CNNSI.com's David Vecsey tackles three issues from around the league:

1	Who will Mike Keenan run out of Miami first?

Roberto Luongo Mitchell Layton/Getty Images/NHLI Mike Keenan is forever starring in his own production of Richard III on Ice, flaunting his insatiable desire to rule the kingdom and willing to eliminate anybody who might undermind his power. Of course, Richard III put his enemies out of their misery; Keenan trades his to Calgary. You might say Pavel Bure was Keenan's first victim last season, but that was was not the same kind of disgraceful banishment received by players like Brendan Shanahan and Trevor Linden in Keenan's previous stops. Keenan skillfully played both ends of the Bure trade, lamenting the loss of such a talent while simultaneously allowing teammates to finger Bure as a cancer. You can expect Keenan to be much -- much -- harder on little brother Valeri Bure, who is coming off of knee surgery and will be hard-pressed to put up the kind of numbers he needs to make Keenan forget his defensive lapses and soft play in the corners. Florida probably will be Bure-less by the end of the season. General manager Rick Dudley also should sleep with one eye open. Hired in May under the provision that Keenan wouldn't answer to him directly, Dudley might be the only GM in the league who has to have his coach sign off on major personnel moves. By hiring Dudley, majority owner Alan Cohen didn't give Keenan the keys to the car, but he certainly left them dangling in open view. Should it come to a power struggle -- and when hasn't it? -- it's more than likely that Cohen will side with Keenan. The famously explosive tempers in both Dudley and Keenan make this arrangement one giant powder keg ready to blow. But the key relationship is between Keenan and goalie Roberto Luongo, the former No. 4 overall draft pick. Keenan is brutal on his goalies, and after the Luongo's shaky play in a season-opening loss to Tampa Bay, Keenan already was mulling a change. After Luongo gave up one goal on one shot in the second game against Atlanta, out he went (though he did come back in and get the win in overtime). Asked if he might be more forgiving on Luongo because of his tender age and psyche, Keenan bristled. "Nobody's being forgiven," he said. "Luongo is 23 and he's been in the NHL for two [full] years already. The thing he has to do now is learn how to win hockey games." Keenan reminded us of the fact that he goaded Ron Hextall to a Vezina as a 21-year-old rookie in 1987, then did the same with a 25-year-old Eddie Belfour in 1991. But -- and it's a big one -- consider the ornery personalities of both Hextall and Belfour and you can see how they would respond under Keenan's tough-love style. Luongo is a little more tender. "That's just Mike's style," he said of the quick hooks. "You just have to learn to adjust to it." And if you don't? Well, you'll love Calgary.

2	What's it like watching the game behind the new safety nets?

Safety nets AP I took in a period of a game from behind the nets recently and here's my assessment: You can see through them. Sure, they make things a little grainy sometimes, but at no point did a player come flying out from a blind spot. Never once did I say, "Whoa! Where the heck did he come from?!" Sitting behind home plate at baseball games is more distracting. Because of the static way you watch a baseball game, the net is just kind of right there in front of you. At a hockey game, with your eyes darting around following the fast action, the net does seem to kind of melt away -- though not entirely, as the commissioner would like you to believe. It's there, but it's hardly a hinderance. One piece of advice: Because the netting is black and the ice is white, if you're sitting high up and looking down at a steep angle -- let's say into the near corners -- the view does get a little more obstructed. Surely, there's some mathematical way of explaining this based on angles and the width of the twine and the square root of pi. But don't worry about it.

3	Who's to blame for Ilya Kovalchuk getting caught with an illegal stick in OT: the player or the coach?

Ilya Kovalchuk Donald Miralle/Getty Images/NHLI Ultimately, the player. Even a 19-year-old still nurturing his invincible gene needs to take responsibility for not putting his team in jeopardy. That said ... shouldn't Atlanta coach Curt Fraser have been more vigilant in overtime when he knows his young prodigy prefers to play with an illegal curve? Yes, that also is true. That was the case last Saturday, when Mike Keenan busted Kovalchuk just as the Thrashers were about to go on the power play in OT. Instead, playing 3-on-3, the Panthers scored to spoil Atlanta's home opener. Kovalchuk isn't the only player in the league to use an illegal stick. Not by a long shot. But he was one of the few to get called on it last year. And with that in mind, with people around the league already wondering whether Kovalchuk's head matches his talent, Atlanta's coaching staff should not have let him embarrass himself and the team. Even if Fraser is willing to risk a two-minute penalty during a game in order to let Kovalchuk play with a stick he's comfortable with, there's no way he should let him out on the ice with it late in a close game. The irony was that Kovalchuk used a legal stick for most of the night Saturday, keeping one good one and two illegals on the bench. Sometime during the third period, feeling pressure to win the game, he covertly switched to one with more torque in the blade. Not that he needs it. Did you see his goal in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night? Far side, top shelf, through a screen from around the face-off circle. And it was with his new legal stick. (His illegal sticks have been taken away and "put in a secure location," according to one team official.) Word of Kovalchuk's boomerang blades -- legal in Europe and Russia -- first got out last year at the All-Star festivities, when his timber was on display during a six-goal showing in the YoungStars game. A few weeks later, Edmonton's astute YoungStar Mike Comrie made the call during a game at Atlanta. Kovalchuk served the penalty, then hopped out of the box with teammate Shean Donovan's stick and scored the game-winning goal … then skated by the Oilers bench and brashly said, "Is this stick OK?" Well, that was cute at the time, as it always is when Bart Simpson's mischievious doings are overshadowed by the ultimate good that comes out of them. Problem is, Bart never learns his lesson. Hockey players know their sticks. They carry them around before the games, planing them and blow-torching the curve, taping them and applying baby powder and wax. As Fraser said last year when Kovalchuk got caught, "With the time these guys spend on their sticks, we could have built a house by now." Or at least a doghouse.