EP Rinkside Mailbag: An early start on playoff prognostication

August means very little news in the hockey world. If there are Official Insider Reports that a general manager and a player he just traded for did something so seemingly insignificant as "going out to dinner," you know this is an entire sport that's just twiddling its thumbs, waiting for a few arbitration cases to get wrapped up, and hoping it'll be September any minute now.

Doesn't mean there aren't any questions to ask, though.