Let's punch it up a little

It's hard not to look into the mirror these days, thinking these vile thoughts, without wondering whether I've somehow broken through a time warp, or staggered onto the set of the next Geico caveman commercial, to find that I am indeed the caveman.

But here goes . . .

Note to NHL: Bring back the fighting, as fast as possible, I'm begging you.

In the spirit of full disclosure, it is without question that my sentiments are influenced by watching what most often has been an emotionally bankrupt Bruins team here in 2006-07. Even when there is the rare case of group indigestion along the boards, I have taken to murmuring in the press box, "Please, don't anyone get mad down there. Whatever you do, don't throw a punch! Gentlemen, above all -- manners."

They must be listening, because, golly gee, I've yet to even hear a discouraging word uttered, never mind witness a right cross to someone's kisser. Did all the skating suits lose their spit and vinegar when they walked away from the humiliating beating they took at the collective bargaining table? Sure looks that way.

Honestly, isn't the politeness of the product killing you? If you are of a certain age, maybe 30 or older, you must remember when every lineup had at least a couple of guys who showed up each night just aching for a fight. Bob Probert come to mind? Terry O'Reilly? Tiger Williams? Games had a pulse, oozed passion.

No doubt, the whole thing got carried away, to the point that we had to witness the sad spectacle of staged bouts that really had no context within the, uh, battle. The whole fight theme got beaten to death, if you will, and wasn't so much disgusting as it was downright silly and boring. A true fight was a spectacle. A staged bout was a farce. If you watched enough, you knew the difference, as sure as you knew art from pornography.

So the Lords of the Boards went about cleaning it all up, tossing the boxers out with the turnbuckle, with the hope that the game would capture the imagination of America's TV-viewing public. To do that, the Lords believed, they couldn't have the cavemen carrying cudgels and beating one another into the ice surface. And that thinking had some merit around 1990.

But look where American TV has gone since then. There is no taste standard. There is no dignity factor. The uglier and the gorier, the more outlandish and the more prurient, the better. Hate entices, blood simply sells. And we can't wait to watch. (Save yourself the e-mail, because you don't have an argument, unless your clicker got frozen on Cartoon Network or Animal Planet.)

Think anyone down here in the Lower 50 today would turn away from one of the buckets o'blood we witnessed in the early '70s? Can you imagine the ratings that something like the Bruins' first-round sweep of the Maple Leafs in 1969 -- Pat Quinn's likeness hanged from the second balcony after his hit on Bobby Orr -- would bring today? Absolute guarantee: that kind of NHL would not be on the Vs. network. No, sir. We'd be watching that kind of hockey strictly via pay-per-view. And the third period might cost more than the first.

That said, at the time it was the right decision to try to sanitize the game. We all know TV drives the bus, and by the end of the '80s, we still held some sensibilities and talked about social rights and good taste. But, folks, TV drove the bus right off the road, much to our entertainment and approval, and that now should be Gary Bettman & Co.'s mandate to follow the party right over the Jersey barrier. No time like the present to take the Coolest Game on Ice and allow it to simmer and sizzle again.

To open the emotional floodgates, and boost the ratings and attendance beyond imagination, the Lords of the Boards would have to amend the rulebook and once again allow bench-clearing brawls. That is not going to happen. In fact, given the tenor of times in sports labor, the NHLPA might step in and prevent its rank and file from playing in what could be fairly portrayed as an unsafe work environment.

But the easiest fix, right here and right now, would be to thin the rulebook out just enough to bring back one of the game's charming attributes: the third man in.

Once was the time when the game allowed a teammate to stick up for another teammate. And because the game allowed it, rosters were built, in part, on that principle. And when a teammate was able to stick up for another teammate, lo and behold, esprit de corps was increased, tempers raised, and fists flew. It was some kind of wonderful, I'll tell you that.

In today's game, to be a third man in is also to be a quick exit, stage right. Because of that, night after night, period after period, politeness rules and passion fades deeper . . . and deeper . . . and deeper into the background.

