Items that may grow up to be columns, Vol. XVII, Chapter 7:
A SHOE DROPS: Score one for the claimants.
The National Hockey League has lost in an attempt to have a U.S. district court in Minnesota throw out a claim by six retired players that the league didn’t protect them from the consequences of repeated brain trauma.
This may only be step one in what promises to be a long, drawn-out legal battle, but for the players, it’s a small victory because the judge rejected three NHL arguments for dismissal.
The players allege that the league intentionally concealed material information from and recklessly endangered the plaintiffs.
Stay tuned. The game has only just begun.
YOU’RE FIRED: One hopes the Golf Channel isn’t paying Notah Begay a whole bunch of money for his penetrating insight into the state of his buddy Tiger Woods’s golf game.
In an interview published on PGATour.com, Begay said he reckoned Tiger’s likelihood of playing The Masters in two weeks was 50-50, adding: “I think his golf game as a whole is in a great place.”
There was more, but Tiger’s old coach, Hank Haney, was too busy spitting out his coffee. “Game is in a great place?” Haney tweeted.
Begay, of course, has become something of a life mentor to Woods, his old Stanford teammate, and is the one who recommended Tiger’s latest swing consultant, Chris Como, to the former world No. 1, who’s currently No. 96 and dropping like a stone.
It’s clear that Woods hasn’t yet got his short-game woes under control, and Augusta National is definitely not the place to be experimenting with new techniques.
Still, it’s a place Woods has always been able to play with his eyes closed, injured or rusty or whatever. So if he doesn’t play in it, for the second year in a row, it will speak volumes about his mental state.
PARTY McPOOPERS: It’s all very well, and sensible, too, for the Ottawa Senators to discourage fans from throwing overpriced hamburgers on the ice after wins by their history-making goaltending sensation, Andrew (The Hamburglar) Hammond.
Not that the food banks are clamoring for used burgers, but the money the patrons are spending on them could be better directed to a food bank, say the Sens.
But what of the children in Third World countries, asks a tongue-in-cheek Dave Lozo of Bleacher Report, who go hatless while thousands of perfectly good lids are tossed onto the ice after NHL hat-tricks?
Or, he might have added, what about all the kids who go to bed every night without a plastic rat to curl up with while Florida fans callously toss them onto the surface?
Wasteful is as wasteful does.
DEAD PUCK UPDATE: Since the column a few weeks back, the one about the NHL’s most exciting players having been reduced to point-per-game producers, the funk has remained right on course.
As of Wednesday, the New York Islanders had played 74 games and John Tavares, the NHL’s top scorer, had 74 points. Only four times since expansion in 1967-68 has the NHL scoring champion finished a full-length regular season with fewer than 100 points.
SUGGESTION BOX: Having done little to remove the confusion surrounding the “what is a catch?” rule following the Dez Bryant fiasco in the Dallas Cowboys’ January playoff loss to Green Bay, the NFL is now pondering how to put at least an ounce of drama into the all but automatic point after touchdown.
Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll tweeted: “Our idea for the extra point:
-Automatic 7pts for a TD
-Mandatory try from the 2 for 1pt
-Defense can score 1pt by returning a fumble or INT.”
Seahawks fans probably would rather he spent his spare time figuring out how to get the ball into the endzone from the one, and to hell with the convert.
TURTLE DIARY PART I: Sabres coach Ted Nolan, in an impassioned soliloquy quoted by the Buffalo News, made it clear he does not want his team to finish last.
The quotes sounded absolutely sincere, but the Sabres have stretched their “lead” over 29th-place Arizona to a whopping five points, thanks to the Coyotes losing their focus and beating Detroit 5-4 on Tuesday. Edmonton, which played Colorado on Wednesday, was six points back, er, ahead, or … whatever, and in some danger of playing its way out of the coveted 30th-place spot.
TURTLE DIARY PART II: World No. 2 Henrik Stenson was fuming after blowing the lead at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, which he blamed in part on being put on the clock twice and feeling rushed on some of his putts coming down the stretch.
Talk about a lame excuse. Nobody’s been docked a shot for slow play on the PGA Tour in 20 years, and the fines are insignificant. “On the clock” is virtually an empty threat.
But if a player or two actually feels the proverbial cattle prod in the hindquarters every once in a while, it’s all good.