The Detroit Red Wings were pummeling the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-0 in a best-of-seven series. Pulling a page from the playbook of the self-sabotaging owner in Major League, Leafs coach Hap Day benched his best defensemen as well as a future Hall of Famer and replaced them with two unproven rookies who had combined for a whopping 9 points during the regular season.


Halfway through Game 4, the move was going approximately as well as you'd expect. The Leafs found themselves down by two goals. Because it's difficult to fire a coach in the middle of a game, Day stuck to his guns and kept the gang of unproven jerks on the ice. And that's when the Leafs suddenly began playing out of their minds, coming from behind to win the game and the entire series.

Mathematicians have looked at the history of games in which a team trailed by two goals and the history of seven-game series in which a team was down three games to none, and calculated the Leafs chance of winning at that moment at 0.17 percent. Herb Brooks, the coach of the U.S. Olympic hockey team that year, calculated his squad's chances of winning at a more reasonable 10 percent. This one just comes down to the fact that it's much more fun to believe in miracles at the height of the Cold War than ones pulled off by teams named after foliage.

BOCA RATON, Fla. -- NHL general managers emerged from their first day of meetings optimistic they would have at least one rule change to make.

After hearing a presentation from disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan on player safety issues, the GMs broke into smaller groups to examine rule change proposals.

A new hybrid icing rule and eliminating hand passes in the defensive zone were both met with support from the seven GMs who discussed them.

For a rule recommendation to be made to the competition committee, at least 20 GMs must be in favour of it.

The managers will continue to meet Tuesday and Wednesday.