10 Days To Go...

After taking much of March off, I am back as we now enter April. We are just 10 days away from my favorite time of year. The weather gets good, my birthday is at the end of the month, and the Stanley Cup Playoffs begin...

First of all, I want to give a belated birthday shout-out to Gordie Howe, who turned 84 yesterday. Second, I've been asked for my take on the firing of Montreal G.M. Pierre Gauthier, which happened Thursday. I don't believe Les Canadiens are that far away from being back in the playoffs next year, especially when you consider that they were only a goal away from a long playoff run last year. Had they scored the winner in Game Seven against the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Bruins, last year, who knows? Serge Savard, who is helping Jeff Molson in the search for a new G.M., pointed out that the candidates for coach and G.M. MUST be fluently billingual. In other words, it will not be enough to be strictly Anglophone, OR sricytly Francophone. Montreal is unique, in that the politics get involved in a way that does not happen anywhere else in the NHL, though that may be about to change...

I say that may about to change, because the speculation is swirling around the Phoenix Coyotes franchise, and that speculation is saying that a move to Quebec City may well be in the offing, in which case the Dogs would become Les Nouveau Nordiques.

With 6 days to go in the regular season, Philadelphia beat Pittsburgh 6-4, in a game that ended in a wild brawl, that even Flyers Coach Peter Laviolette wanted to get into. He succeded in getting both one of his assistant coaches and himself ejected. You don't see coaches get ejected from a game very often. The Red Wings beat Florida 2-1 in a shootout, to get a much-needed extra point that put them ahead of Nashville for fourth seedd in the upcoming playoffs.

BREAKING NEWS AS WE GO TO PRESS-New York Cosmos legend Giorgio Chinaglia has died at age 65. He was a star with Lazio of Italian Serie A before he joined Pele and Franz Beckenbauer with the Cosmos of the Old North American Soccer League in 1976. He was the all-time leading goal scorer in NASL history.