A woman at the front desk of the rink in Westminster where Scotty began practicing 10 days ago says he hasn’t been on the premises since that initial workout. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, Brian Burke staunchly defended his decision to wait for Niedermayer to un-retire. Or retire:

“Hes making 6.75, 7 million a year. Hes walking away right now from Im going to yank out a calculator 6.75 divided by 190 days … thats 35 [specifically, $35,526.13] a day. Is that a guy who you can force a decision?”

Burke said he’ll wait to make any more trades like Monday’s until a) the whole team is healthy and playing together [which could happen Wednesday]; b) Scott Niedermayer knows if he’s retired or not.

One other point of discussion during Monday’s Brian-Sutherby-turned-Todd-Bertuzz-turned-Scott-Niedermayer conference call: If SN comes back, does he have to wait the NHL-mandated 21-day training period before coming back?

“Weve asked the league how this works, does Scott Niedermayer owe us 21 days, or is this a shorter period we can agree to? They said, if and when, we could talk about it My guess is its up to us. … But this is putting the horse way ahead of the cart.”