from Cam Cole of the Vancouver Sun,

“The law,” as Mr. Bumble so aptly put it in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, “is a ass — a idiot.”

In this case, we are not talking about 17th-century English law, the part that supposed that a man’s wife acted under his direction at all times. (“If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor,” Bumble lamented.)

We are, today, addressing the law of the National Hockey League, under which “direction” is a fluid concept, written in chalk, designed to be heavily underlined and accompanied by a stern finger-wag, or erased, according to the wind direction.

Case in point: Vancouver Canucks defenceman Alex Edler, pursuing a puck behind the Phoenix Coyotes’ net Thursday night, finds goalie Mike Smith is in the process of playing it. Edler barges into him from behind, knocking the goalie flat, touching off a minor brouhaha as the Coyotes, quite reasonably, rush to their ’keeper’s defence.

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