RUMOUR HAS IT: PRONGER BOUND FOR T.O.

I know that when I say this / I may be stepping on pins and needles / but I don't like / all these people slagging her for breaking up The Beatles.

Is Chris Pronger really going to be in Toronto next season? Hockey Trade Rumours reports the Leafs offered their best defenceman, Thomas Kaberle, and promising young forward Matt Stajan for the big blueliner.

The Oilers, quoth the Toronto Star, are holding out for Alexander Steen as the forward in the deal.

What is for certain: if the Leafs somehow pull this off in the next five days -- which is likely the window they have, since Kaberle's new contract which takes effect on Saturday (which is July 1) has a limited no-trade clause -- it will be hard, as a Leafs fan who is not part of the "95 percent ratio," to take any joy in getting Pronger.

Here you have a guy who leads the Oilers to the precipice of a Stanley Cup, then turns around not even a week later and demands to be traded. Those are just great circumstances for any player to come to Toronto. It's not as if the Leafs don't have enough bad karma already.

In Edmonton, Pronger's wife, Lauren, the supposed spur for his trade request, has already been dubbed "Yoko" by the hometown media. Yes, there are trace amounts of misogyny in that, and you can understand the emotional reaction to an extent, but those are the breaks. Still, the optics of Pronger leaving Edmonton for Toronto -- or a big-market U.S. team, if that's where it ends up -- are bad.

Oh, and doesn't it put the lie to the myth the league and media have promulgated that every team was going to be on equal ground in the New NHL? Apparently, they forgot to take the needs and wants of players' wives into account. Then again, in the old-boys network of hockey, women are just nobodies in the grand scheme of things, unless the offend decorum by being on the ice during a Stanley Cup celebration. Then all of a sudden it's Anchorman without the jokes. I read somewhere their periods attract bears.

Anyway, if this is going to happen, call me when it happens, and then you'll get the down-low on how Pronger might improve the Leafs defence. The question here is whether it's wise to trade one of your own mobile defencemen and walk away from a deal with the only other regular from '05-06 who skates particularly well, Bryan McCabe, unless Paul Maurice is going to play Ian White and Brendan Bell regularly.

Until then, and only then, consider this the last word on Pronger until a deal happens. It's the same old story every summer with the Leafs. Some big name is headed to Toronto, don't you know? Almost always, said big name re-signs with his old team or looks at the media maelstrom at the fishbowl existence that is playing in Toronto and says to his agent, "You tell me I can play for the same amount of money in some American city where hockey is the fifth-most popular sport, after football, baseball, basketball and municipal corruption? Where do I sign?"

You can never be sure if there's anything to these rumours, or it's just the product of a lazy media that seems intent on doing its part to make hockey the most overhyped sport this side of the NFL. It's summer. Relax. Go fishing or something.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.