TORONTO -- Roger Neilson has always been an open collar in a button-down league.

The innovative coach has changed the look of hockey and how we look at the game and that is why he will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday night.

	BOBBLE-HEADED FOR THE HALL
	The Roger Neilson bobblehead doll, given away by the Senators in honor of the coach's Hall of Fame induction, bears an uncanny semblance to its namesake -- tie and all.

It's a black-tie honor he never expected -- and it has brought with it its own little crisis.

"I can't find a bowtie that fits in with my tux," said the 68-year-old, whose legendary colorful neckware has symbolized his challenging of the system and the status quo. "I've got about five people looking."

The ties are just one characteristic that have made the Senators assistant coach (Ottawa is his 12th NHL franchise in his 25-year NHL coaching career) into one of hockey's most colorful characters.

His coaching made him an influential personality. The loud ties are an around-the-neck exclamation point to a statement by Neilson, his way of protesting The Establishment. Fitting, since beating the system is the very thing which brings him here to the doors of the Hall of Fame.

In addition, he's an inspiration to many. Battling multiple myeloma and skin cancer, he continues to be an uplifting story of courage and said he's felt as well lately as he has in the last year.

He's also the man who became Captain Video, pioneering the use of videotape as a coaching and teaching tool, is an infamously bad driver, the keeper of a Christmas card list over 1,000 names long (divided into A, B and C lists), bender of the rules and, of course, the owner one of hockey's brightest minds.

He is being inducted into the Hall in the builders' category.

It's a black-tie affair, but a black tie on Neilson?

Hard to imagine.

His outrageous ties are selected on but two criteria: the louder and cheaper the better.

"It also helps," he said, "if you can spill something on them and not notice it."

CHANGING THE GAME

Roger Neilson's gift as a coach -- or curse, if you were a hockey administrator -- has always been his ability to think outside the box. He has been responsible for a number of rule changes because of his ability to exploit situations to his team's advantage. That kind of innovative thinking is one of the big reasons he's being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. His two favorites: While coaching the major junior Peterborough Petes, he got the idea of pulling the goaltender when his team faced a penalty shot and replacing him with a defenseman. As soon as the opposing player touched the puck, the defenseman would charge out of the net and check him. "We had six (penalty shots) one year and Ron Stackhouse stopped them all," said Neilson. Now a team has to have a goaltender in net for a penalty shot. In 1966, as a rookie coach, Neilson took an underdog Petes team up against a first-place club from Hamilton. "We were facing elimination and we went into that grubby little rink," Neilson remembered. "We were down 3-1 in the series, but had the lead late in the game. We were down two men with two minutes to go, but we just kept throwing guys out there." With his team already down the maximum two men and less than two minutes to go in the game, Neilson knew taking another minor penalty for having too many men on the ice wasn't going to change the manpower situation. With his the extra bodies on the ice until the referee stopped play, Hamilton didn't have open ice and the clock continued running until the Petes touched the puck which they made no effort to do. "I love the stories he tells and that's my favorite," said Senators assistant coach Perry Pearn. "Every time they dropped the puck, he just kept putting two more guys out there until the end of the game and they won by a goal. "That was a pretty smart thing. I guess the fans went wild and every NHL scout in the building came up to him afterwards and told him he had made a travesty of the game. He said, 'Well, change the rule,' so they did. Now it's a penalty shot if you get called for too many men on the ice in that situation at the end of the game." Chuckled Neilson: "We were lucky to get out of that one alive."

His tie habit started around 1989 when Neilson was coaching the New York Rangers. The club used to stay in a hotel in Manhattan on game days and out on the curb, guys would sell three ties for $10.

"Neil Smith was the general manager and he was a pretty natty dresser. He used to wear these ties that were $150, $170 each. I figured a couple of these $3 ties were just as good. The guy's probably still there on Seventh Avenue."

Since then, he's received hundreds of them, including a half-dozen he got from the public relations man for The Rolling Stones.

"Big companies have sent me some, too," he said, "but they are usually too classy."

After he recorded his 300th coaching win, he was given 300 ties by the Rangers.

"I think it was really about a hundred," he said, "and 300 dog biscuits and 300 donuts. I used to like Dunkin' Donuts."

Reaching far and wide
Neilson's influence in the game is incredibly widespread. It's hard to walk into an NHL dressing room and not find a player who has been influenced in some way by Neilson, who has been part of those 12 NHL organizations as either a coach or scout over his 25 years in the NHL. (If you want to by very basic about it, all the players all have been influenced by Neilson. Since every player has to watch video these days -- one of Neilson's ideas -- they all have been touched by his thinking.)

"He's touched a lot of players," said Toronto Maple Leafs coach and general manager Pat Quinn. "He's had a very positive influence on those people and a lot of them have gone on to have great careers.

"It's what a teacher does. As a builder in this game, that's kind of descriptive. Roger has done that. He's bumped into a lot of people. He's been in so many places, he's had the ability to touch a lot of people. Whether that's good or bad to start with, it winds up being good."

Not to mention the thousands of kids who have passed through his hockey schools in the Peterborough, Ontario, area and in Israel, or the coaches who have listened to him speak at seminars.

The pioneer
Captain Video.

Neilson got the idea of watching a videotape of a just-played game when he was with the major junior Peterborough Petes of what was then the Ontario Hockey Association. Video cassette recorders were just making their way into the consumer marketplace.

"We used to sneak the equipment out of the high school," said Neilson the other day. "I thought it would be a good idea to watch the game again. We wanted to analyze it, so then we came up with the idea of counting the scoring chances to determine how it went. Shots on goal could be misleading.

"Once I got in with the Leafs (1977-79), I had them bring (the video equipment) in there. There were about four teams who used it and we used to switch tapes (to scout opponents). Within about six or seven years, everybody was doing it."

Now, every club has a video coach or video coordinator who is a member of the coaching staff.

They can thank Neilson for their jobs.

The survivor
Neilson has plenty of reasons to feel sorry for himself, but he will not allow himself a moment of self-pity.

"I got bone cancer and a year later, I got skin cancer. They're both incurable," he said Saturday night after being honored before the Hall of Fame Game between the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs at the Air Canada Centre.

"The doctors are always adjusting (the medication) and they're keeping things under control. Three years in, I'm feeling pretty good. I've had great support from the hockey community and the care of one of the best clinics in the United States.

"My Christian faith is important to me. I think God has a plan for my life and I let him take care of it. Setbacks are not as big a deal for me as they might be for someone else."

After his controversial firing by Philadelphia GM Bob Clarke after the cancer struck in February 2000, Neilson said his opportunity to coach with the Senators has been perhaps his best therapy.

"I'm lucky I've got a job where I can go in early and leave late," he said. "I just have to try and get home for an hour or two in the afternoon (for a nap) because I run out of gas quicker than I used to."

A man of one word
"Crap."

In a game where coaches and players can find new and entertaining ways to use a certain four-letter word -- as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb -- Neilson, a deeply religious man, is known for using the word "crap" as his strongest expression of disgust.

"I thought I heard him swear once during a game," Senators assistant coach Perry Pearn said, "but he said he didn't, so I'll have to take him at his word on that one."

The absent-minded professor
Neilson has a gift for self-deprecating humor, delivered with his creaky voice and his hands usually shoved deep into the pockets of his track suit. There are all kinds of stories about his absent-mindedness and quirks, but the charming thing is he tells most of them on himself: