The NHL Could Learn a Few Things From Coach Tressel

Every sports league has scandals: the NFL has Rae Carruth, OJ Simpson and many other miscreants, the NBA has Kobe Bryant and the Portland Jailblazers, and MLB has steroids and the grandaddy of them all, the Black Sox. Still, when it comes down to the sheer weirdness of its scandals, you've got to tip your hat to the National Hockey League.

Only in the NHL will you find the head of the players' union doing a bad Jimmy Hoffa impersonation and ending up in the slammer for skimming money from the players' pension fund. That's what happened in 1998, when Alan Eagleson pleaded guilty to mail fraud and embezzlement charges and served six months in prison.

Only in the NHL will you find a player involved in a murder for hire plot against his agent, who may or may not also have been his lover (not that there's anything wrong with that).

And now, the latest in the "only in the NHL series"--Only in the NHL will you find the wife of the game's greatest hero, Janet Jones (aka Mrs. Wayne Gretzky), implicated in a gambling ring allegedly run by her husband's assistant coach.

The NHL and its officials should take a page from Coach Tressel, who keeps it cool and always comes out smelling like a rose--even when there's a dead hooker in his swimming pool.