OK. So the New York area hockey teams are turning on themselves:
Aaron Asham had words with Devils coach Brent Sutter.
If I'm Rangers' coach Tom Renney, I'm getting a bit nervous.
Oh. And I know this has nothing to do with hockey, but I had to share my favorite part of the Mitchell Report (PDF). I love the memo lines on the checks. Look at Rondell White's:
Bought something? Was "wrote check" taken?
TSN reports four anonymous NHL players are skating on heated blades.
Of course, one has to wonder how much anonymity can be maintained when your skates look like this:
The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine had an interesting piece on former Bruin Willie O'Ree, aka the NHL's first black player.
O'Ree works for the league, doing outreach on behalf of the NHL's diversity program. The article raises the idea that O'Ree's deployment (he's on the road about 200 days a year) is more cosmetic than an actual commitment to diversity. I'm not sure how big NHL Diversity (the initiative, not the idea) is, but if it's just O'Ree, they might consider making some more hires.
This is as good a place as any to plug Cecil Harris' wonderful Breaking the Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey, a great book about the struggle for blacks to break-into and then survive in hockey.
Also, the Times had a piece on Wayne Gretzky as coach. I love these things because they rarely come out and say what's pretty obvious to anyone who's watched the Coyotes: Gretzky isn't a very good coach. I think the problem is amplified in Phoenix, where Gretzky doesn't have any talent to work with. Things might be a little different if he had a legitimate top-six forward.
Not to keep harping on fighting in the NHL, but Tim Panaccio has a nice column looking at respect in the NHL (login info.). An interesting undercurrent to the column is the role of protective equipment in all of this. Once players lose the fear of getting hit, they often lose the fear of executing a dirty hit. In the NHL, it seems you can have protective gear and you can have respect, but maybe you can't have both.
In other news, is Anaheim defenseman Mathieu Schneider on the move (login info.)? I kind of doubt it. I think if anyone can figure out how to have a blueline big three of Schneider, Chris Pronger, and Scott "Unretired" Niedermayer, it's Ducks' GM Brian Burke. But Todd Marchant? I suspect he's soon out of Anaheim, what with his being a healthy scratch last week.
Also, my fantasy column is up: it's all about goalies.
