Last night, I settled in with my husband, a fine Valentines-y dinner, a great bottle of Zin, and a WWE wrestling match on ice skates.
I was not amused. If it were up to me, I would have awarded the Sedins the 2 points, and told neither club they deserved to win.
I know the Sedins catch a lot of flack for being "soft". They made it look real good last night. They are very consistent in the way they body block, drag teammates out of frays, and don't throw punches, and maybe that's not everyone's favorite NHL style, but I respect their choice of style in a season that's been filled with plays around the NHL where I seriously wonder how some of these guys can go home to their families feeling proud of their actions today. Until the refs get some teeth into enforcing the rules as they need to be, play will procede at the highest level of goonishness allowed to goons, and by everyone else in self-defense. And I don't like it. I hesitated about picking this as my topic today, what with the "girl blogger" thing and all, but I'm just still utterly disgusted with last night's circus. I love the physicality and intensity of hockey, but it's on the bargain that I get to enjoy it because I'm not really endorsing psychopathic behaviour.
I'll stay brief here about what bothered me last night. The truly atrocious behaviour was absolutely instigated by Vancouver. I particularly detest Ritchie, Cook, and Burrows. That said, our guys did not acquit themselves entirely without blame and I got pretty mad when Reasoner shoved Henrik Sedin to the ice when Henrik was just standing there--it's not like you can claim pre-emptive on that player with a straight face, it seems to me. I'm not saying Reasoner was outside his rights to scrap with Vancouver, but his choice of target and force disappointed me.
Clearly, emotions were running high on both sides and understandably so, etc, but both sides were lucky nobody got seriously hurt in three periods of constant fighting, and a not-so-small part of me wishes the refs, coaches, veterans, and captains could have stepped up and reined things in so we could have an actual hockey game instead of a three-ring circus.
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We missed the first 8 minutes of the game. Which somehow was my fault. When it was the boyfriend's fault. But, it was quite the game. The last minute in particular.
I couldn't believe it when they put Stortini back out there for the face-off in that last minute. I mean I could, but wow.
I had barely put two dinner plates (hooray for truffled mashed potatoes!) down on the coffee table when the anthem ended and Stortini started chirping at Ritchie. At least you didn't miss much actual hockey in those 8 minutes!
I think the anthem set the tone for the game - it was brutal!
My wife could say that she is emotionally-scarred from her first and only NHL game (Oilers vs. Vancouver). It must be something about these teams because they do not like each other at all.
The game we saw was at Rexall (then Skyreach) 4 yrs ago (dec 03). We were visiting from Sweden and took in the game which featured 8 Swedes, but they were invisible compared with Jovanovski, Bertuzzi (2 months before the incident) and Laraque.
What was a disappointing display of goon-filled hockey also spilled into the stands. We had drunk baffoons surrounding us... mostly Canuck fans.
It is old time hockey, but is it too much? What is the level of intensity that can allowable within the confines of a rink?
As a red blooded quasi-Albertan, I'm so tired of typical, soft on crime, liberal Texan elites who side with the Canucks and want to talk about root causes of the cultural war we saw in Vancouver the other night - it was a culture of pride in winning Stanley Cups against a culture that prides itself on cheering for convicted criminals and cheering an historically terrible team.
Henrik Sedin chose who to side with. He chose to side with men who take cheap shots at guys like Hemsky, who fight guys like Gagner. If he doesn't want to pay the price for his decision, he shouldn't show up at the rink. When you criticize Marty's actions, when you wonder on the inside whether MacT told him to do that...you embolden the Canucks and hurt our team. For shame.
(Cool blog...I like seeing the different perspectives.)
@mc79hockey: Thanks for reading and commenting, and I must say those are the nicest things I've been accused of all week.
@Jamie: Don't even get me started on Bertuzzi! And I must agree with you that that anthem was jaw-droppingly awful--at first I thought there must be something very wrong with my wine.
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