I believe akennett was talking about the playoffs specifically, and there are no ties in NHL playoffs.
“Aimless hacking with sticks”? You make it sound like the players are just indiscriminately whacking away at each other, like Rock Em Sock Em Robots. I’d say there’s an aim, all right.
And unlike, say, 20 years ago, there are virtually no players in the NHL who have “no discernible athletic ability other than punching.” Even the so-called enforcers have goal-scoring abilities.
Serious risk of head trauma? It exists in basketball, too, what with those hard wood floors and all, and it’s far more riskier in football than in hockey.
One reason basketball’s not considered by some to be a “real sport” is the scoring itself. Run down the court. Put ball in basket. Run down the other end. Put ball in basket. Repeat seemingly forever. Teams don’t play a lot of defense now anyway.
Jeez, I really didn’t mean to highjack the thread, but…
I think he was just comparing the sports in general.
There’s a whole lot of aim, but there’s a whole lot of indiscriminate whacking, too. Like when the puck’s trapped in the corner, and three or four guys are just poking away at it or at each other. Or after the whistle, when everyone decides to start jabbing and grabbing. I didn’t say that it was the only kind of hacking, but it’s one kind of hacking that goes on, and there is a lot of it.
Well, you’re right that they have other athletic abilities. They’re all good skaters at least, so I shouldn’t have said that. However, you know as well as I do that there is at least one guy on nearly every team in the NHL who scores fewer than say, 10 points over the course of a season, and racks up hundreds of penalty minutes. But just for the hell of it, I looked it up. 3rd in the league in PIM was Krzysztof Oliwa, who racked up three goals and two assists, plus a -8 rating. On a good team, which I think I can say Calgary is, how would you explain his presence on the ice for 4:55 a game? He managed to make an impact, certainly, but it doesn’t appear that that impact had anything to do with the score. And judging by the numbers, he’s not the exception.
Now, guys like Chris Simon, Matthew Barnaby, and Sean Avery managed to rack up big penalty minutes and still score some goals, but what you said just isn’t true. Of the top 50 PIM leaders in the NHL this year, only two scored 20 goals or more. Only five had 20 assists or more. The +/- ratings of those players is overwhelmingly negative, with few exceptions. It seems to me, judging by the fact that these guys played only a few minutes a game, during which they allowed more goals than they helped to score, and still managed all those penalties, that they are only on the team to commit those penalties.
If you’d like me to adjust my hyperbole, and say that there are players with no discernible hockey talent other than penalty-committing, I’m OK with that, but the point remains. There are guys out there who aren’t out there to play hockey. Lots of them.
Come on- how many NFL or NBA players miss time with concussions? A few quarterbacks come to mind who ended up retiring because of them, and I’m sure there have been NBA players, but NHL players rack them up like NFL guys get knee injuries. Pat LaFontaine. Both Lindroses. Paul Kariya. They talk about Roenick like he gets a concussion every other game- so many that it becomes a joke. If you’re looking to get a concussion, hockey’s the easiest way to do it. And I don’t agree that a serious risk exists in basketball, either.
Putting aside the fact that if you replaced “ball” with “puck” and “run” with “skate” you’d be talking about hockey, when was the last basketball game you watched? To say they don’t play defense can only mean you aren’t watching, which is fine. Good NBA teams nowadays might play better defense than good teams at any time in NBA history. Fifteen to twenty years ago, a score of 150-140 was commonplace. There are teams that score half that and win today. I don’t disagree with your premise, though; if you aren’t into basketball, it looks like little kids playing a dumb game. That’s why I don’t hold it above other sports.
And I said I didn’t mean to highjack. Simply put, here’s the point. Everybody thinks that sports they don’t like are silly. That’s fine. When you say things like “basketball’s not a real sport” and hockey is, though you’re being silly yourself. You’re welcome to think whatever you want, but every sport comes down to grown men and some kind of round object. This:
is an idiotic statement. I just wanted to point that out. If there was an NFL thread you were reading, and somebody said “yeah, football should be on all week. It’s a real sport, unlike hockey,” you might pipe up and say hockey’s a sport too. I’ve got nothing against hockey. They’re all just games, though, and to hold one up as something different is a silly thing to do.
Right. Their only aim is to beat each other up. That must be it.
Cmon, Jimmy. You know why they’re battling in the corner. They’re fighting to get the puck - either for themselves or to one of their teammates, who can then either clear the zone or can shoot it at the net.
After the play, scrums will sometimes commence. Nearly all of them are pushing and shoving. This bothers you, somehow? There’s actually a reason here, too, and it’s the same reason that basketball players do it - it’s a way to get into the opposing player’s head, throw him off his game. Every major sport does this in some way.
First off, 5 minutes of playing time per game is nothing. Second, a possible explanation for Oliwa is that there have been injuries on the Flames’ roster that have precluded other players from taking those precious five minutes per game. This is especially evident in the playoffs, where roster moves are somewhat muted (no trades, for one thing).
Third, judging players by their PIM isn’t terribly fair, because if they’re taking another player off the ice with them, they’re not hurting their team at all. In fact, if they manage to take off a player who’s more talented, they’re helping their team. I’m not saying all of the players do this, of course, but it’s worth noting that not all penalties are created equal.
