from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- One of the most difficult conversations Scotty Bowman had in his magnificent coaching career was sitting down to tell Steve Yzerman he had to change his game.

Yzerman was a star unlike few before him: In the years prior to Bowman coaching the Detroit Red Wings, he had scored 65 goals, 62, 58, 51 and 50. Only Mario Lemieux had more goals in that time period. Only Wayne Gretzky and Lemieux had more points.

“I said to him, ‘You’ve got to play a lot differently if this team is going to win,’ ” said Bowman, describing the extreme challenge in Ken Dryden’s book Scotty: A Hockey Life Like No Other....

- The two top rookie scorers in the NHL this season are 24-year-old Victor Olofsson of Buffalo and the Leafs’ 25-year-old Ilya Mikheyev. As Babcock would say — it’s a man’s league.

- The suspicion was, when Stan Bowman’s Chicago Blackhawks won three Stanley Cups with Joel Quenneville coaching, his legendary father, Scotty, was never much of a Quenneville fan. That notion is supported in Dryden’s book, Scotty, where Quenneville is described this way: “He was a steady unspectacular coach for a steady unspectacular team.”

- The cooing over the return of Patrick Marleau to Toronto was rather romantic, yet somewhat glossing over the facts. The bottom line: Signing Marleau to a three-year contract was a crappy deal for the Leafs. He had one good season in Toronto and one ineffective season, and to get rid of his contract, the Leafs had to relinquish a first-round pick in the process. Sound management, this wasn’t.

more on the first topic and other notes...