For most NHL fans, recalling the career of retired goalie Clint Malarchuk conjures some of the most horrifying images in the history of the game. Thanks to an errant skate blade, Malarchuk was slashed across the neck during a 1989 game between his Buffalo Sabres and the Boston Bruins. If not for the quick reaction of the team's medical staff, Malarchuk surely would have died on the ice.

Calling the incident horrifying isn't an understatement. According to reports, nine fans feinted after watching the accident, while another two suffered heart attacks at the Aud in Buffalo.

Now, 19 years later, Malarchuk has cheated death again, this time at his own hand. Here's the AFP account:

Ex-National Hockey League goalie Clint Malarchuk was recovering in hospital from his second nightmarish accident in 19 years after accidently shooting himself in the face with a hunting rifle on Tuesday.

The 47-year-old Malarchuk was rushed to hospital here after he shot himself with a .22-calibre rifle at his residence, The Record-Courier newspaper reported Wednesday.

[...]

Malarchuk's wife, Christy, told police her husband had been out hunting rabbits at the time of the shooting. She said the gun accidently discharged while he placed it on the ground between his legs.

Malarchuk currently serves as the goalie coach for the Columbus Blue Jackets. For a look at that incident again from 19 years ago, see the video after the jump.

While other sites are previewing "30 teams in 30 days," we decided to take advantage of the extra time off before the start of the season to bring you all 30 previews over the next three weeks. We're counting down in reverse order of finish from last season in each conference every weekday from now until October 3. Look for an Eastern Conference preview every morning and a Western Conference preview every afternoon. Click here to read them all.

Who's In: Michael Ryder, RW (UFA, Mon); Blake Wheeler, RW (UFA, Phx)

Who's Out: Alex Auld, G (UFA, Ott); Glen Metropolit, F (UFA, Phi); Glen Murray, RW (buyout)

What's Changed: Not at ton. For the first time in a while, the Bruins will have quite a bit of stability on the roster, with the most obvious change being that Ryder will slip into a scoring-line role on the right wing where Murray played last season.

A bigger boost to the offense, however, will come from a healthy Patrice Bergeron (pictured). He missed all but 10 games last season after taking a blindside hit from Philadelphia's Randy Jones, but is a solid 70-point man if he can make it back into the lineup full time. (Bergeron impressed already in preseason, racking up four points in the Bruins' first exhibition game against Montreal on Monday night.)

Elsewhere up front, there should be some solid progression from within for players like David Krejci, Milan Lucic and Vladimir Sobotka, who may not be household names but are ready for more minutes than they played as rookies last season.

You've gotta hand it to the Boston Bruins when it comes to innovative marketing strategies -- not only are they offering their fans the opportunity to sit in some of the worst seats in the house and gorge themselves on bottom-of-the-barrel arena fare all season long, but they're using a football fan from Kentucky with a web cam to spread the word. What, was Tay Zonday unavailable?

Year-old web humor aside, take the B's up on their offer for an all-you-can-eat season ticket in, say, Row 2 of Section 328 and you're only paying $3 more per game than you would for a similar view from a comparable spot in Section 319, and the poor sap sitting in that seat has to pay out of pocket for each hot dog, soda and order of nachos he needs to make his night at the rink complete. Imagine the savings if you're, say, Joey Chesnut. Or Keith Tkachuk.

The unfortunate reality is that the Bruins are a team that hasn't played to more than 87% capacity over the course of a season since at least 1999-2000 and finished this past season with worse home attendance than Atlanta and Florida (among 25 other teams), so maybe giving away "food" will help in the effort to fill the seats with more of some of hockey's better fans. And perhaps getting the message out via unconventional means such as viral video (or *ahem* unwitting bloggers) will also pay off for the B's. Combine these ideas with a couple of obviously concerted efforts to make watching the games on television nearly unbearable and the Bruins may fill the building yet.

The Boston Bruins are an exciting young team on the way to bigger and better things. They are also having issues fitting under the salary cap, especially with their recent contract extension to defensemen Dennis Wideman.

Unfortunately for long time Bruins forward Glen Murray, both of these factors mean that he no longer fits in their future plans.

The Bruins took the first step to shed Murray from the team by placing him on waivers. As we know, this will eventually lead to a buy out and divorce proceedings.

