Did Mike Milbury’s barbs drive Alexander Ovechkin to the barber for a more down-to-business hairdo and mindset? (Patrick McDermott/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

Don Cherry’s critics are going to have a field day with this one.

Asked about the remarkable turnaround of Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals, the bombastic TV star offered up a unique take.

“Mike Milbury, I think, deserves a lot of credit here,” Cherry said on Toronto’s Fan 590 radio station. “He’s not getting it. He’d come on and he ripped Ovechkin – he should be ashamed of himself, boom boom boom, and called him every name – and that’s when Ovechkin changed.

“And if you people have noticed – and I haven’t said it on Hockey Night in Canada, I might yet – have you noticed after a game, he just gives it a [fist] pump?” Cherry asked. “Have you noticed that? Have you noticed he’s got nice short hair, he doesn’t look like a wild man anymore? Adam Oates has got to him and said look, get off this celebrity thing. And what happened was, he was more of a celebrity than he was a hockey player. He forgot.

“And you know, when I went to the Bruins, that’s the same thing happened to me — I got there, they had gold chains on and all that stuff, and they were celebrities there, they forgot to play hockey. They loved the life, they loved the travel, the only thing that got to them, they didn’t like the hockey. And you know, that’s what made Bobby Orr great, and I’ll tell you why: he had no businesses, he did nothing, all he wanted was to play hockey. And that’s the name of the game and Ovechkin’s right there now. He’s playing hockey instead of being a big-time celebrity.”

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Don Cherry’s tweets are often as colorful as his renowned jackets. (Andre Ringuette/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

Collecting Don Cherry’s finest moments on Twitter as he approaches the 1,000 tweet milestone might seem a bit like a band putting out a greatest hits compilation right after their first album.

That just goes to show how often the Hockey Night In Canada legend tweets pure, unadulterated gold.

Back in the early days, Cherry simply linked to Coach’s Corner videos online, but has since graduated to offering up hot sports opinions and the occasional day-in-the-life stuff which, of course, is the premium material.

We all know Don doesn’t actually send these tweets himself. He’s a moderate Luddite when it comes to this stuff: he avoids technology himself, but understands the way it can enhance his brand so he has Kathy Broderick, a producer at Hockey Night, do the actual work. Top marks to Kathy, because she does a bang-up job of capturing Don’s voice while translating him into English. No small feat, that.

Here are some of our favorites so far as we look forward to to next thousand.

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Is the Commissioner keeping things from us that we’d like to know? (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

• A simple yes or no question. The great Scott Feschuk imagines a world where the commish channels his inner Lance Armstrong and fesses up on Oprah’s couch. Also, free puppies!

• Something old, something new. True fact. More Minnesotans kept warm during the lockout by wearing a Wild sweater – Zach Parise or Ryan Suter – than by burning an effigy of Bettman. The Wild faithful finally get to see their pricey free agents don the togs tonight, along with rookies Mikael Granlund and Mat Dumba.

• Wishful thinking. The Sens start the season with three goalies and the belief that Ben Bishop could net a top-four defender in trade. Yeah, for a 26-year-old with a 7-8-3 career record.

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The NHL’s wartime consigliere, Gary Bettman must answer to the Board of Governors in the aftermath of the lockout. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

By Stu Hackel

In the aftermath of the lockout, many people have discussed how the NHL should express its regret to fans. ESPN.com’s Pierre Lebrun had a list of 10 things the league could do, the top one being free access to the Center Ice TV package — an idea that others endorse, but it will likely never happen because, as Steve Lepore explained in his Puck The Media blog, it’s not solely the property of the league to give away.

Ken Campbell of The Hockey News had another idea: Fire Gary Bettman.

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Their team in New Jersey, Kings fans in L.A. anxiously await a Cup coronation. (Chris Williams/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

Maybe it ends on Saturday night and maybe not. The Kings, who were juuuust good enough to win two overtime games and then ride their home crowd to a more decisive Game 3 victory, dropped Game 4 to the Devils on Wednesday night in another close outing and now must build on their incredible undefeated road record to win the Stanley Cup this weekend.

The Devils, meanwhile, look to extend their season. Twenty-six teams have lost the first three games of a Cup final. New Jersey is just the sixth to reach Game 5. Only two have pushed the series to a Game 6; both, in fact, went to Game 7. The Maple Leafs came all the way back to win in 1942 against the Red Wings, Detroit nearly returned the favor in 1945, losing to Toronto 2-1 on home ice.

