Putting the first half on ice.(message from John Rawlings, sport writer.)(Brief Article)

Who would have thought that at the halfway mark of the 2000-01 NHL season Mario Lemieux would have more goals than Eric Lindros? Or that Mike Keenan would have even one more victory behind the bench? All those with that kind of prescience, please raise your hands. That's what I thought.

While none of us here could have predicted those events either--and Keenan is a regular contributor to sportingnews.com--we can say the first half of the season has produced some dazzling results, along with the sheer joy of seeing Lemieux on the ice again. None of that would have been possible if some things weren't different this year in the NHL. The most noticeable change is the way games are being officiated, which is why senior writer Larry Wigge focuses on that aspect as a way to examine the sport at midseason. His report begins on page 58.

What we have seen, much to my delight, is a consistent crackdown by officials on the slashing and obstruction penalties that had slowed play in the ...