Now, I'm sure this isn't particularly germane to *college* hockey, but
I don't have any friends on rec.sport.hockey, so I hope the HOCKEY-L reader-
ship will bear with me :-)
 
  Hockey purist that I am, I cringed when the NHL began allowing advertising
placards to be affixed to the boards, as I felt it detracted (minimally,
perhaps) from my enjoyment of the game to have ads for McDonalds and CitiBank
shoved in my face all evening.  I consoled myself with the fact that the
college game I love was (so far) unsullied by this aspect of Madison Avenue
intrusion into sports.  Inasmuch as all this advertising made it harder for
*the fans* to pick up the puck at times, I couldn't believe it when the NHL
Board of Governors trampled on tradition and decreed that Les Habs must paint
the lower dasher in The Forum jaune (instead of the traditional bleu) to
supposedly make it easier for the players/fans to pick up the puck.  What a
joke - as if the damage hadn't already been done !!
 
  But now, the final straw ... In yesterday's "Post" was the following news
tidbit ... "Being a rookie from Russia, Igor Bazhenov probably thought he
was the victim of a prankster when he checked into the locker room and saw
the number on his hockey jersey [sic]: 100.2.  It wasn't a practical joke.
Bazhenov will wear that number this season for Roma, a Swedish first-division
team.  A public radio station paid US$1230 to put its frequency on a jersey
[sic]. It is against the Swedish Hockey Federation rules to have four-digit
jersey [sic] numbers, but Roma was granted an exception."
 
  Somewhere, someplace, Harold Ballard is laughing maniacally ....
 
                                        Cheers from the Chesapeake - Jim