The top secret agenda for Team Canada's Olympic orientation camp

The big news in the hockey world this week was Team Canada's official orientation camp, which is being held in Calgary. The event marked the first opportunity for the country's Olympic hopefuls to gather, and gave coach Mike Babcock and GM Steve Yzerman their first chance to begin the evaluation process.

But there was a snag – due to insurance issues, the players couldn't actually suit up and take to the ice. Which led many fans to wonder: What exactly are they doing out there?

Luckily, my spies were there, and they were able to snag a copy of one day's official agenda.

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Grantland: The Brady Andersons of the NHL

Baltimore Orioles’ first baseman Chris Davis continues to lead the major leagues in home runs, hitting his 46th last week. At his current pace, it won’t be long before he’ll hit his 51st, breaking the franchise record currently held by Brady Anderson.

Anderson was a good player who was named to three All-Star games during his career, but his 1996 season was one of the great outliers in baseball history. He hit 50 home runs that year, more than twice the total he’d manage in any of his other 14 major league seasons. Fair or not, Anderson’s name has become a synonym in the sports world for a one-year wonder. (And for being suspected for some other stuff, but let's not get into that today.)

What does any of this have to do with hockey? Nothing, in theory. But it’s August and there’s nothing else to write about, so we’ll just go ahead and steal this story line from another sport and make it about hockey.

So in honor of the soon-to-be-former Orioles record-holder, here are 10 of the greatest Brady Anderson seasons in NHL history.

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Grantland: The offseason story lines we all just kind of forgot about

If you follow a television series long enough, you’ll eventually hit one of those story lines: The one that is set up brilliantly, seems to be building to an intriguing payoff, and then … just kind of gets forgotten about.

The NHL offseason isn’t a scripted TV show. (We know this because scripted TV shows don’t go weeks at a time with absolutely nothing happening.) But that hasn’t stopped this year’s edition from featuring its share of abandoned story lines.

Here are five subplots that seemed like they’d be important pieces of the 2013 offseason but (so far) have turned out to be duds.

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Grantland: The 13 types of unsigned free agents in August

August is the dead zone of the NHL offseason. After the excitement of the playoffs, followed immediately by the draft, free agency, and a handful of major trades, August shows up and ruins everything. You suck, August.

Although we sometimes do see a meaningful late-summer signing or trade, most of the league seems to take the month off. And that’s bad news for the dozens of players who are still free agents. Some will still sign between now and opening night, but their options are narrowing and their odds of finding a job are getting worse by the day.

If you’re an NHL free agent who’s still unemployed in mid-August, chances are that you fall into one of 13 categories. Let’s walk through them and see if we can figure out what fans should expect.

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Grantland: Thoughts on the Alfredsson press conference

Five weeks after stunning the hockey world by signing with the Detroit Red Wings, former Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson addressed the Ottawa media for the first time Thursday.

It was meant to be a chance for Alfredsson to talk about his decision and some of the bad feelings created in its wake, and it was. It was also meant to be the end of a bittersweet offseason story. If the immediate reactions to the event are any indication, that part may not work out so well.

Here are eight things you need to know about Thursday’s press conference and its fallout.

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