Todd Bertuzzi is having back surgery, meaning he'll be out for at least two months. I'm guessing Jacques Martin is going to check into migraine surgery.
Also, Al Strachan hears the NHL is going to reduce the number of divisional games from 32 to 24, with divisional rivals meeting six games a season instead of eight. Like a lot of NHL executives, I thought all the divisional games would build bigger rivalries. But really, it just isolates the conferences from each other. And that just makes it harder for people to get excited about the Stanley Cup playoffs. Because half of the teams might be completely foreign. There are still an insane amount of people who haven't seen Jarome Iginla play, which is just absurd.

I'm really loving all of the hockey blogs newspapers are starting. They have way more dirt than the print editions. Maybe one day I'll get into that whole can of worms, but for now, enjoy this fantastic tidbit from Mike Heika's Dallas Morning News Stars blog:

Marty Turco thinks he has a great way to welcome Bill Guerin tonight when the Blues skate out at American Airlines Center. Guerin is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan and, well, Turco picks it up from there:

"We were joking that when they come out in the warm-up that we'll put some Bruce Springsteen on he’ll come out and say, 'Oh wow, they’re welcoming me back.' And then we’ll just stop it dead, like errrererr (makes sound of record scratching) and put on some country or some rap. We figured he’d love that."

Sadly, I could read stuff like that all day.
OK. Not hockey related, but please enjoy former Mets catcher Mike Piazza performing "Youth Gone Wild" with Skid Row. I was pretty shocked to learn Sebastian Bach, whose brother is a goalie, is no longer their singer. I was also shocked to learn it's 2006, not 1986.

Sunday's Times featured Play, their fantastic (quarterly?) sports magazine. I haven't gotten through all of it yet, but upfront they had a great examination of Edmonton's goal during the last 2.2 seconds of a game against Phoenix last season. They talk to everyone involved, from the players to the coaches. It's pretty neat.

I've never been a huge fan of ex-Islander GM Mike Milbury. In fact, I've always considered him a bit of a simpleton. But I think I might have been wrong about him. Greg Logan over on Newsday's Islanders Blog has some interesting stuff from Milbury, now doing higher-level managerial stuff for the Islanders' organization.
Milbury's take on season tickets is especially sophisticated:

How do you treat people who don't want to be a full season-ticket holder? There are people who either can't afford to become a full season-ticket holder or don't have the time. I feel people who buy partial plans should be treated like a season-ticket holder. They don't get the same benefits, but still, get them the plans early and give them their choices...It's a new day and age when it comes to marketing to your fans, and giving them choices is a very legitimate way to go. Let's give them the options up front. Let's show them the menu and let them make their choices. We need to treat those people who don't come to all 41 games with as much respect as we can.

It's really such a brilliant deconstruction of the conventional wisdom. Obviously, teams want to sell as many season ticket packages as possible. But once those dry up, as they have on Long Island, you need to evolve. I'm always shocked when people have season tickets to things like baseball, basketball, and hockey (and even football). How do you make that kind of commitment? How do you just block out 41 parts of your life? Or even seven? I'm sure a lot of that has to do with my personal issues, but it can't be just me who's wired this way. People are busy and there's a lot of competition for their attention. Season tickets seem almost quaint. Milbury sees that and he's on top of it. Decade-long contracts for faded stars? Not so much. But season tickets? Yes.

Islanders' defenseman Brendan Witt: the world's loneliest rearguard.
Play in Washington or on Long Island, and you're not going to see a lot of fans in the stands.
Ever.
Sad, but true.
Now, I'm off to tend to my Don Cherry costume.

Wow. Could the Coyotes be pressing any more panic buttons? I'm not saying they're scared, I'm just saying if Jody Foster ever does a sequel to one of her movies, she might want to hang out by the Coyotes' bench for inspiration.
(And the movie would be either PANIC ROOM or NELL, by the way).
First, the Coyotes sign Yanic Perreault to a small, one-year deal. I imagine they want him to 1) win faceoffs and 2) distribute the puck. Now ask anyone with the Coyotes who he's passing to or winning faceoffs for.
Then, Larry Brooks reports Arizona almost traded defenseman Nick Boynton to San Jose for goalie Evgeni Nabokov. Which is fantastic, since I think everyone pretty much agrees the Coyotes should look into thinning their blueline.
By the way, Brooks also wonders if Flyer Peter Forsberg might end up in Vancouver, playing with Markus Naslund.
Finally, Kottke has a great post on the late, great NHL '94 and how it's now the subject of some cool YouTube clips. Like a lot of geeky guys of a certain age, I played too many video games in the dorms, and if we had had something like YouTube to show off our moves, I probably would never have graduated. But there probably would be a lot of beautiful NHL '94 clips cut to Public Enemy, because it's long been a dream of mine to sync those two things up.