Some advice to those who don't believe in the old adage "you can't go home again": 1. Call Boston Bruins PR staff; 2. Schedule interview with Joe Thornton; 3. Reconsider misplaced skepticism.

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Thornton made the wrong type of headlines April 24 when he was arrested in his hometown of St. Thomas, Ontario, and charged with two counts of assaulting a police officer following a late-night bar brawl. The Bruins captain was pepper-sprayed in the face by police during the incident, which took place in the early hours of a Canadian holiday weekend and also resulted in the arrest of eight others, including his brother, John, for trespassing.

Certainly not the sort of newspaper clipping J.P. Barry, the budding superstar's agent, will be preserving for future arbitration hearings. Getting arrested is rarely thought of as a positive part of a young man's personal development, and the added stigma that's attached to the allegation against Boston's best player makes matters that much worse.

But right now, that's all Thornton has against him. An allegation. One group's account of a series of events. And, whether you have endorsement deals or not, allegations aren't enough to be judged by. Especially when the allegations are about a hockey player who finds himself in trouble while returning home for a visit.

You see, this kind of scenario is far from being uncharted territory. For example, there's the Eric Lindros "Koo Koo Bananas" episode, wherein the then-19-year-old Flyers star was arrested in 1992 and alleged to have spit beer and physically assaulted a woman at a watering hole just outside of Oshawa, Ontario, where he grew up playing junior hockey. (Lindros was subsequently acquitted of all charges). Chris Pronger was fined $500 by the Hartford Whalers for his involvement in a tavern dust-up in 1994. Scott Mellanby and Shayne Corson have also seen their share of bar troubles.

The real story in all this, the one that can't be squeezed into a catchy headline, is this: Thornton is discovering the same truth almost every NHLer discovers -- namely, once you make the big time, your private life evaporates as though it were a negative thought in Gary Bettman's mind -- and now lawyer Douglas Gunn is billing him by the hour to deal with the fallout.

According to Thornton's cousin, Jamie Pell, the incident was a classic case of the feisty little pug trying to goad the local big dog into a showdown.

"They were talking trash," Pell said of the bar flies he accused of trying to instigate a confrontation with Thornton. "When you're in Joe's position, everybody wants to take a shot at you."

Talk to enough players and you'll understand that, like it or like it not, this is part of the package you agree to when you agree to become a pro athlete. You'll come to know that for every person who buys your jersey, there's at least one who craves nothing more than the sight of you falling on your face. You'll realize why effigies are built to be burnt. You'll see what the temptations of money and infamy do to people. You'll watch friends change and be forced to do the same.

According to published reports, a melee had already taken place inside the bar when the police arrived, although Thornton is believed to have stayed clear of any trouble to that point.

Things began to deteriorate, Ontario Provincial Police Staff Sgt. Hank Zehr told the Toronto Sun, when officers ordered Thornton's brother and other patrons to leave the bar. John Thornton refused the request and the charge was laid against him, Zehr said, when Joe pushed the officer who was trying to handcuff John. Joe Thornton is alleged to then have struck another officer before he was restrained and arrested. (Neither officer was injured.)

Andrew Harvey, a friend of Thornton's who was at the bar that night, told the Boston Herald "Joe didn't do a thing" to trigger the disturbance.

"It all happened because I was standing on top of a chair and a bouncer pulled me off and threw me against the bar," the paper quotes Harvey as saying. "Other bouncers were coming in to grab my friends and (Thornton) was helping pull people off the ground and he got tagged as one of the instigators.

"He doesn't know who he's grabbing or who he's pushing," Harvey said, "and (the police) sprayed him with pepper spray."

By Zehr's own estimation, Thornton -- who was otherwise cooperative and said to appear sober at the time -- was coming to the defense of his brother when the confrontation is alleged to have occurred. "But nobody has a right to push a policeman," Zehr said. "It doesn't matter who you are."

Agreed. But there is issue to be taken with those who would automatically equate wealth with arrogance. Sometimes the opposite is true.

Sometimes those who didn't get all the right bounces growing up are the ones that want to do all the boasting. Being well-compensated for your efforts doesn't come packaged with the ability to control the behavior of others. Sometimes you have to learn the hard truth the hard way.

And if you don't think these guys are aware that there are people angling to relieve them of their legal tender, if you don't know that they know one shove or one punch could make a serious dent in their savings, you're fooling yourself.

This is the price you pay for a major-league bank account. This is what your time on the ice does to your life off of it.

Of course, none of this is to suggest we know what happened to Joe Thornton that night. We don't know what went down in St. Thomas. We can't estimate how justified the charges are. We have no surveillance tape that would exonerate him. And that's the point: None of us know, one way or the other. And because we don't, the benefit of the doubt should go to Thornton, the same way it should go to anybody else.

The easy thing to do here is to lump Thornton in with the selfish athletes that litter the landscape of modern sports. The difficult thing to do is to extend the same open-mindedness you'd afford a family member to a multimillionaire you've never met. In this instance, the difficult thing is the right thing to do.

So let the facts come out before the knives do. And for all you budding superstars out there, remember, Dorothy was right: There's no place like home. Too bad that's more of a warning than a comfort.

E-mail Adam Proteau at aproteau@thehockeynews.com.

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