That's the kind of play I expect of him, getting involved at both ends of the ice. His play has really picked up since the L.A. trip. He's showing a lot of leadership that way. We need him.

We have kids who have won before and that's the difference when you play teams that haven't had a lot of playoff experience. Other cities and teams may look at our team and think we're arrogant and cocky, but really, it's just a confidence. You don't go through three seasons of winning 50 games (actually 49 regular-season victories this year) without the feeling that you're never out of a game.

Since the election of Shinzo Abe as the new Japanese prime minister, by reputation a fervent nationalist, relations between Japan and China have paradoxically improved a little.

China's Internet will continue to be policed and controlled, information filtered, sites prohibited, noncompliant search engines excluded, and sensitive search words disallowed. And where China goes, others, also informed by different values, are already and will follow.

The Internet has been seen in the West as the quintessential expression of the free exchange of ideas and information, untrammeled by government interference and increasingly global in reach. But the Chinese government has shown that the Internet can be successfully filtered and controlled.

In Formula One, the car can make a difference in a way that a driver cannot. Whereas Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna spent their early seasons in second-rate machinery, Hamilton walked into the equal best car on the grid. His first season none the less has, by any standards, been extraordinary.