Leading Off: Glory Slip-Sliding Away If you haven't noticed - and based on regular-season ratings in most places this side of Vancouver, there is a good chance you haven't - there is some weird stuff going on in the N.H.L. We not only have the game's best player, Sidney Crosby, missing most of the season while in indefinite concussion limbo, but we also have the player who once battled him for that status, Alex Ovechkin, playing as if he wants to be traded to Omsk, and the once and always proud Montreal Canadiens sitting dead last in the Eastern Conference. Even stranger, the No. 3 seeds in each conference are currently Phoenix and Florida, which a large percentage of people in their cities have not noticed. Roughly half the people in Phoenix believe the Coyotes went bankrupt and moved three years ago, which they sort of did. On the equally surprising flip side, the team that loaded up at the trading deadline and is creating huge buzz in its unsuspecting city is Nashville, writes Scott Burnside on ESPN.com. It's hard not to let your eyes fall to the bottom of the standings, where it's also hard not to feel a little jolt when you find Montreal there, even if you have noticed what a train wreck the Canadiens season has been, in two languages. The latest installment came Thursday night, when the much ballyhooed arrival of the latest Geoffrion - 24-year-old Blake followed in the footsteps of his famous grandfather Boom Boom Geoffrion and great-grandfather Howie Morenz after his deadline trade from yes, Nashville - turned into one of the strangest games of the season. It started with a less-than-full Bell Centre (yes, it was snowing, but please, this is Montreal, not Miami) and ended with Minnesota's Devin Setoguchi performing the most hilarious shootout flop of the season to preserve a Montreal victory. That came after Minnesota tied it late on another weird sequence that involved a referee swallowing his whistle and Max Pacioretti failing to win a best supporting actor award. O.K., at least the Zamboni driver wasn't drunk (that we know of). That happened in a youth league game in Apple Valley, Minn. And yes, there is video. Yes, March Madness is supposed to be about college basketball. But things there are actually a little sane as March dawns. Yahoo.com's Mike Huguenin gives you the rundown on how things are going in the chase for N.C.A.A. tournament spots and seeds. CliffsNotes version: Kentucky is darned good, Illinois is swan-diving out of consideration and the smaller conferences that make up a lot of March's madness will have some great conference tournament action this weekend. The N.B.A. action was limited to a small schedule of games Thursday night, during which the Kings lost to the Lakers, but the people of Sacramento still had something to cheer because, as Mark Kriedler writes on ESPN.com, they have an arena deal that will keep their team in town thanks to some strong-arming by Commissioner David Stern. Oklahoma City's come-from-behind victory over Orlando held some excitement. It also held and object lesson in one happy small-market star (Kevin Durant) thriving while another (Dwight Howard) tries to whine and/or pout his way to a bigger stage, writes Tim Povtak on Foxsports.com. Baseball's whining came mostly from Ryan Braun's lawyer, still trying to impugn the drug-testing collector, and from those still not in love with the new wild-card playoff format, writes Bob Nightengale in USA Today. But the notable outburst of the day came from Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek's tearful retirement. As Gordon Edes writes on ESPN.com, Varitek toughed out his career as long as he could. In Philadelphia, Ryan Howard is hoping to tough his way through a comeback from a torn Achilles, which, as Jeff Passan writes on Yahoo.com, is no small thing. The Arizona Diamondbacks do not have to come back from anything dreadful, considering their wonderfully surprising season a year ago, but they are hoping to prove it was not all a dream, Tim Brown writes on Yahoo.com. The N.H.L. would like to know if it's bizarre season has been a dream. If anyone notices, please let it know.