• Don't say I didn't warn you: ESPN sucks at fantasy sports, something Scotty Hockey learned about recently. It's an 'A+' rant in my book. Bravo! Well, except for the part where your fantasy team got ruined in the process. Probably not worth it, I would guess.
• The morning news: Brought to you by the gang at Illegal Curve. Probably the best hockey blog you haven't heard of. If it happens in hockey, they know about it. No, really. They do.
• Thank you Paul Stastny hat trick: Now all three of my fantasy hockey teams are +3 goals. Not nearly as cool as +1 throwing daggers, but still cooler than Chris Kattan.
  
• More blog rankings: This time courtesy of Sports Business Daily. How many of these friggin' things do we need? My cat can rank blogs, too. Wanna see?