The Anaheim Ducks are keeping a Hall of Famer in their front office after he helped them find their general manager.

Scott Niedermayer is staying on as a special advisor to hockey operations after reportedly joining the team's GM search committee along with fellow Anaheim legend Paul Kariya last month. The Ducks named Pat Verbeek GM on Thursday.

Niedermayer played five seasons for Anaheim at the end of his illustrious career, captaining the 2007 Stanley Cup champions and claiming the Conn Smythe Trophy.

The former defenseman was also the first player in hockey history to win the Stanley Cup, an Olympic gold medal, the World Championship, the World Cup of Hockey, the Memorial Cup, and the World Junior Championship.

Niedermayer was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2013, and the Ducks retired his number in 2019. The New Jersey Devils also raised his No. 27 to their rafters in 2011. The 48-year-old former blue-liner starred for the Devils for parts of 13 seasons before joining Anaheim.

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The St. Louis Blues inked a pair of depth players to contract extensions Tuesday.

Defenseman Robert Bortuzzo agreed to a two-year pact carrying an average annual value of $950,000, while forward Logan Brown re-upped on a one-year deal for $750,000.

Bortuzzo, a third-pairing blue-liner, was a pending unrestricted free agent. He's in the final season of a three-year contract he signed with St. Louis at a cap hit of $1.375 million. The veteran, who'll turn 33 on March 18, is in his seventh full season with the Blues. He began his career with the Pittsburgh Penguins, who traded him to St. Louis in March 2015.

Brown would've been an RFA and is earning $750,000 in 2021-22. The center, who'll turn 24 on March 5, has split this campaign between the Blues and their AHL affiliate, the Springfield Thunderbirds. He's collected 17 points in 19 AHL games in addition to six points over 17 NHL contests this season. His extension is a one-way contract.

The Blues acquired Brown in a trade with the Ottawa Senators in September. Ottawa drafted him 11th overall in 2016.

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Dave King, the retired NHL and Team Canada coach, is from the Prairies and has seen the world. When the Calgary Flames fired him in 1995, Japan offered him work. The Nagano Olympics were approaching and the home team was keen to contract his expertise.

King signed on as general manager, taking over a national program that was versed in the merits of possession hockey. Japan was skilled with the puck and made smart cuts without it into open space. King pinpointed two team weaknesses: defense and aggression. Politeness and conflict avoidance are cultural norms there, but he felt the players were respectful to a fault: "They just don't hit anybody."

The summer before the '98 Olympics, King asked a Canadian university football coach, Tony Fasano, to teach his players how to hit. Donning football pads on turf, they squared off in contact drills to fine-tune their technique and allay the fear of injury. Battle on the field, King reasoned, and they'd be ready to battle in the corners on home ice.

"We did things like that," King said in a recent interview, "to try to get them to understand that we're going to play above our head."

Japan didn't finish last at Nagano 1998, earning a moral victory as it avoided the host country's nightmare outcome. Olympic hosts qualify automatically for all events, an afterthought when the Games are in Canada or the United States and cause for concern when the host is a hockey minnow. Foreseeing double-digit blowouts, the IIHF almost booted China's nascent program from this month's tournament in Beijing.

"Watching a team being beaten 15-0 is not good for anyone," IIHF president Luc Tardif told Agence France-Presse this past fall.

Green-lit to play, the burden is on the Chinese team to prove it belongs. Recent Olympic underdogs have achieved this. At Turin in 2006, Italy scored twice on Martin Brodeur and tied multiple teams that had NHL goaltenders. South Korea lost every game in PyeongChang four years ago, but threatened to upset Czech Republic and Finland.

Nontraditional hockey hosts aren't created equal. Turin was Italy's ninth Olympic hockey berth. The South Korean team was ranked 21st in the world in 2018. Flanked by Spain and Australia, China is 32nd in the current world rankings, illustrating that it's hard to build a program from scratch.

China's first Olympic game is against the U.S. on Thursday; Germany and Canada await this weekend. Group A is loaded even without NHLers present.

That Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid aren't in Beijing is a source of faint hope, though. Also: There are lessons from past Games that China's already heeded and could follow this week. History supplies the roadmap to Olympic respectability.

"The main thing was: Can we be competitive and not be embarrassed?" King said, describing Japan's priority in Nagano.

"We knew we weren't going to win a medal. But we wanted to surprise some teams," said John Parco, who played forward for Italy in 2006.

