Maybe they think this will help. A bailout of their bad boy. A tough-love method when all else has failed.

	Theo Fleury has just two goals and is minus-6 in the 14 games since Jan. 19.

More likely, however, Brian Sutter scratching the itch that is Theo Fleury the last two games is part of a less grandiose plan -- one that could be setting Fleury up for failure.

Through the power of humiliation, the Blackhawks bosses might be thinking, Fleury could be motivated to live the good life both on and off the ice again. Or, more likely, he will turn himself inward as he's done too often the past two years and allow the Hawks to grease his path out of Chicagoland, the remaining $4.5 million bucks gone with him.

Then again, that might not be how Sutter foresees things.

After benching Fleury because of a lack of dedication to conditioning, the harassed, confounded Chicago hockey coach was forced to insert him in the lineup Thursday in a 5-2 loss to Philadelphia because of an injury to Eric Daze.

"Theo makes a difference himself," said Sutter. "He's got to say the heck with everybody now and say, 'I'm going to make a difference.' He's got to be accountable and take responsibility for that.

"I want Theo to be a difference, but he's got to prepare to be a difference. It's just not coming and punching the clock in at game time. I want more from him than just him saying, 'You've got to play me,' or 'I need more minutes,' because that hasn't worked, OK?"

And it won't work. In a city where fewer and fewer fans care about their Original Six hockey team and in a league that faces almost certain financial implosion in 2004, there's no room for a premier player and charming guy who excels at wasting his talent.

Yet if you look at the way Fleury, 34, ended his stay in New York, you can see how Hawks general manager Mike Smith might have been swayed. Sure, Fleury had that first long stay in rehab back in February of 2001, but last season he played in all 82 games as a Ranger and played a role, albeit limited, in Team Canada's gold-medal performance at the Olympics.

Considering Fleury's age, former linemate Eric Lindros' second-half flop to earth and how generally bad the Rangers were, Fleury's 24 goals and 63 points last season weren't altogether terrible totals. Numbers like that could have gone a long way toward advancing a Blackhawks team that had missed the playoffs for three years before going one-and-done last spring.

With a season of relative success under his belt, Smith then did something akin to the impossible -- convince notoriously thrifty owner Bill Wirtz to spend some real money. Maybe it was guilt over letting favorite adopted son Tony Amonte go, or some long overdue loyalty toward whatever few fans the team won back the prior season. Either way, Wirtz OK'd a two-year contract worth $8.4 million when no other team seemed interested in taking a chance on Theo.

Look where it's gotten them: Another rehab stay and a suspension, considerable dissension in a split locker room, an embarrassing brush with the law in Columbus, and now an all-out war with the head coach.

Oh yeah, Theo has nine goals and 10 assists in 36 games, too.

"I'm very hurt, very hurt ... extremely hurt that this is going on right now. But I just have to take it," Fleury said Tuesday, after finding out that night's game would be his second straight healthy benching. "There's not a whole lot I can do about it. It's out of my control. Obviously, I know I can help this team win hockey games and that's what I'm trying to do.

"You can blame anybody, but if you want to blame me, that's fine. I'm big enough to be able handle that. My whole career has been like this. It's not like when I'm on the ice I'm not trying to score. I'm trying to do whatever I can to the best of my ability and if that's not good enough, then I don't know."

That was a reversal from the Fleury of last Sunday night, who responded to his first healthy scratch game since his rookie year by saying he "understood." And it was a far cry from the stable and happy Fleury that was said to be a model citizen in the first couple of weeks of training camp.

But even if Smith closed his ears to all the unpublicized news of Fleury's "progress" last year in New York and simply limited his managerial judgments to stat sheets, he missed a couple of telltale signs: While Fleury's production slipped a little, his agitation numbers increased significantly. He went from 68 penalty minutes in 80 games in his first season with the Rangers to 122 minutes in 62 games in his rehab-shortened second season to a whopping 216 minutes of NHL jail time in 82 games last season.

