NHL: Around the League

Consistency is important.

With that in mind, good to see ole' Marty 'McSurly' out there chuckin' the knuckles for Grand Rapids on the weekend. To recap, in his first game in the IHL since being suspended for a year from the NHL, he sucker-punched an opponent who was tied up with another player. And in his second game, he got penalized for using an illegal stick, just like in a crucial Stanley Cup finals game in '93, which led to a Montreal game-tying goal and was a turning point in the Habs' series win. Until last February's decapitation attempt on Donald Brashear, that was the most infamous play of McSorley's career. It's like he's reenacting all the low points of his career in a bizarre twist on 'This is Your Life.' What's next, will he hunt down the kids whose lunch money he stole in grade four and shake them down again?

I think the Ottawa Senators, Grand Rapids' NHL affiliate, are actually interested in a guy who used to be a quality defenseman, but now isn't even a good goon anymore. The Sens somehow made it through the Yashin situation none the worse for wear; now they want this headache? I know they need veteran reinforcements for the blue line, but please, if they want a washed-up tough guy, I hear a certain prizefighter with an appetite for destruction (and Lennox Lewis's children) needs a little work before his next fight/meal.

It seems like time to move the trading deadline back a stretch from the current middle-of-March date. There might be a little less movement since teams acquiring a star player would have to assume a larger part of the contract, but it would beat all this endless and tiresome speculation. We've been in Rumor Central mode since before Christmas, and there's still a month to go before D-Day. Besides, and I can't stress this enough, FEBRUARY IS BRUTALLY SLOW! After the All-Star Game, the next biggest event in the NHL this month is Sergei Fedorov getting engaged to Anna Kournikova (Watch out for that virus, Sergei!) Give us a little flurry of trading action to get us revved up for the stretch run, will you, before the XFL starts to look pretty good, and I'm actually talking about the football!

Do the San Jose Sharks have a point when they say the NHL is out to get them?

Please. They're whining that Owen Nolan got eleven games for his attack on Grant Marshall, while Doug Weight got nada for going after Bryan Marchment is as pointless as drafting Ulf Samuelsson in your hockey pool. Weight skated directly up to noted hatchet-man Bryan Marchment to pay the Shark back for going for his knee, and was rightly given a game misconduct for it. Nolan was right to be livid after Marshall hit him into the boards from behind, but cowardly whacking the Dallas player with a sneak attack as he was about to leave the ice on a change was one of the ugliest things I've seen since the NHL started embracing third jerseys.

Gary Bettman may still be steaming at San Jose for a lockout clause they sneaked into the contract of, ironically enough, Nolan last fall, but the league has no choice to keep handing out hefty suspensions for this kind of thing. Enough violence occurs within the rules in hockey; there's no call for WWF-type maneuvers. Remember, this stuff isn't scripted – if enough guys are slashed in the face, or hit their head on the back of the ice, some of them aren't going to get back up.

Speaking of back, (love those seamless seques!) Mario Lemieux is starting to show signs that he's, well, human.

Chronic back pain was a major contributor in his premature retirement from the game, and just over a month into his amazing comeback, the problem has resurfaced. Lemieux's also a little cranky about another nagging problem that led to his early retirement - the clutch and grab tactics which are – surprise! – still in vogue among some of the league's less talented teams. Jacques Lemaire's Minnesota Wild, are your ears burning?

The expansion team is doing very well, only a few points out of the playoffs, thanks to their coach's infamously boring but effective defensive strategies, including those three little words that most fans hate to hear – 'neutral zone trap.' After a recent game between the Pens and Wild, a certain owner/player had some less than complimentary things to say about Lemaire's game plan and the veteran coach responded in kind, saying Lemieux should, in effect, quit whining and just worry about playing.

I'm all for entertaining hockey whenever possible, and I pray to the hockey gods every night that Mario's back pain drops off faster than XFL ratings, but Lemaire has a point. You've got to make do with the materials you're dealt with, which is exactly what Lemaire is doing in Minny. If Lemieux and his fellow owners are so concerned about clutch-and-grab play, maybe they should stop expanding so much, don't you think?