Refs seem to have rediscovered the idea that sending a player to the box and leaving his team in a potentially costly penalty-kill is one of the best ways to curb on-ice mayhem. (Mark Goldman/Icon SMI)

Perhaps Wednesday will go down as the day the NHL regained some control over the Stanley Cup playoffs and did it in the most logical manner – having the referees call penalties rather than “let the boys play.”

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

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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What line did the Stars’ Eric Nystrom  cross on Wednesday night in Dallas when he collided with the Penguins’ Kris Letang? Was it a legal hit? A targeted head shot? An unfortunate accident? It’s a question more easily asked than answered.

And it’s an important one — not just for Letang who may (or may not) have suffered his second concussion of the season as a result — but also for the NHL and its ongoing quest to help keep them game as physical as possible while ridding it of deliberate attempts to target the head. This is the kind of play that falls in between those efforts.

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Only 21, Erik Karlsson has blossomed into the NHL's best offensive defenseman. (JC Salas/Icon SMI)

It’s a bit too early to say whether Senators defenseman Erik Karlsson will be one of the NHL’s three Stars of the Week next Monday — and because it will be trade deadline day, who is even going to notice? — but he’s got a great head start with seven points in his last six periods of play.  With his goal and two assists in Ottawa’s 5-2 win over Washington on Wednesday night, Karlsson leads all NHL defenseman in scoring with 60 points — 20 more than his closest pursuer, Florida’s Brian Campbell.

Karlsson’s 47th assist on Wednesday set a new Sens franchise record, breaking Norm Maciver’s mark of 46 set during the team’s inaugural campaign of 1992-93. He’s now only three points shy of Maciver’s team mark of 63 points by a d-man in a season.

Playing in a small market is part of the reason Karlsson hasn’t gotten the acclaim he should. It doesn’t help matters when NBC’s Mike Milbury touts him for the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year, as Milbury did last night, either not realizing that Karlsson has already played two full seasons or perhaps confusing him with Devils rookie Adam Larsson.

Karlsson is just 21, and obviously doesn’t have the name recognition nor resume of Shea Weber, Nick Lidstrom or Zdeno Chara. But he has zoomed to the top ranks of blueliners this season. Last season (yes, Karlsson indeed played last season), he was a minus-30 on a poor, directionless team. Today, he’s plus-15 on an excellently coached club that is one of the NHL’s surprises — and he’s a big reason why they are.

So the inescapable question is, should Karlsson be the favorite for the Norris Trophy as top NHL defenseman?

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Isn’t that video above terrific? On Wednesday night, Tampa Bay’s 1-3-1 defense against Philadelphia forced Mike Milbury to storm off the set in Versus’s studio during the second intermission, and that’s reason enough for us to nominate the Lightning’s Guy Boucher as not just NHL Coach of Year, but also for the The George Foster Peabody Award for distinguished and meritorious public service to television.

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If the NHL really wants to rid itself of dangerous hits, going light on repeat offenders like Daniel "Carbomb" Carcillo of the Blackhawks is not the way to go about it. (Chris Seward/ZUMAPRESS.com)

As we turn the calendar page to November, it’s as good a time as any to review and assess  things in the NHL, and while we have lots of surprises with teams exceeding or falling short of expectations, no performance is more intriguing than the league’s Department of Player Safety (a name we can’t write without thinking it sounds like a government branch that oversees highway construction or traffic enforcement — if not the French Revolution’s Committee on Public Safety from 1793, which protected the new republic from internal and external enemies by using the guillotine as its preferred instrument of deterrence).
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The Rangers avoided having to disparage Brandon Dubinsky, who led the team in scoring last season, by agreeing to a new contract hours before their salary arbitration hearing. (Bennett Cohen/Icon SMI)

It’s salary arbitration time in the NHL, one of the most complicated and often anti-climactic periods of the offseason.

The first of hearings took place on Wednesday when defenseman Chris Campoli was awarded $2.5 million for next season. But the Blackhawks walked away from the award, which they indicated they would do when the sides couldn’t reach a negotiated settlement last week and signed free agent defenseman Sami Lepisto instead for $750,000, substantially less than the $2.75 million Campoli was reportedly seeking. So Campoli is now an unrestricted free agent.
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Win or lose, Bruins goalie Tim Thomas is the likely Conn Smythe winner. (Michael Ivins/US Presswire)

With the Canucks back in Boston — site of their horror show Games 3 and 4 — and the Stanley Cup in the building, the Bruins will, as their coach Claude Julien says, hope “to create a Game 7.”

The B’s will have to be better than they were on Friday in Vancouver, when the Canucks showed the physical dimension that was missing from their play during the two previous games. The Canucks took every opportunity to smash Boston players, outhitting them 47-27, forcing numerous turnovers (NHL stats had the takeaways at 15-6 in the Canucks’ favor), tightening their defensive play while getting a very strong game from Roberto Luongo, and doing all sorts of things that seemed unimaginable after Vancouver’s two-game massacre in Boston. After Game 4, we wrote that Vancouver would need a massive turnaround to halt Boston’s huge grab of the series’ momentum and we felt somewhat skeptical that they could. But that’s just what they did.
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Though players are taught to protect themselves from onrushing checkers by keeping their heads up, it's not always possible when they're looking for the puck. (Jeanine Leech/Icon SMI)

Marc Savard has another concussion and Sidney Crosby will not be taking part in this weekend’s All-Star festivities as he continues to recover from the one he suffered. These news items may or may not further ratchet up the discussion on how the NHL deals with hits to the head, although it’s hard to imagine the debate being more polarizing than it is at the moment.

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The Ducks are afloat in the tempestuous Western Conference thanks to goaltender Jonas Hiller weathering a storm of pucks each night. (Andre Ringuette/NHLI via Getty Images)

The Western Conference continues to be a marvelously cluttered game of chutes and ladders, and in the last few weeks, the two southern California clubs have been headed in opposite directions. The Kings have won only two of their last 10 games and sit in the 12th spot. Rumors are flying and being denied that coach Terry Murray is in trouble.
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