Much ado over “the most-watched hockey game in 30 years”, with an estimated 27.6 million Americans watching the U.S.-Canada gold medal game. The context:

To put the numbers in perspective, Sunday’s game drew a higher overnight rating than every World Series game since 2004 (including every game of Yankees/Phillies last year), every NBA Finals telecast since 1998, and every NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four game since at least ‘98.

Excluding the NFL, the 17.6 overnight for the game is the second-highest of the year for any sporting event, behind only the Texas/Alabama BCS National Championship Game in January (18.2).

That kind of televised turnout sparks discussion on how, or if, it’ll transfer over to the National Hockey League.

The short answer: It won’t.

Certainly, hockey proved itself worthy of the showcase-event placement it garnered as the closing act of the Games (especially impressive considering that standard Olympics presentations tend to emphasize individual athletic personalities). And certainly, the fervor created by Vancouver will net the NHL a few extra followers for the stretch run of the 2009-10 season. But let’s face it: People tuned in because this was a once-every-four-years happening, and the grand finale happened to feature a storybook North American rivalry. The echoes of 1980 (strained as they were) helped build the momentum for the U.S., as well (the Canadians, of course, didn’t need any such priming of the pump).

But, for all the enthusiasm that was generated, I don’t see it carrying past the extinguished Olympic torches. It was indeed a self-contained moment, part of what made it special. There’s no sense of re-living that experience by catching the next NHL game on Versus or NBC, let alone on a regional sports network.

It is amusing to think how the league could attempt to capitalize on the concept, though. Maybe continue to ride Ryan Miller as Team USA’s golden boy, and make the Buffalo Sabres “America’s team” for the NHL playoffs? They could do worse.

After falling short of a pre-Games boast to dominate the medal podiums, Olympic host Canada compensated with a record-breaking haul of 14 Golds.

And really, it’s that 14th Gold that counts the most:

Canada is the Olympic champion in men’s hockey, and the whole country can finally celebrate its Winter Games.

Canada survived one of the greatest games in Olympic history to beat the Americans 3-2 in overtime and cap the host country’s record gold rush in Vancouver.

Luckily for me, my cable TV was restored from a weekend-long blackout just minutes before the puck-drop. So I got to see all the action. I’d have been sorely disappointed if I had missed this one. It’s certainly disappointing to see Team USA settle for second place — there’s something perverse about having to, in effect, back into a Silver medal. But it was an eminently entertaining game, well worthy of the build-up. It was also a fitting showcase for the Winter Games, a role that hockey was granted as the final sign-off event for the Vancouver Olympiad.

And now, of course, it’s game-on again for the NHL, starting tomorrow. It’ll be a good momentum-carryover from Canada’s triumph into the Stanley Cup playoff run.

In the immediate afterglow of Team USA’s 5-3 win over Canada in men’s hockey, the comparisons are already being made between tonight’s impressive upset and the 1980 Miracle On Ice win over the Soviets.

Not to detract from this win, but I don’t see it. The Americans might have been an underdog coming into these games, but they’re hardly Davids going up against Canadian/Russian/Swedish Goliaths. Like most of the rest of the Olympics squads, the U.S. is stocked with National Hockey League players, which already puts them on more of a par than the all-amateur 1980 team that bested professional/military players from Europe.

I’m sure the impending 30th anniversary of the Miracle team tomorrow is fueling the hype. Take this win for what it is: A thrilling victory over a stacked Canadian team that had the home-crowd advantage going for it. It might turn out to be one of the ages, but for now, it’s enough that it’s of the moment.

For all the years I’ve been watching hockey, I’m stunned that I’ve never noticed this fundamental divergence in North American stick-curve predilections:

According to sales figures from stick manufacturers, a majority of Canadian hockey players shoot left-handed, and a majority of American players shoot right-handed. No reason is known for this disparity, which cuts across all age groups and has persisted for decades.

Most Canadians, like most Americans, are naturally right-handed, so the discrepancy has nothing to do with national brain-wiring. And how you hold a pencil, say, has little or no bearing on how you hold a stick. A left-handed shooter puts his right hand on top; a right-hander puts the left hand there.

