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Sunday, March 02, 2003

By Dejan Kovacevic, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

The NHL yesterday opened a policy of embarrassing players who dive in attempts to draw penalties. The league plans to review video of all games and fine players they feel take dives $1,000. It also plans to publish a list of the divers' names each week and distribute them to all teams' locker rooms.

The Canucks' Trevor Linden, president of the NHL Players Association, objects on the basis that he feels some players are ordered by their coaches to dive.

"Some teams encourage players," he told reporters. "They have some players on their team that are notorious for going down easy."

Ian Moran, the Penguins' player representative, shares that sentiment. "Call it on the ice," he said. "I don't think you need to have fines or other punishment. The rule is right there in the book."

Colin Campbell, the NHL's director of hockey operations, said not all dives will draw fines, "only the disgraceful ones that demean our game."

Owen Nolan, who has scored 11 of his 20 goals since Jan. 20, could be headed to Toronto. San Jose, eager to be rid of the $18 million Nolan is due the next three years, is believed to be asking for top prospect Brad Boyes, fourth-liner Alyn McCauley and a first-round pick in the upcoming NHL Entry Draft. The Maple Leafs are still stung by having their offer for Alexei Kovalev rejected by the Penguins.

Another prominent player who is the subject of trade speculation is the Flames' Jarome Iginla. And he, too, is responding well. Even though his Flames went 2-6-3-1 in February, he produced 13 goals in those 12 games, including 11 on the road. "Iggy had a hell of a month," Coach Darryl Sutter told the Calgary Sun. "That speculation is even more motivation. He's fine with it."

Iginla is one of 13 black players in the 30-team NHL, just two more than five years ago and eight more than 10 years ago, but the Blue Jackets' Jean-Luc Grand-Pierre told the Tennessean he expects a greater percentage of growth in the next decade: "I grew up in Canada, and it was pretty common to see minorities playing hockey there, just as it is for football and basketball here in the U.S. I don't know if the NHL has established itself long enough for minorities to really pick up hockey as much. But, if you look at the league 10 years from now, I think you'll see some changes."

Add the Blackhawks to the lengthy list of teams who have given up on Theoren Fleury. He is now a regular healthy scratch after irking management and teammates not only with his late-January bar duel in Columbus but also with poor conditioning. "It's not coming in and punching the clock at game time," Coach Brian Sutter told the Chicago Tribune. Fleury is in the first yearof a two-year, $8 million deal.

Although Steve Yzerman's knee kept him from starting his season until Tuesday, he is feeling good enough that he plans to return next season. Beyond that? The only certain is that he does not wish to join Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky in the NHL's ownership fraternity. "Well, I can't afford to buy a team, so I don't know about ownership unless somebody gives me a team," he told Detroit reporters. "It's a bad business to be in right now. That's what I read." Teammate Brett Hull has suggested that more players enter ownership, if only to see the other side, but Yzerman doused that concept, too: "There's a lot of dumb players out there, so I wouldn't be in any hurry to have players running teams."