Eric Gage and Mick Kern drop the gloves yet again (well, Mick does…Eric just stands there while Mick sucker-punches him), and talk about Roberto Luongo, the Ward-Walker non-fight, the wacky Tampa Bay Lightning, visors in the NHL, and why Eric thinks the World Hockey Championships are for losers.

Have you got your One Percentile Membership Badge yet?

Not sick-in-the-head, though many would advance that theory.  Sick as in “Man, I can’t get outta bed, it hurts so bad” sick.   One wicked case of sinus infection, which seems to happen this time every year.

Stuck at home, feeling like I blocked an Al MacInnis slapshot with my forehead, until the drugs kicked in.  Dragged myself to the basement TV room couch.  Thankfully, there were a lot of NHL games on this particular Tuesday evening.

Started with Pittsburgh in Montreal.  Talk about a game both teams wanted to win.  The Penguins trying to claw their way back into an Eastern Conference playoff spot; the Habs trying to hang onto theirs.

Don’t know what Canadiens’ head coach Guy Carbonneau said to Alex Kovalev, but the enigmatic Russian sniper played with some jump in his step.  Carey Price still makes me nervous as I watch him tend net.  His positioning is top-notch, but get the dude to move, and you’ve got a good chance of burying the puck.  Price will excel with a defensive core dedicated to clearing the puck.  Sounds simple, but not all defenceman master that basic skill.  Even so, Price appears to give up one questionable goal a game.  And he’s gotta stop doing that annoying shrug of his shoulders whenever he is scored upon.  It’s like he’s saying, “wasn’t my fault”.

Switched over to the resurgent Florida Panthers at the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Had intended to attend this game, but no such luck.  The Leafs staked themselves to a 3-1 lead, but watching it from the couch, I just knew that the Cats were gonna tie this thing up.  Toronto’s Alexei Ponikarovsky got caught for boarding with less than two minutes remaining in the game, and of course, Florida tied it up.

What cracked me up about that sequence of events was how Leafs’ uber-GM Brian Burke reacted, high up in the pressbox.  His face indicated he probably thought the penalty was horse-bleep.  Funny how that is.  It was clearly a boarding call.  It was also the only situation all night where a Leaf went to the penalty box alone.  Why can’t a team, or a kiss-ass TV/Radio play-by-play guy, or for that matter, most homer fans, admit when a penalty is a penalty?  Show some class.  Shuddup, and skate to the penalty box and feel shame for two minutes.  Or less.

And to complete the evening, ex-pat Bryan McCabe scored the overtime winner for Florida on a two-on-one slapshot.  Nice shot, but really, Vesa Toskala should have had it.  He’s a starting goaltender in the National Hockey League.  They’re supposed to get those ones, not allow them to squirt past him for the game-winning tally.

Hey, every so often one of those gets through.  Grant Fuhr was with the Maple Leafs when Trevor Linden unloaded a similar shot on him during a game at Maple Leaf Gardens during the autumn of 1991.  No doubt you could hear me scream with joy miles away, even though I was ensconced way up in the corner greys.

That goal stood up as the winner in a 2-1 victory for the Canucks.  After the game, Fuhr admitted one or two of those find their way through him every year.  He played the shot correctly, but sometimes, that little vulcanized rubber projectile has eyes of its own.

Same thing could be said for Toskula, but the trouble is, like Price, he tends to give up one bad goal a game.  A team cannot constantly win knowing they’re effectively one goal down to start.  Not that the Leafs’ brass probably minds; wasn’t this Year One of the constant rebuilding phase?

Switched games and caught the tail-end of the Capitals putting down the Devils 5-2.  Jose Theodore in net still makes me nervous.  Come to think of it, most goaltenders make me nervous.  So much so, I forgot about the sinuses for a while.  What will the Devils do when the Best Goaltender Of All-Time (C) returns?

A couple of late games that I was able to catch.  The mighty Marty Turco and his band of Merry Dallas Stars were at home and dropped the Calgary Flames 3-1.  Turco is back to playing like, well, Marty Turco, and the Stars are the force most of us expected them to be.

Which is why everyone has to keep their cool when it comes to watching this grand game of ours.  It’s a long, long season.  82 regular-season games.  All that matters is where you stand once your 82nd game is played.  Most teams will experience highs and lows during the course of the season.  Don’t allow either to convince you it’s a trend.

