Sabres And Sinners

Time for a 48-hour checkup on the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the consciousness of the American sports fan....

GOOD: Dominik Hasek, stopping all 29 shots on goal as the Buffalo Sabres upset New Jersey in the first round of this year's NHL Playoffs.

Hasek came into the 1993-94 season as Grant Fuhr's backup and came out with a 1.95 goals-against average. That mark has been bettered only once in the last 25 years, and that was by the same Bernie Parent that single-handedly backstopped the Flyers to a Stanley Cup title in the 1970's.

You can win in the playoffs with defense and goaltending, and with Hasek in goal, the Sabres can make a run at...wait a minute. Didn't we say this about Harvard Hockey?

BAD: The Pittsburgh Penguins, failing to sell out the first two games of its playoff series with Washington, even after chopping the price of its $68 tickets in half for some corporate buyers.

The Igloo faithful that had already purchased full-price tickets are crying foul, and deservedly so. But shame on the citizens of the Steel City, who in the past routinely left empty seats for the good postseason baseball action of their Pirates. And now, for the winners of two of the last three Stanley Cups...pass me a Rolling Rock while I stop to ponder this one.

UGLY: The Montreal Canadiens, letting in three man-down goals to Boston in the Bruins' 3-2 Game One win. This to a club rolling into the playoffs behind a 2-for-39 stretch on the "power" play.

GOOD: Tom Browning, back in command of his once-formidable pitching repertoire, two-hitting the Phillies in this year of offense, a year in which the juiced ball and expansion pitching are all the rage in barroom debates on the national game.

BAD: Browning, losing big at an Atlantic City casino two nights before winning big on the mound. Come on, Tom, between Marge Schott and Pete Rose, haven't the Reds given America enough negative publicity without you taking a turn at the blackjack table?

UGLY: But wait, there's more. Reds outfielder Reggie Sanders has just been given a justly-deserved five-day suspension for charging the mound after being hit by a pitch of the Expos' Pedro Martinez.

Oh, and by the way, Martinez was in the seventh inning of an attempt at a perfect game. Is there something bad in the Riverfront Stadium water supply, or what? I want an answer.

GOOD: Juwan Howard, bolting for the NBA before his senior season as a member first of Michigan's Fab Five, then Four, now Three...do I hear Two? One? Blast-off?

Get him into the pro game, where he can become just another face in the big man's crowd Haven't heard as much from Chris Webber, the Golden State Warrior, as from Webber, the Fab Five-All World-PTP'er from Steve Fisher's Wolverines? Proof of God's merciful existence, methinks.

BAD: The Minnesota Timberwolves look ready, willing and able to bolt to Nashville, and There's nothing that its fans can do about it.

This is franchise chess at its most violent. When a struggling team sells out a large fraction of its home games and still gets sold down the Mississippi River...call it the Rape of Minneapolis, Part II. The North Stars are already gone, and now this...two franchise departures does not a Warren Moon arrival equal.

UGLY: The Baltimore Colts are back in business...in the Canadian Football League. Feeling violated by Bob Irsay's stealth of the original NFL Colts to Indianapolis, the city strikes next year into the world of the 110-yard field and the "single."

Almost as surreal as Jerry Tarkanian's continuing involvement in the U.S. Supreme Court. Proof that once again, unlike the Tark's bald head, the rolling stone of professional sports gathers no [Kate] moss....