Yashin, Senators Are Near Accord

The impasse between the Ottawa Senators and Alexei Yashin appears to be drawing to a close.

The Senators have called a news conference for today, the first day of training camp, to announce Yashin will be returning to the team.

Yashin sat out the 1999-2000 season in hopes of renegotiating his contract, even though a year remained at $3.6 million.

In June, arbitrator Larry Holden ruled that Yashin couldn’t circumvent the terms of his contract by sitting out a year. Yashin tried to have the decision overturned, but an Ontario judge refused to hear Yashin’s case last week.

Meanwhile, arbitrator Holden was fired by the NHL Friday.

Holden’s firing marks the third consecutive year that hockey’s independent arbitrator has been fired.

Auto Racing

NASCAR spent a lot of time Friday denying teams will run restrictor-plate engines next week when it returns to the track where two drivers died earlier this year.

Car owners, however, sounded as if the decision has already been made to reduce speeds at New Hampshire International Speedway, where Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin Jr. were killed in practices less than two months apart.

“It’s something that we’re bouncing off the teams,” said Kevin Triplett, NASCAR’s director of operations. “It’s something that . . . we’ll have a decision on pretty quickly, possibly even this weekend. But we haven’t announced anything.”

Restrictor plates restrict airflow to the carburetor, sapping horsepower from the engine.

Jack Roush, the owner of five teams that run regularly on the Winston Cup circuit, certainly sounded as if he knew more than that.

“I was floored,” Roush said. “The concerns of a number, certainly not the majority, of the drivers has resulted in NASCAR doing something that I think is a knee-jerk that will certainly create for a very confused, most unusual race at Loudon.”

Jeff Burton could do no wrong at Richmond International Raceway in Virginia.

He started with a rare pole-winning qualifying run in the Winston Cup series, and capped the night with a runaway victory in the Autolite/FRAM 250 Busch Series race.

Burton, who won only his second career pole position in 214 attempts in NASCAR’s premier series, started second and led four times for 198 of the 250 laps.

The victory was the 13th of Burton’s Busch career. It came by 0.935 seconds over points leader Jeff Green. Mark Martin, Burton’s Roush Racing teammate, was third.

Burton qualified for tonight’s Chevrolet 400 in an event-record 125.780 mph in his Ford.

Marlboro Team Penske teammates Helio Castroneves and Gil de Ferran led the way in provisional qualifying for the Honda Grand Prix of Monterey, both topping the qualifying record at Laguna Seca Raceway.

Castroneves turned a lap of 118.969 mph, and de Ferran hit 118.792, both bettering the lap of 118.666 set in 1997 by Bryan Herta.

Those fast trips were even more impressive since they came after Patrick Carpentier’s spectacular crash.

The Canadian driver slid off course, skidded backward into the dirt at the 90-degree right-hand Turn 4, became airborne, slammed into a tire wall and somersaulted over a concrete barrier, landing cockpit down.

Carpentier came away with only a sore neck and was immediately cleared to continue driving, but Hal Whiteford, president of racing operations for CART, delayed restarting the session until he had inspected the entire track and met with the drivers for nearly an hour.

Miscellany

Charging the Minnesota Timberwolves, player Joe Smith and agent Eric Fleisher violated salary cap rules, the NBA started an arbitration proceeding at New York.

“The agreement, which is set forth in writing, calls for payments to Smith of tens of millions of dollars, and was deliberately hidden from the league,” said Joel Litvin, the NBA’s executive vice president of legal and business affairs.

The Timberwolves did not immediately comment, and attempts to reach Fleisher for comment were unsuccessful.

A federal grand jury is expected to convene to consider criminal charges in the cheating scandal in the Minnesota basketball program, WCCO-TV reported.

WCCO said former Gopher star Bobby Jackson has been subpoenaed and plans to testify before a grand jury in Minneapolis later this month, according to his attorney, Kevin Short.

Edgar William Johnson, 17, a junior football player at Harrells Academy in Harrells, N.C., died of injuries sustained during a game.

Gov. Gray Davis vetoed Senate Bill 338, which directed state colleges to make every reasonable effort to put athletes in other programs and to honor athletic scholarships if sports programs were eliminated.

Davis said the bill would have reduced the flexibility of college administrators to make decisions regarding continuation, expansion or elimination of academic and athletic programs.