Clearing the Airwaves

*** Thought we'd start the Sunday reading period with some thoughts after Don Cherry detailed his thoughts about Daniel Carcillo and Sean Avery during the Coach's Corner segment Saturday night on "Hockey Night in Canada."

Little rats. If you are talking to Cherry, that's what he sees in Avery and Carcillo. Now I'd have to look into the archives, and I will during the Olympic break, but are these two rats doing anything different from the original rat, Kenny "The Rat" Linseman?

Cherry's argument about the instigator makes some sense at face value. You allow a tough guy to police the situation when an Avery or Carcillo takes on a star, and you take away the threat of an extra penalty for instigation, and things get put back in place. Order is restored.

But I don't remember Linseman ever having to defend himself in the old days. He'd poke some one and as soon as a Ranger or Islander came in to settle the score, instantly there was Paul Holmgren or another large Flyer fluent in fist arriving quickly to protect Linseman.

I'll have to check into this, because Cherry has a point about Avery and Carcillo taking advantage of the rules that allow them to play outside the rules to challenge star players.

But the Kenny the Rat played the same way in a tougher era. And I'm pretty certain he got away with pretty much everything without ever paying full price. We shall see.



*** All eyes of Canada, or a large share of them, will be tracking the progress of the Anaheim/Edmonton game tonight. More likely, they will be tracking the status of the Ducks' Ryan Getzlaf, who is considered to be a critical figure in Canada's drive for hockey gold in Vancouver.

This daily watch reminds me a lot of the daily updates about Paul Kariya before the NHLers went to the Nagano Games in 1998. Kariya, recovering from a concussion, never made it to the Olympic tournament. And right up to the point of his status being made official, hockey writers across Canada were making calls to determine Kariya's health and the likelihood of him being in the lineup.

We'll be watching tonight as well.

*** I'm not a big fan of the NHL taking a break so its players can play in the Olympics. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy most of the men's tournament, but I do not enjoy seeing the rest of the NHL shut down.

The junior leagues and U.S. colleges do not shut down for the World Junior Championship. In fact, junior-age players participate in more games outside of their leagues than you might imagine. If you count the WJC, Russia-Canada challenge series, league all-star games, CHL prospect games, etc., there are a lot of extracurricular activity.

But their leagues don't shut down.

During the New York Islanders/Tampa Bay Lightning broadcast on MSG-Plus, Butch Goring said he did not support shutting down the NHL to allow the Olympic tournament to have NHL players. He said it should be an amateur tournament.

Those days are not coming back, however. You dictate that Canada and the United States send only amateurs and that's where that movement stops. Sweden, Russia, Finland and the Czech Republic are going to send their best. The Olympics and the IIHF want the best in the world tournaments.

An amateur-only tournament then, is only likely in the World Junior Championship. If the NHL wants to skip the 2014 Games in Russia, I have no problem with it; others would disagree. But I don't expect the rest of the world to go along with the amateurs-only concept.

That ship has sailed.