Just as there is no crying in baseball, there should be no “Roger Clemens-ing” in hockey.  You know what Roger Clemens-ing is:  you’re a proven veteran, a sure-fire hall- of-famer, so you make your own schedule when it comes to playing or not playing, joining or not joining a team.  Time for spring training?  Not according to my biological clock.  I’m thinking I’ll set my own workout schedule and see if I’m ready or even interested in playing again.  If I am, I know someone will sign me, and more than likely it’ll be exactly the team I want.  Clemens has done it in the past because he can, and the same is true for Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne this season, although Niedermayer was actually under contract when he worked out his special calendar arrangements.  Why does that not feel right to me?  Because this is hockey, not baseball.

Hey, don’t get me wrong.  I think Niedermayer is one of the most productive and talented defensemen I’ve ever seen play the game, and certainly Selanne is among the most electrifying forwards ever to grace NHL ice.  That’s not the point; the point is that one of hockey’s greatest strengths lies in its team-first mantra, and this doesn’t fit.  Those two veterans aren’t the only guys who have played the game well enough and long enough to have earned the status and financial well being to set their own reporting schedule.  What’s to stop the Joe Sakic’s and Nick Lidstrom’s of the hockey world to take a page from the Ducks’ veterans and decide that September is awfully early to be doing any heavy lifting or lung busting exercises?  Would the Avalanche or Wings say no, even if it violated contractual obligations? 

And does anyone care about the roster ramifications when a prodigal son does decide to return to the fold?  You can bet Andy MacDonald and Doug Weight cared about it this season, since each was involved in a trade the Ducks had to make for salary-cap reasons when Niedermayer returned.  Now that Selanne is on the Ducks roster, how will the trickle-down effect impact the rest of the team’s wingers, who have done everything asked of them for two-thirds of the season?  Hey good to see you, Teemu, here’s my ice time.

I understand how players can suffer burnout and get caught in that gray area, unable to decide between retirement and returning to the grind of a long, difficult NHL season.  But it’s always been a “we’re all in this together mentality” in hockey.  If this separate calendar for the superstars thing becomes a trend, then the old adage that 50 percent of life is just showing up will have to be tweaked.  It’ll be more like 50 percent of a season is good enough in the NHL, as long as you’re good enough to hold those kind of cards.

And that simply isn’t good enough, for the game.