It's Bill Belichick. Duane Starks was just placed on IR, and Bill's wondering if you're free this Sunday.

Oy, what a tough pick. On paper, they look like teams heading in opposite directions, but they don't play that way. The Pats' tough run defense or Ricky Williams getting his sea legs back? Recruiting the Bruins' healthy scratches for the secondary or, well, Gus Frerotte? Guess this is why King gets the big bucks.

There's a pretty good hockey tournament at these Winter Olympic things. Lots of NHL stars, a wider ice surface that gives skill players room to work, no-touch icing and fast faceoffs to keep the game flowing, and none of that "I don't want to get hurt, so I won't check you" pussy-footing around that makes All-Star Games such a bore.

Oh, wait. That's right. King's a card carrying member of the National Association of American Sports Columnists, Local 1337. Their bylaws specifically state that its members must hate hockey. Violators will be fired and blackballed. Those columnists who actually like hockey must feign indifference until Todd Bertuzzi does something else to embarrass the sport.

That's OK, King. I don't blame you. Nobody wants to see you so broke that Buster has to flip a tin washer with notches on one side to make NFL picks next year.

I'm a bit, um, sensitive to hockey coverage in the US right now. The fact that you singled out downhill skiing and figure skating triggered that reflex. Most columnists are falling back in to the old habit of completely disregarding the NHL between the first week of the season and the first week of April.

Do you think some combination of NBC, the USOC, and the Big Sponsors decided that the Athens games were overexposed? I have a feeling that, instead of a long, constant drizzle of promotions, we're in the calm before a storm of hype.

Wonderful column, King. From a lifelong Penguin fan suffering through the Season From Hell, thank you.

One correction, though: Mario's last game before retiring in '97 was in Philadelphia. His first game back was against Toronto.

By the way, Bill S? This was a significant enough event to get King to write about hockey before the trading deadline. This doesn't happen often, so shut up and run with it! :-)

The Blues can't claim a trademark violation until the Clippers make the post-season for 25 straight years with no championships to show for it.

I'm from Pittsburgh, so I've been listening to Joey Porter's trash talk for years. If any of you honestly believe that he needs another team's "bulletin-board material" to get motivated for a game, you're more gullible than I thought. The only thing that Stevens' kinda-sorta-guarantee "motivated" Porter to do was find an open microphone.

To answer some of Wayne's questions about the NHL rule changes...

The obstruction crackdown helped in two ways. First of all, the decrease in clutch 'n' grab defense gave players more space to set up plays. Second, the old, slow guys who couldn't mend their ways created more power play opportunities. That didn't do much for flow, but it drove up goal-per-game averages.

During regular 5-on-5 play, the trapezoid rule prevented "protected" goaltenders from nullifying the forecheck by playing the puck in the corner. (My idea was to allow goalies to be checked in the corners, but volunteering to be hit with 90 MPH vulcanized rubber projectiles means you're as fragile as an NFL quarterback now.) I think they should relax that rule when penalty killers clear their zone, though, because goalies will just stop the puck before the goal line anyway.

The expanded attacking zones and the abolition of the two-line pass rule give the defense more square feet of ice to cover, which means more space for passing and playmaking.

The obstruction crackdown is working this year because of new blood in the home office. Former referee Stephen Walkom took over as director of officials this year, and was given a mandate from Gary Bettman to make it stick. Walkom used the Olympic break to review the season, noticed some slacking off, and told the refs to tighten it up again for the stretch run. It will be interesting to see if it holds up for the playoffs, or if the refs just "let 'em play."

How often can OLN's "Televised Sports Amateur Hour" demonstrate it's boneheadedness? Yes, that "technical difficulty" turned out nicely for viewers. (And I don't know about you, but I kinda liked the unusually high angle from the center-ice camera at Scotiabanc Place.)

What's exposing OLN, though, is their bonus coverage. Last night, after the Tampa @ Ottawa tilt, they switched to CBC's feed of Anaheim @ Calgary. I half expected Al Trautwig to introduce the game with: "Now that we've shown you how American networks screw up live coverage of ice hockey, here's how Canada gets it right." Even then, OLN screwed up by cropping the sides of CBC's HD feed. So if you weren't among the 17 people who get OLN-HD, you got a lot of clipped graphics.

...do [the Pirates] even play any more?

Well, there are 9 guys in black-and-gold baseball uniforms who stagger onto the field 162 times a year. But I wouldn't insult anyone associated with professional baseball by claiming that they play.

But the Pirates and AZ Cardinals still have their fans. I'd have to rank the Chicago Blackhawks as the lowest of the low. Theirs is a malicious kind of stupidity. An Original Six franchise in one of the largest American markets, yet they refuse to put their games on local TV, they have to pay the radio station to air games, and the Chicago media have all but forgotten that they exist. The Tribune and the Sun-Times don't even assign beat writers. No wonder they averaged around 7,000 empty seats a night this year.

Dwyane Wade is a great flaming pile of fantastitude...

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why King Kaufman gets paid the big bucks.