It was really, really difficult," said [GM] Chiarelli of Murray, who was due $4.15 million in 2008-09. "Muzz is a very good person. He meant a lot to the room. It's something where you have to make hard decisions in this new system. Being put on waivers, if you get taken by somebody else, we're prepared to accept that. And that's not a very good thing to hear, especially for someone who's served the time he has with us. It was a hard decision."

Murray is a classy player I've always had a lot of respect for, given his blue collar style of play and the fact he put up with some suspect Bruins management for many years without much complaint.

That said, it's obvious that his production decline (60-53-45-30 points the last four seasons) and inability to stay healthy make him not close to being worth his salary. If he was making $2M, then perhaps this parting of the ways wouldn't have to happen.

Now, if I am a GM of another team, I'd definitely look at signing Murray as a 2nd/3rd line winger. Murray still brings a soft touch within a big body, moderate production, and some leadership. Give the guy $1.5-2M for a season.

Winning the Memorial Cup, the championship of Canadian Junior hockey, is even harder than winning the Stanley Cup. With over twice as many teams to compete against, and a short "career" window", anyone who wins the award is in some very select company, as well as the owner of some very pricey memorabilia.

Unfortunately for Bruins' bruiser Milan Lucic, some conniving douchebag knew this, and decided to break into his family's home, swiping some of Milan's prized possessions.

Young NHL star Milan Lucic's prized Memorial Cup ring and several valuable tournament watches were stolen from his Vancouver home Thursday.

Milan's mom, Shezana, told The Province that thieves entered the family's East Vancouver home at noon by smashing in the back door.

Lucic told his mom that when he was flying to Boston he thought about his memorabilia at home and how ex-Edmonton Oilers goalie Bill Ranford was robbed of memorabilia from his New Westminster home last summer.

If, by small chance, they manage to catch the thief they did this, they ought to forego the usual jail time/slap on the wrist that will nary be effective.

Instead, simply have the crook face off in a one-on-one fight with Lucic and put it on YouTube. Why not make the thief pay a real price for his treachery? I'm sure the felon would be well "straightened out".

When the Phoenix Coyotes took Blake Wheeler with the 5th selection in the 2004 draft, most people wondered what the hell Gretzky and Pals were smoking. Wheeler was not expected to go until at least the second round, and was pretty much a raw 'project' prospect that would require more work than Prescilla Presley's face.

Well, after the big slug had a good-but-not-great college career, the Coyotes didn't feel Wheeler was worth 5th overall money (and he's not), so they let him go on the free agent market.

After hitting up the likes of Toronto and New York, Wheeler chose Boston as the team to sign with.

"More than 20 NHL teams were interested in Blake, and this was a very tough decision," agent Matt Keator told the Boston Globe. "And ultimately it came down to a few things for Blake, but mostly that he was comfortable with where the Bruins were headed as an organization - how this year they brought along kids like David Krejci, Milan Lucic, and Mark Stuart."

Folks, any time a prospect is labeled a 'project', stay the hell away! Remember Kristian Kudroc, Michael Rupp, Nikita Alexeev, and Chris Wells? Some foolish GM's drooled over what could possibly become of a tall, clumsy player, and the results weren't pretty.

Just because a player is 6'4" 220lbs and has a little bit of skill does not mean he'll turn out to be the next Todd Bertuzzi. A player generally either has "it", or he doesn't. Even the late bloomers have a good level of skill that is obvious to the scouting eye.

As for the Bruins, they can afford to stick Wheeler in the minors for as long as needed, and may just end up with a serviceable NHL player for nothing more than a small dip on Jeremy Jacobs' profits. If not, at least they didn't waste the 5th overall pick to do so.

When I was reading the Bill Simmons column earlier this week about his casual bandwagon hockey habit, I couldn't help but pick up on the fact that he waved poetic over the fact that you could hop onto YouTube anytime to watch the classic battles between Clark Gillies of the New York Islanders and Terry O'Reilly of the Boston Bruins that took place during a Stanley Cup Playoffs Quarterfinal series between their two teams in 1980.

