Maybe Jose Canseco can learn how to ice skate and play in the NHL?

The two North American pastimes have had better weeks; heck they've had better decades than what's happened the past few days.

Baseball's steroid scandal isn't going away despite the sport's efforts to stick its head in the sand and ignore it.

Baseball winked its eye at steroid abuse for more than a decade and is now paying the rightful price for selling its soul to the devil.

The powers-that-be didn't care how the increase in home runs came; all they cared about is that it brought fans to the ballparks and increased television ratings.

They knew what was going on; they would have to be utter fools not to. When 50-homer seasons went from rare to commonplace, there had to be a reasonable explanation.

Expansion and weakening of pitching, maybe. Smaller ballparks, possibly. But when players go from tall stringbeans to massive hulks, it's easy to see what's going on.

Of course, how do you prove it?

It was evident baseball players were lifting more weights, which can account for an increase in strength, but you can't accuse someone without proof.

The players union was not going to allow for tougher testing until the public and the media demanded it.

This whole affair has given baseball its greatest taint since the Black Sox scandal of 1919.

A generation of records will have an asterisk on them, even if baseball does not put one there.

If you're a baseball fan and sick of this, you won't have to worry about it much longer. The hubbub about the Canseco book will fade, too.

Obviously, baseball isn't going to say much of anything, they want it to disappear.

The focus will shift back to the field, the Yankees battling the Red Sox, Roger Clemens back for another season, and other stories.

Then again, Barry Bonds, husband of the year, will be catching the Babe's 714 by mid-May and the steroid talk will resume in full.

Now to the NHL, and the winter of its discontent. The NHL is a how-not-to on running a sports league.

The league overexpanded, (Columbus, Ohio? North Carolina?), didn't do enough to thwart thuggery (deliberate muggings on the ice), made its season run too long (six-month regular season and playoffs that end in June?) and favored a defensive-first system that doesn't let its players develop into superstars.

I've been to a few NHL games and it's a great sport - when you can see the entire rink - but it doesn't work on television, unless you crank up the offense.

It isn't a coincidence that the NHL's glory days were in the mid-1980s to early 1990s, when Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux could light up the scoreboard.

The best thing the NHL could do is contract a few teams, ban all fighting, and change the rules to open up the offense.

Of course, they have to get a labor agreement first, but it will come.

The fans may not - it will be intriguing to see fan reaction if and when the NHL returns next fall.

The NHL will never be the same and for all we know won't return as a shell of its former self.

OK, a reminder, tonight's SU-BC game is on ESPN, not Adelphia, at 6 p.m.

Sciria, The Citizen's sports editor, can be reached at 253-5311, ext. 258 or citizensports@lee.net