Skill is a great thing. The NHL today, as in decades past, is full of dazzling skaters and brilliant stickhandlers. They provide some great entertainment. But the greatest entertainment of all, which is what the NHL can be, and in fact once was, is when dazzling skill and raw passion skate side by side, on a sheet of ice ringed by boards that act as the frame of a heaving, emotional pit.

At its best, the NHL is a bouquet of both roses and thorns. Today, with the barbs plucked from the product, the scent is not nearly the same.

Going south in Atlanta

There is nothing wrong with Atlanta goalie Kari Lehtonen, but his game the last couple of weeks has left plenty to be desired.

Considered one of the game's top young goaltenders, the 23-year-old Finn, a sensational 7-1-1 out of the gate this season, entered last night's game in a 1-6-0 slump. His goals-against mark was a slightly bloated 3.06, and his save percentage a pedestrian .894. What happened to the Finnish goaltending mystique?

On a club that tends to struggle when its power play is muted (not the case during Boston's last visit, when Atlanta went 3 for 11), a Lehtonen letdown can lead to grim results. The Thrashers were stumbling along at 4 for their last 31 on the power play after Friday night's 3-2 loss in Tampa.

Into the fray comes Jason Krog, the former University of New Hampshire star and 1999 Hobey Baker winner. Krog, 31, was the AHL's top scorer (18 games/39 points) when the Thrashers summoned him Friday from the Chicago Wolves, and he scored against the Lightning. Krog, who had limited success with the Islanders and Ducks, spent the last two years in Europe (Austria, Switzerland, Sweden) before hitching on with Atlanta in July as a free agent.

Atlanta has three of the game's most potent offensive performers in Ilya Kovalchuk, Marian Hossa, and Slava Kozlov (all among the league's top 10 scorers last week). But beyond those three, scoring becomes a real challenge.

Meanwhile, Boston pivot Marc Savard is on a pace to eclipse the career-high 97 points he notched last season with Atlanta, refuting opinions that he was more a givee than a giver with the Thrashers.

Dealing from a position of strength

The Blackhawks aren't actively shopping prime defenseman Brent Seabrook, according to one veteran general manager, but with the loss of Michael Handzus (blown knee), they have to find Martin Havlat a running mate when the dynamic Czech forward returns from his ankle injury. He should be back in a week or two.

Chicago has enough underlying talent on defense with the likes of Duncan Keith and Cam Barker that it can consider -- must consider? --wheeling the 6-foot-3-inch Seabrook. His combination of talent, age (21), salary ($942,000 for this season and 2007-08), and the fact that he is a coveted righthanded shot, make him extremely easy to move.

With their two prime point men, Andrei Markov and Sheldon Souray, free to walk as of July 1, the Canadiens could get very interested in Seabrook. Perhaps this is the deal that finally will bring Sergei Samsonov back to Chicago, where he would be reunited with Rick Dudley, his close pal from their Detroit Vipers days. Dudley is the Hawks' assistant general manager.

Etc.

Hall of Famer Ray Bourque was in Toronto a couple of weeks ago to attend the induction ceremonies for his old pal, Patrick Roy. The two Quebec-born stars were casual friends for years before forming a close bond once Bourque was swapped to the Avalanche in 2000. "You play against great players and you have an idea what they're like," said Bourque. "Then when you play with them, you see how they go about their business every day, and you see why they have their success. Patrick was prepared. He practiced. He had a true passion for the game. It was a lot of fun to be there and experience that, see it first-hand." In many ways, that description sounds like Bourque on Bourque. Attention to detail was just one of Bourque's specialties. St. Patrick was equally meticulous. "I think we got along," said Bourque, "because we are both perfectionists, in games and practices. I've always believed, if the best players do it that way, then that's a godsend for a coach. If not, then it's an embarrassment. If the older players go the opposite way of a coach, then the whole team goes that way."

