Every Monday morning The Ice Sheet will take a close look at everything that's happened in the NHL since Friday night at 5:00 p.m. To read them all, click here.

Now that the NHL has gotten through it's first full weekend of the regular season, we still have nine separate squads that we can classify as undefeated, but thanks to their early start in Prague, it's the New York Rangers who sit atop the league with four wins and eight points. Out West, the Sharks have gotten off to a quick start with three wins while only yielding two goals.

Other mild surprises: the Canucks were supposed to be offensively-challenged, yet they still managed to hang 11 goals on the Flames in their home at home series on opening weekend -- including Saturday's come from behind 5-4 OT win in Calgary. Phoenix has a pair of wins, including last night's impressive 4-2 win on enemy ice against Anaheim.

Back East, everyone was talking about how Washington was going to win the Southeast in a walk, but it's Carolina, a team struggling with plenty of injuries, that sits on top of the division with a pair of wins. And while the Rangers might be on top of the East and the Atlantic, the re-tooled Devils notched a pair of wins on opening weekend as well.

Thanks to just one ceremonial puck drop with Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the National Hockey League has turned into a political football -- and a lot of the folks are working very hard trying to influence what and how you think about it.

In the last 24 hours, I've seen a pair of interesting instances of how the events of Saturday night are being reported that are worth noting. Details follow after the jump.

Here's a piece of video that's going to be over analyzed in the sports blogosphere in the next 24-48 hours -- Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's appearance at a ceremonial puck drop before the Philadelphia Flyers season opener with the New York Rangers. Was she booed? I'll let you decide:

For those of you who might be looking to make the Flyers-Rangers game on Saturday night a little more interesting, the folks at Bodog are offering odds with a slightly different twist.

With Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin set to drop the ceremonial first puck before the game, the folks at Bodog are offering a couple of additional wagers to the regular menu.

The following come from our friend Jimmy Shapiro at Bodog:

Will Sarah Palin Fall while dropping the Puck at the Philadelphia Flyers Home Opener?

Yes 10/1

Will Sarah Palin get in a Donnybrook with the Flyers Captain at Center Ice?

Yes 1000/1

Will Sarah Palin get Booed more or Cheered more when introduced onto the Ice at the Flyers Home Opener?

Booed Even
Cheered -130

Will Sarah Palin wear a Philadelphia Flyers jersey at Center Ice?

Yes Even
No -140

Those are some interesting choices to say the least. I wonder what Janet Gretzky thinks?

Ice hockey and politics will cross over once again on Saturday night, when Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin drops the ceremonial first puck before the Philadelphia Flyers home opener against the New York Rangers. Here's the team press release with all the relevant details:

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the nation's most popular hockey mom, will join the winner of the Philadelphia Flyers regional search for the "Ultimate Hockey Mom" contest and drop the puck at the ceremonial opening face-off as the home team Flyers host the New York Rangers at the Wachovia Center on Saturday, October 11 at 7 p.m.

"Because of the tremendous amount of publicity she has brought to our sport, we invited the most popular hockey mom in North America to our home opener to help us get our season started," said Comcast-Spectacor Chairman Ed Snider who founded the Flyers in 1967. "We are very excited she has accepted our offer and we are very proud of the publicity she is generating for hockey moms and the sport of hockey."

If you drop by Puck Daddy, the claim that Palin is the nation's "most popular hockey mom" seems to be in dispute. After reading a couple of the comments, it's easy to see how "most controversial" hockey mom might be more appropriate. Here's hoping the innocent winner of the contest, whoever that might be, gets a nice hand in Philly regardless of the reception Palin gets.

As for me, I'm of two minds on the subject. First off, I'm thoroughly sick of election news, and have been since around Labor Day. Once you threw the global credit crisis into the mix, I began to realize that there's really little reason to have much confidence in America's political leadership these days regardless of party. Looking over the horizon, it's hard not to conclude that the winner of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election might very well be the recipient of the biggest booby prize in American political history since the election of 1928.

On the other hand, I distinctly recall that when I first learned that U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA), the 2004 Democratic nominee for President, had played hockey in high school, I somehow managed to process the information without having an aneurysm. Go figure.

When Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Barry Melrose benched defenseman Shane O'Brien for Sunday's game against the New York Rangers in Prague, Tampa Bay Online's Damian Cristodero wondered out loud whether or not the benching wasn't so much for poor play as it was to make sure O'Brien wasn't injured while the team was trying to deal him.

Just 24 hours later, Cristodero was proven right when the Lightning shipped O'Brien and and right wing Michel Ouellet to Vancouver for defenseman Lukas Krajicek and minor league winger Juraj Simek. Needless to say, the move provoked a lot of headscratching in our FanHouse email group. After all, if Tampa Bay's blue line is soft now, how in the world will the addition of Kajicek -- and the rumored interest in free agent defenseman Bryan Berard -- make things better?

Every Monday morning The Ice Sheet will take a close look at everything that's happened in the NHL since Friday night at 5:00 p.m. To read them all, click here.

