NHL

Rangers GM wants change to icing rule

STOCKHOLM — You can’t say it’s just the new guard that wants to see the NHL do away with the current touch-icing regulation that’s been in place for just about forever when Glen Sather, who has been in the league for just about forever, is one of those in favor of changing it.

The Last Lion of Winter told Slap Shots the risk of shattering injuries such as the complex fracture of the right femur sustained by Oilers defenseman Taylor Fedun in an exhibition game a week ago Friday is reason enough for the league to adopt a hybrid icing regulation.

“Every year we talk about it at our meetings and it seems like every year we have a player get seriously hurt,” the Rangers general manager said on Wednesday. “We hear the competitive arguments that the races are good for the game, that they’re good for the speed of the game, that they keep the game moving, but the problem is that there are always going to be accidents.

“When you have guys racing to the end-boards, you’re always going to have legs tangled and skates tangled with sticks, no matter how careful the players are trying to be so that they don’t hurt one another. And they don’t try to hurt each other. Players get hurt mostly because of accidents and there are too many accidents.

“I just don’t think it’s worth it anymore. I’m not in favor of the no-touch rule that’s used it in the Olympics. I’d like to keep the race in our game, but the risk would be taken out of it by having the race stop at the dots.

“That’s what I’d like to see.”

The topic of icing will be on the agenda at the general managers’ meetings next month. It is unclear whether the league executives will do more than just talk about it again.

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There had been talk Wayne Gretzky would replace Harry Sinden on the Hall of Fame selection committee, but The Great One told Slap Shots via email that he has commitments in Europe in late June for the next two years that would prevent him from attending the committee meetings at which the selections are made.

It would be invigorating for the selection committee, now essentially discredited for its annual snub of Fred Shero and its disgraceful snub of Pat Burns in 2010 when the 2003 Cup-winning, three-time coach-of-the-year was in the final stages of his fight against cancer, to have eyes as all-seeing and a mind for the game as creative as Gretzky’s join the discussion and the decision-making process.

Speaking of which: Can a legitimate argument be made against Anders Hedberg as a Hall of Famer? In this year that Winnipeg returns to the NHL, it has finally come time to recognize and honor the greatness of Hedberg, who played seven years with the Rangers after combining with Ulf Nilsson and Bobby Hull with the WHA Jets to form one of the most outstanding lines in the history of pro hockey.

Hedberg, now the Rangers’ chief European scout, was one of Sweden’s greatest juniors ever before leaving his native land to play with Winnipeg, where he joined with countryman and future fellow Ranger Nilsson and the Golden Jet to ring up four consecutive 50-goal seasons (once getting 70, once recording 63) before signing as a free agent in 1978 with Sonny Werblin‘s Blueshirts.

He was a strong player with the Rangers, just about technically perfect, and after Nilsson went down on Feb. 25, 1979 with the fractured ankle that would be the genesis of the Denis Potvin chant that lives to this day, Hedberg became a checking winger on a line with Walt Tkaczuk and Steve Vickers on the club that went to the Cup Final with Shero behind the bench.

The Hockey Hall of Fame is open to players whose body of work does not include time in the NHL, though just an exclusive handful of such athletes — including Vladislav Tretiak, Valery Kharlamov, Angela James and Cammi Granato — have been admitted under that criteria.

Hedberg had a solid NHL career, scoring 30 or more goals in four of six full seasons, a seventh ruined by injuries. He was a great player in the WHA, one of the best in the world through the mid-seventies, and an elite player in Sweden. He was a trailblazer, and is a man of honor.

Indeed, he is a man who should be honored by induction to the Hockey Hall of Fame. One doesn’t need eyes as all-seeing as Gretzky’s to recognize that.

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Jeff Frazee as Ari Ahonen? Devils fans, talk among yourselves.

It isn’t for the fans — either at the arena or watching at home on television — that numbers will be worn on the front of helmets, but for the officials to more accurately identify players in scrums. Of all the issues regarding officiating, who knew that was one?

Finally, this just in: Colin Campbell says after watching the video, he can find no conclusive evidence that Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald.

larry.brooks@nypost.com