As of Friday, Anaheim's blue line powerhouses, Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger, were first and sixth in scoring among NHL defensemen. The Toronto pairing of Tomas Kaberle and Bryan McCabe was 2-3, and Montreal's Andrei Markov and Sheldon Souray were 6-7. Earlier in the week, those three pairings covered the 1-6 spots. In the post-expansion era, only twice have teammates finished 1-2 atop the scoring list for defensemen. The brothers Potvin did it first for the 1975-76 Islanders, with Denis Potvin notching 98 points and Jean Potvin collecting 72. Gary Suter (91) and Al MacInnis (83) did it with the 1987-88 Calgary Flames.

Prior to his University of Vermont days, Bruins goalie Tim Thomas played junior hockey in Michigan for the Lakeland Jets. And even though his parents at one point hawked their wedding rings to rake up the cash to send him to a goalie camp, Thomas briefly surrendered the gear and moved to forward. "I switched so I could fight, and I fought because, hey, it was a chance to play," recalled Thomas, dubbed "Wild Thing" in those days. "At that level, the fights weren't much, really, just a lot of holding on and wrestling, where no one does much of anything." Thomas recalled not taking kindly to a Jets teammate reminding him that he should "shut up" because he was a rookie. "Ian . . . Ian . . . Ian somebody," recalled Thomas. "Sorry, I can't remember his last name. But I fought him, too."

Ex-Bruins bench boss Pat Burns, diagnosed with colon cancer in March 2004, told RDS radio in Canada last week that he has hasn't "given up on the possibility of coaching again" and is feeling much better these days. The 54-year-old Burns, who lives in Florida and consults for the Devils, attends NHL games throughout the Southeast. "I must say," said Burns, "I like the job. But when the subject of hockey comes up, with people like [Montreal coach] Guy Carbonneau, that's when the coaching bug hits me even more."

Lost in the shuffle of a new season, regrettably, was the Sept. 26 passing of former Bruin Billy Knibbs, whose only NHL stop in a 13-year pro career came with the 1964-65 Bruins -- back in the John Bucyk-Ted Green-Eddie Westfall days. Knibbs, a lefthanded center, collected 7 goals and 17 points in 53 NHL games, and spent most of the next 10 years in the AHL, wrapping up with a two-year stay in Rochester, N.Y. He played one season for Don Cherry in Rochester before Grapes was promoted to the Boston bench for the start of the 1974-75 season. Knibbs, 64, died in Midland, Ontario. According to longtime pal Harvey McKenney, Knibbs succumbed to a liver disease triggered by iron supplements he took following knee replacement surgery some four years ago. "One game I saw, he took the puck away from Gordie Howe and scored a shorthander," recalled McKenney. "Gordie ended up leaving the Garden under police escort that night after he hit Billy from behind, and Billy ended up at Newton-Wellesley hospital. And when I saw him at the hospital and asked him about it, he was like, 'Well, hey, what do you expect? I took the puck away from Gordie Howe.' "

Local agent Neil Abbott was in Nagano for the 1998 Olympics, the first en masse representation of NHLers at the Games, and was truly impressed by Japanese hockey fans. "If Japanese baseball fans are like the hockey fans," said Abbott, musing over the prospects of Daisuke Matsuzaka joining the Red Sox, "and they come to Fenway in force, they will rock the joint." Abbott was especially intrigued by a corps of some 20 Japanese drummers who hung out on the steps of the main arena, Big Hat, in Nagano and belted out "very heavy and inspiring drum pieces," he said. Leaving Big Hat after the Czechs rubbed out the Yanks, Abbott stopped by the drummers, and was pleased when one of them invited him into the ensemble. "I jumped the ropes, grabbed the drumstick, and started beating the bejesus out of the drum," said Abbott. Security moved in, and Abbott figures he was spared a visit to the local lockup when one of the drummers made clear he was there on an invite. "He saved the day," recalled Abbott, "and I retired to a local saloon for some well-deserved refreshment."

Kevin Paul Dupont's e-mail address is dupont@globe.com; material from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.