Good News: Marty Turco is ready to go back in goal for Dallas. He could be back as soon as Tuesday. Nothing helps a Stanley Cup run more than a genuine starting goalie.

Bad News: The streaky Islanders have found their flow, it seems. Even Alexei Yashin, who put up five points and two goals, as the Isles embarrassed Montreal 6-3.
Why is this bad news? It puts more points between the Islanders and the Rangers. And I'll admit it. I was pulling for the Rangers to make the playoffs. The Isles and Bruins are tied for seventh with 78 points each. The Rangers are six back.
What happened to being able to count on Yashin as an overpaid dud? I guess everyone has their off days.

Odd News: Chicago GM Mike Smith and coach Brian Sutter will be back running the Blackhawks next season. Because this season was so great for the Hawks. Not that a denial by management means anything. No one ever admits trading or firing anybody.

More Odd News: The March 28, 2003 Hockey News reports that Phoenix didn't get much from Philly for Tony Amonte because Flyer GM Bobby Clarke told Phoenix he could get Teemu Selanne from San Jose for a fourth-round pick. Selanne wouldn't take a trade to New Jersey. So was he willing to go to Philadelphia and not New Jersey? Or was Clarke bluffing? Interesting, no?

"Yeah, Robbie's weathered the storm. It looks like we righted the ship a little bit. It's constant evaluation: watching the team and seeing how it goes, but I think that he's got the team in the right direction and I'm prepared to go with him for the rest of the year."

Quick. Who said that?
Boston GM Mike O'Connell.
When did he say it?
March 13, 2003.
What did he do six days later?
He fired coach Robbie Ftorek. O'Connell will take over for the rest of the season. And the way Boston has been playing, it shouldn't be long.
No one should be surprised Ftorek was fired. The Bruins started really strong and just got weaker and weaker as the season went on. When Boston couldn't muster more than a goal against Phoenix, O'Connell had to know it was time for a coachectomy.
It was the good start that doomed Ftorek. No one could have possibly expected Boston to succeed with all the injuries that plagued the start of their season. They also had no goaltending. And they never replaced Bill Guerin. But Ftorek proved that despite all that, the Bruins could thrive. So when they started to fail, it looked that much worse, even though Boston should have failed in the first place.
Ftorek was fired for a brief, brief victory over his team's destiny.
Also, probably, for weird moves like making defenseman Bryan Berard a forward. Berard left hockey for a year or so with a severe eye injury. But then he realized he wanted to keep playing. He spent a year with the Rangers, but they didn't ask him back, so he went to Boston. The word on the street is that Berard's vision isn't 100% (he's legally blind in one eye). And you kind of want your forwards to be able to see.
So even turning a half-blind defenseman into a forward wasn't enough to save Ftorek's job.

Rapist Billy Tibbetts is out of hockey. Again.
The Hartford Wolfpack let him go after he got into a shouting match with his coach during a game.
Tibbetts spent over three years in a Massachusetts prison on charges that included a probation violation on a statutory rape charge. He was signed by the Rangers in December but played only 11 games for them.
Everyone deserves a second chance, but do rapists deserve to play in the NHL? Or the AHL? Apparently not.

I'm not a big college basketball fan, but I thought people might want to see Hurricane Rod Brind'Amour's picks for the tournament. They're here.
Brind'Amour has plenty of time to concentrate on the NCAA — the Canes were officially eliminated from the playoffs Tuesday night. Last year it was the Stanley Cup. This year it's filling out brackets.

Wow. The Sharks fired GM Dean Lombardi.
When this season started, everyone was saying the Sharks were going to be the team to beat. Instead they just spiraled into nothingness. You have to wonder if Lombardi was fired for the Sharks' performance this season or because he wasn't able to unload all of the team's talent at the deadline. San Jose was having a fire sale and while Lombardi was able to move a lot of stock, he couldn't unload everybody (Teemu Selanne didn't want to join New Jersey and Vincent Damphousse wouldn't go to Vancouver unless they gave him another year on his contract).
It looks like the owners in San Jose just want to start the team all over again.

In more administrative news (see above), the Penguins have asked President Tom Rooney to step down. Apparently, having run out of players to purge, the Penguins have decided to start getting rid of people upstairs.
Ken Sawyer, president of the Penguins parent company, is taking over as president.
The Penguins haven't won in 13 games.
Their best line is no longer Alexei Kovalev-Mario Lemieux-Jaromir Jagr. Now it's Mathias Johansson-Rico Fata-Guillaume Lefebvre. That's right. The once might Pittsburgh Penguins' hot line is a bunch of journeymen.
The people of Pittsburgh must love coming out for games now.
I mean, can you ever see enough Rico Fata?

