Just a couple of updates to the posts I made earlier today:

Peter Forsberg has officially declined the opportunity to represent Sweden at the Worlds. This is no surprise to anybody, as the oft-injured superstar as been suffering from a concussion and a sore wrist that just hasn't been the same since he broke it earlier this season. (Add Tomas Holmstrom to the list of guys who won't be there, too; I forgot to mention his name earlier.)

Wayne Gretzky has weighed in on the steroid issue, saying that he doesn't think it's a big problem...he seems to be downplaying it a little too much, though. "It's like drugs in life, people who do drugs don't hang with people who don't do drugs...People who do steroids don't hang with people who don't do steroids," he said, all but admitting that even if guys on his teams had used performance enhancers, they wouldn't have talked to him about it. "It's something that I never saw, it's something that I don't think is part of our game. But is it totally invisible? Probably not," Greztky continued.

I'd like to think that he's taking this approach in an attempt to put the issue aside while things like the CBA get solved; the other possibility is that he's naïve, and I find that hard to believe about one of the greatest players ever to play the game, as well as one of the sharpest minds ever to preside over it. True, sometimes he does appear to idealize hockey, but I'm not going to psychoanalyze him over this...as long as he is willing to say that if there's a problem, something should be done about it, then I'm happy.