Yashin Loses in Bid to End Contract

A Canadian judge refused Tuesday to hear Alexei Yashin’s bid to overturn an arbitrator’s decision that dictates he owes one more season to the Ottawa Senators.

Ontario Justice Douglas Cunningham threw out Yashin’s attempt to have the ruling examined.

“We obviously think it’s the right decision,” said Bill Daly, the NHL’s executive vice president and chief legal officer. “We’re hopeful it means that Alexei Yashin will come back to play hockey for the Ottawa Senators.”

In his ruling, Cunningham concluded that Yashin, as an individual, didn’t have standing to bring the application for judicial review, something he said would more appropriately be done by the NHL players’ union.

Yashin’s attorneys argued Boston arbitrator Lawrence Holden had overstepped his boundaries when ruling June 28 that the star forward was not eligible to become a Group 2 restricted free agent and had to fulfill the final year of his contract at $3.6 million.

“All the arbitrator’s decision does is determine that Mr. Yashin’s contractual obligations have not expired and that he continues to be bound by the positive and negative terms of the standard players contract,” Cunningham wrote in his judgment.

“[The player] cannot now choose not to perform the remainder of his contract while at the same time claiming entitlement to the additional benefit of free agency.”

Yashin had walked away from the team after much bickering and a 1998-99 early playoff loss--in which he contributed no points against the Buffalo Sabres. He sat out all of last season, but practiced in Switzerland and played for his native Russia at this past spring’s world championships.

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Captain Michael Peca and the Sabres are far apart in contract talks three days before the team opens training camp.

Peca, a restricted free agent, is seeking a two- to four-year deal worth about $4 million annually, more than double the $1.65 million he made last season.

Peca is coming off a subpar season, with 20 goals and 41 points in 73 games.

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Spurning a multiyear contract offer, Colorado Avalanche forward Chris Drury’s agent said his client would like to sign a one-year deal for this season and be eligible for arbitration next summer. Drury, a restricted free agent who had 20 goals and 47 assists last season, made $640,000 last year. . . . The Edmonton Oilers signed center Shawn Horcoff to a three-year contract, the team said. Horcoff, 21, was taken by the Oilers in the fourth round of the 1998 draft and has played the past four years at Michigan State. . . . The Vancouver Canucks signed free-agent left wing Dody Wood, 28. . . . Forward Rem Murray agreed to a three-year contract with the Edmonton Oilers that will pay him a base salary of $3.3 million.

Basketball

Bill Carmody, who posted a 92-25 record in his four years as coach at Princeton, will be introduced today as Northwestern’s new basketball coach, the Associated Press reported.

He will replace Kevin O’Neill, who resigned five days ago to take a job as an assistant with the New York Knicks, according to a source close to Carmody.

Michigan sophomore point guard Kevin Gaines will no longer be a part of the team, after “a serious violation of team policies” over the Labor Day weekend, Coach Brian Ellerbe said. The 6-foot-4 Gaines was third on the Wolverines in scoring last season at 11.7 points a game and led the team in assists and steals.

Incoming freshmen Bernard Robinson Jr. and Avery Queen were put on probation.

Police reports say the three were arrested early Monday on suspicion of disorderly intoxication.

Police

Billy Hunter, head of the National Basketball Players Assn., said it’s a “longshot” that the union will offer to buy the Continental Basketball Assn.

He would not specify why the league now probably wouldn’t buy the 10-team minor league from Isiah Thomas, who was named coach of the Indiana Pacers in July, and faces a NBA-imposed deadline of Oct. 4 to sell the CBA.

NBA rules prohibit any team or league employee from owning a stake in another league. Thomas bought the CBA for about $10 million a year ago.

Golf

The Senior PGA Tour will have a match-play tournament among its 38 official money events in 2001, with a total purse of about $59 million, the tour announced in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

The Match Play Championship, formerly the Boone Valley Classic, will be played the first week of May near St. Louis. The $2-million event will have a 78-player field that will include two days of stroke play to determine 16 players for single-elimination match play over the weekend.

The season will begin in Hawaii with the MasterCard Championship on Jan. 19-21, and end with the Senior Tour Championship on Oct. 25-28.

Miscellany

Vernon Dancer, a harness driver, trainer and breeder recently nominated for the sport’s Hall of Fame, died in Philadelphia. He was 77 and had been hospitalized at the University of Pennsylvania since early July with several illnesses.

Jim Ward, winner of two Ironman triathlons in a senior division, died at 83 after collapsing fives miles into a 72-mile round-trip bicycle ride in Seminole, Fla. “The ER doctor seemed to think he had a heart attack,” said Lt. Ric Koda of Seminole Fire and Rescue.

Birmingham-Southern will join the Big South Conference in the fall of 2003 as it makes the move from NAIA to Division I.

Spain’s Angel Casero became the third leader in as many days at the Tour of Spain after finishing 10th in the 82-mile 11th stage. Casero, who replaced fellow Spaniard Santos Gonzalez, leads Roberto Heras by 1 minute 15 seconds in the 21-day tour.