By the Numbers

Check out the audiences in the NHL's big markets on Thursday night. There were 15,119 paying customers in Los Angeles, 9,078 in Chicago, 13,047 in Boston and 9,551 on Long Island. Just as discouraging were the 12,500 who showed up in Pittsburgh this week to watch Sidney Crosby play against the Florida Panthers. I'm sure they could draw that many in Kitchener. ... The Devils can't draw either, but they were the NHL's best home team going into play Friday night.

Just $16 million for Barry Bonds? Imagine what the figure would have been if any other teams were seriously bidding.

Not all franchises are equal. That's why NFL owners once again showed their smarts this week by putting up $300 million towards the construction of a new stadium in the Meadowlands for the Jets and Giants. That's called using money to make more money.

J.P. Riccardi came away empty handed from the winter meetings. But when he says the team might have got lucky by missing out on Gil Meche, he sounds right. Signing with K.C. is taking the money and letting somebody else worry about winning.

I'm loving this movement to vote Vancouver journeyman defenceman Rory Fitzpatrick into the NHL all-star game. That's no more ridiculous than Bryan McCabe leading the Eastern Conference in voting.

Nice of him to give it a whirl, but Bryant Gumble is officially the worst play-by-play man in sports. It's not even close.

Don't know about you, but I didn't know T.O.'s middle name was Eldorado.

Blues defenceman Dennis Wideman is officially the NHL's dummy of the week. With Curtis Sanford out already, Wideman ripped a shot off the mask of Manny Legace in practice this week. Now Legace's out for at least a week and the Blues had to use Jason Bacashihua in Detroit Thursday night. Man, Mike Kitchen just doesn't deserve this.

Don't look know, but the Chicago Bulls are scoring points again, averaging more than 100 per game for the first time in a decade.

After playing 19 games without Martin Havlat, the Hawks hoped to have him back for Saturday's game in Minnesota.

After choking away a third period lead to lose to Atlanta on Tuesday, the Maple Leafs sure had to feel good about watching those same Thrashers get crushed 8-0 by Tampa Bay on Thursday, particularly with the Bolts in town on Tuesday.

Go West. . .For Boredom

We can argue all day long over whether the Western Conference of the NHL is better than the Eastern Conference, or vice versa.

The fact the east has produced the last three Stanley Cup champions - albeit just barely all three times - suggests that grouping is superior in the most important sense.

But there can be no argument that when it comes to exciting, creative and interesting hockey, the east is miles ahead. No wonder of the top 20 scorers in the league, 18 play in the east.

Remember the days when the Western Conference was all about flow and speed and Gretzky and offence? Remember when the trap lived in the east, along with slow, grind-it-out hockey?

Those days are gone.

Of the top eight teams out west, only Minnesota, really, is a particularly interesting team to watch.

Anaheim, even with the fabulous Teemu Selanne, is very good and brutally efficient, but also deadly dull. Dallas puts my feet to sleep. Detroit, once the most exciting, skillfull team in the game, is now a snooze to watch. Calgary is fast and energetic, but it's about defence and Mikka Kiprusoff most nights.

Even Vancouver, formerly a vibrant and often controversial team, has now gone vanilla.

Come back Brian Burke and Marc Crawford - all is forgiven.

It goes right through the conference. Dull, dull, dull. No wonder nobody wants to watch the back end of Hockey Night in Canada's Saturday double-header anymore.

In the east, by contrast, there's all sorts of entertaining stuff to watch.

Sidney Crosby, Evgeny Malkin and the Penguins. Marian Hossa, Ilya Kovalchuk and the Thrashers. Run 'n gun Montreal. Ottawa, Carolina and even Washington will make you want to watch.

Oh yes, and that Buffalo team, quite probably the flashiest team in hockey right now.

You'll notice when it came to the scheduling debate, it was all about getting Crosby and Alex Ovechkin to town.

Nobody said much about eastern cities getting the opportunity to watch Ryan Getzlaf. Or Milan Michalek. Or Ladislav Nagy.

This too, of course, will change. Excitement will come back to the west one day.

But not this season.

Foiled

Rats!

Barnacles!

Curses!

(Insert any other word of frustration in common use by arch-criminals featured in comic strips or movies here)

We were this close, or at least it seemed for a few days, to being rid of Barry Bonds.

This close. (Put your thumb and index finger about a centimetre apart).

It would have been the perfect ending for one of this generation's most arrogant and odious athletes if, just 22 home runs of becoming the greatest home run hitter of all-time, he found himself unemployed and without suitors.

Remember Dustin Hoffman in the movie Tootsie when his agent looks him straight in the eye and says, "NO ONE. . .will hire you."

And then the Hoffman character ends up in a dress.

Now Barry doing boo-hoo in a frock isn't exactly an enticing scenario.

But after all he's done to the integrity and image of the game, it would be a fitting end if he found nobody interested in his, ahem, services as a free agent.

As baseball's winter meetings opened in Florida on Monday, it seemed that might be the case. Bonds' agent went into a lengthy public diatribe that seemed the indicated his client no longer fit into the "business plan" of the San Francisco Giants, which made a certain degree of sense since the Giants hadn't opted to offer Bonds' salary arbitration on Friday.

There were some murmurings that the Boston Red Sox might be interested if they moved Manny Ramirez, and, conversely, that the Giants might solved their need for a big bat by trying to trade for Ramirez.

But other than money, the Giants didn't seem to have the wherewithal to do a deal.

All seemed in order, then, for a happy ending for baseball.

No job for Barry. Oh, so sad.

But now it appears, after an exchange of ideas between Giants GM Brian Sabean and Bonds' agent, that the Giants are indeed in the process of bringing back Mr. Sunshine for his final charge at history.