Having said that, Dallas moved to erase the cancer in their dressing room, and slowly, this team has rediscovered its confidence, even with key injuries.  Let the 2008-09 Dallas Stars stand as an example why a team should not automatically fire its head coach when things aren’t going as planned.  Often, the fault lines run deeper than that.

(Now watch, of course, as the Stars lose every game for the rest of the season).

Dallas were able to pull themselves out of a troubling nosedive, yet the Ottawa Senators seem keen on continuing their descent.  They get rid of the perceived malcontents, design some horrid third sweaters, the owner tells reporters to go blow themselves up, and then they fire head coach Craig Hartburg affter only 48 games.

48 games?  That’s not even as long as most people get to try out their fancy new widescreen HDTV before realizing they can’t pay for it, and return it to the store.

Whatever.  It looks good on the Senators that they lost tonight 1-0 to the rebuilding Los Angeles Kings.

Are we to expect a 11 am press conference on Wednesday morning announcing the firing of head coach Cory Clouston?  That’s the way things are tracking in Ottawa.

Flipped the channel.  Saw video of Adam Graves getting his number 9 retired by the New York Rangers.  With all due respect to Larry Brooks of the New York Post, who I enjoy reading, but is the whole world going crazy???

Okay, I get it.  Graves was a great guy off-the-ice, did great things for his community and was a key cog in the 1994 Stanley Cup winning Rangers team.  But c’mon.  This isn’t Rod Gilbert, or Jean Ratelle, or Ed Giacomin, or Brad Park, or Brian Leetch, or Mark Messier, or even Andy Bathgate, or Harry Howell, or Bill Gadsby, Vic Hadfield or the Cooks we’re talking about.

This is Adam Graves.

Messier commented that the night was not about honouring Graves’s stats.  Fair enough.  Raw numbers don’t always tell the whole tale.  But retiring his uniform number?   It should be first-and-foremost about what happens on the ice that determines sweater retirements, and Hall-of-Fame inductions, etc.

The standards have been lowered.  Ranger fans, take your best shot.  And don’t try and feed me the line, “ya had to be in New York to truly appreciate Graves”.

What about Bathgate, and Bernie Nicholls, and Rick Middleton, if the Rangers hadn’t been so stupid, stupid, stupid and traded away Nifty.  These guys also served as Number Nine.

Wow, win one Cup, one stinkin’ Cup after fifty-four years of nothing, and I guess you truly do walk together forever.

Then again, hey, it’s your team.  Do what you want.  The way things are going, each and every member of that ‘94 team will eventually have their number raised.  I can hardly wait for Jay Wells night. 

And I thought the 1967 Maple Leafs were honoured to death.

Stop the presses!  As I type, the Vancouver Canucks actually win a game, 4-3, at home against the Hurricanes.  Alex Burrows pots the shorthanded winner with under two minutes to play.  Mats Sundin stays out of the penalty box and contributes a goal and an assist.

Stay tuned.

Time to take some more drugs.  All is well in the NHL.  Goodnight.

- Mick Kern

Now that the biggest non-secret in the hockey world is finally official, that Brian Burke is done with the Anaheim Ducks and is searching for greener pastures, there’s been non-stop speculation as to which NHL team he’ll lay his hat with.

Ever since the Toronto Maple Leafs’ arrogantly made it known that they were going to conduct an exhaustive search for the “best hockey general manager in the world”, most pundits believed that man would be Burke, particularly when the Detroit Red Wings did not want to part ways with Ken Holland, and Hurricanes’ GM Jim Rutherford turned down the job.

But is Brian Burke as good as he’s being made out to be?  Oh sure, he won the Cup with the 2007 Ducks, and that’s a heck of a lot more than most NHL teams have accomplished recently, but is he really a hockey Messiah?  Some teams no doubt believe so, and one would have to think there’d be a number of organizations lining up to get this guy onboard.

The safe money is on Burke ending up in Tarana, but there are other intriguing possibilities for Uber-Burke.  Let’s take a quick look at the contenders…

1. TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS
 - if a GM could ever somehow manoeuvre around all the sharks in this dysfunctional organization, and win the Stanley Cup, he would be proclaimed Prime Minister of Canada the next day, thanks to the grass roots support for the Maple Leafs across the Great White North…and it helps that Burke has dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship.

2. CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS
- the cold-hearted, cut-throat manner in which they gassed head coach Denis Savard clearly shows that the new Hawks management will stop at nothing in an effort to win a Cup before the equally historically sad-sack Maple Leafs do.  Also, current Chicago GM Dale Tallon is accustomed to coming out second, though usually it was thanks to the spin of a roulette wheel.

3.  BOSTON BRUINS
- wait, they’ve got a GM who’s done a very good job rebuilding this team that hasn’t won the Cup since before anyone in North America knew who Tretiak was.  Regardless, Burke lives in the area, and he’d be home for dinner almost every night.  That really cuts down on the cost of brown-bagging it.  That way, Boston could low-ball their offer to Burke, thus keeping a proud Bruins’ tradition alive.

4.  WINNIPEG JETS/LAS VEGAS STARS/HAMILTON PREDATORS
- word has it a number of wannabe team owners have approached Burke to run their hockey affairs when-and-if they are granted an NHL expansion franchise, or one of the weak sisters relocates.  But since NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman recently stated that all thirty teams are fine, well, then no-one’s moving, and only a bunch of crazies would venture down the path of expansion during these turbulent economic times.  Okay, so this option is very much alive.

5.  TORONTO BLUE JAYS/TORONTO ARGONAUTS/TORONTO RAPTORS
- well, this is somewhat contingent on choice number one.  If Burke doesn’t get the Maple Leafs’ job, maybe he could spin his magic with the Jays, Argos and Dinos as well.  Not that he could do any worse than what those teams have been through recently.  And he would be in the city for the inevitable failure of the man the Leafs chose as GM instead of him, which would give the hockey panels on Hockey Night in Canada, TSN and Sportsnet enough material for the next year that they would only have to mention Mats Sundin when he actually does something.

6.  GENERAL MOTORS
- okay, so the consensus pick for best general manager in the National Hockey League is Ken Holland, and he’s currently working for the Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings, one of the few companies in Michigan that’s actually successful these days.  The former Big Three have taken a big hit, bigger than most companies have, and speculation is that once-mighty GM is lurching towards bankruptcy.  The industry always talks fondly of the days of Lee Iacocca, and Brian Burke is kind of the NHL’s version of the chairman.  Besides, it might be the closest he gets to the Stanley Cup in the next few seasons, though I understand the Anaheim Ducks have a pretty good team.

7.  THE WHITE HOUSE
- actually, come to think of it, that position’s recently been filled.  But Burkie could always try again in four years time.

8.  THE BEATLES
- okay, maybe not the White House, but what about the White Album?  Paul McCartney doesn’t need the cash, but he craves the spotlight, while apparently Ringo Starr is very busy these days, so don’t send him anything.  Now what could Ringo be that busy at?  His garden?  Woodworking?  That kick-ass triple CD set he’s been working on that’s going to revolutionize popular music as we know it?  Maybe,  just maybe, the remaining Beatles are secretly practising in some garage somewhere in England, preparing for their return to the stage.  Enter one Brian Burke.  The Beatles Mark II are going to need a great frontman who’ll look good slinging a Rickenbacker 325.  Burkie’s most definitely the Lennon in this equation.  He’s clever, inquisitive, sarcastic, and doesn’t suffer fools easily…though I can’t really picture Burkie giving peace a chance, particularly when it comes to his feud with Kevin Lowe.

9.  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
- if any one person could breath life into this sad, tired franchise, it would be Brian Burke.  He’d dominate the show the way Chevy Chase did during the show’s first season, and in the manner of John Belusi during his all-too-short glory days.  Problems might arise when Burkie demands that he gets to say “Live From New York”, handle the opening monologue, and anchor Weekend Update every show.  Then again, they could always get Sarah Palin to host, she doesn’t have a lot to do these days.

10.  NHL HOME ICE
- if Burke ends up getting the job in Toronto, it wouldn’t take all that long to make the trek up on the Yonge subway line and drop by our studios to impart his wisdom.  I don’t think we’re hiring at the moment, but there are always intern opportunities.  We’re got a bubble hockey game, Joe Thistel will often spring for pizza, and who’d want to pass up a chance to hang out with Rossy?

- Mick Kern