Not Ready for Prime Time? NHL Not Ready for Any Time

Whatever happened to . . . the NHL?

The league has gone from network television to ESPN to SportsChannel America and is now shopping for any kind of TV outlet.

Meanwhile, annual player salaries lag $637,000 per man behind baseball, $581,000 behind the NBA and $212,000 behind the NFL.

“Come on,” says Wayne Gretzky. “You can’t tell me our game isn’t more exciting than bowling on a Saturday afternoon or women’s golf. We can’t get on TV? Somewhere, somebody is doing something wrong and they’ve got to make changes.”

Said NHL Commissioner John Ziegler to the New York Times: “Broadcasting is not a critical item to our business.”

Fun Bunch: You can’t say those Canadians don’t know how to party.

They spent a month winning the Canada Cup but needed only a few hours to misplace their trophy, a nickel cup in the shape of a maple leaf.

After beating the United States, 4-2, to win the six-nation tournament, they celebrated at a hotel. Highlights included parading the cup up and down the elevators on a room-service cart. When the party ended, the cup was left behind.

“The players were really having a good time carrying it all over the place, hanging it over their heads,” hotel marketing manager Joan Pengelly said. “I’m not surprised it got left. They had a whale of a party.”

Hotel workers found it the next morning, had their photographs taken with it and called tournament organizers for the traditional pickup.

Add fun: In 1981 the victorious Soviet Union players, unaware the cup was supposed to remain at the Hockey Hall of Fame, tried to take it home.

It was spotted in a travel bag by the Canadian team dentist and a tug-of-war ensued in the basement of the Montreal Forum.

Last add fun: The Canada Cup has a long way to go to match the exploits of the Stanley Cup.

The trophy has been dunked in Ottawa’s Rideau Canal and Mario Lemieux’s swimming pool, used as a vase and left behind several times, once on a sidewalk while the victorious team was changing a tire on its bus.

Edmonton Oiler players took it to a strip club, put it on top of the table and hired a table dancer to dance beside it.

During one Oiler celebration, the cup was dented. Someone sent it to an auto body shop for repair. A newspaper photographer found it dismantled while being worked on.

Trivia time: How many coaches and players from Philadelphia’s Big Five currently coach in the NBA?

Add forgettable quotes: Former Atlanta Brave third baseman Jim Presley after the team refused to re-sign him and gave Terry Pendleton a $10-million contract: “A year will tell. If he hits 25 home runs with 90 RBIs and 15 errors, it’s worth it.”

Blase: Washington Redskin linebacker Matt Millen on the team’s 3-0 start: “What’s the big deal?”

Millen’s teams have started 3-0 in seven of his 12 seasons: four times with the Raiders, twice with the 49ers.

Trivia answer: Four. Penn’s Chuck Daly, La Salle’s Paul Westhead, St. Joseph’s Jim Lynam and Matt Guokas.

Quotebook: Milwaukee’s Dan Plesac, on his conversation with his mother after giving up Cecil Fielder’s 520-foot home run: “I said, ‘Yeah, it just barely went over the fence.’ I didn’t tell her it was the back fence.”