It all started with an e-mail.

Marshall Johnston, the Ottawa Senators' veteran general manager, was on the computer and read a missive from a fan who pointed out that Roger Neilson was two games short of becoming the ninth man to serve at least 1,000 games as an NHL head coach.

	With his bone-marrow cancer in remission, Roger Neilson was treated for skin cancer and had lymph nodes removed in January 2001.

Perhaps it was a welcome relief for Johnston from hearing about his ongoing spat with the CBC's Don Cherry, who shared the coaching stage with Johnston in Denver over 20 years ago. Back then, "Grapes" was behind the bench of the Colorado Rockies, while Johnston was coaching the University of Denver and destined to be one of Cherry's Rockies coaching successors before he made the move with the franchise to New Jersey.

Whatever the reason, Johnston was intrigued with the e-mail and checked it out. And indeed, the correspondent was correct: Neilson would reach four figures in NHL games coached if he "ran" the Senators for two games.

How could it have been overlooked?

This is a league that distributes press notes every night, running down all the imminent milestones for players. We are alerted that a player is approaching the much-coveted 300 games played, or 150 assists, 200 penalty minutes, or the 50th power-play goal on Tuesdays for a specific franchise.

This is a sporting era in which it seems the next step is to halt games to commemorate a strong safety's 50th career stupid dance to celebrate a crushing hit that stopped a tight end for a 17-yard gain.

And we are informed in routine parts of postgame coverage that an outfielder was caught stealing for the 100th time in his career (not including that shoplifting charge during his days in the minors, which of course was just a misunderstanding because anyone could forget about those six CDs under the coat).

We are in the midst of Milestone Mania, and in the media, we feed the monster because we have to fill those notes boxes and charts and the spots between the three-dots -- not to mention the graphics and the "crawls" on the game broadcasts and highlights shows.

The Senators' gesture of appointing Neilson their head coach for the final two games of the regular season, including against the Bruins Thursday night, is a praiseworthy salute to a man who has battled -- on levels both relatively unimportant, meaning through a long career behind NHL benches; and more serious, including his fight with multiple myeloma.

It serves other purposes.

Although this certainly wasn't among the motivations, Jacques Martin will watch the final two games from upstairs, and sometimes the view from the press box lends a unique perspective -- including the fact that nobody sitting up there ever has been wrong. (Or at least admitted it.)

Let's face it, the Sens have tried a lot of things to jettison their reputation as Heimlich's favorite NHL team.

So having Martin upstairs and indulging in what amounts to a short self-scouting stint could help. Yes, there are stacks of video tape, broken down into pertinent categories, and other opportunities to evaluate, but sometimes just the casual look from upstairs can be both refreshing and enlightening. If Saturday's Toronto-Ottawa regular-season finale turns out to be a preview of a first-round series, it also serves a scouting purpose. Martin's continued tenure almost certainly depends on a significant playoff run, but provincial first-round showdown heightens the tension.

And it would have been greasy to have Martin designated an associate coach on the bench for those two games, with Neilson as the temporary head coach.

Was the NHL going to have a league functionary monitoring communications on the Senators' bench, to make sure Neilson was truly in charge to guarantee the "integrity" of the record-keeping? Having Martin off the bench at least dilutes some of the contrivance elements of this salute.

How's that for finding a "hockey" reason for a statistical contrivance, largely based on the accidental adoption of the Base Ten system, plus our fascination with zeroes and round numbers?

Mainly, this is a way to salute Neilson, enough of a pioneer to be called "Captain Video" when video was new and revolutionary. Even without his battle with cancer, he is a symbol.

He has been an adaptive innovator in a sport that was reluctant to go from vinyl LPs to 8-track, much less enter the modern era of sports methodology.

He also represents some of the downside realities of the coaching craft in the NHL, which considers the coaches disposable parts and handy scapegoats for front-office shortcomings.

As often as anyone else in NHL history, Neilson has heard himself described as a visionary genius when he has been hired, and at least implicity as a dope when he has been shoved aside -- most recently by the Flyers' Bob Clarke. And Neilson had the temerity to take cancer treatment while Craig Ramsay -- temporarily, as it turned out -- was anointed the "answer."

So finding a way to coach eight different NHL teams also illustrates the NHL's ability or tendency to have short memories. The NHL takes decisions about coaching tenure decisions for what they are -- as the sort of scapegoating impetuousness that seems to be ingrained as part of the system and even accepted by the media.

Indeed, Roger Neilson's perseverance -- on several levels -- is worth saluting. So we all should be waving a towel when he hits 1,000. Because he never threw one in.

Terry Frei of The Denver Post is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. His feedback address for e-mail signed with full names and hometowns is freifeedback@hotmail.com.