It’s Been a Season on the Brink

As the NHL regular season wraps up, the league doesn’t need to look far for highlights.

Pavel Bure’s goal-scoring. The St. Louis Blues’ remarkable season. A shiny new ice palace in Atlanta. The exciting finishes created by 4-on-4 overtime. The extremely competitive Western Conference playoffs soon to begin.

The trouble is, the highlights were overwhelmed by the low lights--the players who marred the season with their sticks and stubbornness, their refusal to play for vast sums of money or to use their blades as anything other than weapons.

For the NHL, a potentially shining season at the rink turned more and more each week into a season on the brink.

Alexei Yashin, last year’s MVP runner-up, flushed $3 million by refusing to play out his contract. Eric Lindros absorbed another concussion and ripped his own team’s medical staff. Roger Neilson, one of the sport’s true good guys, got cancer. Kevin Stevens and Ed Belfour were arrested. Geoff Courtnall retired because of post-concussion syndrome. And, in a preview of the season to come, Capitals GM George McPhee punched Blackhawks coach Lorne Molleken in the nose ... during a preseason game, no less.

There were far more maulings on the ice than miracles on the ice, and those can be hard to sell at the box office. By season’s end, a poll by the Canadian network CTV revealed 71 of all Canadians felt their most-loved sport has become too violent and another 71 percent believe new rules are needed to curb the violence.

All in all, it was another missed opportunity for the NHL, especially with the NBA stagnating with lower TV ratings and empty seats in the post-Michael Jordan era.

What troubles many in the game: Instead of selling its stars, the NHL often turns its back as players with limited talent clutch and grab and mug, dragging down the quality of play and injuring the very stars the league should be showcasing.

Jaromir Jagr, for example, was easily the leading vote-getter for the All-Star game and was on a remarkable early scoring pace. But he wound up missing a quarter of the season after absorbing, separately, a well-placed knee to the thigh, a slam into the glass, a slash to the hand and a blow to the back of his neck.

“When I saw (commissioner) Gary Bettman, I asked him, ‘What would you do to Michael Jordan in this league?”’ Pittsburgh Penguins coach Herb Brooks said.

The most ardent hockey fans in the world agree with Brooks; 75 percent of Canadians polled by CTV say there is more unnecessary violence in the game than ever before, even if Bettman dissents.