Home >  Sports >  Notebooks

Sunday, March 30, 2003

By Dejan Kovacevic, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Wayne Gretzky finally has taken a stand on the NHL’s imminent labor battle, and his view, to no surprise, is decidedly pro-owner.

Speaking to reporters Monday at a charity event in Calgary, he warned that more teams are poised to dump their best players to save money if the new Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2004 is not to their liking.

“It’s not going out on a limb saying there are some problems,” he said. “And for people who don’t think there are some problems, they’re kidding themselves. You’ve got two teams in the league that are bankrupt.”

Gretzky, the Coyotes’ owner, pointed to salary-clearing deals made in the past two months by the Penguins, Oilers and others as evidence that such transactions are becoming increasingly blatant.

“For the past eight, nine, 10 years, deals have been made that probably have been more economically driven than people ever thought about. Now, these deals are made, and it’s on the forefront. We know they’re economically driven, and we’ve gotten into a situation where we probably don’t want to be, and that’s somewhere baseball’s been the past 10 years.”

Perhaps the greatest active streak in the game also is among the least mentioned. The Blues have qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the 24th consecutive year, longest current run in any of the four major professional sports. The NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers are on the verge of their 21st. The NHL record is 29, belonging to the Bruins of 1968-96.

Bob Boughner played with some of the game’s greatest stars while in Pittsburgh, but he told reporters in Calgary he has never played with an elite player tougher than Jarome Iginla: “Other teams play him physically, and Iggy’s not going to back down. Iggy’s going to fight those guys. It’s the first guy I’ve played with who’s in that situation. He’s probably as tough as anybody on the team, and he’s our best player.” Iginla has three fighting majors this season.

Teemu Selanne is dropping hints he will leave the Sharks and return to Anaheim when he hits free agency this summer.

The only challenge greater than stopping Markus Naslund from scoring is getting him to talk about it. Naslund is on the verge of winning the Art Ross Trophy, having topped 100 points Thursday night. He became the first Swede to hit that mark since Peter Forsberg in 1995-96 and is close to becoming the first from his country with 50 goals since Hakan Loob in 1987-88. And yet . . . “I don’t really like talking about numbers,” he told reporters in Vancouver after a 5-1 rout of the Coyotes. “It’s a matter of playing on a good team and playing with good players.”

For what it’s worth, a Naslund scoring title would mean that Iginla and Gretzky would be the only scoring champions in the past 16 years who were not drafted by the Penguins. Mario Lemieux won six in that span, Jaromir Jagr five.

Jagr has had eight 80-point seasons since 1992-93. The only other player to achieve that? Mike Modano of the Stars.

The Predators’ Rem Murray will not receive bonus pay for it, but he will have played 85 games if he participates in all of Nashville’s remaining schedule. That’s because he spent his first 32 games with the Rangers, who played more often than any team in the season’s first half, before being traded. Murray’s 85 games would tie Bill Guerin’s NHL record, set in 2000-01 with the Oilers and Bruins.