THN ALL-STARS

Here’s another way to spice up the All-Star Game. Have two real teams play against each other, instead of a bunch of superstars. What we’ve done is built a real team with the players we think are the best fourth-liners, backup goalies and snipers in the NHL. Positions are based on our depth charts.…

EASTERN CONFERENCE

OLD PIRATE STILL HAS GAME

HAVING TURNED 41 in mid-December, Eric Weinrich, the AHL’s elder stateman, is used to the grandpa jokes. “Oh, yeah; those are always out there,” Weinrich laughed. “That’s expected. I probably used those, too.” That would have been nearly a generation ago, when the 6-foot-1, 210-pound Weinrich was a hotshot young defenseman, drafted 32nd overall by the New Jersey Devils in 1985. He played two years in the AHL and was named the league’s best defensemen in 1990 before embarking on an NHL career that saw him play 1,157 games for eight teams in 16 seasons. Weinrich started last season behind the bench in Portland as an assistant to coach Kevin Dineen. It wasn’t long before injuries and recall took its toll on the Pirates and prompted Weinrich to end his brief retirement. He stayed on…

Fire Starter

THE CITY OF CALGARY IS, by anyone’s definition, booming. Sitting in the middle of the oil patch with crude prices pushing $100 a barrel will have that kind of effect on a place. It has the fastest-growing economy and population of any major city in Canada, maybe in North America. A typical Calgary family pulls in $82,200 a year, about $15,000 more than the national median average. The average resale price for a home in Calgary in 2007 was $438,000 and downtown office space is almost impossible to find. The city expects a labor shortage of 225,000 people in the next decade and hotels have had to close entire floors because they don’t have enough staff to clean the rooms. Good luck getting a bag of popcorn at the movies, too.…