Seriously? I can’t say I’ve noticed this on the ice, from NHL level on down. In fact, I’m downright skeptical, despite all the stats that seemingly back this up. As for theories for why this is (supposedly) so:

The Canadian journalist and author Bruce Dowbiggin noted the Canadian-American handedness split in his 2001 book, “The Stick: A History, a Celebration, an Elegy.” On Dowbiggin’s Web site, a reader named Kent Mayhew suggested the difference may have to do with how old a player is when he first picks up a hockey stick.

“The top hand on a hockey stick has to be able to handle the torques of a stick while the bottom hand just has to handle the weight with no torques,” he wrote. He theorized that American children, who tend to take up hockey when they are older and bigger, can afford to put the stronger hand, generally the right, on the lower part of the shaft for more precision.

Personally, having picked up the sport late in life, it’s no surprise that I’m a righty, both in stick-handling and firing the puck. Then again, neither my wrister nor my slapshot are exactly blistering; so maybe I should start practicing a southpaw-shooting style, like my Canuck brethren…

I’ve thought about it, and I’ve come to this conclusion: Using a forward to man the point on a power play is nothing short of a travesty.

This isn’t the first time I’ve considered this. But of late, the news of the New Jersey Devils using newly-acquired Ilya Kovalchuk up high during the man-advantage has crystallized my thinking. Of all the teams in the National Hockey League to opt for a pure offensive player in that role, the unlikeliest of all would be a Jacques Lemaire-coached squad. You’d think the overarching defense-first (and -second, and -third) philosophy would disqualify a sniper left wing during that critical gametime situation. And yet, the Devils are doing it.

I mean, what do you gain? A booming slapshot? Efficient puck distribution? A quality offensive defenseman should deliver that, and keep the puck relatively safe in a vulnerable spot.

Blame it on my own blueline bias, but I think the point is strictly the defenseman’s domain. Even the most loosey-goosey offensive d-man has more defensive responsibility than a comparably-equipped forward. When a penalty-killer pinches in, it’s a cinch that a forward is going to feel like he’s on an island, and make an ill-advised play with the puck — more than likely turning it over in the process. In my mind, resorting to a center or wing at the PP point is a sign of an incomplete roster, practically a desperation move.

Deeming that the National Hockey League lost the battle to get serious television exposure long ago, Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis is aggressively cultivating online social media:

“Where we should be advantaged is our customers are younger, more educated, Web-savvy than the NFL audience, which is older, less wired. So let’s pick a fight we have a shot at winning, and if our consumers are younger, and they love video games, and they have shorter attention spans, and they love interactivity, and they love social media, and everyone blogs, and everyone’s on Facebook, why wouldn’t we put ourselves right in the middle of that?”

Leonsis has been at the forefront of advancing his team into what he calls “the new world,” starting with launching a Web site for the Capitals soon after his purchase and becoming the first NHL owner to make available his direct e-mail address.

The Capitals have more than 95,000 fans on Facebook and more than 11,000 followers on Twitter. Players with accounts include defenseman Mike Green, who Twitters as GreenLife52 and has more than 6,000 followers, and forward Eric Fehr, who only recently began using the social networking Web site at the suggestion of the Capitals.

This is, in fact, the latest evolution of Leonsis’ longstanding plans to grow his team via the Web. I remember reading about his plans to emulate baseball’s Atlanta Braves, who built a national following in the ’90s via their exposure on budding TV superstation TBS. Leonsis had intended to use America Online — where he was a key executive when he bought his team — as the online platform to make the Caps the hockey equivalent of “America’s team”.

That was then, of course, and it never did come off. But Leonsis, owing to his background as a Web business maven, is sticking with the online avenue for growth. It’s consistent, if nothing else.

While watching the Islanders game the other night (I’m a Rangers fan and thus anti-Isles, but a game is a game), one of the announcers offhandedly proposed nicknaming the trio of Sean Bergenheim, Kyle Okposo, and Josh Bailey the “First Round Line”, owing to each player’s status as a first-round draft pick.

