''I tried to defuse the situation,'' McPhee said. ''But the game still got out of hand.''

Chicago's Dave Manson was suspended for one game for cross-checking a Washington player.

McPhee's confrontation with the coach ''started in a civil manner,'' he said, ''but got out of hand.''

McPhee will not be allowed to attend games or practices for the first month of the season, which begins today. He will not be able to conduct team business or even enter the team offices. In addition, the league also fined Ron Wilson, the coach of the Capitals, and Bill Wirtz, the owner of the Blackhawks.

Wilson was hit for $5,000 after being quoted as having said he wished he had known that McPhee was confronting the Blackhawks because he and his players would have trailed in support. Wirtz, who will turn 70 tomorrow, was fined $3,000 for saying that the top brass of both teams could settle things by locking themselves in a room, turning out the lights and swinging away.

Thank goodness the commissioner is enforcing decorum before these things escalate and pay-per-view operators get involved. Fighting remains quasi-legal in the sport, as long as it involves two consenting adults, in uniform, trading punches during the game before they rest in the penalty box for five minutes and feel the appropriate shame. It is the outside-the-lines stuff that cannot be tolerated.

Earlier in the exhibition season, in a game at the same arena, Lyle Odelein of the Devils nearly came to blows with Matthew Barnaby of Pittsburgh as they walked through the corridors to the ice before the game. (Odelein still resents comments made last season by Barnaby that Odelein looks like an ape.) Later, they fought on the ice. After that game, it was decided that opposing teams in future exhibitions would be housed on opposite sides of the Columbus rink. But the distance did not deter McPhee.

Confrontations outside the glass and the boards are not unusual, which is why most arenas employ big, burly security guys who are not afraid to get their knuckles scratched. Colin Campbell, the league's chief disciplinarian, went jaw to jaw and chest to chest in the Madison Square Garden corridor with Ted Nolan a couple of years ago when Campbell coached the Rangers and Nolan coached the Buffalo Sabres.