FanHouse ScottStevens

It appears free agent forward Brendan Shanahan has finally made up his mind on where to play this season, as the 39-year-old veteran will join the New Jersey Devils, according to TSN.

Notice I didn't say "signed" with the New Jersey Devils because, well, he hasn't signed yet, and there is no timetable as to when an official signing will occur. Make sense? No? Perfect.

Shanahan was originally a draft pick of the Devils back in 1987 (No. 2 overall) and played four seasons before joining the St. Louis Blues as a restricted free agent, a move that resulted in the Devils landing Scott Stevens from St. Louis. He played the past two seasons with the New York Rangers, scoring 23 and 29 goals.

If the St. Louis Blues didn't have bad luck this season, they would have absolutely no luck. On Saturday night, the Blues announced that forward Paul Kariya will be undergoing surgery to repair a torn muscle in his hip, as reported by Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The surgery will, obviously, keep him out of the lineup for quite a while, if not the remainder of the season.

The 34-year old forward had not played in a game for the Blues since November 5, a 5-2 loss at Anaheim, while he had 15 points (2 goals, 13 assists) in 11 games this season, after a 65 point effort a season ago.

One of my favorite hockey moments will always be game 6 of the 2003 Stanley Cup finals when, after being on the wrong end of a Scott Stevens elbow, Kariya returned to the game and blasted a slap shot behind Martin Brodeur, helping the Ducks force a game 7. Ugly hit. Fantastic shot.

Kariya joins Erik Johnson, Manny Legace, and Andy McDonald -- just to name a few -- on the lengthy list of Blues to miss significant time this season in a variety of bizarre manners. Just as a reminder, Johnson injured his knee in a golf cart accident, while Legace was knocked out of the lineup after he tripped and fell on Sarah Palin's red carpet.

After about five months worth of votes, the guys over at Orland Kurtenblog have finally determined a winner in their exhaustive poll to determine the greatest NHL hit of all time. The winner: Scott Stevens' clean and righteous destruction of Slava Kozlov during the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals:



Sitting proudly in the second spot: Brian Campbell's number on R.J. Umberger during the 2006 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Click here to check that one out. Thanks to the guys at Kurtenblog for leaving no video evidence unconsidered in what has to be considered the ultimate hit reel.

As for me, well, there's one hit I'll always consider above all others.

Perhaps the greatest measure of the utter lack of confidence hockey fans have in the NHL disciplinary system occurred after Colton Orr's open-ice hit on Matt Cullen of Carolina, as reviewed by EMac on an earlier FanHouse entry. The majority of fan reactions I came across just assumed the injurious play, which left Cullen with a broken nose, would result in a procedural short suspension from the League. Orr was a repeat offender, after all; and as clean as the hit was, it resulted in an injury -- always a clincher for suspensions.

But NHL goon czar Colin Campbell remains as unpredictable as ever, deeming the Orr check to be free and clear of any additional jail time from the League offices. (I'd give him a pat on the back, but I've seen how he reacts to hits from behind.) Orr, or any player who unleashes a similar hit, didn't deserve a suspension or even that game misconduct he received for the check. It was a hockey play, as Orr told the media in review: "I just cut through the middle of the ice and was just playing the man. We were both just cutting to the middle and I was just defending myself."

And yet we have Mark Pargas of the New York Times asking if, in the future, Orr could take a moment before delivering a high-speed hit to ask himself, "W.W.M.P.O.T.N.Y.T.D.?" ("What Would Mark Pargas of the New York Times Do?") Pargas argues for "a more responsible way to play a physical brand of hockey," that targets the lower body with body checks. He uses the infamous Scott Stevens/Eric Lindros collision as evidence, which would have been a fine example had his blog focused less on the checkers delivering hard hits and more on the checkees skating with their heads down in the middle of the ice.

For Carolina, watching Mike Commodore skate over to "enforce" Orr led Hockey in the South to issue a post-Christmas wish for a heavyweight goon. Bubba over on Canes Country doesn't see the need for an enforcer because he doesn't believe that players policing themselves is a better deterrent than the League suspending reckless offenders. And this is coming from someone who watched Brooks Orpik get just three games for a brutal act of chiropractory on Erik Cole.

If the Columbus Blue Jackets were going to challenge for their first berth in the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season, Rick Nash was going to have to be a leader and a much better player than his 27 goals in 75 games last season. So far, so good: He scored his 12th goal in 18 games and added an assist in last night's win over Chicago; more importantly, he completed the Gordie Howe Hat Trick with a third-period fight with the Blackhawks' Jim Vandermeer.

Nash didn't have a fighting major last season, even though he's 6-4, 215 and can play a physical brand of hockey. He went after Vandermeer because he claimed the 'Hawks goon (304 career PIM in 206 games) was throwing cheap shots at his Jackets teammates. Michael Arace of The Columbus Dispatch had a great recap of the fights in the stands between fans and Nash's fight on the ice, including this review from notorious Columbus tough guy Jody Shelley:

"The other guy's a fighter, and an experienced one at that, and he plays dirty and gritty," Shelley said. "Rick Nash is a goal scorer, a first overall pick and a Rocket Richard Trophy winner, and he stands up and gives it to the other guy. That just goes above and beyond. That's character I can't even begin to describe."

If you want to truly be a leader in the NHL, if you want to earn that level of respect, you have to occasionally do what Rick Nash did last night. Messier did. Scott Stevens did. And we all know where those guys ended up. It was an important moment for a young player still finding himself in this League, and a vital one for his team. If Nash's actions, and Shelley's reaction, don't speak to what it is that makes hockey the greatest damn sport on the planet, I don't know what does.