Nice moniker, if you disregard that most of the Isles forwards seem to be former first-rounders. But beyond that, that quip reminded me that it’s been a long time since I’d heard a noteworthy nickname for a National Hockey League forward line.

Bestowing a colorful label on an established line combination used to be a regular exercise in the NHL. As this lovingly-compiled list shows, there have been several over the years, with the wordplay for some coming off better than others. The “Production Line” during the Red Wings’ Gordie Howe era, for instance, jibed perfectly with the popular imagery of Detroit’s then-dominant industrial output in the auto industry. Buffalo’s “French Connection” from the early ’70s was a clever play on both those players’ Quebecois backgrounds, with reference to the popular box-office fare of the day. Line nicknames also served to spotlight another aspect of the sport, something between the individual star players and the whole team, to capture the fans’ imagination.

But nowadays, you just don’t hear these catchy line nicknames taking hold anymore. Maybe they do locally, but they never make it to a league-wide level. To me, the last nickname that caught on in hockey-media and fan circles across the NHL was Philadelphia’s “Legion of Doom” line of Eric Lindros, John LeClair, and Mikael Renberg. And that was some 15 years ago! Since then, nada.

The common reason cited for this is the lack of stability in modern-day line combos. Coaches seem quicker to mix and match players whenever goal production dips for more than a couple of games, thus making it hard for three players to form a recognizably cohesive unit. If anything, it seems like a two-player rapport develops on the top lines, with the left-wing slot usually being a revolving door for a plugger. Longer-term, free agency makes it harder to keep line partners together (although trades and minor-league demotions in the past probably created just as much player movement, so I doubt that’s much of an impediment).

It’s a shame to see this unique hockey contribution to the greater sports lexicon fall into disuse. I don’t know what can be done to revive it — the emergence of a hotshot offensive line? Grassroots marketing from the league/media/fans? — but whatever it takes, I’d like to start hearing those clever nicknames again.

Theoren Fleury is not playing in the National Hockey League this season, and he really thinks he should be:

The report says that Fleury believed that his performance at Calgary’s training camp last fall during his comeback attempt should have been enough for him to make the squad.

“At one hundred and eighty pounds, I finished 11th out of 56 guys at camp in the fitness test and scored a historic shootout goal in an exhibition game after being out of hockey for six years,” Fleury reportedly wrote. “What does that say about the talent level in the NHL? 4 points and a plus 4 rating in four exhibition games and I get cut. What a joke! Craig Conroy goes the first 37 games of the season with zero goals. I wonder how many I would have had?”

That rant came from Fleury’s blog, on a post that’s since been removed. In addition to the media report, the original lives on on various hockey forums. Looks like typical publish-first-think-later blogging.

The thing is, I’m somewhat in accord with Fleury on his getting a bum rap during training camp. In fact, I used it as a test case for how inefficient pro sports training camps are:

On something of a flip-side, 41-year-old Theoren Fleury’s comeback attempt was snuffed by the Calgary Flames. Even with the odds against him — age and six years out of the NHL — he posted four points in the preseason, and certainly didn’t look out of place. Still, Flames brass deemed him not good enough to crack the team’s top six forwards. What more he’d have to do is undetermined.

I’m hoping I didn’t inspire Fleury to post his legacy-threatening comments. Although if I did, the least he could have done was sent me a trackback link…

Along with catching a corker of a Winter Classic today — a thriller in which the Bruins rallied with two sweet tic-tac-toe passes to beat Philadelphia 2-1 in OT at Fenway Park — I noticed a distinct improvement in the quality of the game’s televised commercials this year. Instead of endless replays of generic national ads, sponsors like GEICO and Verizon Wireless created customized hockey-themed spots that actually looked good. A couple of those spots even feature star players like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, thus highlighting the league’s most marketable assets.

Why the sudden boost in dedicated advertising for a hockey game? Because, improbably enough, the WC really has become the NHL’s showcase event:

In the past three years, the league’s corporate advertising revenue has jumped 66 percent and the Winter Classic is at the heart of that leap. Sports Business Daily recently reported that sports business executives ranked the Winter Classic fifth among major sporting events they were looking forward to in 2010, ahead of sporting staples like the BCS National Championship, the World Series, the Masters and the Daytona 500. The survey was taken in December and included reports from more than 1,100 senior-level sports professionals.

