from Cam Cole of the Vancouver Sun,

Now that it has tackled softer caps on shoulder and elbow pads and rounded the glass near the benches to eliminate the "turnbuckle" effect, the National Hockey League's Department of Player Safety needs to look into this whole business of skate sharpening.

Like, limiting it to once a month, with the Dave Keon skate sharpener.

For those of you under the age of 50, that's the little whetstone-embedded gizmo, maybe three inches long, that kids used to send away for, with $1.25 and a label from Bee Hive Corn Syrup, to put something resembling an edge on their blades after accidentally stepping on concrete on the way from the dressing room to the ice surface.

No one ever got cut by a skate sharpened with a Dave Keon.

Alas, technology arrived, and with it came the NHL player's penchant for having his skates done every few days on a machine that puts an edge like the amazing Ginsu knife on them, and suddenly the skate cut - like Matt Cooke - is an ongoing menace in the game of hockey.

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