And You Thought Emmitt Had It Rough

It’s too bad one needed a satellite dish this week to see the young season’s two best games to date.

Pittsburgh and Quebec staged a marvelous back-and-forth affair Tuesday, and Detroit and Chicago produced 60 minutes of hardhitting hockey two nights later.

What a relief those two matchups were from the neutral-zone-trap, clutch-and-grab bore-a-thon this game largely has become.

It’s kind of ironic to think that barely a year ago, the league sent directives to its officials and teams stipulating that several fouls, mainly holding, no longer would be tolerated.

Yeah, right. Emmitt Smith doesn’t get tackled from behind as much as NHL stars do these days.

The joke used to suggest that one could go to a boxing match and a hockey game would break out. Now boxing has been replaced by wrestling.

“Our game against Buffalo (Feb. 15) was right out of the WWF,” New York Rangers’ general manager Neil Smith said, referring to the World Wrestling Federation. “You were looking for Hulk Hogan to come out on the ice for a shift.”

Philadelphia general manager Bob Clarke is another of a growing number of team officials sick of what the league and its officials have allowed the NHL to become.

“I hate the blocking and the holding that teams are using to keep players from getting in and forechecking,” he said. “You almost have to draft blockers now. It’s like football.”

Quote-unquote

“I used to worry about that. There were times over the last six years that if we traded for an Oiler, people would look at me. All of a sudden, it’s Wayne Gretzky’s (deal), and that bothered me tremendously. Then at the end of the year, I saw (Mark) Messier with the Stanley Cup with about nine exOilers. So I don’t give a (expletive) what they say now, to be honest.”

- Kings’ superstar Wayne Gretzky, on speculation he forced the trade with Buffalo that brought to Los Angeles Gretzky’s former Edmonton teammate Grant Fuhr.