Salei’s Reputation Takes Hardest Hit From NHL

Coach Ken Hitchcock of the Dallas Stars says that Mighty Duck defenders Ruslan Salei and Pascal Trepanier are stupid. I don’t think Trepanier is stupid.

If Salei, on the other hand, sued for slander, there is some evidence that could lead the court to rule for Hitchcock. Salei, after all, was suspended once for head-butting, which has never struck me as a particularly intelligent thing to do.

In any case, I think it’s safe to say that he will never be a finalist for the Lady Byng Trophy for sportsmanship.

His reputation as a player who doesn’t rely solely on style points no doubt was one factor contributing to his 10-game suspension by the NHL for shoving Mike Modano in the back last Saturday in Dallas.

Other factors were that it’s early in the season, a good time for the NHL’s No. 1 law enforcement officer, Colin Campbell, to send a message to players about what he will and won’t tolerate and that Modano is a Star star.

If the players involved had been a niftier Duck defender such as Fredrik Olausson and less celebrated Star forward, the incident might have been overlooked by the league office. It’s not as if no defenders in the NHL ever shove from behind.

But, considering all the circumstances, Campbell didn’t necessarily overreact with his suspension of Salei or of teammates Trepanier (five games) and Jim McKenzie (four games) because of their roles in separate incidents.

Campbell, however, did under-react by not fining and suspending Hitchcock because of his incendiary comments immediately after the game and since.

“I think those two players are either the stupidest players in the league or they just bought themselves a war,” Hitchcock said Saturday night.

You can almost forgive him for that one by presuming that he was still emotionally overwrought. But he came back the next day and said, “They’ve bought themselves a response from our team that has to be made sometime.”

The Stars’ first opportunity is tonight at the Arrowhead Pond. Let’s hope that neither they nor the Ducks--nor the fans in the arena-- allow themselves to be inflamed by Hitchcock and that everyone is there for a good, hard-checking, clean hockey game.

For now, the suspensions should be justice enough. For the long term, King Coach Andy Murray said from Tampa Bay on Thursday that only the players can police themselves and that it’s an issue that the NHL Players’ Assn. should make a priority before someone is seriously hurt.

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The Staples Center box office opens for business Saturday with the sale of King individual game tickets. Fewer than 1,000 remain for the home opener, which is coming up any month now. . . .

Someone should tie a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree for the Kings. . . .

The ice sheet in the new arena has been down for a couple of weeks. It will remain for the entire season, Staples Center General Manager Bobby Goldwater said. . . .

That was not the case at Madison Square Garden, where he formerly worked. The ice there had to be removed each February for the Westminster Dog Show. . . .

Why?

“Because the dogs don’t like the cold,” Goldwater said. . . .

The dogs have been trying to tell them that for years at the Iditarod. . . .

What is former Angel general manager Bill Bavasi, the special assistant to team President Tony Tavares, doing now that he has spare time? . . .

He has started an e-mail campaign against the Lakers’ new uniforms. . . .

“Can you imagine Jerry or Elgin or Wilt wearing these foolish things?” Bavasi writes. “Whose idea was that?”

Probably some special assistant’s. . . .

ESPN is profiling Magic Johnson tonight as the 17th-greatest athlete of the century. In voting by an expert panel, the two basketball players who finished ahead of him were Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan. Their placements have not been announced. . . .

But the only important thing is that Johnson finished ahead of Larry Bird, who was 30th. . . .

I predict that our NFL teams will go undefeated Sunday--Raiders over the Broncos, Cardinals over the Giants, Vikings over the Bears, Saints over the Falcons and Bills over the Steelers. . . .

In their second season, the Arizona Diamondbacks have one fewer playoff victory than the Arizona Cardinals do in their 80th. . . .

I don’t know if you should read anything into this, but USC Coach Paul Hackett is already talking about how good his defense is going to be next season. . . .

Bobby Valentine complained because Met fans had to stay up too late to watch the games from Phoenix. Hasn’t he heard the song? New York is the city that never sleeps.

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While wondering if the Rose Bowl has to take a Pac-10 team, I was thinking: Fred Claire and Tom Lasorda tried to tell us Pedro Martinez was frail, you’d think Peter Warrick would have waited for the Heisman ceremony and gone shopping at Bloomingdale’s, Los Angeles will have an NFL team before Houston.

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.