That’s the money people talking, which explains why extra marketing dollars went into today’s TV ads. Doubtless they’ve noticed the rising viewership:

The Classic has become a surprise TV hit, occupying the 1 p.m. Eastern time slot against three college bowl games (the Outback at 11 a.m. and the Gator and the Capital One at 1 p.m.). In 2008, an average of 3.75 million viewers watched on NBC, which was exceeded last New Year’s Day with a 17 percent jump to 4.4 million, the most-viewed regular-season N.H.L. game in 34 years. Nearly 1.3 million more watched it in Canada.

Pucks beating out baseball, college football, and NASCAR? I’m an unabashed hockey fan, and even I can’t believe it. A lot of this is due to the novelty of the New Year’s Day game, which is only in its third year; will the mindshare still be there ten years from now? Still, the success of the Winter Classic rightly stands out as a rare marketing homerun for a league that traditionally can’t promote its way out of a paper bag.

This afternoon’s weather in Boston looks snowfall-free, so today’s 2010 NHL Winter Classic should go off without a hitch. But just in case, the league has a contingency plan:

A league source confirmed to ESPN.com on Thursday that it is possible the Winter Classic could only go two periods if the weather doesn’t cooperate and the game would still be deemed official. But that’s only if all else fails.

That beats watching the players slosh through on-ice snowdrifts. Still, I wonder if there isn’t a better way to guard against inclement weather. Maybe a tarp high, high above the rink? Somehow positioned so it doesn’t block out the sightlines for the nosebleed seats? It would negate the open-air hockey motif, but at least the game would proceed uninterrupted.

Islanders defenseman Brendan Witt knows how to brace himself for an on-ice hit. Presumably, that professional National Hockey League training helped him literally walk away from being hit by an SUV:

Witt was crossing Arch Street [in Philadelphia] to get a cup of coffee when a gold Yukon truck made an illegal turn and hit the 34-year-old. Newsday says Witt tried to jump on the hood of the vehicle before being thrown to the ground as he was struck.

“I’m okay,” Witt told the crowd as he dusted himself off, according to Newsday. “I’ve got to go play some hockey. I’m a hockey player. I’m okay. No big deal.”

And indeed, Witt played tonight, despite his automotive run-in. Unfortunately, he and his New York teammates got thumped 6-2 by the Flyers.

Witt did come out of the game relatively unscathed: Two hits and an even plus/minus. So no ill effects. Still, I can’t believe the team didn’t insist on giving him a check-up to ensure no damage. Maybe if he has a future encounter with a tractor-trailer, Witt will take the night off…

It was bound to happen: Days after I took my first-ever skate on the Rockefeller Center ice rink, I’ve got the itch to buy a new pair of blades.

Which I need like a hole in the head. I’ve got little enough time as it is for eating and breathing, practically — scheduling ice time is a laughable notion at this point. New ice skates would end up in the back of a closet, along with the all the other clutter I accumulate. And while the expense isn’t an issue, the inevitable new hockey-gear add-ons will start looking like rational purchases to go along with shiny new footwear, and before you know it, several hundred dollars disappear.

So I really should disabuse myself of this budding impulse-purchase impulse.

Except that, bad ice and all, it felt so good gliding around out there. Damn it.

Maybe the key is to long after ice-skating equipment that doesn’t actually exist. To wit: High-quality hockey skates with specialized titanium-adamantium alloy metal blades. If I settle for nothing but this imaginary best, it’ll keep athletic-consumer urges at bay.

Apparently, recent goal-line injuries in the National Hockey League have created a groundswell of sentiment for a rule change that allows goaltenders to handle the puck outside the crease. Thankfully, the league’s general managers don’t agree:

The merits of potentially eliminating it were discussed, but didn’t gain much momentum. The trapezoid rule was introduced as part of a package of changes coming out of the NHL lockout and San Jose Sharks GM Doug Wilson thought it was time to take a closer look at it. However, he wasn’t upset that his colleagues chose to leave it in the rulebook.

