Without question, goaltender has always been my favorite position in hockey. I've kept a close watch on the Stars netminder situation, and needless to say, I was thrilled when the team signed Swede Christopher "Nihil" Nihlstorp (I gave him that nickname myself - "nihil" is the Latin word for "nothing" - and I think it fits nicely). The big guy can play. He led Farjestad to the Swedish Elite League championship last year, and, as the newest Dallas puck stopper, he will provide valuable competition to Richard "Steven King" Bachman.

I did a little snooping around on the Interweb to see if I could find more info on him and stumbled upon something curious. You can see what I mean when you look at the following pics:

via www.roglebk.se

via sverigesradio.se

In the first image, it looks like Nihil may have a "lazy" left eye. In the second pic, an eye patch is secured over same said eye. Which came first? Was the patch put on after surgery to correct the alleged problem? I delved into the situation a bit further and found this on the site The Goalie Guild:

"He suffered a scary eye injury during the playoffs, but fortunately it wasn’t anything too serious. He even rocked an eye patch for a little bit."

For a look at how the injury happened, take a look at this:

Cristopher Nihlstorp får en klubba i ögat (via kristianhockey)

Ouch.

I plugged the video headline into a Swedish-to-English online translator and came up with something about a lollipop to the eye. Darn free translators.

Personally, I don't think he'll have any problems tracking the puck. He let in a few softies from a sharp angle during development camp drills, but drills are just that. In game situations, once he gets used to the smaller North American ice surface, he'll be fine.

So no more patch. In fact, Nihil now looks something like this:

via 1.cdn.nhle.com

Obviously, he's one happy man. That makes two of us.