When Giants WR Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself with an illegal handgun last month in a Manhattan nightclub, was it possible to find a media outlet that wasn’t sifting through every dirty detail? Let’s face it, bad behavior sparks internet interest and sells newspapers.

On the other hand, what might be dubbed a random act of kindness, committed a few days before Burress stupidly fired a bullet into his own leg, was overlooked by nearly every media outlet in Chicago.

For two weeks of each NHL season, the Blackhawks vacate the United Center to accommodate the circus. This year’s typically grueling road trip kicked off in Phoenix and included stops in Dallas and Toronto over a five-day span. The swing across the continent was only the beginning. After three days off, which allowed the players and coaches to stop home for a brief stay prior to Thanksgiving, the Hawks moved on to the West Coast for games at San Jose, Anaheim and Los Angeles.

The team was booked for a commercial flight to Chicago on Saturday, Nov. 22, after a 5-4 victory over the Maple Leafs. Instead, the players stayed behind in Toronto that night, bypassing a chance to be at home and sleep in their own beds. They rented a couple of buses and headed north the next morning, traveling two hours into rural Ontario to Gravenhurst, where Blackhawks GM Dave Tallon was attending his father’s funeral.

Tallon was touched and surprised by the team visit, as was the staff and customers of a small-town McDonald’s on the bus ride back to Toronto the next day. The players were hungry and made the fast-food stop, where the team’s young stars, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, were featured in a promotional card set available at the chain. Photos of both players hung on the restaurant’s walls. And in this hockey-crazy part of Canada, reportedly every player getting off the team buses was known to hockey fans there.

The players returned home, where they had one less day to be with family before departing for San Jose and a Wednesday night showdown with the Sharks. No matter how you view the gesture -- a noble effort or simply the right thing to do -- the lack of coverage by even Chicago media is a reminder that not all professional athletes are wasting their time and resources finding trouble in nightclubs, running dog-fighting rings or collecting DUI arrests.

Professional sports are loaded with good citizens who work hard at their game and raise families, without fanfare, and many of them participate in an abundance of charity work. Media coverage makes it easy to have a less-than-complimentary opinion of pro athletes, who often are unfairly judged as a group by those generating the off-the-field headlines.

It’s beyond their control. There’s the phrase that “no news is good news.” It seems to be equally true that "good news is no news."