I’m not sure why the focus has been exclusively on the goalie’s role in working the puck. Why hasn’t no-touch, or automatic, icing been considered in this latest debate? If the concern is over reducing serious injury risk from the mad scramble into the endboards, no-touch practically eliminates the possibility. And it won’t burn game-clock — and thus, more potential goal-scoring time — like the goalie’s puck-handling does.

There’s a long-standing aversion in the NHL to the no-touch rule, with complaints that it would take some juice out of the North American game’s tempo. But if player safety is now overriding that concern, then why isn’t no-touch being recognized as a more obvious solution than goalie intervention? It’s like that option has been so discredited as a possibility that it doesn’t even enter a rules-change conversation anymore.

Today is a big day in hockey history: The 50th anniversary of the late Montreal great Jacques Plante being the first goaltender to wear a protective facemask during a National Hockey League game. Thus changing the face of the NHL, literally and figuratively.

It’s worth noting that this golden anniversary falls during a November that, in a couple of weeks, will also produce a Friday the 13th. The connection? In pop-cultural terms, the old-style hockey mask that Plante debuted in 1959 really hit the limelight 23 years later, when Jason first donned his in Friday the 13th Part III. Thus turning a highly-visible piece of athletic equipment into an even more recognizable horror-movie icon.

I’ll let you decide if November the 1st or Friday the 13th is the more significant date for hockey-heads. I just like the juxtapositional occurrence of the two dates on this particular anniversary, the 50th commemoration of Plante’s debut.

Times have changed, of course. Plante’s first mask, and the flat-plated ones that became standard netminder equipment during the ’60s and ’70s, morphed into today’s ornately-decorated catcher’s-mask models, with little resemblance to the original designs. Even though Jason Voorhees stuck with the old-school look in his 2009 remake (how could he not?), the on-ice product goes for less scare and more flare.

Greg “Puck Daddy” Wyshynski saw fit to link back and expand upon my little post on what might have been had the Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs swapped cities/arenas in the early 1980s, the proposal of which recently has been alleged by former Oilers owner Peter Pocklington. Much thanks to Wysh for the added exposure in the hockey blogosphere.

I was inspired to comment on the Puck Daddy blog on some of the further ramifications from this what-if-ing. Included in that is Wysh’s point about the New York Rangers’ Stanley Cup drought possibly having extended well past 1994, since they wouldn’t have had a cash-poor Oilers franchise from which to import Cup-winning ringers that year (in which case, the New Jersey Devils’ new Prudential Center arena might have a seat count representing the year 1940). Another commenter pointed out that the Calgary Flames would also have been affected in this scenario; since they arrived in the province in 1980 (from Atlanta), I’d speculate that they, not a relocated Leafs team, would have become Alberta’s favored team.

Anyway, since I went a little long in my commenting on Puck Daddy, I figured I should bring that verbiage back to this blog, for personal posterity’s sake. So here it is, and if it doesn’t speak for itself, at least it’ll leave some cryptic puckery for future pondering:

As for team mergers, it’s the NHL’s distinction to have fostered the last one among the 4 big leagues: 1977, when the Minnesota North Stars basically swallowed the Cleveland Barons (formerly the Golden State/Oakland Seals, answering the question, “Whatever happened to the now-extinct 6th team from the 1967 expansion?”). The major consequence of that deal is that it brought the Gund brothers into the league, who later moved on to the expansion franchise in San Jose.

Minor quibble: The league was already set on Sunbelt expansion before Bettman, under President-For-Life John Ziegler. If anything, to further the never-was scenario, I’d think they’d have started planting flags in Florida and Texas earlier, in the late ’80s — and maybe achieve a favored-nation-status with ESPN that extends to present day? (Hah!)

Anyway, Gretzky would be the central figure here. Reminds me of similar speculation from some AP writer 10-15 years ago, who wondered what would have happened had Bobby Hull never signed with the Winnipeg Jets, thus strangling the WHA as a stillborn. Ultimate upshot: Gretz enters the Draft in the late ’70s, gets picked by the Leafs in the 2nd round (due to size concerns), and goes on to lead his hometown team to glory. (If anyone can track down that anonymous wire article, I’d be a happy camper.)

