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Q: If the NHL wants to continue to grow and expand its fan base, it must find a way to keep homegrown players on their original team's roster. I think the NHL and the NHL Players' Association need to find a way to add a provision to the collective bargaining agreement that allows teams to go a certain percentage over the cap in order to be able to sign their own drafted players and to allow players to restructure contracts.

Mike Drakulich, Midland

MOLINARI: It's easy to understand why Penguins supporters would back that kind of plan, given that nearly all of this team's core players were drafted and developed by the organization. Anything that would make it possible for general manager Ray Shero to keep the nucleus of guys like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal, Marc-Andre Fleury, Brooks Orpik, Kris Letang and Alex Goligoski together would be well-received in these parts.

The primary purpose of the collective bargaining agreement that took effect in 2005 was to level the economic playing field so that all 30 teams, if well managed and coached, would have a reasonable opportunity to succeed on the ice. That, in theory, would give each a chance to be profitable off of it.

A key element of that labor deal was eliminating loopholes -- or trying to, anyway -- that could have made it possible for teams to violate the provisions of the salary cap. The basic intention was to save teams from themselves, because so many owners and GMs had proven incapable of showing restraint when deciding how much to spend on players.

The CBA also prevents contracts terms from being altered, regardless of which side would propose the changes or what the intention of doing so would be. Again, the idea was to eliminate, not simply discourage, the abuse that could result if teams had the option of redoing agreements.

Even though the Penguins are now stable and successful, on the ice and at the box office, it shouldn't be forgotten that as the middle of this decade approached, they were the worst team in the NHL and that tickets to their games were not exactly the toughest in town.

A favorable, inflexible labor agreement -- along, of course, with four consecutive drafts in which they picked first or second and ended up with Fleury, Malkin, Crosby and Staal -- had an awful lot to with what has happened to the franchise since then, and is an important tool for other smaller-market teams trying to make similar progress.

While a particular fan base's interest understandably is in how its team of choice fares, it is critical to the health of the league that every franchise have a reasonable opportunity to compete effectively and a CBA with no special provisions that benefit a handful of clubs is an important ingredient in that.

Q: A question came up during the Jordan Staal penalty Friday that I don't have a sure answer for. If a player can't serve a penalty, someone serves it for him. My question is, if the penalized player gets his equipment fixed and comes back to the ice during the penalty, does he go to the box and the other player comes out, or does the player with the equipment issue have to stay off the ice until the penalty is over while his replacement serves it?

Jim Sampson, Wheeling, W.Va.

MOLINARI: Per Rule 8.1, a player who receives a minor penalty is injured -- and all available evidence suggests that Staal had a physical issue, not an equipment problem, when he was assessed a penalty midway through the second period of the Florida game -- can go directly to the locker room for treatment while a teammate takes his spot in the box.

If the penalized individual is able to return to the ice before the penalty has expired, he would replace his teammate in the box during the first stoppage in play. (That didn't come into play Friday night, because Staal didn't return from the dressing room until early in the third period.)

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