NHL: Mario Not The Only Comeback

Sports has a great ability to balance a depressing story with an uplifting one. For every Darryl Strawberry, there's a Kurt Warner. Sometimes, it even happens to the same person. One month, Ray Lewis is in prison for murder, the next he's an innocent man playing the best defensive football in the league and a game away from the Super Bowl. Along those lines, two prominent NHLers returned to their respective teams this week, and the circumstances couldn't have been more different. Dallas all-star goalie Ed Belfour and Ottawa assistant coach Roger Neilson are both back on the job, and that's probably the only fact that links these two men and these two stories.

'Crazy Eddie' Belfour has had a reputation for eccentricity since he entered the league with Chicago almost ten years ago. Of course, how much of that was as a result of working for Mike Keenan, we can only speculate. And all goalies are a little goofy, as you can well imagine from the whole "Hey, why don't you guys fire 100-mph shots of frozen rubber at me?" career choice. But Belfour has clearly taken this stereotype and run with it. Talking to your goal posts and vomiting before every game is one thing, resisting arrest is another. That's what happened in a Dallas hotel last March when Belfour, in the midst of his best season, got into a rumble with security guards, police and a room service waiter or two. On the way to the real penalty box, he apparently offered police one billion dollars to let it slide. Of course, Belfour was going to pay in Canadian dollars. And Eddie, let me tell ya, if Dallas' finest didn't look the other way with Michael Irvin offered up all the coke and hookers America's Team could buy, they weren't going to be impressed by $19.95 American. The end result was a little fine, a little probation, a little treatment for alcohol abuse, and a heck of a story for the kids at his next hockey school.

But through it all, Belfour continued to shine. The guy with a rep for folding under pressure nearly stole a Cup for the Stars against the younger and fresher Devils last spring. He's bested the world's formerly number one playoff goalie, Patrick Roy, two years straight. And of course, he beat out Dominik Hasek in the Cup finals two years ago and probably should have won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP. If that wasn't enough, Belfour got off to a ridiculous start this season, with seven shutouts in the first two-and-a-half months. And then, as so many great athletes have done before him, he ran away for a few days because the coach dared give him...a day off. Turns out Eddie doesn't like it when backup Marty Turco gets to play every now and then. Turns out his coach Ken Hitchcock, who would sooner clean the Reunion Arena ice with a toothbrush than back down from one of his players, had already tried to give Turco some action earlier in the season, but backed way down when faced with a potential Belfour 'scene.' But this time, Hitchcock went through with his diabolical plan to actually use both of his goalies and Belfour predictably snapped. Off he went for three fun-filled days of brooding and sulking, while all Turco did was win two straight in his absence, including a shutout in Boston. And wouldn't you know it, that's when Belfour thought it might be a good idea to get back in the fold, before the Stars decided not to invite him back at all. So know, everything's apparently hugs and kisses, and Belfour will be back in nets tonight against Detroit. But who knows when 'Crazy Eddie' will rear his ugly head again. Maybe the water in his water-bottle will be too 'wet' and he'll maul a stick-boy. Now that's entertainment.

Of course, it's also extremely silly when you compare it to the story of another man who returned to his team this week, a man who, unlike Belfour, couldn't have been happier to be behind the bench. Ottawa assistant Roger Neilson, recently diagnosed with cancer for the second time in a year, was back helping out Wednesday night as the Sens began a West coast trip in Vancouver. Neilson contracting bone marrow cancer last season while the head coach of the Flyers. In his absence, interim coach Craig Ramsay took the team within a game of the Cup finals, even while Neilson claimed he was ready to get back behind the bench. Philly GM Bobby Clarke disagreed, and after the playoffs, promptly fired Neilson and made Ramsay the full-time coach. Talk about tough love, huh? And just weeks before Neilson's latest setback, Clarke went on national TV in Canada and blamed his former coach for "going goofy" after contracting cancer, saying, "We didn't tell him (Neilson) to go get cancer." It occurs to me that if Bobby Clarke was a television show, he'd be 'Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?' The man just reeks of class, doesn't he? Fortunately, some people have it to spare.

You will not find a more well-liked man in hockey than Roger Neilson, it's that simple. The game is his life, and when something means that much to you, you learn to treat it - and everyone involved with it - with all the respect in the world. You learn how important it is to make people laugh and smile and feel better about themselves, even while doctors are telling you you'll be lucky to be alive five years from now. After a cancerous lymph node was discovered in his groin last week, the hockey world ached for a guy who, it turns out, was more worried about fine-tuning the Senators' power play. Fortunately, the cancer has not spread, and Neilson was deemed O.K. to rejoin the team. despite being forced to wear a 'drainage bag,' which has to be exactly as enjoyable as it sounds. And yet, he takes things in such good-natured stride that Ottawa head coach Jacques Martin, never extremely comfortable with the media, was cracking wise like Dangerfield at a press conference Monday, joking, "The reason he's coming back so quick is he doesn't want the same situation to happen as in Philly." Well, that and a love for hockey, an incredibly positive attitude and an unbreakable resolve.

Funny, isn't it? One man contracts cancer twice in a year, and he takes the news better than a guy who finds out he's not playing against the Boston Bruins. Just goes to show you, it takes all kinds in sports - the Neilsons AND the Belfours. And sometimes, it takes the latter to appreciate the former.