Geez. This sucks.
The St. Louis Blues gave goalie Freddy Brathwaite his walking papers yesterday. He was their backup goalie , but really stepped up as St. Louis cruised through 28 different goaltenders over the course of this season. But once the Blues landed Chris Osgood, they knew they couldn't keep Brathwaite. So he's been released, meaning he'll be paid, but he can't play in the NHL the rest of this season because the trade deadline has passed. The Blues couldn't trade Brathwaite before the deadline because they didn't know they had a goalie until 10 minutes before the deadline.
Freddy Brathwaite — another casualty of St. Louis.
I'm sure he'll be playing next season, though. He showed a lot of good stuff in St. Louis.

How sad is it that it's so shocking when high-price rentals work out really, really well. It seems that at best the rental is fine and at worst the rental is a dud. But the way Tony Amonte is clicking in Philadelphia? That's not a rental — that's a purchase.
Tony Amonte helped the Flyers beat New Jersey and tie them for first place in the Atlantic Division (temporarily...). Sami Kapanen, stolen from Carolina, also hasn't been a slouch on the ice. Factor in the return of John LeClair, and you have a scary-good team. How good is Philadelphia right now? Fans are clamoring for Philadelphia to acquire Danny Green, the Boston lawyer who played on a line with Amonte and Jeremy Roenick at Thayer Academy in Massachusetts.
And the way the Flyers have been clicking, he'd probably thrive, too.
* * *
I may have written too soon. Buffalo beat Philly 5-2. Although in defense of the above thesis, LeClair and Amonte did score. So really, it's the old Flyers who are the problem. Not the new and recently-returned Flyers.
But just the same, maybe they should hold off on bring Danny Green into the NHL.

Geez. Canuck captain Markus Naslund better watch out.
St. Louis is gunning for him. They're still pissed about the season-ending hit on their captain Keith Tkachuk, and they might be looking to go eye-for-eye, captain-for-captain. Especially since Brad May (didn't you just love his work in Queen) is out with a concussion.
It's going to be a messy game.
And hey! Congrats to Todd Bertuzzi on his hat trick. That gives him 42 on the season. Pretty nice stuff.

Will Ottawa make it out of the first round?
The Sens are rolling along, on top of the East, but there's something wrong. They can't seem to beat anybody lately.
Sunday night, the Senators give up a hat trick to Red Wing Brett Hull. Not to take anything away from Hull, but should the best team in the East be giving up hat tricks to someone who help invent the puck? I mean, Hull is like 62.
Before that, Ottawa got smacked around by the Islanders. That's pretty significant. The Senators always beat the Islanders. Was Ottawa due for a loss? Or are they just not tough enough. The Islanders are what's become the typical Eastern team, modeled after the Leafs. They're tough. That's all there is to it. They're mean and they just try to bang or bank or kick or bounce the puck in. It's not pretty, but it wins games. Will Ottawa be able to escape the first round playing a team like that? Especially given that the Isles are the number eight seed (which means Ottawa, the number one seed, draws them in the first round)?
Ottawa's been having a rough time of it lately. They couldn't beat the Rangers or the Bruins last week, tying both vulnerable teams.
Ottawa is great during the regular season, and they definitely toughened up for the playoffs, but as The Fabulous Thunderbirds might ask, are they TUFF ENUFF?

OK. I'm calling it "The Curse of the Homecoming."
Dean McAmmond gets traded back to Calgary and the league tells him he can't play due to some Collective Bargaining Agreement violations.
Brad May comes back to Vancouver from Phoenix, and gets a concussion in his second game back.
Doug Gilmour comes back to Toronto from Montreal and he's out four to six weeks witha knee injury.
You can't go home again.
You shouldn't go home again. It's dangerous.

* St. Louis must be pretty happy with new goalie Chris Osgood. He got a shutout in his first game for them. Of course, the thing about Osgood is he'll be a rock for X amount of games and then get lost for X+Y. That's not me talking. That's math talking. Also, Keith Tkachuk is out the rest of the season with a wrist sprain. The only breaks the Blues have gotten this season have been the kind that show up on x-rays.

* Meet the guy who told Alexei Yashin it was a good idea to holdout on a valid contract. Ottawa always boos current Islander Yashin but I think they got off lucky. Long Island fans are stuck with the slumping forward for like the next eight years.

Yeah. I don't know. I'm just not a huge fan of this time of year. Not that I have anything against mid-March. It's just this point in the season. The trade deadline has passed. All the GMs have pulled their triggers. There's just nothing to speculate on. Everything is pretty much set. Look at the standings. Maybe Montreal can make a run into the playoffs, but I'm not holding my breath. No one is. The Montreal fans are so dejected, they don't even boo the Habs anymore.
So now we're just waiting to see who plays who in the playoffs. And I don't even think that's too big a deal. Everyone wants an easy draw in the first round. But you still have to face tough teams in the second or third round, so you're not really gaining anything with the easy draw. Not in the long run anyway. Easy first-round draws are just a good way for mid-level teams to sell more tickets.
So I guess, this is all my roundabout way of plugging a band called the Black Keys. They're raw and exciting — everything the season isn't at the moment. So put the last 10 regular-season games on mute, throw on the Black Keys' album THE BIG COME UP and listen to a band that could teach the White Stripes a lot about the blues and about garage rock.