[AJ_77]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...NStory/Sports/

As the NHL's image plunged to an all-time low, a USA Today sports columnist wished the league would just go away.
"It is a cartoon sport with a cult following that cheers from the fringe of relevance," Ian O'Connor wrote.

"Who among us would notice if, this autumn, we found ourselves surveying a sports landscape without major league hockey?" asked Christine Brennan, another USA Today columnist. "And how many of us would complain?"

Canadian broadcaster Don Chevrier was asked about the reaction in Florida, where he lives.

"The reaction here is one word," he said. "Disgust.

"It's really sad," continued Chevrier, who called hockey games for years. "I've lost all respect for the game."

Olympic producer Ralph Mellanby, who was the head of Hockey Night in Canada for 20 years and whose son Scott plays for the St. Louis Blues, lives in Atlanta.

He blames "Neanderthals" in the NHL's front office for the Bertuzzi incident, citing the league's leniency toward violent infractions and failure to punish players and coaches who make threats.

"It's the greatest game in the world being destroyed by the people who run it," Mellanby said. "There's no fighting in college hockey, no fighting at the world tournaments or the Olympics, and nobody misses it. But these cement heads at the NHL don't get it." Unless the game changes, Mellanby said, the NHL is doomed in the United States to permanent third-class status.

"Down here, hockey is on a par with pro wrestling and roller derby," he said. "Stuff like that."

No argument from Bernie Lincicome, a columnist with the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.

"This is what hockey wants to be," he wrote this week. "This is why hockey is a boutique sport, like cockfighting and bear baiting."