To adapt a current-day political statement for hockey purposes, call this “Buds for Oil“: A long-ago proposal to simultaneously relocate two Canadian-based NHL teams.

The biography of one-time Oilers owner Peter Pocklington says the scheme called for the entire team to move to Toronto to play in Maple Leaf Gardens. The Leafs, in turn, would have found a home in Edmonton’s new arena, which at that time was called the Coliseum.

In the book “I’d Trade Him Again,” Pocklington says Leafs owner Harold Ballard was having financial troubles and made the proposal in 1980. Ballard also wanted Pocklington to pay him $50 million in cash.

Pocklington, who was vilified in Edmonton when he traded Wayne Gretzky in 1988, says he was all for the market swap, but Ballard backed out in the end.

To find an equivalent, you could look to the 1972 NFL ownership swap between the Los Angeles Rams and Baltimore Colts. That deal actually went down, although the team colors and players remained in their established locations (until both teams left their towns years later), with only Robert Irsay and Carroll Rosenbloom swapping deeds. The Oilers-Leafs exchange would have taken things a step further, with an Original Six franchise leaving Canada’s largest city, and being replaced by a squad from the just-vanquished upstart World Hockey Association.

Had this somehow happened, the obvious result would have been the transfer of the Ontario-born and bred Wayne Gretzky from the western hinterlands to the heart of hockey country. Presumably, these Toronto Oilers would have hauled in a clutch of Stanley Cups in the ’80s. What’s more, it would have been extremely unlikely that Pocklington would have felt the financial pressure to trade away Gretzky by the end of that decade. So the Great One might have stayed with one team for his whole career, and the NHL’s Sunbelt expansion would have needed a different catalyst than the LA Kings’ acquisition of Gretzky (although it still would have happened).

As for the prospects of the Edmonton Maple Leafs, I’d have to believe they would have fared much worse. The city of Edmonton showed during the lean ’90s that it didn’t care much for supporting a foundering organization, and the Ballard-led Leafs were exactly that. Without a wildly successful team to root for, chances are that NHL hockey would have withered in Oil Town, to the point where a relocated Leafs franchise might have had to relocate yet again — leaving Edmonton without an NHL team in the end.

No telling just how much meat there was to this. Ballard could have just been feeling out possibilities for raising the cash he wanted (which he ultimately got from bringing in Molson Brewery as a partner). Likewise, Pocklington could be trumping up what was only informal talks, just to generate interest in his book. But it’s an intriguing alternate-history scenario.

I was in hockey heaven yesterday, with National Hockey League games on television pretty much continuously from noon until the wee post-midnight hours of Sunday morning.

I was able to watch all that Saturday extended ice-time thanks to the annual season-opening NHL Center Ice free preview, which is running to nearly the end of October this year. And yet, I’m feeling inexplicably short-changed. Because today, only three days after the first regular-season puck was dropped, the league is inexplicably taking today off, with no games on the schedule.

What gives? Usually some especially compelling competing event, sports or non-sports, would make the NHL clear out for the day/night. But I don’t see anything on the TV schedule that’s prompting this move. Major League Baseball closes out their 2009 season today, but big deal. No awards shows to draw away eyeballs either. It’s not exactly a disaster, but I can’t figure why a major-pro league would break the continuity of a season’s start with an early hole in the league-wide schedule.

What’s more, they’re going to pull this Sunday no-show again this month: October 18th is also NHL-free.

I really don’t get it. Considering the Olympic two-week hiatus for player participation in the Vancouver Games this February, you’d think the resulting compressed schedule would eliminate any empty dates. Whatever magic the schedulemakers cast to put this all together, I can’t work it out.

I wonder how the bottoms of my dress shoes manage to get smoother with wear-and-tear? It would make more sense to me that they get coarser.