"Someone said in Canada that we'd get beat 120-something to nothing," said Jim Paek, South Korea's head coach in 2018. "That type of disrespect. For us to compete - and not be embarrassed as people thought we would - was a great accomplishment."

Recruit North Americans

China's 25 Olympic players all play for Kunlun Red Star, the KHL's last-place club this season.

Six are homegrown, one is from Russia, and the rest hail from the U.S. or Canada. Vancouver-born winger Brandon Yip was in the NHL for five seasons. Defenseman Jake Chelios is Chris Chelios' son. Jeremy Smith, the starting goalie from Michigan, spent a couple of months with the Colorado Avalanche in 2017. Each foreign-born player has Chinese heritage or was with Kunlun for a few seasons, which makes them eligible to compete in Beijing.

Importing floor-raising talent from hockey countries is an Olympic tradition.

In 1998, Japan's Olympic goalie was Dusty Imoo, the British Columbia product whose objectionable social media activity cost him a coaching job with the Toronto Marlies last year. Imoo's save percentage in Nagano was .925. Five fellow heritage players had starred in junior in Canada, and King appreciated their feistiness.

"They gave us a nucleus," King said. "Because of their Japanese parentage, the Japanese player from Japan could see that this was all possible."

Some of Italy's Turin Olympians shared a backstory: they were late-round NHL draft picks, like Parco and Tony Iob, whose parents were Italian and who signed in the domestic Serie A as young pros. Early in the 1990s, when Parco and Iob headed over from Ontario, Serie A teams played in packed arenas and handed out some of Europe's richest contracts. The arrangements beat AHL bus rides, Iob said: "We got treated like soccer players."

The money that coursed through the league diminished over time, and Italian members of the national team came to work day jobs, Iob recalled - in construction, as bakers, as electricians. They were solid players but needed support. At Turin, nine of Italy's top 11 scorers were from Canada or the U.S, and a former NHLer, Jason Muzzatti, started in net.

"We were always one of those teams that was in your face," Iob said. "We still had that Canadian strength in an Italian jersey."

In 2018, seven South Korean Olympians were naturalized citizens from North America. Defensemen Bryan Young and Alex Plante peaked in the NHL as Edmonton Oilers call-ups. Michael Swift played in the AHL before he followed Young, his second cousin, to the Asia League. Goalie Matt Dalton, who's from the same Ontario town as Ryan O'Reilly, made 45 saves against Canada when his countries faced off in PyeongChang.

When Brock Radunske joined Anyang Halla, Korea's top pro team, in 2008, a translator coined him a nickname: Canadian Big Beauty.

"It was more of a literal translation," said Radunske, who's 6-foot-5 and blue-eyed. "He may have even added it to Wikipedia himself at the time. Just trying to promote the sport over there and get some interest."

Radunske was an Oilers draft pick, and he signed in Germany when his entry-level contract ended, which opened his eyes to jobs further afield. Playing in South Korea enabled his wife to teach English there. To attain citizenship, Radunske and his Olympic teammates took language classes and learned to sing the Korean anthem, establishing their immersion in the culture.

Speed and skill abound in Korean pro hockey, and the North Americans weren't relied on to be saviors. But they'd played in top leagues and were assertive on the ice, spurring deferential teammates to ask questions in practice that helped them develop, Paek said. Early in the 2018 Olympic opener, Radunske fed Minho Cho in the slot and his snapper evaded Czech goalie Pavel Francouz, putting Korea up 1-0 as the crowd roared.

"The combination of the imports, if you want to say, and the Korean players working together as a family and teammates allowed us to be one cohesive team," Paek said.

"In our dressing room, we needed to be, as our president says, one body. They had to understand the Korean culture, and vice versa."

Play to your strengths

Seoul-born and Toronto-raised, Paek won two Stanley Cups as a Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman in the early '90s. In 2014, he left the AHL coaching ranks to run South Korea's undermanned national program. When he came on as coach, the team hired equipment and video staff and bought a skate sharpener.

Paek and his assistant coach, fellow ex-NHLer Richard Park, optimized how Korea prepared and played. They introduced video review and the use of analytics. They landed an invite to the 2017 Channel One Cup, securing Olympic tune-up games against Canada, Finland, and Sweden. They preached defensive attentiveness, figuring bigger teams that dominated the puck had to be repelled with structure and great goaltending.