Although it seems the hockey gods changed allegiances on Wednesday, bestowing a larger share of good luck on New Jersey than they did in the first three contests, the Devils also benefited from better execution. They finally took their own advice and exploited the flaw they detected in Kings goalie Jonathan Quick — shooting high. L.A. meanwhile, played tentatively at times and missed the Devils’ net entirely with their shots on over 20 occasions, the nervous prospect of winning the Cup at home perhaps in their minds. All that should make Game 5 rather interesting.

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Blackhawks star Marian Hossa was hospitalized by a dangerous illegal headshot of the kind the NHL has been trying to eliminate, not a fight or a clean, hard check. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

What threatens to become the NHL’s Spring of Shame continued on Day 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs when Marian Hossa was stretchered off in the first period of the Coyotes-Blackhawks game on Tuesday night, the result of a clearly illegal but unpenalized hit by multiple offender Raffi Torres. It was the lasting image on another compelling night of playoff hockey and it overshadowed all else, just as each daily episode of brutal play has done.

This has to be viewed as a crisis for the NHL. The league was prepared to make this its greatest playoffs ever, especially in the U.S., with NBC and its family of channels pumping every game of every series into homes for the first time. But what will likely be remembered by its growing audience is not the best hockey of the year, but perhaps the most barbaric. Who knows what that will mean in the long run? More on that later.

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Mad Mike Milbury often slings sexist cliches like “hit ‘em with your purse.” (Photo by Mary Altaffer/AP)

By Stu Hackel

At some point, Mike Milbury is going to have to come to terms with the 21st Century. His future employment as a hockey opinionist on television may depend on it, but the contemporary world is obviously not one in which he is comfortable or happy.

For a few years, since he left the employ of Charles Wang and the Islanders — we won’t bother rehashing his many questionable moves as Isles GM other than to say they were how he picked up, and even embraced, his nickname “Mad Mike” — Milbury has done triple duty as a studio voice on Hockey Night in Canada, NESN and NBC/Versus/NBC Sports Network. It’s a passionate voice, that’s for sure, and hockey is a passionate game. On the surface, it seems like a good match.

Milbury’s problem is that his passions too often go unchecked. He clearly has trouble controlling himself when the camera is on and the mic is live, and he says things that reveal thoughts that really don’t do his image much good. He may not care about that, but he’s also a spokesman for the networks who employ him and the sport he’s worked in for pretty much his entire career. In those capacities, he is not exactly a shining representative.

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New coach Randy Carlyle put his Maple Leafs through a grueling practice and bag skate…after a victory. (Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Will Brian Burke’s late-season gambit pay off? Replacing his coach and long-time friend Ron Wilson with Randy Carlyle — the same coaching hire that won their Anaheim Ducks the 2007 Stanley Cup — was a move for the moment to be sure. But it is also a move for the future, assuming that Burke has one in Toronto. In this league, you never know.

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Not all hockey fights are the same and this complex issue deserves more than a “yes” or “no” answer. (Terry Lee/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

There’s lots to chew on in the annual NHLPA/CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada Players’ Poll, the results of which were made public over the weekend. Pavel Datsyuk was pretty much acclaimed as the NHL’s best player, Zdeno Chara the best defenseman, and Henrik Lundqvist the best goalie. The players say they think the Canucks are overrated, the Blues are underrated, that they’d love to play for the Blackhawks, they love playing at Montreal’s Bell Centre, and  the Penguins Dan Bylsma is the coach they’d most like to play for.

There’s lots more, of course, but let’s stop to consider the issues-oriented questions in the poll, namely those on fighting and the instigator rule. There are some serious problems here, and they start with the questions themselves.

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The parade of concussions and players visiting the NHL discipline czar, continued with Rene Bourque (top) plastering Brent Seabrook on Sunday and adding more fuel to the debate about how to stop the carnage. (Charles Cherney/AP)

By Stu Hackel

With concern growing in the hockey world about a spike in concussions during the past few weeks, the wide range of proposed solutions has included restoring the two-line offside pass — “bringing back the red line,” as many hockey people say, although the line hasn’t been removed, only the old offside rule that was based on it.

But it’s very questionable whether the consequences of restoring it would be worth what might be gained.
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