Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded - accordion-style - back to full stature, without any lasting side effect.

I've always had an irrational fear - it's really not an irrational fear, I think - whenever I've been standing at a urinal at a bar, or Giants Stadium or Yankee Stadium. You've got a bunch of drunks behind you, often in a hostile, adrenalized environment like a football game. What's to prevent the guy behind me from slamming my head into the porcelain wall in front of me?

My first interview at SI, I sat in silence next to Guy LaFleur for five minutes on the New York Rangers team bus until he finally broke the ice. Those early interviews, every one of them was like a terrible first date.

Summer runs out the way a centerfielder runs out of real estate - slowly at first, then all at once.

Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded - accordion-style - back to full stature, without any lasting side effect.

Happy 110th birthday to Frank Zamboni, who left us in 1988 but still resurfaces periodically.

As life speeds by, nostalgia has a shorter pregnancy. Games still in progress are given the straight-to-sepia status of "Instant Classics" no matter how oxymoronic that phrase appears.