"After that, we just had to play to our advantages," Radunske said. "If our guys kept their legs moving and used their speed, some of the European countries struggled with that, because our guys were so quick. They would take some penalties against us. Then the scales would tilt in our direction for moments in the game."

Outshot 159-81 over four games in PyeongChang, the Koreans managed to rack up small wins. They gave up power-play and shorthanded goals to the Czechs but outscored them at even strength. They held Canada to one goal for more than half of that matchup. Down 3-0 to Miro Heiskanen's Finns, goals from Radunske and Jin Hui Ahn forced a tense third period, at the end of which the losing team saluted the exuberant home fans.

The Italians fared better in 2006. Italy ranked top 10 in the world throughout the 1990s, cultivating a no-quit attitude in pressurized games. At the Turin Olympics, Germany and Switzerland iced eight NHL players between them, including goalies Olaf Kolzig and David Aebischer, yet the hosts led both games 3-2 before conceding late equalizers.

Six Hockey Hall of Famers (and counting) suited up for Canada at those Olympics, but in the first game of the tournament, Italy capitalized on a couple of openings. With Dany Heatley in the box for charging, Toronto native Jason Cirone tipped a shot past Brodeur to tie the score at 1-1. Down 6-1 later, Parco countered the onslaught with a slapper off the rush from the faceoff dot, impressing CBC broadcasters Bob Cole and Harry Neale.

"The famous Marty Brodeur," Parco said. "(Scoring that goal was) a high point of my career. It was a lot of years of hard work."

At Nagano in 1998, top teams got byes past the preliminary round robin, which pitted Japan against Germany, France, and Belgium. The Japanese still got to face some NHLers, including Jochen Hecht and the late Ruslan Salei, and they broke through in the 13th-place game. Shin Yahata, Akihito Sugisawa, and Tsutsumi Otomo scored on Austria and the host nation prevailed in the eighth round of a shootout.

King coached Canada at three previous Olympics, winning silver in France in 1992. His Japanese team was mobile, and King wanted it to forecheck hard and backtrack with speed, not content with hunkering in the neutral and defensive zones for 60 minutes. The year before the '98 Games, Japan faced the Canadian national team in a dozen exhibitions. Like Fasano's gridiron teachings, they were tests that pushed the players to be physical.

"They didn't get, to any great extent, to that level," King said. "But they got better. And we actually became a team that was pretty hard to play against."

Compete with pride

Italy's Turin Olympic opener reunited Iob with familiar faces. Canadian defenseman Adam Foote was his teammate in the Ontario Hockey League. Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis, the retired Tampa Bay Lightning forwards, remembered Iob from a distant training camp he attended. When Italy goalie coach Jim Corsi suggested he test Brodeur by shooting low, Iob beat Brodeur but hit the post on his first shift.

Parco, the guy who solved Brodeur, today directs hockey development for the Italian federation.

"We have, basically, about the same amount of youth players as Sault Ste. Marie does," Parco said, referring to his Ontario hometown. "Just to make people understand: It's still a very small hockey country. I'm sure the (Italian) people were really excited about the way we played (in 2006)."

That's not to say the Italian players, nor other past hosts, were happy just to be there. One of Paek's first games as South Korean coach, he recalls, was a narrow loss that would have devolved into a blowout in earlier seasons. Keeping Olympic games close was a feat that he celebrates, but in that moment, he told his players they shouldn't feel satisfied.

"We have to believe that we're able to win," Paek said. "Every game we played, we had that belief."

Long after he guided Japan to Nagano, King was an assistant coach for Canada in PyeongChang. He confirms that Paek's squad impressed people, and he thinks Olympic participation fosters respect for hockey in the host country. After Beijing was awarded the Olympics in 2015, the NHL staged preseason games and opened an office there, eager to grow fan and player interest.

China was the world's 34th-best national team when Kunlun Red Star, the country's only pro franchise, debuted in the KHL in 2016. Kunlun hired Mike Keenan and other prominent coaches to man the bench - the current coach, Ivano Zanatta, was an Italian Olympian in 1992 - and China funded a youth academy system to bolster the national talent pipeline.

This was before the pandemic. COVID-19 curbed academy attendance, nixed training opportunities abroad, and prompted the cancelation of last year's fourth-tier world championships in Beijing. Kunlun relocated to Moscow temporarily and, in Zanatta's first season as coach, is 9-32-7 in KHL play, suggesting the home fans should brace for big Olympic losses.

