The next clown in the sound booth who cues up and plays "Who Let the Dogs Out?" by the Baha Men at an NHL game should be fired on the spot, blackballed for life from employment in pro sports and sentenced to wear a Walkman headset and listen to Queen's "We Are the Champions" until the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Whew, that feels better.

But what is it with these copycat folks in pro sports? Is that what they teach in sports management degree programs? The game-day and game-night experience around pro sports, including the NHL, becomes numbingly generic, with the same music, the same geeky stunts, the same approaches, and the dual-ownership of many NHL and NBA teams in many markets means the same "entertainment" folks are making the decisions for 82 regular-season home games in each city. Everyone goes to league meetings, and these sports management geeks sit around and exhange ideas and tell each other how brilliant they are because they all think exactly alike and see nothing wrong with noise-meters on the scoreboard screens.

	“	When one idiot decides that this 'Who Let The Dogs Out' song is kind of cool, and a few people nod that it's kind of fun after hearing it for the first time at a game, it's played 78 kazillion times at sporting events across the country. ”
		— Frei on arena music.

Yes, it's true that fans don't travel from city to city, as do cranky sportswriters, but 10 minutes of television viewing drives home the point that everyone pretty much does it the same. So, when one idiot decides that this "Who Let The Dogs Out" song is kind of cool, and a few people nod that it's kind of fun after hearing it for the first time at a game, it's played 78 kazillion times at sporting events across the country.

Now, we can move on.

And this isn't being brought up only because of the obvious tilt of power in the direction of the West this season. Sure, the Southeast Division is so rancid, it could be renamed the Smythe Division, which -- before the acceptance of the Oilers into the league -- twice had division "champions" with sub-.500 records in the late '70s.

In a slight concession to travel convenience -- and it's very slight, since it includes keeping that western outpost, Detroit, playing in the West -- the first round of the postseason could remain the same, with intraconference matchups -- 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, 3 vs. 6 and 4 vs. 5.

But after that, the teams should be reseeded and the remaining eight teams would play opponents from the other conference. In other words, West 1 vs. East 4, West 2 vs. East 3, West 3 vs. East 2, West 4 vs. East 1. If all final four teams are from one conference, so be it. Think of how much more entertaining a '98 Dallas-Detroit Stanley Cup final would have been than the Red Wings' romp over whoever it was. See how memorable it was? (It was the Capitals.)

The days of this fascination with East vs. West are long gone. Get the best in the showcase series: The finals.

This is a major scandal waiting to happen. The NFL's strict policy is based on the premise that folks wager on games, and that gambling is a major component in the league's success. (Of course, the NFL won't admit this, and comes off as disingenuous as the French policeman in "Casablanca" who announces he is closing down Rick's Café because he is "shocked" there is a casino in the back room -- moments before he is handed his winnings by the croupier. At least the NFL understands that if it tolerates the lack of approximate, close-enough candor about injuries, it's one more invitation for a major "inside-information" scandal involving bribes of trainers or other team employees.

The NHL's traditional, and lingering, lack of candor about injuries is a joke. If the league were around in France, it would have announced Joan of Arc was day-to-day with rope burns to her wrists.

When Peter Forsberg left the bench area in the third period of Colorado's victory over Anaheim on Saturday night, the post-game word from coach Bob Hartley was that Forsberg had felt a "pull" in his rib area. The suspicions were that it involved another body part. Why? Because when someone genuinely has injured ribs in the NHL, teams treat that as if it's as sensitive as Los Alamos nuclear secrets. (Oops.) Because, ahem, someone might go after the star's ribs.

In this atmosphere of accepted untruthfulness, we don't even believe the truth. Forsberg's injury probably is a rib problem, and this isn't meant to pick on the Avalanche, who are no better or worse, depending on your perspective, than other NHL teams. But we were careful to attribute the word about this injury to the Avs, just in case it turns out to be, say, a recurrence of the (alleged) ankle injury that kept Forsberg out of the first part of training camp and the exhibition season.

Hockey's lying is insulting not only to those passing along the news, but also to the paying customers. It's a tacit indication that the players don't have respect for one another, which has some validity, but the training-room gossip gets around, anyway.

This one is a real pipe dream, because the players association would balk, but it would be great for the game. Over the years, the blather about the dilution of talent has been largely overstated in the NHL because the internationalization of the talent pool has mitigated the "damage." But the game would be better with fewer players on each roster, regardless of the number of teams.

Make it 15 skaters and two goalies. This isn't a call for a return to the days when each team carried one goalie and the reserve was the trainer or some guy in each city who might have had seven beers before he was called out of the stands. The move would save money, but the savings on three lower-tier salaries would be offset by growing salaries at the elite level. At least it might slow the acceleration of payrolls and ticket prices. The move also would put a premium on conditioning and get the best players on the ice even more. With television timeouts built into games now, there are more opportunities for rest,and players are in far better condition than in the glory years, when offseason workouts were hunting, beer drinking and Glenn Hall's painting of the barn.

Teams could suit up 10 forwards, or three lines and a spare forward. They could dress five defensemen, or two usual pairs plus an extra. If the NHL throws out a proposal such as this one in the negotiations for the new collective bargaining agreement in 2004, it deserves at least consideration. Even from the players' selfish perspective, it's worth considering as a "tradeoff"; it would eliminate 90 jobs, but make the game better and enhance the value of the elite.