March 12th Column

Why anyone would complain about the NHL's championing of the Warner Bros. film "300" is beyond me.

Here's an idea: Take a hip looking movie with great technology, lots of violence and comic book-nerd credibility (the kind the NHL's main 18-34 male demographic loves) and make a connection between the plot of the movie (300 Spartan soldiers' fight against the largest army ever assembled) with the chase for the Stanley Cup.

You know what? "300" made $70 million this weekend at the box office.

Think the NHL doesn't like being associated with that?

When it comes to Chris Simon's tomahawk chop on Ryan Hollweg, the NHL absolutely gave Simon the correct punishment. He sits out the rest of the season and the playoffs. Doesn't matter how far the New York Islanders go, he will not play. Now, if the amount of games the Islanders play in the postseason doesn't add up to 25 (The Isles had 15 games left at the start of the suspension, so they'd need to be in the 2nd round at least), Simon will sit out the start of the next season until it does. Absolutely the right call by the league. There were rumors that he would only sit out one playoff round, but that would not have been enough. They took Simon and made him an example. He may be too old to play again next year, so this may be it for him.

As far as the excuse that he was concussed on that hit? C'mon Chris; we would have to have been concussed to believe that excuse. The simple fact is you got up from the hit, had enough time to find Ryan Hollweg, take your stick in the air and line-drive it right into his chin area. It makes his entire apology useless. What he did was absolutely shameful to our game. It was worse than what McSorley did to Brashear and possibly even what Bertuzzi did to Moore, because most of the impact on those hits came from the receiver's head pounding the ice. Most of the damage was caused by Simon on this play; frankly, I wouldn't have had a problem with the NHL never letting him play again.

Remember, this is not Simon's first infraction. He's been suspended for elbows, cross-checks, and making racist comments in the past. This is someone who has played this way forever, and went too far. He lost his right to play for this year.

On to NBC, whom I've been praising for quite a while. It looks as if that praise has to end.

NBC has been dropping games that were crucial to the NHL's playoff race. Wanna get rid of St. Louis-Columbus on March 25? Go ahead, I don't think even Ken Hitchcock would notice. But March 4th's dropping of Carolina-Atlanta was already too much. Now, they've decided to lose themselves of April 1st's Boston-New Jersey game and April 8th's NY Islanders-New Jersey tilt.

Say what?

Now, there are numerous reasons why this is absolutely ridiculous. First of all, you're dropping three big markets, so it screws with NHL business sense. Second, these are key games in the NHL's playoff race. The Bruins and Isles will be fighting for there playoff lives those afternoons.

Finally, what else do they have those weeks? Detroit-Columbus and Los Angeles-San Jose on the first, and Chicago-Dallas with Buffalo-Philadelphia on the eighth. Oh boy, cannot wait.

NBC may be giving us great playoff coverage, but their regular season coverage needs to step up next year. By the way, how many Devils fans will think that this is just the Meadowlands' last chance to mess with them? The game on the eighth is New Jersey's final home tilt in The Swamp, and now it'll likely be moved back three hours because of NBC.

Biggest bust since the trade deadline: Bill Guerin. Zero points in six games since the deadline. In fact, there have been very few real big payoffs from the blockbusters on deadline day. Ryan Smyth has one goal in five games as an Islander. Peter Forsberg has six points in 11 games in Nashville, and three of those came in one game against bottom feeder Los Angeles. Keith Tkachuk and Alexei Zhitnik have played well, but this may very well turn out to be the year where GMs gave up too much and got too little in return.

-SFM-