This summer, the National Hockey League has become the Money Hockey League (MHL).

It’s been all about money since the Chicago Blackhawks paraded around the ice with the Stanley Cup in mid-June. Since then, the news from the MHL has been about $$$$$ —free-agent signings with huge contracts; arbitration hearings with good and bad results for players; salary caps; and budgets.

Way back when, summertime around the NHL was about charity golf tournaments, the occasional trade, a retirement announcement or two and hot-stove talk about the upcoming season.

Now it’s all about money. Money may not be able to buy you love, but it can get you a goal-scoring forward. If the arbitrator agrees, that is.

Ilya Kovalchuk signed a $102 million deal with New Jersey, who spread out the contract over 17 years so the Devils could circumnavigate the salary cap regulations. The NHL said no-can-do, so an arbitrator was called in.

Chicago Blackhawks got to enjoy their Stanley Cup triumph for all of two or three days before the decimation of the champs’ roster began with the trading of playoff hero Dustin Byfuglien to Atlanta. Why? Salary cap restrictions, of course. Byfuglien was followed out the Blackhawks’ door by Kris Versteeg, Andrew Ladd, Ben Eager, John Madden, Adam Burish, Brent Sopel, Colin Fraser and another playoff hero, goalie Antti Niemi.

Those players represented 80 goals from 2009-10 and Niemi was 16-6 in the playoffs.

And the Hawks are still over the salary cap, thanks to ‘superstar’ salaries being paid to Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith and Marian Hossa. Niemi, who was awarded $2.7 million in an arbitration hearing, is now unemployed and looking for work after the Hawks said that price tag was too rich for their budget. Filling the hole will be Marty Turco, formerly of Dallas, who signed for a mere million bucks.

Fans in Montreal were stunned earlier in the MHL season when the Habs traded goalie Jaroslav Halak, who was walking on water for the Canadiens in the playoffs. Halak and fellow goalie Carey Price were both restricted free agents this summer, and GM Pierre Gauthier couldn’t keep them both. But Habs’ fans feel he kept the bum and traded the star. Why? Money. Budgets. Salary cap.

The Blackhawks and their fans better enjoy their Cup title because odds are against their depleted roster repeating in 2010-11. Don’t blame it on the coaching staff. Blame it on the accounting office.

• Groaner time: “A man dressed as a broccoli proposed to his girlfriend immediately after winning a veggie race at a Reading Phillies game,” noted RJ Currie of SporstsDeke.com. “Word is he once asked her to sneak off and get married, but she said, ‘Sorry, I cantaloupe.’ “

• NBC’s Jay Leno, on Bristol Palin breaking up with Levi Johnston again: “These two have called it quits more times than Brett Favre.”

• Jay Mariotti, FanHouse: “If You Know Who actually is retiring from You Know What, I speak for a nation in asking him a sizable favour. This time, please don’t change your mind. I don’t want to remember you as Brett Farce.”

• Jim Barach of WCHS-TV in Charleston, W.Va., on research indicating that men who wear red are more attractive to women: “And all this time people thought Tiger Woods wore red on Sunday for luck at golf.”

• Golfer James Mason, 59, to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, on playing on the Champions Tour: “It’s a hard way to make an easy living.”

• Janice Hough, from leftcoastsportsbabe.com: “Brett Favre now says that he hasn’t decided on retirement, and the decision won’t be about money. Too bad, otherwise there is a chance we could pay him to go away.”

• Hough again: “Alex Rodriguez hit his 600th career home run last week. ‘That’s really awesome’ said absolutely no one outside New York.”

• Cowboys coach Wade Phillips, jokingly to The Dallas Morning News, on the latest Favre retirement conjecture: “Again? Just use the same quotes I had last year, and the year before that.”

• Headline at TheOnion.com: “Indians apologize for not having ace pitcher to trade to contender this year.”
• Comedy writer Wendel Potter, after nary a player showed up at services for Yankee Stadium “Voice of God” Bob Sheppard: “There were more Yankees at Robert E. Lee’s funeral.”

•  Cam Hutchinson in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix: “Winnipeg’s new football stadium will begin to take shape after a massive hole is dug. I’m thinking this phase of construction should be named after Mike Kelly.”

• Ian Hamilton of the Regina Leader-Post: “The NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals bowed to the pressure exerted by wide receiver Chad Ocho Cinco and signed petulant wideout Terrell Owens this week. The Bengals now have Ocho Cinco and Ocho Psycho.”

• Steve Simmons in the Toronto Sun: “Why doesn’t the NHL just get it over with and move the Phoenix Coyotes to Winnipeg? There is no future, no hope, no chance, in Phoenix. End of story.”

Care to comment? Email brucepenton2003@yahoo.ca”