Toronto Maple Leafs forward Joffrey Lupul, who has been out since Jan. 24 with a fractured forearm, has been cleared for contact and could play Saturday against the Winnipeg Jets.

Maple Leafs coach Randy Carlyle informed the media in Toronto about Lupul's status Friday, but said he wasn't sure if he would insert him into the lineup against the Jets.

DALLAS -- When the Dallas Stars signed veterans Jaromir Jagr and Ray Whitney in July, pundits wondered about adding two players who had passed their 40th birthday.

As Dallas general manager Joe Nieuwendyk explained, the Stars added Jagr, 41, and Whitney, 40, for what they could bring on the ice as well as in the room as veteran mentors for a mostly young roster.

After catching a glimpse late last season of prospects like defenseman Brenden Dillon, a defenseman signed out of the Western Hockey League in 2011, and wing Reilly Smith, a third-round pick in the 2009 NHL Draft, Nieuwendyk wanted to see how they would handle significant NHL ice time. Later he added center Cody Eakin, acquired in a June trade with Washington for Mike Ribeiro, and defenseman Jamie Oleksiak, the 14th pick in the 2011 NHL Draft, to that list.

Dillon, 22, who has been paired with veteran defenseman Stephane Robidas, has been rock solid. He hasn't missed a game and ranks fourth on Dallas in ice time at 20:17 per game.

Alex Ovechkin scored career points 700 and 701 on Thursday night in the Washington Capitals' 3-2 comeback win against the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh, N.C.

Alex Ovechkin

Left Wing - WSH

GOALS: 10 | ASST: 12 | PTS: 22
SOG: 107 | +/-: -6

Only 209 players in NHL history have more career points than Ovechkin, who is still just 27 years old. Since 2005-06, no player has more points than Ovechkin.

That's not too bad for a guy who has been consistently criticized during his career by just about every hockey analyst in North America.

"For me it doesn't matter," Ovechkin told reporters about reaching 700 points. "Right now the most important thing is to get back on track and just stay fight for the playoff spot."

If it seems like the shooters are getting better in the shootout … well, they are.

Through the first 400 games this season, 56, or 14.0 percent, have been decided in the tiebreaker. That's down slightly from the 14.72 percent total for 2011-12, though it would still be the second-highest full-season percentage since the shootout was adopted in 2005.

But shooters are having their best season ever in the tiebreaker. They've scored 133 times on 357 attempts, a 37.3 percent success rate that dwarfs previous seasons. The 33.8 percent rate in 2011-12 was the best in the first seven seasons, and the average success rate in those seven seasons was 32.7 percent -- just below one in every three attempts.

The improvement by the shooters is most evident in the number of shootouts that are being decided quickly.

Less time on an airplane, fewer nights in a hotel, more days at home -- who wouldn't be in favor of all that?

National Hockey League players are no different than anyone else when it comes to the rigors of travel, so it's no surprise that the League's two-conference, four-division alignment plan that was approved by the Board of Governors on Thursday and will go into effect starting next season was met with positive reviews from many of the guys who will be most affected by the changes.

"I like … a lot of things about it," Calgary Flames captain Jarome Iginla said. "It makes sense."

It was a year ago that questions surrounded Sidney Crosby's NHL future.

When would the Pittsburgh Penguins captain return to the lineup? If he did return, what kind of player would he be? Could he still be the dominant force he was prior to the concussion and neck injuries that took him out of the lineup for most of a 14-month span?

As we reach the one-year anniversary of Crosby's most recent return, he again is right where he was when he began his injury ordeal: on top of the NHL scoring race and regarded as the best player in the game.

"I get to play with the best player in the world every night," Chris Kunitz, Crosby's linemate, told the Penguins' website. "It makes going out and playing a lot of fun."

On Nov. 6, in Quinnipiac's most frustrating contest in a young NCAA hockey season, it lost at home, 2-1 to American International, despite outshooting its opponent 40-17.

The loss dropped Quinnipiac to 3-4-1.

This wasn't supposed to happen to a motivated Bobcats team with 11 seniors on the roster. The rest of college hockey may not have shared coach Rand Pecknold's expectations, but entering his 19th season in Hamden, Conn., he had lofty goals for a program that hadn't moved beyond the ECAC tournament quarterfinals since 2007.

"I think for that first month of October, guys hadn't really been buying into our system and buying into being selfless. We had a lot of selfish play," Pecknold said. "We just came in as a coaching staff and said, 'We know we weren't very good last night, but let's move on. We've been good at having a short memory; this is what we need to do to be successful.'"

Brenden Morrow

Left Wing - DAL

GOALS: 6 | ASST: 5 | PTS: 11
SOG: 27 | +/-: -4

Morrow, who missed Tuesday's game and Wednesday's practice with a groin problem, took part in the morning skate on Thursday, and it appeared he'd be in the lineup. But Stars coach Glen Gulutzan told the media that Morrow was definitely out against Anaheim but that he and Jamie Benn, sidelined with a wrist injury, were definite possibilities for Saturday, when the Chicago Blackhawks visit Dallas.

SAN JOSE - San Jose Sharks coach Todd McLellan said he was just trying to help "fix" his team's problems on offense when he moved defenseman Brent Burns to right wing Tuesday night against the St. Louis Blues.

Burns opened the game on the third line, scored his first goal of the season at 11:41 of the second period and jumped to the top line with Joe Thornton and Logan Couture before that period ended.

Burns will play on the top line with Thornton and Couture from the outset Thursday night at HP Pavilion when the Sharks face the defending Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings for the first time this season.

Thornton considered that to be great news.

The NHL will have a fresh look for the regular season and a new format for the Stanley Cup Playoffs beginning next season after the Board of Governors approved the realignment plan proposed last week.

The four-division plan, featuring a new set-up for the playoffs, will be in place for a minimum of three seasons, barring any franchise relocation or expansion. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said neither relocation nor expansion were being discussed, however.

"This goes into the good news category," Commissioner Bettman said Thursday. "We can begin the process of preparing next year's schedule."

The NHL and NHL Players' Association each had input into the plan to realign the League into a more geographically appropriate two-conference, four-division format that has 16 teams in the Eastern Conference and 14 teams in the Western Conference.