Playing so-called fantasy sports is one of the best ways to kill hours of valuable time. Fantasy hockey is no exception: You choose a selection of professional players, you pick a nightly lineup and you compete in a game of wits against a league of other “managers.” If your players happen to score the most goals or make the most saves or reach the top in any category, your team advances in the standings.

I find it's a great way to burn hours on end buried in statistics and researching teams in the NHL that one wouldn't bother following otherwise. The problem is, when your players get injured, they don't score points and thus your team starts to sink in the standings.

Such was the case last week, when I logged onto yahoo.com to find Colorado Avalanche goalie Peter Budaj with a “DTD” designation next to his name — an indicator suggesting he's “day-to-day” with an injury. The designation struck me as peculiar because Budaj, a backup goalie, hadn't skated in a game. At the same time, starting center Doug Weight, the captain of the New York Islanders, was also out of my fantasy lineup, without word of injury. Odd, I thought, promptly dumping both players from my team.

It wasn't until Tuesday that I learned of the nature of their injuries: H1N1. Yes, the dreaded swine flu. Both players contracted the virus and were knocked out of play for close to two weeks. I quietly mused to myself that they must have caught it on my team's bench during a game that occurred somewhere in cyberspace.

But for the NHL and hockey teams in general, swine flu is no laughing matter. Hockey benches are perhaps one of the least sanitary places on the planet, save for truck-stop bathroom in the middle of some desert hinterland or an actual septic tank. Players sit in close quarters — sometimes shoulder to shoulder — and they're heavily respiring. Spit is something that's usually coating a good percentage of the floor; enough so that you'll seldom see a player rest the butt end of his stick(the part that touches his hands)on the ground.

For these reasons, illness like the flu can sweep through a hockey team in a matter of minutes. One player coughs and another spits, suddenly everyone's sick. And with all the nervousness about swine flu, it's an issue that has caught the attention of the NHL, as the number of cases rise.

I've often wondered whether area hockey clubs are taking their own precautions, if in fact they can. Part of the nature of hockey is that you make contact with players and a lot of it. Wearing a surgical mask on the ice and using hand sanitizer after each shift ain't an option. Not unless you feel like getting an elbow to the head on ice and an unprecedented ribbing on the bench.