"If they get beat badly but they go down fighting, I think Chinese people can appreciate that," said Susan Brownell, a University of Missouri-St. Louis anthropology professor who's an expert on Chinese sports. As a reference point, she brought up 2008's Beijing Summer Olympics, where China went winless in men's soccer and the team captain was red carded for dirty play.

"(That) performance was considered a national embarrassment," Brownell said. "The main reason wasn't that they lost, but that they seemed to be playing like they didn't want to win - or that they didn't care, or that they had given up."

Before the NHL dropped out of these Games, Chinese hockey stakeholders shared how they'd define Olympic success. Speaking in the fall to the Associated Press, Longmou Li, Kunlun's vice president of communications, said the goal should be to score on Germany and avert "disaster" against the U.S. and Canada. Yip thought long term, voicing his hope that some future Chinese NHL draft pick will say the 2022 team inspired him.

Yip is the Chinese team's elder statesman at 36, about Iob's age when his career crescendoed in Turin. The '06 Olympics was "my NHL," Iob told reporters at the time. Recently, he reminisced about the opening ceremony, where Luciano Pavarotti sang opera and Iob marched in step with the world's best athletes. He has a tattoo that calls this to mind.

"I got the rings on my arm," Iob said. "No one can ever take that away from me."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

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Toronto Maple Leafs superstar Auston Matthews was forced to leave Monday's game against the Carolina Hurricanes late in the third period after taking a knee to the back of his head.

Matthews stayed down for a considerable amount of time before leaving the ice. He did not return for overtime.

Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe offered no postgame update on Matthews' status.

Matthews leads Toronto with 31 goals and 53 points in 40 games this season.

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Pierre Dorion's phone has apparently been blowing up lately.

The Ottawa Senators general manager received several calls over the NHL All-Star break as his club gears toward selling at the trade deadline, according to TSN's Pierre LeBrun.

"Teams around the league, I'm told, over the last three or four days, have made Ottawa a popular target for phone calls," LeBrun said Monday. "And I'm told that the Senators were a popular team to reach out to as far as checking out a team that is gonna be a seller."

Ottawa entered Monday 13th in the Eastern Conference in points percentage.

The Senators' potential trade chips include forwards Chris Tierney, Zach Sanford, Nick Paul, Tyler Ennis, defenseman Josh Brown, and goaltender Anton Forsberg. All six players are pending unrestricted free agents.

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Edmonton Oilers goaltender Mike Smith will be back in the crease soon after yet another stint on injured reserve.

Smith will start against the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday night after missing the last eight games with a thumb ailment, he told reporters Monday, including The Athletic's Daniel Nugent-Bowman.

The Oilers activated the soon-to-be 40-year-old off IR earlier Monday. He was a full participant in practice and served as the No. 1 netminder during the session.

Meanwhile, the Oilers placed goaltender Mikko Koskinen in COVID-19 protocol on Monday.

Smith has been limited to six appearances this season due to injuries. He last played on Jan. 5, and eight days later, the club said it expected him to miss one-to-two weeks. The veteran also got hurt in late October, had a setback in November, then landed on long-term IR before returning in late December.

The Oilers signed Smith to a two-year deal at a $2.2-million cap hit in July.

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The Florida Panthers signed goaltender Mack Guzda to a three-year, entry-level contract, the team announced Monday.

Guzda, 21, is one of the OHL's top goaltenders this season. In 16 contests with the Barrie Colts, he recorded an 11-4-1 record alongside a .925 save percentage. He also had a 5-4-1 record with a .915 save percentage in 10 games with the Owen Sound Attack.

"Guzda has been a standout goaltender in the Ontario Hockey League this season," Panthers general manager Bill Zito said. "We are excited about his growth and are thrilled that he will continue his development in our organization."

Multiple NHL teams had reportedly expressed interest in signing the goaltender, including the Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Rangers, and Pittsburgh Penguins.

Florida already has a crowded crease at the NHL level with Sergei Bobrovsky and Spencer Knight. The club traded top goalie prospect Devon Levi to the Buffalo Sabres during the offseason in a deal to acquire Sam Reinhart.

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The men's tournament begins in just two days. While the NHL disappointingly - yet understandably - chose not to send its players to the Olympics, there'll still be plenty of familiar names participating.

Let's look at how the tournament is shaping up and what we can expect from each team.