No other team would want this guy, at least no team interested in winning. His bat might still be helpful, but all the other stuff - the posse, the controversial behavior, the constant steroid questions - outweighs what he might be able to contribute as a 30 home run man on a wonky knee.

But the Giants, sadly, can't resist. San Fran still has affection for Barry, probably the only region of America that still does, and the baseball team can't afford to ignore the commercial appeal of Bonds' pursuit of Henry Aaron's all-time record.

So the signals seem to be that Bonds will remain a Giant, although there's still hope that it will all fall apart and every other team will also turns its back.

As they said over and over in Angels in the Outfield, "It could happen."

A New NHL Trophy

Mark Messier deserves all the recognition he gets. This guy was one of the greatest ever, period.

That said, it's sad that the new NHL award named in his honor, the Mark Messier Award, has no chance at all of gaining any traction and becoming a particularly valued honor in the hockey world.

For starters, it's a monthly award for leadership, and monthly awards never work. You have too many winners, for starters. Second of all, there is no clear criteria for the award, just a gut feel, more or less, about a player who shows leadership on and off the ice.

But what does that mean? In theory, wouldn't it just entail going through the league and picking out 30 captains? When Brendan Shanahan was named the first winner last month, did that mean he was more of a leader than the Ranger captain, Jaromir Jagr?

Moreover, the NHL already has too many awards with nebulous meanings. The Selke. The Lady Byng. The Masterton.

That's why the Rocket Richard Trophy has been such a hit. Most goals wins. No confusion there.

If you want a new trophy, here's one.

Given that the shootout is here to stay and is already a fairly critical element of NHL competition - Dallas picked up 12 extra points in the standings last year through the shootout - it would make sense to recognize the best in the league.

Most shootout goals wins. In case of a tie, most game deciding shootout goals wins. Still tied? Shooting percentage.

It would be a way of further legitimizing the shootout given that shootout goals don't otherwise count in a players offensive totals, and its likely a competition that would go down to the last weeks of the season.

You could put a $100,000 prize on the line to make it really interesting.

As of Monday morning, Brian Gionta, Daniel Briere and Mikko Koivu lead the league with four shootout goals each. Both Briere and Koivu have two game-deciders, but Briere has the higher percentage, scoring four times on six shots.

So Briere wins. And the best part is the player wouldn't be able to say I couldn't have done it alone.

Of course you could have. In fact, you did.

But what to call it? Obviously a great scorer would be the best recipient, although if you wanted to be cynical and nasty you could call it the Marc Crawford Award. You know, Nagano and all that.

Mike Bossy? Brett Hull? Bobby Hull? Mario Lemieux? Phil Esposito?

Wayne Gretzky would be obvious, but even he would tell you he wasn't great on breakaways.

Of course, if you wanted to break from tradition altogether, a European player would be nice.

Jari Kurri? Feel free to offer up your own suggestion. But in a sports world in which nobody can even agree on the definition of MVP and big-time college football decides who plays for its championship by voting, we need more honors with definite, set-in-concrete criteria.

Exposed

About a week ago, Phoenix Coyotes enforcer Georges Laraque worried that the role of fighters is nearing extinction in the NHL.

Well, based on his conduct Thursday night against Los Angeles, it can't come soon enough.

While wearing a televison microphone for the game, Laraque inadvertently made a mockery of his chosen art and completely undermined the dogged efforts of those who maintain that fighting has an important part in the sport.

With a faceoff just outside the Phoenix and the Coyotes ahead 3-2 in the 14th minute of the first period, the 6-foot-6 Laraque ambled over to L.A.'s designated goon, Raitus Ivanans, and inquired politely if he might possibly interested in fisticuffs.

"Wanna do it?" said Laraque, without a trace of anger, a curse word or any indication that the invitation to scrap had anything at all to do with something that had happened within the game.

There was no argument, no schoolyard jabbering back and forth, no "I'm gonna knock your teeth out" or claim that revenge was at hand for a previous injustice.

Best of all, when Ivanans accepted, Laraque happily said, "Ok," then offered a terribly menacing threat.

"Good luck," he said breezily, and as soon as the puck was dropped, the two dropped their gloves and wasted everybody's time for 45 seconds.

See, if the NHL wonders why it struggles to find TV acceptance in the U.S., one of the reasons is because of pro wrestling silliness like this.

It was a phony fight, pure and simple. The punches were real, sure, but those guys in the squared circle really jump off the top rope, too.

If Gary Bettman wanted to make a statement about the integrity of the sport, he'd immediately suspend both players.

The beauty of this incident is that it proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all the cliches offered by those who believe fighting is so crucial to the sport are complete baloney.

Neither Laraque nor Ivanans was trying to stop the opponent from "taking liberties" on their teammates.

It wasn't about keeping the sticks down. It wasn't about stopping guys with visors from "running around" and hitting everything in sight. It wasn't about "policing" the game to keep it fair and clean.

It was a rather pathetic attempt by both men to legimitize their increasingly dicey existence as NHL players.

How else would Laraque make $1.1 million per season? In what other line of work would Ivanans pull down $450,000 per? Without fighting, of course, neither man would ever have earned a position in the league, so it is in their interest to try to perpetuate the myth that fighting is an integral part of the game.

All those ex-players and former coaches in the media, of course, are in on this dirty little secret. They know this kind of fake confrontation is part of the NHL every night.

But they don't want to be the whistle blower. So they continue to mouth the propaganda.

The truth is that playing the game itself is incidental to these enforcers, and their little insiders deal is evidence of what goes on every single night with enforcers.

Their phony fight made a joke of both players and the job of the professional thug.

And in so doing, it makes a mockery of the NHL.