And indeed, you can find those fights -- all four of them in fact. But after I did some more poking around, I found a battle that had some historical significance -- a piece of video that would seem to have recorded the first NHL fight between O'Reilly and the man who for a time would become known as the most brutal in hockey, Dave Schultz of the Philadelphia Flyers. Click here (embedding disabled by user) to watch it.

After watching the clip, I'd have to conclude this is a Boston-area telecast, probably from WSBK-TV, the station that carried the Bruins back in those days before sports cable giants like NESN, YES and MASN strode the earth. Given that the play-by-play team say that this was the first time the two fought in the NHL, though they had tangled previously in the AHL, I'm guessing the clip is vintage 1972-73.

The previous season, where the two supposedly fought earlier, O'Reilly compiled a modest 134 penalty minutes playing for the Boston Braves. Meanwhile, Schultz piled up 392 PIMs for the Richmond Robins. I think it's safe to say he knew by then what he needed to do to get to the NHL.

Oddly enough, even though I was raised on Long Island, O'Reilly was the one player who I admired the most. Watching and playing the game as a young kid, there just didn't seem to be anybody else on the ice who played with more hustle, desire and bravery than O'Reilly did. That's probably why his name hangs from the rafters beside a number of men who either won Stanley Cups or have a bust in the Hockey Hall of Fame -- honors O'Reilly never earned himself.

Instead, he just stepped onto NHL ice 891 times in his career and honored the game every time. Thanks, Terry.

Ahead of yesterday's Game Seven between Boston and Montreal, Boston ex-pat Bill Simmons decided to hand his column over to a topic he rarely, if ever, discusses: The NHL. In this case, he devoted plenty of pixels to his recent re-infatuation with the Boston Bruins.

I know I bash the WWL with the best of them these days, but seeing Simmons write about the league is nothing but good news. Like it or not, the NHL can use all the friends it can get over at ESPN, even if Simmons mostly writes about the NHL like it was an old girlfriend who was enduring some hard times.

In any case, Simmons made more than a few points that any NHL diehard could agree with, including how expansion has watered down the sort of rivalries that were once the lifeblood of the league and how he's developed a genuine man crush on Milan Lucic. But what really caught my attention was this line:

The NHL has evolved into a sport with all die-hard fans and no casual ones. They need to get the casual ones back. They need to bring back people like me.

While plenty of fans of the league might disagree with Simmons -- including ESPN's own John Buccigross, who often writes that the NHL ought to be happy with its niche status -- at least you can see his point. But what struck me about it was this: After reading a little further, it was hard to conclude that Simmons was a casual fan at all.

It's been all of 15 years since the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup, and if you've seen any of the footage coming out of that city since last night's 5-0 win over Boston in Game Seven of their Eastern Conference Quarterfinal playoff series, you could be forgiven for hoping that the Canadiens never win another Stanley Cup.



I know it's unfair to ask that an entire city bear the blame for the actions of just a small handful of yahoos, but after seeing a couple of hundred local residents riot on St. Catherine's Street, loot a couple of stores and torch a few police cruisers, one begins to wonder just might what happen if the Canadiens fight their way to the Finals and bring the Cup back to Montreal.

After the Rangers and Penguins advanced to the second round of the playoffs, all talk about future matchups centered on the Flyers/Caps series. "If the Flyers win ...." or "If the Caps win ..." Of course, all talk came with one caveat: "Unless the Bruins win." You can toss that caveat out the window now, because the Habs did their job and blew the Bruins out of the water tonight with a 5-0 win, dominating the Bruins the way most people expected them to the entire series.

The key to this one was most certainly Carey Price, he of the 8 third period goals allowed in Games 5 and 6. It goes without saying that that kind of play is unacceptable in the playoffs and he shored things up tonight, turning away all 25 shots the Bruins threw at him. He was huge in the first period when Montreal ran out to a 1-0 lead, but Boston outplayed and outshot the Habs.

From that point on it was all Canadiens, with Mark Streit adding one goal and the Kostitsyns adding three more (Andrei with two, Sergei with one). After disappearing behind Price's shaky goal tending for two games, the high-flying Habs that took the top seed in the East were back on the ice tonight. They'll sit back tomorrow night with the Rangers and Penguins, watching the Flyers and Capitals settle both their series and the second round playoff matchups.