The Nhl

Since the Bruins claimed the well-traveled 26-year-old from the Rangers in September's waiver draft, Stock has been making a convincing case for his inclusion in that video. Despite being only 5'10" and 190 pounds, he had 15 fighting majors and 103 penalty minutes in 46 games through Sunday, and his post-fight signature—an exaggerated wave to the FleetCenter crowd as he skates to the penalty box (he sometimes does it on the road, too)—is making him a Beantown cult figure. "I don't know where I got it," Stock says of the wave, which he first used after his Dec. 8 bout with the Sabres' Eric Boulton. "Too many punches to the head, I guess."

Stock is no offensive threat—at week's end he had four goals in 151 career NHL games and just one assist this season—but he isn't above laughing about it. "I'm being shadowed every night," he says.

Last fall he and goalies Byron Dafoe and John Grahame started a contest to see which number would be bigger this season: Stock's points or the netminders' combined penalty minutes. Dafoe, however, put the race out of reach when he tussled with Senators goalie Patrick Lalime on Jan. 17 and earned 17 penalty minutes. Dafoe then did a takeoff on Stock's postbrawl wave.

"We had to change the contest to my shots against their points," says Stock. "I'm still losing. Byron's also trying to steal the wave, but he's got the rotation of the shoulder all wrong."

Pavel Bure Trade
Rangers Pull Off Steal of a Deal

New York general manager Glen Sather is shrewd, but the trade he swung on Monday to land the Panthers' preternatural goal scorer Pavel Bure could have been negotiated by the Rangers' stick boy. As Florida coach Mike Keenan put it, "A good deal for New York? They got the best scorer in the league and didn't give up a player on their roster."

To get Bure, who led the NHL in goals the last two seasons, plus a second-round draft pick, the Rangers surrendered middling defenseman Igor Ulanov (sent to the minors on March 1), blue line prospect Filip Novak and three draft picks, including a first-rounder in June. New York also opened its vault, taking on Bure's $10 million-a-year contract, which runs through 2003-04 and was too costly for a woeful Panthers team that needs to rebuild.

Bure, 30, could goose the mediocre Rangers, who were one point out of the final playoff berth in the East, into the postseason. In his second year as New York's G.M., Sather is learning that no matter what Annie says, there is no tomorrow on Broadway.