TORONTO – He seemed straight out of the old "Saturday Night Live" skit about Da Bears. He was a big, beefy guy in a Brian Urlacher(notes) jersey. Half of his face was painted blue, the other half orange.

From Chicago?

Nope.

"Nova Scotia," he said.

Welcome to the Bills Toronto Series, where Canadian football fans can taste the NFL experience and the city can showcase itself as a potential NFL market. For now, it seems like a foreign fit.

There is no question Canada has an appetite for the NFL. Take our Bears fan, Jonathan Duthie, 36, from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He moved from England when he was about 8. He fell in love with the 1985 Bears, the Super Bowl-shuffling champions, and has been devoted to them ever since. He has traveled to places like Indianapolis and New England to see the NFL live.

"Every game I've gone to in the States has been amazing," said Duthie, as he rode the subway down to the stadium Sunday morning. "The atmosphere has been amazing."

But Duthie had heard the

TORONTO – Just 13.1 seconds. Had they ticked down uneventfully, had the puck not bounced around and squeaked into the net, this story would have been totally different. The Buffalo Sabres still would have been written off for dead. The Toronto Maple Leafs would have been feeling good about themselves again.

But this is how thin the line can be in the NHL – not just between victory and defeat, but between desperation and relief, at least on one night in November. Jochen Hecht(notes) did put the puck past Jean-Sebastien Giguere’s(notes) left pad with 13.1 seconds left on Saturday night. The game did go to a scoreless overtime and a five-round shootout. Rookie Tyler Ennis(notes) did deke Giguere for the winner, giving the Sabres a 3-2 victory. The Sabres did rush onto the ice and mob each other in celebration.

“You would have thought we won the Stanley Cup,” said defenseman Tyler Myers(notes) in the Sabres’ dressing room, seconds after a teammate skipped off to the showers and said, “Boy,

Let’s start with the letter. In May 1967, Jimmy Devellano wrote Lynn Patrick, the general manager of the brand-new St. Louis Blues, offering his services as a scout – for free.

Jimmy D was only 24 then. He hadn’t finished high school, and he was working as a claims adjuster for the unemployment insurance commission at the corner of Yonge and St. Clair in Toronto. He hadn’t played hockey, but he had grown up playing street hockey, trading bubble-gum hockey cards and going to Maple Leafs games, idolizing coach and GM Punch Imlach. He was coaching multiple minor hockey teams – hockey, hockey, hockey filling up his nights and weekends – and the NHL was about to expand.

Wait. The NHL wasn’t just expanding. It was doubling in size, going from six teams to 12. In the Original Six era, there were so few management jobs that they rarely went to anyone who hadn’t played in the league or hadn’t been born into it. But now Jimmy D saw an opportunity for a guy with no real background in the game, a

Steve Yzerman never gets too excited too soon. In August, when congratulated on his strong moves in his first offseason as general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning, he replied: “Yeah, we’re undefeated.” More recently, when asked about the Bolts’ first month of the regular season, he said: “We’re off to a respectable start.”

Yzerman knows how long the NHL regular season can be and how quickly fortunes can turn. But it isn’t too soon to get excited about the Bolts. They’re off to a more than respectable start.

The Lightning was leading the Eastern Conference with 16 points. That set up an intriguing matchup Thursday night with the Los Angeles Kings, who were leading the West with 16 points.

No one should get carried away and call it a preview of the Stanley Cup final. But the great start is a great sign for the Bolts, who are trying to make the playoffs for the first time in four years. They led the East with 15 points in October. Only twice in the past 24 years has a team missed the

Gary Bettman bristled at the number and the insinuation. Six thousand seven hundred six. That was the attendance for a Phoenix Coyotes game a couple of weeks ago, and that can be used as too-easy evidence that hockey doesn’t work in the desert.

“This is a franchise that still doesn’t have an owner, OK?” said the NHL commissioner, who oversaw the Winnipeg Jets’ move to Phoenix in 1996 and now is overseeing another sale of the team. “And until we iron it out and lock it down, there will be uncertainty. And until the uncertainty is resolved, for anybody to judge the interest level of that market in the face of everything that’s happened and all the uncertainty, is a little unfair.”

Maybe. But only a little. After all, isn’t the interest level of that market a root cause of the ownership uncertainty? Even if the NHL can iron out the issues and lock down a deal with Chicago businessman Matthew Hulsizer, after a long soap opera starring owners and potential owners, it remains to be seen

DETROIT — Jackets off, ties loosened a little, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly sat in a spare suite Thursday night at Joe Louis Arena.

Between business meetings and the Phoenix Coyotes’ 4-2 victory over the Detroit Red Wings, they took some time with Yahoo! Sports to discuss some of the issues in the game.

Bettman said it was too early to judge the enforcement and effect of the new rule outlawing blindside hits to the head, while defending the physical nature of hockey and arguing concussions are not on the rise.

He dismissed the idea of contraction, which David Stern, his NBA counterpart and mentor, has said will be on the table as the NBA negotiates its next collective bargaining agreement with its players’ union.

He wondered why there was so much interest in the NHL’s upcoming round of collective bargaining – even though the last round led to a lockout and the cancellation of the 2004-05 season – and said he was just starting to get to know Donald

Some guys have gotten the message. That struck Brendan Shanahan(notes) just a week into the regular season, when he watched the Carolina Hurricanes’ Tuomo Ruutu(notes), a player famous for finishing his checks, with the chance to finish another one. The elements were there for a devastating hit – the Ottawa Senators’ Mike Fisher(notes) coming across and shooting the puck, bent over, head lined up; Ruutu streaking on his blind side.

“And he passed it up, and I couldn’t believe it,” said Shanahan, the NHL’s vice-president of hockey and business development. “I thought, ‘I think right there that’s one concussion saved.’ Those moments are hard to track.”

We have seen several examples of illegal or borderline hits this season, with the head-shot and concussion issues a hot topic in sports. Anyone can spot those incidents. But it takes an experienced, sophisticated eye to spot the plays where the NHL’s new head-shot rule has had an effect. And let’s face it: No contact means no news.

“A hit

DETROIT – Dangerous. That’s the word Teemu Selanne(notes) used to describe Niklas Kronwall(notes) after taking a big hit from him Saturday night in the Anaheim Ducks’ 5-4 loss to the Detroit Red Wings.

Wings coach Mike Babcock is fine with that.

“He is,” said Babcock of Kronwall. “That’s why we like him.”

But dirty? That’s different.

“To say he’s a dirty player is wrong,” Babcock said. “To say he’s dangerous to the opposition at times when he steps up, there’s no question. That’s a fair statement.”

And to Babcock, that’s fair play.

Head shots and concussions are major issues in the NHL. But all the talk of gray matter runs into gray areas. When does dangerous become dirty? Where is the line between legal and illegal, and is that the same line between ethical and unethical? Have rule changes gone far enough, and if not, how do we make the sport safer but not too soft?

There are myriad opinions on each specific incident and the issues as a whole, and they can be shaded by team