by Todd Maternowski

Or, why the NHL could learn a thing or two from T.O., Dennis Rodman and Barry Bonds.

Good morning hockey fans! Last week we learned what the Stars must do this off-season to improve their team enough to lose in the second round of the playoffs (maybe even the third! Wowsers, wouldn't that be something!). I was going to hand out my annual 2006-07 NHL Awards and have my own awards ceremony, replete with my He-Man figurines dressed in little tuxedos to laugh awkwardly at my schlocky jokes --but thanks to recent weather patterns, that column got rained out. So instead, I bring you this allegedly non-hockey-related quote from Australian-born Milwaukee Bucks center Andrew Bogut:

“The public’s image of NBA players is true,” he says. “A lot of them get caught up in the hype and do video clips with rappers and all that crap. They want bling bling all over themselves and drive fast cars. But that’s just the way the culture is in America - if you’ve got it flaunt it and if you don’t, you can’t.”

“I’m not into jewelry. I’ve got some earrings but they’re not too expensive. There are guys who drop a hundred grand for a chain. The public’s got it right - a lot of NBA stars are arrogant and like to spend lots of money and have lots of girlfriends and all that.

“The smarter guys don’t do that. They like to live a regular life and want to retire and be set up. About 80 per cent of them go broke by the time they retire or come close to it.

“We have compulsory tutoring each week where they teach you to manage your money and they tell you about all the things that can happen to you, people trying to take advantage of you, but it’s amazing how many guys totally ignore it. I guess if you’re a normal person and suddenly you’re getting $10 million a year, it can go to your head.

“But it’s just the culture over there. I would never want my child to be brought up in an environment like that, where if you have money you’re supposed to flaunt it and make everyone jealous.

“The American attitude is ‘We’re the best’. That’s why the NBA guys who come from other countries, the Europeans, all sort of stick together away from the game.”

As you can imagine, these comments have caused a raging firestorm throughout the sportstalk world. In fact, Congres---what's that? Wha-- really? You hadn't heard about this? Seriously? But it's all over the--yes, Bogut is a real person! No, I'm not making him up, he was the first overall pic--yes, for real, he's not a figure of my imagination! No, neither are the Milwaukee Bucks! You mean to tell me you've never heard of guys like Terry Cummings, Sidney Moncr--it's the biggest city in Wisconsin! Ye--no, you're thinking of Michigan, but actually the upper part--well, regardless, he said it, for real, so just shut the hell up.

While Bogut's pithy pontifications on our preposterously prioritized pretension to the power of publicity are perfectly proper, as a red-blooded American I'm legally obligated to take offense to his American athlete bashing --I mean, he's an Australian, for chrissakes! Are you honestly going to believe a bunch of koala-eating descendants of criminals that name their kids after vile reptilian behemoths? Someone needs to check Bogut's skull for one-too-many dingo bite-marks, because the mere fact that he's Australian --and hence, genetically prone to committing crimes against the English Crown (don't even mention King George II around them if you want to keep your collarbone in one piece)-- means not a single point he makes can be taken seriously.

But Bogut does bring up an interesting point: NBA players' lifestyles (and by extension, the lifestyles of all Americans) are now completely out of control. Which begs the question: what can we do about hockey players and their out-of-control lifestyles? I'm specifically talking about the aggressively in-your-face attitudes of the typical Canadian --while U.S.-born players regularly feed the homeless, considerately re-arrange hotel furniture, and cloister themselves in monasteries during the summers, Canadian players have been damaging the sport, leading lives that put all hockey players in a bad light across the globe.

For example, noted Canadian Joe Sakic aggressively flaunts his stoic meekness at every opportunity, purposefully rubbing his quiet superiority in our faces. Another ratings-hogging Canadian, Marty Turco, is clearly guilty of showing up U.S.-born goaltenders with his irresistible charm and clean sense of humor. And don't even get me started on Canadian-born coach Ken Hitchcock and his milquetoast mustache, forever forcing us to re-evaluate our perceptions of such iconic American patriots as Captain Kangaroo, Tom Selleck and Burt Reynolds.

The result? Now we have foreign-born players committing terrible and senseless acts of evil just to keep up. Finnish players, sensing the moral void, now play their Scandinavian death metal CDs at slightly-higher volumes. British wingers now no longer ask you if you would like scones with your afternoon tea. Some Czech players have turned to expressing themselves through the gender-neutral artistic medium of poetry. One player who shall remain anonymous --but his name rhymes with Benrik Betterberg-- has even been known to pour molten lead into his subterranean pits full of infants while laughing maniacally. Obviously, hockey needs to clean up its act before it's too late.

Or does it? Perhaps what hockey needs is a good dose of good old-fashioned American-made pizazz. For a sport that now hovers near Tlingit Potlatch Basket-Weaving in the TV ratings, perhaps now is the time for the NHL to create some TV-friendly villains for added gusto. I mean, sure, we've got ogres chopping other ogres in the neck with heavy wooden clubs -- but nothing on the level of the villains driving the other three major sports. The NBA had Dennis Rodman, the NFL has Terrell Owens, and even baseball has Barry Bonds -- these three, with their long arrest records and infamous misdeeds hav--what, you again? What? Really? Not a single arrest between them? Seriously? Well, you get my point: the NHL needs someone that, to sportswriters at least, represents the epitome of pure, unadulterated evil, despite not really having done anything technically illegal (fortunately for T.O., punching an orphan in the nuts is still not a crime in Philly).

I nominate Bryan Marchment.

I realize my nomination goes against everything the Sportswriter Guild's Code of Blame expressly states --mainly, that Marchment has the wrong skin color for a hated sports villain-- but I stand by my man. Until the NHL wises up and starts selling the sizzle rather than the icing, it's going to forever be entombed in the abandoned asylum of sports media, sharing TV time with such ratings-hogging sports as Fungus Growing with Diego "Gray Ooze" Santiago and Competitive Alaskan Bear-Humping. Tune in next week as I finally get to my long-awaited column on the merits of using your fists to successfully resist arrest!

What do you think?