Fifteen years ago, running back Billy Cole was resting up at half time when he was called to the phone. As he listened, panic set in: The amount of money resting on this game meant he had to find the end zone - or else.

Hopped up on pills, Cole took the field in the second half, playing for his life. But eventually, he hit the wall. Charging toward a desperately needed touchdown, there were too many bodies to outrace. And so, in a cautionary tale of what happens when gambling and sports meet, Cole pulled out a gun, shot three defensive players in his way, charged to the end zone, sank to his knees, proclaimed life "a bitch," and shot himself in the head.

Oh, wait. Sorry. That was the opening scene from The Last Boy Scout - a 1991 b-movie in which Bruce Willis' down-and-out private investigator and Damon Wayans' drug-addicted former player team up to take down a massive sports gambling conspiracy.

You can understand how I got confused. To read the reaction to professional sports' most recent gambling scandal, you'd think the NHL's latest shootout had ended with Jaromir Jagr going postal on Dominik Hasek.

The Rick Tocchet affair, we're being told, is an outright disaster for hockey. With attendance rising, the game getting good reviews and the Olympic tournament generating a buzz, The Globe and Mail's Eric Duhatschek wrote Wednesday, "all that promise ... went up in an ugly puff of smoke."

On both sides of the border, those thoughts have been echoed. "Just when hockey was making a comeback and just when its best are about to be showcased during the Winter Olympics, comes a gambling scandal of epic proportions," the Boston Herald pronounced in an editorial, lamenting "a hideous blot on the sport."

There are clearly two very serious issues at play here. First, there are the allegations that Tocchet, a former player and current assistant coach, took a deep plunge into organized crime with a leading role in a gambling and money laundering ring - which, if proven, should keep him out of the game for life. And second, there is the possibility that hockey players gambled on their own sport - which, if it happened, would indeed be highly damaging to the NHL.

To this point, however, there has been no evidence of that second malfeasance. And so, aside from the deserved focus on Tocchet, we're left with a lot of handwringing about reports that a dozen players - and, most sensationally, Wayne Gretzky's wife - laid down a lot of cash on other sports.

All this sanctimonious finger-wagging - complete with breathless condemnations of the "gambling culture" that pervades locker rooms - would be easier to take if it weren't so hypocritical.

Look at the pervasiveness of gambling in North America, and it's a wonder most players aren't actively involved. It has been estimated that $2.6-billion in legal sports bets are placed each year in the United States - a figure that pales next to the illegal gambling industry, reportedly worth more than $120-billion. Statistics Canada has reported that three-quarters of Canadians gamble in some way, with approximately 5% of adults either problem gamblers or at risk of becoming such. And governments are right there cashing in -- provinces pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars from Sports Select, not to mention casinos and more traditional lotteries.

As for the leagues themselves, their protestations ring hollow when betting interests have made the NFL the world's most successful sports operation. Tellingly, the CFL has now tried to duplicate that success by entering into an open business relationship with an offshore betting company.

Considering gambling's stigma ever since the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal nearly brought down baseball, hockey players should be smart enough to stay away from it. But it's hardly shocking if they aren't. We're talking about young millionaires, full of adrenaline and testosterone - pretty much the target market for any bookie.

It's unfortunate that a popular former player has been charged with criminal offences. It's too bad Gretzky, perhaps Canada's most beloved icon, appears to have been at least tangentially involved. But unless hockey players placed bets on hockey, the game's integrity is not at stake. We're a long way from seeing holsters sewn into hockey pants.