Neat seeing the Oilers rally back from a 3-0 deficit last night (which they lost anyway) but UGGG!!! that fourth Anaheim goal last night was going to go wide, but Talbot knocked it in under his arm.
This is why I think Connor McDavid is one of the chosen ones: From last night.
Because your examples are way more well known than Meeks, locating even one cite to back up my claim of him getting bashed by the media would understandably be a much more difficult task - I couldn’t locate an op-ed piece ripping him to shreds in The Georgia Straight (a Vancouver culture and entertainment tab). I remember some Adrian Raeside (Victoria Times Colonist) cartoons taking shots at him, and a young Jay Leno on the Alan Hamel show having some bemused comments about him. (In the same routine he goes on about Lorne Greene’s “that’s so-and-so in dog years to you and me” but then later concluded with: “aaaaaa he’s probably gay”, which even as a kid I thought was maybe a little off-side).
And I know there was more than just those examples, not to mention every single person I knew not being able to stand his fucking guts.
Further thoughts: those sources I mentioned obviously weren’t major media outlets, and I’m sure if you googled HM there would be a resounding majority of favourable commentary on him, to be sure, but still, back in the day, let’s just say, ‘on the street’, he sucked Chewbacca farts.
No. Howie Meeker was great. He won the rookie of the year award and had a decent NHL career.
He was very entertaining with his telestrator reviews of games for something like two decades.
He was the in-between period filler before Don Cherry.
He was lampooned by John Candy in Howie McMeeker’s curling on SCTV.
I watched him every Saturday night and he was very relevant to my understanding of hockey, as a relatively new Canadian.
And Bob Cole has done the play-by-play for most of the important games since Foster Hewitt retired.
Bob Cole has been an icon announcer since 1980.
And I love his voice, “Ohhhh Baby!.”
So what’s Crosby’s status? Does he keep playing or end up a vegetable. I’m not a Crosby hater and I understand the seriousness of CTE. The Crosby haters are beneath contempt because they just don’t get it. They are drunk fools that achieved nothing on their own and want to watch someone who worked their ass off suffer because that guy is not on “their” team (as if they own it).
I agree with the Crosby hater comments. It isn’t like he is a Pittsburgh native and Ovechkin isn’t from D.C. I’ve never related to appropriating to a city the abilities of the hired professionals paid to come in. Of course, sports are just entertainment to me and I’ve never had an outcome still affect me the next day.
They were crystal clear examples elaborating on my claim about the various ways that Meeker got bashed back in the day (from my unerring recollections, btw), along with a digression on Jay Leno’s routine.
True, but the previous part of my post (with all those examples) most clearly was.
Thanks doc.
Goalies sure are making a difference in the Olis/Ducks Series. In game two it was Talbot, but last night it was Gibson, especially in the second period, fighting off scoring chances left right and centre. I hope McDavid eventually lights him up.
Let’s hope Sid makes it back for game 5. Even if you’re going for the team he’s playing against, the game still suffers when this goes down.
And you cannot seriously tell me that wasn’t deliberate. The vast majority of players, past and present are saying it was. TWO hits, one after another, first Ovi, then Nisky. And then the hit on Conor Sheary? C’mon. Fuck. I am seriously, seriously pissed off. First we’re without Kris Letang, our best defenseman, and now Crosby? Son of a bitch, this sucks balls.
Indeed.
Too bad Matthews and company couldn’t have stuck around for the second round. With so much young talent and Babcock at the helm, I would be extremely surprised if they end up faring worse next season.
Crossing the ole fingers Lundqvist has another uncharacteristically shitty game tonight.
It wasn’t deliberate and your assertion that the “vast majority of players” say it was appears to be pure fantasy. I haven’t heard a single person of any significance beyond a deranged Pittsburgh reporter who has called this deliberate.
Are you listening to yourself? Are you seriously alleging that the Capitals planned to have Ovechkin get his skates tied up with Crosby’s, have him stumble to the ice right into the path of Niskanen so he could cross-check him in the face?
With the Crosby thing - I’m also concerned about what I’m sure will be dirty retaliations in the next couple games.
I like it tough, with finished checks, but chippiness* - nope, uh-uh.
It was intentional in the sense that any player who goes to the net can expect to be hit. If you think at the speed of play it was intentional to give him an injury, we have no basis for a discussion.
You are grossly underestimating the Capitals’ ability to choke and overestimating the skill level of whomever they’re going to play in the Eastern Conference final. Even without Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh is a better team than Ottawa and probably New York.
As to the Crosby hit, characterizing the hit as clearly deliberate is, frankly, delusional. But so what? Niskanen should have been penalized and ejected because you should be held responsible for what happens with your stick even if you didn’t mean it. Crosby’s literally falling, very awkwardly, into Niskanen there; I can’t tell if it’s deliberate or not. It might have been, but I’m not sure. But, tough crap.
I don’t know if Niskanen was trying to hit Crosby in the head; it’s possible Crosby falling surprised him. But he was trying to cross-check Crosby. Not to point out the obvious here, but CROSS CHECKING IS AGAINST THE RULES. Look it up; it’s Rule 59. You’re not supposed to cross-check someone at all. Not in the head, not in the back, not in the chest, not anywhere; if you hit someone with the shaft of your stick while holding in in both hands that is cross checking, and is a penalty. If the contact is particularly severe, then the penalty is a major and a game misconduct. It’s in the rules. Sorry, Matt, but the rules are the rules.
The reason this shit keeps happening is not because they don’t give Matt Niskanen a suspension or not. It’s because 99% of all cross checks aren’t penalized. I’ve a broken record on this but it bears repeating;
If you do not penalize most high sticking and cross checking offenses, players will carry their sticks high and cross check.
If you have players carrying their sticks high and cross checking all the time, it is absolutely, 100% inevitable this will result in very serious injuries, even if no player in the NHL is actually trying to inflict a serious injury.
This strikes me as being dog-stupid obvious. Yet, we’ll go a half dozen more playoff games with 500 cross checks and slashes above the waist and such that AREN’T called, and then when someone gets hurt everyone will cry foul over that 501st case and forget they were okay with the previous 500. If you want to reduce these incidents you need to start getting serious about enforcing the damned rules.
