Now the storyline going in to this series was that the Chicago Blackhawks have a player named Byfuglin, a big guy who annoys goaltenders by placing himself in front of the net and blocking their view and distracting them. Well It seems Pronger had an answer for this nonsense/ On the first shift he crosschecked him about twenty times by ramming his stick into his back-clearly penalties ever time his stick made contact- but nothing called. This behavior went on the entire game with nothing being called. Why not? Well only God and the braintrust of the NHL seem to know why they allow this nonsense.
The NHL routinely whines aout it's inability to get a major US television contract and yet they present a game which is only marginally above roller derby in its foolishness as I just mentioned. Curiously they not only condone this type of dirty play, but they insult everyones intelligence by covering up this nonsense. When Bruins Player Savard got pummeled to the ice by an obvious cheap shot elbow to the head in a nasty blindside by some idiot Pittsburg Penguin, the league defended not suspending the player by saying "Savard Should have been paying attention." Thats right they blamed the victim of the cheapshot for being blindsided.
and so it goes.
They have numerous penalties on the books but for reasons only the NHL Hierarchy seems to understand they do't call them, Curiously most of the problem seems to stem from the league expanding so much that they have watered down the product to the point that several of these players who commit these cheap infractions don't even belong in the league and they only survive because the league condones their illegal play. One of the interesting aspects of hockey in days gone by was fighting. In the old NHL when a player went out and deliberately used his stick on another player, ran him into the boards from behind, or elbowed him in the head with a blindside, if the referee didn't call a penalty, you could be sure that at some time in the game the fighter would go after the cheapshot artist and wail on him. That doesn't happen anymore. Now the only fighting is when one goon from each team who's only job is to fight goes out and challenges the other teams goon. This in the moronic mindset of the NHL is supposed to "fire up" the team when they are lethargic-when in reality it is just useless and boring.
Probably the worst excuse for not calling penalties is this, The NHL says that if they call every penalty the teams would be shorthanded constantly and this would be boring. Let me leave you with this anecdote. A few years back the Bruins and Canadians were locked in one of their epic playoff battles. Each team was carping the entire series about penalties not being called etc. so the league said fine we will call everything we see. The first period of the game was a constan trip to the penalty box by both teams, but curiously after playing that way the entire first period, the players settled down, stopped the cheap penalties and the result was two periods of some of the best hockey I have ever seen- no more penalties (the Bruins lost 1-0 what a shock eh). At some point the league has to decide to suck it up and call penalties as they occur, They may have a coupe of months of penalty ridden hockey games but eventually even the thick headed hockey players will get the idea they will have to stop the insanity. Perhaps then we can see some real skilled hockey without all the tripping, holding, crosschecking and other nonsense they in reality has no place in the game. Maybe just maybe they might be able to get a TV contract.
Well thats it for today-tomorrow I will take on the NBA.
No comments:
Post a Comment