We're just days away from the start of August, when the sport of hockey typically slows to a crawl, but there's still plenty of news coming out here in July. And then, lest we forget, there's a whole World Juniors tournament to be played in early August.

It'll be nice to get that little injection of hockey for a few weeks — and fun to see who joins me in acting like they know all about the best players on the Latvian team. We here at EP Rinkside definitely have people who do, but I am absolutely not one of them. Will I pretend to be? You bet. Nothing better to do at this time of year, after all.

Let’s go:

The Patrik Laine extension

Something that I don't think got enough play in the past week -- because it was so quickly overwhelmed by the Matthew Tkachuk trade -- is that Columbus gave away a