League reviews Barrasso slash

By LANCE HORNBY -- Toronto Sun
The so-called centre of the hockey universe has been hard on its centres in 1999.

For the seventh time in the calendar year, the Maple Leafs are rejigging furiously from an injury to a top-flight centre.

Yanic Perreault is the latest to be sidelined. He will be out six to eight weeks after his left forearm was shattered Saturday night by a Tom Barrasso slash that will be reviewed by NHL senior vice-president hockey operations boss Colin Campbell today. The Leafs are sending in a tape of the incident.

"We don't want to be told in three days time that they didn't act because we didn't send in a tape," Leafs executive Bill Watters said yesterday.

Perreault, who is tied with Mats Sundin for the Leafs lead in points with 23, underwent a difficult operation on Saturday night to insert nine screws and a plate. The club's first impulse was to call up centre Kevyn Adams from St. John's of the AHL. But with Saturday scratch Alyn McCauley looking to have recovered from the flu and Dmitri Khristich able to slide over from the wing, the Leafs are holding off on making a move until this morning.

Despite all the mishaps to the middlemen, the Leafs have proved they have the depth to withstand the injuries, unlike a couple of years ago when a lack of a second-line centre killed their playoff hopes.

They also have the option of dressing seven defencemen against the Buffalo Sabres tonight at the Air Canada Centre and are not worried about playing one under the 23-man roster for a few days.

McCauley missed 43 games last season plus the playoffs with knee and concussion problems that lingered right up to the start of this season, while Igor Korolev suffered a fractured finger and ankle.

Captain Mats Sundin fractured his right ankle in October, while Nikolai Antropov is in the middle of a two-week absence with a shoulder injury.

Sundin and netminder Curtis Joseph have called for the league to discipline Barrasso, for wildly hacking his goal stick at a dangerous height to stop Perreault on a wraparound. The heel of the stick caught Perreault above the cuff of his glove and broke the radius, the bone which runs from the elbow to the thumb side of the wrist.

Penguins coach Kevin Constantine said yesterday it was a natural reaction by Barrasso. "There was no intent to injure."

Leafs general manager/coach Pat Quinn said that doctors found the bottom bone (ulna, the inner bone that goes from elbow to the little finger) also was cracked. "There was some real damage done."

Quinn's team has played the Penguins twice this month and he watched their game against Buffalo last week. He says he has detected that the struggling Pens are becoming collectively careless with their sticks.

"I don't know if it's aggressive hockey or not," Quinn said. "They (NHL executives) are always talking about stopping the stick work in the game. That (Saturday's 3-2 overtime win by the Leafs) was an awful game for stick play.

"I don't know if that (stick work) is the proper response. I know you ask your players to be more physical sometimes when you don't win. But slashing and hitting from behind is not what you want in the game."

-- with files from Jack Boland

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