Tom Kostopoulos

As we await further details – Canadiens will issue a mealy-mouthed statement after their 4 p.m. practice today – let's be thankful that the incident did not involve guns, knives, illegal drugs, underage girls, strippers, ladies of the evening, racial slurs, DUI, brawls with bouncers – or star players.

Ryan O'Byrne and Tom Kostopoulos, however, are in deep sewage with a conservative (with gusts to uptight) organization that frowns on rookie dinners ending with last call and an overnight stay in the nick.

The timing sucks. This debacle will be a huge distraction as the team prepares for back-to-back games in Florida, then a home-and-home with the Flyers.

What's with O'Byrne in the Sunshine State? He breaks his thumb fighting the Panthers. Then on the team's next southern sojourn, the big galoot gets busted for stealing a woman's purse ... and tells the cops she's his girlfriend .... and when they ask her name he doesn't know it.

For this O'Byrne spent three years at an Ivy League university?

You learn better manners in major junior.

And back in the day when I used to close bars, you could rely on anyone whose last name began with O' to be the last man standing.

Canadiens head coach Guy Carbonneau will try and inject some life into his top line tonight by inserting Tom Kostopoulos with Saku Koivu and Christopher Higgings and bumping Michael Ryder to the third line, The Gazette's Pat Hickey reports.

"I think playing with different people he doesn't know, maybe he'll trust his instincts and shoot a little more," Carbonneau said of Ryder, who is going through a deep slump and will be teamed with Steve Bégin and Bryan Smolinski in Buffalo.

Hickey writes: There won't be as many expectations on the newcomer (Kostopoulos) to score goals, but he'll be asked to do some of the heavy lifting along the boards.