Russia is favored in this tournament, and for good reason. The Russians are icing a veteran-heavy team with an abundance of players who have played games in the NHL. They have plenty of skill up front, with the likes of Nikita Gusev, Vadim Shipachyov, and Mikhail Grigorenko leading the charge. Arseni Gritsyuk is in the midst of a breakout season in the KHL and is a wild card to provide some real scoring pop.

Russia's defensive core looks to be in good shape as well. Including Slava Voynov, four defensemen have spent time in the NHL.

I don't see many weaknesses on this roster, and the fact many of them have played together in the KHL should allow Russia to hit the ground running. For example, there are seven players from CSKA Moscow.

Many see Finland as the team most likely to give Russia a run for its money, and it's easy to see why. The Finns feature plenty of former NHLers in their lineup, including Valtteri Filppula, Leo Komarov, and Markus Granlund. They also have Sami Vatanen heading the defense. This team probably won't score a ton of goals, but they'll play structured and responsible hockey. That'll allow them to stay in every game they play - even against more high-powered opponents.

I'm not sure Canada is getting enough respect in this market. The Canadians have a nice mix of former NHLers trying to fight their way back into the league (Eric Staal, Josh Ho-Sang, etc.) and impact prospects close to making their mark as professionals (Owen Power, Mason McTavish). It might take a little time for this team to gel and for the coaching staff to find everyone's optimal role, but there's enough talent for them to make noise in this tournament. This will be a scrappy and motivated group.

Sweden will be stung by a lack of NHL players. The Swedens don't have as deep of a talent pool to pick from as a team like Canada, and they don't have the luxury of stacking former NHLers who have familiarized themselves with one another from playing together - a la Russia. Sweden's best hope for a medal is for its goaltending to get hot and allow them to slip by some more talented teams.

Czechia has real potential to surprise in this tournament. The Czechs might well have the best player in David Krejci, who just last season was a near point-per-game player with the Boston Bruins. The team has some others with NHL experience as well, including long underrated two-way winger Michael Frolik. The big question mark is in goal. If Czechia's goaltending can hold up against some of the stiffer opponents, it can make a real run.

What Switzerland lacks in raw talent it could make up for in teamwork, structure, and familiarity. Like Russia, the Swiss have stacked guys who play for the same club. That should lead to less of an adjustment period than most countries. Their best hope of surprising in this tournament is playing smart, low-event games and squeezing out just enough offense to get by.

The U.S. is following a similar formula as Canada. It doesn't have as much talent in the way of former NHLers, but the lineup does feature a few high-end prospects. Matty Beniers and Jake Sanderson were both high first-round picks, while Matthew Knies looks like one of the steals of the 2021 NHL Draft. The hope is that those kids can provide some game-breaking ability while the rest of the veterans scratch and claw their way through games. However, goaltending is a significant question mark.

Germany might not medal, but it will be competitive. With Dominik Kahun and Tobias Rieder headlining the forward group, the Germans have some speed and scoring ability that can threaten opponents, plus a big, rangy defense that could provide some physicality to keep opponents to the outside. They also have one of the more underrated goaltenders in Mathias Niederberger, who I think deserves the bulk of the workload. Germany will be a tough out.

Slovakia looks thin on paper. The team will be relying on former NHL top prospects Marko Dano and Tomas Jurco to provide offense, while 17-year-old blue-liner Simon Nemec will get his first taste of big-stage hockey. I don't know how much of an impact he'll be able to make right now - it's a lot to ask of a kid - but the experience should serve him well. He's the future of Slovakian hockey.

Generally, Denmark is a team built around team speed, but I'm not sure it'll have much success playing that way in this tournament. The roster is aged, with eight forwards 32 or older. Mikkel Boedker (32), Frans Nielsen (37), and Co. have put together strong careers, but they just don't have the speed or skill to make plays at a high level anymore. This team will struggle.

The Latvians are a hard-working team that relies on effort plays and goaltending to grind out wins. They might well steal a game unexpectedly, but I don't think they have the horses to enjoy sustained success playing the way they do.

Lastly, we have China, who'll be hard-pressed to win a game. The hope is that team familiarity - every player's home club is HC Kunlun Red Star - will allow the team to be more than the sum of its parts. Spencer Foo, Brandon Yip, and Ryan Sproul are probably China's best bets to produce some much-needed offense.

Todd Cordell is a sports betting writer at theScore. Be sure to follow him on Twitter @ToddCordell.

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