On Saturday morning when I passed along the news that Petr Prucha was actually going to get into the lineup for Saturday's Rangers-Lightning tilt in Prague, I also made a point of linking to a rather angry Larry Brooks column where the Slap Shot columnist let loose with every little complaint he had about the way the Rangers were handling their pre-season. After giving it a read, you could be forgiven for thinking the team was in a bit of disarray:

It's all about Renney coaching a team without Jagr and Shanahan to lean on, and it's all about this group filling the huge voids created with the decision to dispose of the team's post-lockout identity as if it were toxic.

It's all about one of the most vanilla Rangers teams in memory bonding in order to form a unit greater than the sum of its underwhelming parts.

Well, here we are a little less than 48 hours later, and all is forgotten in the wake of a pair of 2-1 victories over the revamped Lightning. Rangers newcomers Markus Naslund and Wade Redden combined for two goals and two assists over the weekend, as the New Yorkers pretty easily dominated the run of play as the Lightning played against type. While new owners Oren Koules and Len Barrie spent most of the Summer stacking the team with loads of new offensive weapons, it was their goalies, Mike Smith and Olie Kolzig, who kept things close, stopping 76 of 80 shots over the course of two games.

The first min-controversy of the New York Rangers season was settled early today in Prgaue, where it appears that head coach Tom Renney has reversed a decision and will dress Czech native Petr Prucha for the team's season opener against the Tampa Bay Lightning later today.

Newsday's Steve Zipay set off some online furor yesterday when he reported in his Blue Notes blog that Prucha had stormed off the ice and blown off a television interview after saying that he wouldn't be playing today. It was a reaction that was easy to understand, especially as Prucha had expected around 20 relatives to attend the game in Prgaue to see him play.

But as of a couple of hours ago, all has been forgotten, and Renney talked to Zipay to perform some damage control:

"I didn't change my mind, I made up my mind," said Renney. "I think Petr's had a good camp, he's been a little bit snakebitten offensively, but he's had chances as much as anybody on our team, and we need to score to win. The fact that he would be energized is not going to hurt us at all. But that's not unusual for Petr, we could be playing in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and he would play the game the same way. It was just one of those things, I contemplated it all day yesterday and last night."

Problem solved, right? Well, maybe not.

After a lackluster start to their pre-season, or at least the parts of it that were played on American soil, the Rangers have turned things around in Europe. The team went 1-5 in their first six pre-season games, all of which were played in America against NHL teams. After crossing the Atlantic, the team played two exhibition Victoria Cup games against European teams SC Bern and Metallurg Magnitogorsk. They defeated Bern by an 8-1 margin on Tuesday and downed Metallurg 4-3 last night. So, things are looking up for the team.

I'm sorry to report that things are not looking so good for new Ranger beat writer Michael Obernauer of the New York Daily News. Obernauer is replacing John Dellapina, who moved on to a job with the NHL. Dellapina was the Rangers beat writer since 1994 and did a solid job for what can sometimes be considered a tabloid. Anyway, Obernauer officially started today, and his first report, which he wrote yesterday, left a lot to be desired. And a few Ranger fans grilled him for it. But I guess that's what happens when you follow in the footsteps of a solid beat writer by, you know, writing one paragraph about a pretty important road trip.

Playing their first of two European exhibition games before Saturday's season opener in Prague, the Rangers scored six times in the third period to pull away from SC Bern, 8-1, in the Swiss capital Tuesday night. The Rangers struck six times on power plays and got goals from seven different players. They'll take on European champion Metallurg Magnitogorsk of Siberia tonight in Bern in the inaugural Victoria Cup game.

That was Obernauer's entire report last night. Seriously. I know occasionally blogs can kind of get away with stuff like that, and it is only the pre-season, but what happened to making a good first impression?

After the jump, enjoy a few of the more hilarious comments left by Ranger fans.

Welcome to the NHL FanHouse 2008-09 season preview. While other sites are previewing "30 teams in 30 days," we decided to take advantage of the extra time off before the start of the season to bring you all 30 previews over the next three weeks. We're counting down in reverse order of finish from last season in each conference every weekday from now until October 3. Look for an Eastern Conference preview every morning and a Western Conference preview every afternoon. Click here to read them all.

Who's In: Markus Naslund, Nikolai Zherdev, Dmitri Kalinin.

Who's Out: Martin Straka, Jaromir Jagr, Brendan Shanahan (could still return), Sean Avery, Fedor Tyutin.

What's Changed: Another year and it's still the same old Rangers -- spend, spend, spend. In February the team signed stud netminder Henrik Lundqvist to a six-year deal that came out to about $6.5 million per. During the off-season they nabbed UFAs Wade Redden and Markus Naslund for the low price of $11.5 million this season. Not that this is a bad tactic, they did pretty well this past season with their spending spree from the summer of 2007 (Gomez, Drury). But, in all serious, not a whole lot has changed in terms of the philosophy in New York. The faces, however, are a different story.

With Jaromir Jagr in Russia, Brendan Shanahan in limbo, and the departure of Martin Straka, the Rangers are going to be without three of their top five scorers from a year ago. The trio combined for 158 points last season, something the Rangers will dearly miss. The addition of Naslund and Nikolai Zherdev will help ease the stress, but it will certainly be interesting to see how the new faces, and the loss of some old faces, pans out.