I guess that’s why, when I’m on the sidewalk, I try to walk around with slight scuffing motions, in an effort to gain more traction. This, despite knowing that it produces exactly the opposite effect. I attribute this irrational behavior to my being a hockey fan, and thus attempting to emulate the traditional goaltender prepping of the crease (known as the “goalie dance” or “building a nest”). Even this is the wrong approach on my part, since the goalie is using his skate blades to rough up the surface beneath him, and my intent is the opposite. Although the end result — a friction-based mooring — is our shared goal.

None of this would have anything to do with tomorrow’s opening night of the 2009-10 National Hockey League season. If anything, it just means I need a new pair of shoes. And maybe some pads.

This is new to me: TSN is tagging the National Hockey League games currently being played as “NHL-X”, like like in this headline.

That “X” stands for “exhibition”, of course, given that regular season doesn’t start until October (as usual). I suppose they could have gone for “NHL-PRE”, to signify the preseason (that sounds more French, which should have been apropos). I don’t know what’s preferred in Canada, but I recall a long-ago debate at the Sports Desk I used to work at over the correct terminology for games that don’t count, in any team sport. Personally, I prefer “preseason”, although not strongly so; I guess it gives the glorified intersquad scrimmages a veneer of organized legitimacy. “Exhibition”, to me, sounds more like some kind of showcased skills competition, less sport than spectacle.

Along with its compactness for easier headline-writing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “X” was chosen as an echo of all things “extreme”, including the X-Games. Which would make the labeling even more laughable. But if it perks up interest in the upcoming season that much more, then game on…

What do I think of Chicago Blackhawks star forward Patrick Kane’s court-ordered penalty for assaulting a taxi driver in Buffalo?

The 20-year-old player and his 21-year-old cousin, James Kane, were given conditional discharges, meaning they will avoid any penalties if they stay out of trouble for a year and write apologies to cabbie Jan Radecki.

That written apology condition, oddly enough, reminds me of my long-ago critique on how writing is regarded by authority figures:

As someone who does a lot of writing for a living, it still blows my mind when I encounter so many people who have a built-in aversion to doing any real writing (i.e., non-email/IM sentence fragments). And it’s really easy to figure out the root of that aversion: Teachers who inflict, rather than instruct, writing on their students. When you frame the act of writing as the consequence of doing something wrong, naturally the student is going to develop a distaste for that communication skill, and it’ll probably stay distasteful for their entire lives.

And that distasteful feeling now extends into the criminal justice system. I realize this is probably standard procedure, and hardly as punishing as jail time. Still, nothing reinforces the idea of writing as a negative exercise like making it a criminal reparation. Small wonder most people avoid it at all costs, even in a Digital Age that relies on the written word more than ever.

Once again, I must cite Bill Simmons’ bold prediction on the future of sports journalism, as published by ESPN The Magazine:

…I see a day when the following sequence will be routine: Player demands trade on blog; team obliges and announces deal on Twitter; player thanks old fans, takes shots at old team and gushes about new team on Facebook. We will not need anyone to report this, just someone to recap it. Preferably with links.

Only three months after writing that, Simmons is seeing his vision come true. At least a healthy chunk of it. Because today, the Tampa Bay Lightning followed that social-media script by teasing, and then formally announcing, a player trade via Twitter.

Granted, the deal was hardly earth-shaking: Underachieving forward Evgeny Artyukin to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for winger Drew Miller and a third-round draft pick in 2010. It’s certainly nowhere near the magnitude of tonight’s NFL news about Michael Vick signing with Philadelphia (which was delivered through traditional media). But it does demonstrate a willingness by a National Hockey League club to bypass the established channels with high-level news that’s especially relevant for fans. And it’s significant that this was an announcement directly from an NHL front office, versus the roundabout way in which the NBA’s Shaquille O’Neal learned about his trade, through his tweetstream.

Suddenly, social media outlets are official major-pro sports communication organs. The players are likewise utilizing online media. The future’s now. And while sports reporters aren’t out of a job (and won’t be, given that there’ll always be dirt to dig up that will never be tweeted or permalinked by the primaries), they increasingly will be competing to be heard, and will have to refine their message accordingly.