Game Misconduct for Refusing to Start Play Until the NHL Gives You $100 Million.

The distraction: A sudden interest in the NHLPA's collective bargaining argreement.

Why: Because the League has rejected the Kovalchuk deal on the grounds it circumvented the collective bargaining agreement. Duh. How else do you sign somebody to a $100 million-plus deal over 17 years, the last 4 of which he will likely be retired? One word: Lockout. It happened once. It can happen again, if deals like this are allowed to transpire.

Now, as home to the number 4 and 5 NHL draft picks from 2010, I love Portland, I really do. But: We really shouldn't try to pretend that we are fashionable. Practical, sturdy and hard-working honest people we are, but fashion forward we are not. We try. We do. But maybe we shouldn't. For example:

-- It is never ok to combine cargo pants, a sweatshirt with a gingham teddy bear on the front and 5-inch stilettos. I don't care what you saw in Vogue. It's just wrong.

-- Women in their 40s should not prance about in jeans that sit just below the hips with studded belts, and tattoos sticking out of their Rainbow Brite t-shirts. And especially not if the Rainbow Brite t-shirt is, after 100 plus rounds in the dryer, a belly shirt that exposes the muffin top sitting neatly atop the studded belt. Put it down, walk away. No exceptions.

It's kind of like these rules: Section 5, Penalties. Other Penalties. Rule 565, Officials Leaving the Player's Bench. Rule 566, Refusing to Start Play - Team on the Ice.

Rule 565: Any team official who goes on the ice during any period without the permission of the Referee shall be assessed a game misconduct penalty.

And I still don't understand how teams think this will end well:

Rule 566: a. If, when both teams are on the ice and one team refuses to start play for any reason when ordered to do so by the Referee, the Referee shall warn the Captain and allow the team so refusing 3o seconds to the begin the game or resume play. c. If there be a recurrence of the same incident, the Referee shall declare the game forfeited to the non-offending team and the case shall be reporter to the proper authorities.

Morals of the story:

The game: So, what if the Captain's the one who instigates his teammates into not starting play? Does an alternate Captain get warned because the big C is in the corner crying until he turns blue in the face? And dudes, the only other place in which the phrase "proper authorities" is used is the law. The law isn't messing around and neither is an international sports organization that suffered the consequences of sanctioning their PR guy to rip Sidney Crosby a new one in an unmitigated and unsporstmanlike online tirade. Just get back in the game and deal with your crap later.

Life: If you do the equivalent of refusing to start play at your job, you get fired. If you refuse to pull into the main street out of a parking lot, even though the main street is wide open, while other drivers sit helplessly behind you, they will get out of their car, reach through your partially open window and rip your head off so they can decorate their dashboard with it. And if you refuse to turn off a cell phone while on a date or any other personal interaction with me, I will glare at you so hard you will spontaneously burst into flames, therefore guaranteeing that I'll never have to talk to you again. So, perhaps, on occasion, there is justice in hockey and in life.

Next up on 7/22: Section 5, Penalties. Other Penalties. Rule 567, Refusing to Start Play - Team on the Ice. Rule 568, Throwing a Stick or Any Object Out of the Playing Area.