HOSERDOME: LOVIN' EVERY MINUTE OF IT

by Neate Sager, Out Of Left Field

Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

The all-star game no one would miss; Sidney Crosby tries to ward off cabin fever; and what impact will Gretzky's wife have on the Super Bowl betting line?

• Relax, reading this post absolve you or any responsibility or guilty feelings over not watching the NHL all-star game in Atlanta this weekend. (You don't? Well, that makes you and everyone in Canada between the ages of 12 and 70.) It's a 6 p.m on Sunday, so basically, the NHL's only hope for ratings is that a lot of people forget that the Super Bowl is the next Sunday, flick on to hockey and lose the remote when they chuck it away in anger.
  
• If you see Sidney Crosby acting strangely, don't be surprised. The Kid being out of the lineup with high ankle sprain, it goes without saying, feeds into all the hater fantasies. What's going to happen to Crosby if he actually has to go a month without being on skates, which he's probably never done since he was five years old? Is he going to go Britney-batshit on us without the game to sustain him?
  
• After the Ottawa Senators crapped the bed in weekend losses to Tampa Bay and Philadelphia, their off-day activity on Monday was a tour of owner Eugene Melnyk's horse farm. You think Melnyk might have had a horse put down in front of the team just as a not-so-gentle reminder?
  
• More headlines that can never be written: "Semin's got it covered." (This was after the Capitals' Alexander Semin scored the shootout winner against Pittsburgh on Monday.)
  
• Pure Canadiana, Part 1: The Oshawa Generals and Sarnia Sting o fthe Ontario Hockey League go at it in a post-game melee on Sunday.
  
  
  
  The Oshawa kid (uh, that's the one in red and blue) tossing his helmet away after the fight, Loverboy's Lovin' Every Minute Of It being played, without ironic meaning, on the arena speakers.
  
• Dave Semenko, the enforcer on those 1980s Edmonton Oilers teams, actually boxed against Muhummad Ali. Semenko was quick to drop the gloves in his career (at least until everyone got too scared too fight) him, but he was also quick with his hit. One time he was on an elevator and Wilt Chamberlain got on. Semenko, 6-foot-4, looked at Chamberlain, 7-2, and said, "If he played in our league, I'd have to score goals."
  
• Now you know why the Super Bowl line's already moved: It's being played in Glendale, Ariz., where Wayne Gretzky now coaches the Phoenix Coyotes. Remember when Janet Jones was implicated in that gambling probe?