Happy Thanksgiving!
A few days ago I talked about how the NHL is getting more publicity in its current lockout state, than if the season was actually going on.
The trend continues.
The New York Observer, a very tony New York City weekly is writing about hockey. Or about the lockout, really. And what some of New York's hockey writers are doing while the game isn't being played.
So in a lot of ways, the lockout is really promoting the heck out of hockey. It's a shame the league can't lock the players out while still keeping the game going. You figure out how to do that, and you'll have an awful lot of people giving thanks.
Trust me, pilgrims.

A reader gave me a heads-up about the death of Harvey Bennett.
Who was Bennett?
A legend in the admittedly small world of Rhode Island hockey (login info.).
Bennett was a goalie, making his mark for the AHL Rhode Island Reds. After the AHL, he focused on youth hockey.
My reader said five of Bennett's sons played in the NHL. I can't confirm that, since Bennett is a common name, but hockeyDB.com seems to back the idea.
Speaking of old time hockey, Jay Greenberg from the New York Post and The Hockey News went back to his home town of Johnstown to check out the ECHL's Chiefs, made famous in the movie SLAP SHOT.
Basically, Greenberg misses hockey. And maybe his childhood.
And the ECHL never misses an opportunity to send out a press release.

That Piston-Pacers brawl was pretty crazy, but I found one aspect especially disturbing: Detroit Red Wing/bobsledder Chris Chelios and annoying rap/rocker Kid Rock were sitting courtside at the game together.
What do you think they were talking about? Was Rock pumping Chelios for mullet insights? With Chelios' 75 years in the NHL, he would probably be a wealth of information for the one-time Mr. Pam Anderson.
Mrs. PuckUpdate suggested that the NBA brawl might have been caused by the lockout. She wondered if the collective conscious wasn't feeling a bit repressed without the minor violence of hockey acting as a pressure valve. It made me sad the NHLPA can't use Carl Jung to negotiate with the league.
And of course, any time an athlete attacks a fan, you've got to talk to Islander GM Mike Milbury. Milbury is rather famous for attacking a Garden fan with the fan's own shoe back in the late 1970s (a video of that is supposed to be here, but I didn't have the patience to download it and check). On a side note, I love that Milbury's hockey legacy is basically attacking a fan and signing Alexei Yashin to a $90 million contract. All he has to do is marry Paris Hilton and he'll have completed the hat trick of truly bad life decisions.