He always was fueled by emotion. Obviously, the fuel spilleth over.

That might have been expedited last fall by the overbearing way both Smith and Sutter handled him. No talking about Theo's past they warned the media. No questions at all about "the program." Even when Fleury went on live on a radio show just before camp and gladly talked about himself, the front office supposedly went nuts. Seems Theo didn't seek their permission before talking to the media.

Not so long afterward and perhaps not so coincidentally, Fleury was found in violation of the guidelines of his substance-abuse aftercare program. Then he skipped a practice on Oct. 4 because, he said, he was tending to his ill father.

Still, Fleury admitted to what then was called an unspecified violation, essentially setting himself up for an automatic suspension. He wouldn't play until Dec. 6, and played well only in short stretches.

Then on Jan. 19, he decided he'd love the nightlife in Columbus and went to a strip club with two teammates. Because of Sutter and Smith's continued covering up of Theo's antics -- something that made Fleury's training camp fallout only look that much worse -- it took quite a while to get the story out. But generally accepted versions are that Fleury was significantly impaired and insulted one of the, um, entertainers. That led to one of the bar employees to half put Theo through a wall.

The Hawks reacted by doing nothing. No team suspension. No tossing Theo back into the program. Not even scratching him from the next night's game against the Blue Jackets.

But they did cut a trip to Montreal short a week later because news of the incident leaked out, which didn't thrill players who had pre-scheduled meetings with friends and family members on a couple of pre-scheduled off-days there.

Some of those same players reportedly weren't too happy less than two weeks later when Fleury was allowed to travel on his own from Calgary to Edmonton so that he could spend an extra day with some of his own family members.

Now, all of this is old news. But it's no accident that the Hawks have gone belly up this winter after being one of the West's biggest comeback stories last season. From that Jan. 19 night in Columbus through the grumbling in Montreal and Western Canada through their loss to the Flyers on Thursday, the Blackhawks have gone 3-12-2 while stretching their home winless streak to eight (0-7-1).

They're dead now, and facing the contractual demand of perhaps resurrecting all these troubles for one more season. Yet Smith says he won't waive Fleury, shrugging that possibility off as a media creation.

Said punch liner Smith about Fleury: "There's no truth to reports he'll become a newspaper columnist."

Read all about it: Fleury was supposed to make the Blackhawks a postseason contender, not lead them to yet another early spring. But that's exactly what he's doing. His failure to remain sober got him off to a bad start. His lack of consistent production didn't help when he returned. His bad act in a nightclub -- by the way, the cops were there but Theo wasn't charged, primarily because the club figured it was bad for business -- wreaked havoc for the Hawks.

What these front office factions might need is an exit plan.

Since Wirtz is claiming that his team will lose $15 million this season and he might have to look for a buyer if the economic system isn't fixed in 2004, losing Fleury's contract might be a mandate for Smith ... if he isn't fired first. Speaking of which, Smith just fired an employee named Jim Jenkins. His $200,000 job was as a "sponsor and sober companion" to Fleury. In other words, he was paid to keep Theo out of trouble.

Mission impossible.

Of course, a troubled Theo could lead to a removal of more than $4 million from next season's budget. For now, that's idle speculation. But the way that Fleury's disastrous season in Chicago has been handled -- from Wirtz and right-hand man Bob Pulford, to hands-on mishandlers Smith and Sutter, but ultimately to Fleury himself -- what's one to think about what all this is leading to?

"I'm not paid to think," Fleury said. "It's for the people who are in charge here, the coaches and the GM -- those people are responsible for this team winning hockey games and obviously they feel at this point I'm more a hindrance to the team than a help. But when I get my opportunity, and I get my chance, I'll shove it up everybody's a-- once again. I guarantee that."

So far, he's done a pretty good job of that.

Rob Parent of the Delaware County (Pa.) Times is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.