Off Wing Opinion

For about seven months now, Off Wing Opinion has been closely following the activities of Hailey Wickenheiser, the Captain of the Canadian Women's Olympic Hockey team, as she attempts to make a go at things in Men's professional hockey. With no worlds left to conquer in North America, Wickenheiser accepted an offer from Salamat, a second division team in the Finnish professional league.

Much to my delight, she's made a great impression. As the New York Times reports:

Here, in this small town where snow and ice cover the ground well into April, Ms. Wickenheiser is a hero who has turned this obscure Finnish team into a household name. The hockey arena is papered with news articles about her exploits. She plays to sellout crowds everywhere.

In 23 games for Kirkkonummi Salamat (Lightning), a second-division team, Ms. Wickenheiser, the captain and M.V.P. of Canada's gold medal women's Olympic team in Salt Lake City, has won a vast majority of her face-offs, an impressive contribution that helped to advance her team beyond the playoffs last week to Finland's first division, the second-highest level in men's hockey here.

Just for reference, the Finnish second division is the third highest level of professional hockey in the nation. As her team moves up another level, Wickenheiser is sure to run into bigger, and faster players -- something which has some folks concerned:

Rene Fasel, the president of the International Ice Hockey Federation, is the latest to join in the criticism. In an editorial in the organization's newsletter, Mr. Fasel said the federation did not want to promote mixed hockey because women would only get hurt.

"Defensemen in hockey are often well over 100 kilograms"

Though two Buffalo Sabres may be cleared to return to their team after being exposed to SARS, another event in the ice hockey world has been affected. The Women's World Ice Hockey Championship, scheduled for this week in Beijing, has been cancelled over fears that players might be exposed to the disease. Over at Medrants, the good doctor says there are some indications progress is being made in the fight against the virus.

This hasn't been the best of years for the Buffalo Sabres, as the threat of insolvency continually hung over a lost season. Today, that season just got a little tougher, and a little scarier too:

Two Buffalo Sabres defencemen were under observation Saturday after they may have had limited exposure to SARS, a mysterious and potentially deadly respiratory illness.

Sabres spokesman Mike Gilbert announced that Rhett Warrener and Brian Campbell, who played in Friday night's 4-1 win over Montreal, did not travel with the team for its game at Carolina on Saturday.

Gilbert stressed the decision to hold the players back was a precaution, and that neither has shown any signs of being infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The decision was made after the team's doctors consulted with Erie County and New York state health officials. It was determined that there was what Gilbert called "a remote chance" that the players had limited exposure to the virus after Campbell's relative visited them earlier in the week.

In Canada, a SARS outbreak in Toronto has killed four, and hospitalized many others. The epicenter of the outbreak appears to be in Hong Kong, where SARS has killed 12 people and infected another 470. Here's hoping public health officials get this under control.

Over at ESPN.com, Page 2's Eric Neel has put together a neat little piece over which sport has the best playoff system. Overall, he gives the nod to Major League Baseball, but along the way he matches the NBA Playoffs against the NHL Playoffs. Here's what he had to say in giving the nod to Mr. Stern's neighborhood:

Dead heat. But in one, you're playing for a dinged-up relic from another era, and better yet, for the chance to take it home with you, fill it up with pudding, bathe the baby in it, serve your best girl a nice hot 'n' sour soup -- whatever suits you. There is a weird, frantic energy to the NHL playoffs. Maybe it's the fierce checking, maybe it's the tough defense and scarcity of goals, but maybe what it really is is that guys truly, madly, deeply want the Cup; not the victory, or the title, or the abstract notion of being a champion, but the hardware itself, the shiny metal evidence of their desire and its accomplishment. The Larry O'Brien trophy, by comparison, is nice, but it's too pretty, and not at all funky, and really only functional as one of those tranquility garden balls you see from time to time tucked in among the ferns. All of which would add up to an NHL upset in this battle if not for one thing: The NHL playoff field is limited to exactly 1,464 teams every year, including every team in the league, every team that once was in the league but has gone out of business, every team in college and high school, and every team that plays gas-money, no-holds-barred semi-pro hockey in every nook and cranny of the country (emphasis mine -- EMc).

Neel exaggerates, but there was a time when he wasn't all that far off the mark. As recently as the early 1980s (recent for me anyway), an astounding 16 of 21 NHL franchises made the playoffs -- just under 80 percent, or better than two-thirds of the league's teams.

Back then, the regular season really did mean next to nothing. And, as the NHL began slowly creeping toward going best of seven in every round of the playoffs, it seemed as if the playoffs were nearly as long as the regular season.

But a funny thing has happened over the past twenty or so years. Thanks to the expansion-mad 1990s, the league now has 30 teams, and all of a sudden, the regular season does mean something. It means so much, that the very financial survival of certain franchises is predicated on their ability to make it to the post season and pick up some extra bucks.

Meanwhile, the NBA, which will also be adopting a best of seven format in every playoff round, has been growing as well -- to the point where 16 of the league's 29 teams make the playoffs.

Oops. Guess Neel got it wrong. Because according to my math, that means that it's slightly tougher to make the NHL playoffs than the NBA playoffs. So, if it's a push, according to Neel, the NHL ought to win every time.