Will any remaining New York Ranger please pick up a Madison Square Garden white courtesy phone? Or did Sather trade all those away too? Man, what a flurry of activity on Tuesday night, eh? We pretty much beat the Rangers trades like a dead horse in last week's column but do you realize that the entire second round of the 2005 draft is going to be the Rangers picking something like 30 consecutive players? Anway, let's focus our attention for a moment across the river to the team who play their games in The Swamp. The defending Stanley Cup champions didn't get the coveted defensemen they were looking for to replace the injured Scott Stevens, however they did make a deal with the Coyotes for a pretty decent two-way player who can provide some help come playoff time. So who did the Devils get? Well, here's my friend Tone Loc here to sing about it:

Trade deadline approachin' and we're lookin' for some action
Come on Lou Lamoriello, give us Devs fans satisfaction
Defensemen all around, but none of them want to get with me
We've got the Cup, we can deal Mike Rupp, so what's wrong with New Jersey?
Now it's March 8th and I'm hangin', at the local sporting bar
Devils trade comes up on E-S-P-N, but it's blurry from afar
So I got up and strolled over to the other side of the cantina
I asked the crowd, who did we get, they said Funky Jan Hrdina

So if you haven't figured the sing-along out, that wasn't sung to the tune Tone Loc's "The Wild Thing", instead you had to follow the bouncing puck to the tune of "Funky Cold Medina". If you missed it, go back and do it again, it's a lot of fun, trust me…

And those 647 trades you saw scrolling by you on ESPNEWS were just the half of it. What you may not know is that some even bigger trades were rumored as being discussed as the deadline approached but never finalized. So what did we miss? Well here's this week's Top 10 List to show you:

Top 10 Trades That Were Discussed At The Trading Deadline But Never Made

10. The Ghost of Pelle Lindbergh to the Flyers for Antero Niitimyaki, Bob Crachtit and three 3rd round picks from Drafts Past, Present and Future.
9. Mark Messier and Bobby Holik to the Devils for the entire Albany River Rats team plus the destruction of the only surviving videotape of the Stephane Matteau goal.
8. Olaf Kolzig to the Islanders for Garth Snow and 3,000,000 shares of Computer Associates preferred stock with voting privileges.
7. Terrell Owens to the Flyers. Hey he wants to play in Philly doesn't he?
6. Henrik and Daniel Sedin to the Los Angeles Kings for the Olsen Twins and Nicky and Paris Hilton. No word on whether Paris came with the full 37-minute video or just the 3 minute one with the night vision scene…
5. Ozzy Osbourne's long awaited return to Phoenix in exchange for Ossi Vaananen and a dove to be bitten later.
4. The Rangers ask for volunteers from amongst the remaining active 11 players to be traded to Calgary and for volunteering the player would get a free companion round trip ticket and a food voucher. Mike Dunham immediately raised his hand but was blithely ignored.
3. A three way deal between Buffalo, San Jose and Washington in which the Capitals current leading scorer (some guy named Pierre just up from the AHL with 3 goals and 2 assists) would go to Buffalo. Buffalo would then send Drew Bledsoe to San Jose. And the owner of the Sharks would get to punch Capitals owner Ted Leonisis in the stomach.
2. Michael Vick to the Avalanche. Or was that just that cool Nike commercial playing again?
… and the #1 trade that was discussed at the trading deadline but never consummated was …
1. Another Devils-Phoenix trade almost got done as Scott Stevens' concussion-clouded brain was rumored to be going to the Alcor Life Extension Facility in a two-for-one deal for the heads of Ted and John Henry Williams.

And what's with all the violence in the NHL this past week? Must have been the opening of the latest Sopranos season on HBO got everyone's blood pumping for some fisticuffs and whacking… First we get the Flyers and Senators in a Wrestlemania XX preview, as they re-enact all the fights from Rocky's I through V, plus a few scenes straight out of "Slapshot"! That was Rob Ray I saw puttin' on the foil, wasn't it? When did he get back? I thought him and Bob Probert walked off into the sunset many seasons ago? Well I guess if Mick Foley can come back for Wrestlemania (The Rock and Sock Connection lives!) then it's only fitting for Rob Ray to make his triumphant return in the most brawl filled game in recent NHL history. Anyway, so after all the penalty numbers were added up (counting up by five, as in "five minute major") in this game we had about 7 hours of penalty minutes. Or perhaps to put it in better perspective, consider the following. If you stopped the game, took all the players involved and sat them in the penalty box (stadium style seating would of course be necessary to do this) then let them watch two of the three Lord of The Rings movies (their choice), only after the credits are rolling on "The Two Towers" and the name of the guy who did Frodo's stunts scrolled by, would the game be allowed to continue…

Then we need to discuss Todd Bertuzzi's cheap shot of the Colorado Avalache's Steve Moore. Now I don't want to go off on a rant here but… That wasn't a cheap shot at all. As a matter of fact, that was an outright mugging! Not only does he hit him from behind in some coward-ass Jesse James shoot you in the back as you're leaving the watering hole fashion but Bertuzzi then proceeds to grab Moore's head and grind it into the ice. Along with a few of Moore's vertebrae to boot! Did he get his wallet to in the ensuing fracas? I mean come on! Now I'm definitely not trying to condone this type of "Moore mugging" by any stretch of the imagination. But had this been say Ashton-loving Demi Moore getting Punk'd by Bertuzzi or liberal director Michael Moore (hey there's always a shortage of good Left Wingers in the NHL!) with his face eating what only the zamboni dares tread on, then I would be apt to turn the other bloody cheek.

But it wasn't Demi or Michael, instead it was Steve, who one might say had something coming back the other way for a previous knee-on-knee with Markus Naslund but not this Robert Chambers/Jennifer Levin re-enactment! This was a friggin' crime, that's all, plain and simple. And no matter how long a suspension Colin Campbell decides to dish out, fact of the matter is that Bertuzzi has pretty much gotten away with murder. So much so in fact, that I hear he left the game by way of Ray Lewis' limousine! Must've been tough crowding into the back of the stretch with Dale Hunter, Claude Lemieux, Marty McSorley and Martha Stewart, eh? The NHL is set to announce Bertuzzi's punishment on Thursday so stay tuned. I say a year in San Quentin playing "drop the soap" with sniper youth John Lee Malvo, "just a bit inside" Sam Waskal and a couple of pretty boy Enron executives ought to be good enough, no? Either that or a year of community service campaigning for Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich would be a good fit as well…

OK, I feel much better now. How about you? Good then let's call it night because I've got to hit the road. You see I got tickets to something in Tampa Bay only I can't tell if it's a Lightning game or Disney On Ice? "See your favorite dwarves skating with Snow White. There's Doc, Bashful, Grumpy, Dopey and even Martin St. Louis…" 'til next week…

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