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Sunday, December 30, 2001

Compiled by Dejan Kovacevic

When an anonymous Eastern Conference team protested the Sharks' decision to allow Marco Sturm to leave the team and play for his native Germany in the Olympic preliminary round, fingers were quick to point at the Capitals.

Made sense, too, given that the game Sturm was to miss is Feb. 10 against the Hurricanes, the team Washington is chasing for first place in the Southeast Division.

Funny thing is, Dean Lombardi, the Sharks' general manager, told the San Jose Mercury News the complaint came from a team outside the Southeast Division, without revealing further clues.

"An Eastern Conference team protested that Sturm wasn't going to play against a conference opponent and, therefore, Carolina might get points because of it," he said. "There's a league bylaw that says a team has an obligation to dress its best team or face a $1 million fine or loss of draft picks. I don't think the German federation is going to come up with $1 million."

So, which team made that call?

At the urging of the NHLPA, the NHL fined the Oilers between $10,000 and $25,000 for having a 45-minute practice on Christmas. The Collective Bargaining Agreement stipulates that games and practices are forbidden on Christmas Eve or Christmas, but Edmonton's players voted to have an extra day off before the break in exchange for working out on the holiday. The union, naturally, was outraged.

Maybe the AARP Red Wings will end up regretting they have a league-high 10 players on Olympic rosters. The grind will be grueling for the veterans upon whom Detroit relies so heavily. Consider, too, that 18 of the Red Wings' final 28 games are on the road. Scott Bowman is aware of all this, of course, and has allowed his team to skip its past three game-day skates.

Pittsburgh isn't the only town in which returning stars get booed. Ottawa stuck it to Alexei Yashin in style Thursday, and Los Angeles is bracing for a round of boos to dump on the Avalanche's Rob Blake Jan. 26, just as the Kings' fans did in the playoffs this past spring. He was traded after failing to agree to a contract extension. "Management said I'm greedy," he told the Denver Post. "But they offered $20 million less than I got this year. I mean, does anyone in the world really take that much less? Ask any one of those fans who booed me, and every one of them would do the same thing I did."

The Blackhawks finally seem to be turning the monolithic United Center into home, best evidenced Thursday in a 3-1 victory against Colorado before a throbbing crowd of 21,811. "It was like a playoff game," Coach Brian Sutter told the Chicago Tribune. "And that's the way it's supposed to be." The Blackhawks are 13-3-4 on home ice after going 14-21-4-2 last season.

The Mighty Ducks had been one of the league's worst teams before their current 4-1-1 roll, but their resurgence is no mystery. Jean-Sebastien Giguere, owner of 87 NHL games on his resume since breaking in with the Whalers in 1996, has given up one or no goals in six of his past 10 games and has a .920 save percentage.

It was 20 years ago today that Wayne Gretzky reached the 50-goal mark in 39 games, faster than anyone in NHL history. He did it by scoring five in a 7-5 victory against the Flyers, nailing an empty net. Today, two players -- the Flames' Jarome Iginla and the Capitals' Peter Bondra -- are on pace to net 50 for the season.