(Some solo penalties are useful, too; for example, when a player is ahead of a trailing opponent and is about to gain possession of the puck and is then taken down by the opponent. This is rightly called a penalty, but not doing so might have cost the player’s team a goal.)
Scoring is down in the NHL these days; goaltending is way up. Time was, you’d have many forty-goal scorers, with a few 50-goal guys for good measure. It’s not like that now, so it’s no surprise that the so-called tough guys aren’t scoring 20 a season. 20 a season now is considered a very good offensive year.
Players who get limited ice time aren’t necessarily one-dimensional - they could simply not be as good as the others on the team. Truth is, a truly one-dimensional player doesn’t survive in the NHL anymore. For example, there was a guy on the Flyers’ AHL roster who was a REAL goon. Man, he’d rack up 400 PIM a season, it seemed, but that’s all he COULD do. He got called up. He sucked. His career is now over.
Just because those players do exist doesn’t mean they can make a career out of doing nothing but take penalties. And looking at stats like goals, assists, and plus-minus doesn’t tell the entire story, either.
Could you name any of them? I realize it will be difficult to prove a player’s intent, but if you could give me the names of the players who can do absolutely nothing but commit penalties, I’d appreciate it.
You’re joking, right?
First, just because a player doesn’t miss time from a concussion certainly doesn’t mean he didn’t suffer one. NFL players in particular are encouraged to shake it off and get back into the game. However, the effects of the concussions can last a long time.
The reason you don’t hear of as many NFL players retiring from concussions is that they’re retiring for many other reasons (bad knees, for one), but this doesn’t preclude them from having had the concussions. You’ve named three hockey players whose careers ended because of concussions (Lindros, Lindros, and LaFontaine), but to that I could add Al Toon, Steve Young, and Troy Aikman. Heck, there were even studies done owing to the number of concussions in the sport: http://www.neurologyreviews.com/dec03/nr_dec03_concussion.html.
Something’s wrong with my computer, I think. On my screen, I see a quote from me saying “I didn’t say that it was the only kind of hacking, but it’s one kind of hacking that goes on, and there is a lot of it.” But judging from your response, you read something different altogether- something where I said all they were trying to do was hurt each other. Once more, with feeling- aimless hacking isn’t all they do- they just do a fair bit of it.
Yes. I know. In the process, they spend thirty to forty seconds kicking and poking at the puck, and sometimes each other. They certainly aren’t passing it during this time. Neither are they shooting. They are whacking at the puck with the intention of just moving it clear, so they can do something productive. I call this aimless hacking. Perhaps I should have said non-productive instead of aimless. Point is, they spend almost entire shifts sometimes just trying to get the puck out of the corner. You can call it cycling, if you want, or battling in the corner, or anything else that sounds good. They go in the corner and push each other and poke at the puck.
No. If you could just show me where I said it bothered me, I’d appreciate it. What I did say was that they do it, and it’s a good example of aimless hacking.
When basketball players throw punches after the whistle, they get kicked out of the game. I still don’t see what that has to do with anything I’ve said. I said there was a lot of stickplay and general mayhem that takes place which doesn’t directly affect the game.
I know 5 minutes is nothing. That’s why I mentioned it. How did Oliwa manage all those PIM in such short time, and how did he get such a terrible +/- on a good team? What is he out there for? Anyway, like I said, he’s the rule, not the exception. The leaders in PIM seem to have this in common: low ice time, low point totals, and negative plus/minus ratings. Explain the correlation in a way that doesn’t add up to their being valuable for their penalty ability. Alternately, you could explain to me what an enforcer does, other than generally rough people up. Once again, it comes down to what words you choose to use to describe what they’re doing.
I don’t see what any of this is doing to further your argument. You said these guys were goalscorers. I said that their real impact was their ability to commit penalties. You seem to be agreeing.
Still nothing to back up what you said about enforcers being skilled hockey players.
What about three goals? Or four? Because that’s what I see coming from the PIM leaders, on average.
Frankie “The Animal” Bialowas. I know. So why did he get called up in the first place? Honestly, I can’t believe you would argue this point. The NHL consists of a lot of great hockey players, and some guys who are just there to generally beat people up and cause commotion. Do you dispute this?
Maybe you shouldn’t have said they were all talented goal scorers, then.
First of all, I realize that everybody occasionally makes a play here and there. My point was that people are in the NHL that didn’t make it there based on their hockey ability. Sure, they’re all better than me with a puck. Is that your argument?
Anyway, I already gave you Oliwa. Just look down the list. Peter Worrell. Francis Lessard. Reed Lowe. Jesse “I Almost Killed a Man” Boulerice. These guys barely play, don’t score, and yet somehow manage to commit all these penalties. Guys like Tie Domi hang around for years upon years, even though they rarely break double digits in goals scored. Please explain to me how so many of the league leaders in PIM are such bad players, and why, for example, I don’t see Jarome Iginla or Joe Sakic amongst the leaders in this category. I imagine it’s because that isn’t Iginla or Sakic’s role, right? So what is Peter Worrell’s role?
No.
You’re right. I was wrong to say the NHL is especially concussion-heavy in comparison to the NFL. It’s a part of the game in the NFL, for quarterbacks and receivers at least. Same thing for the NHL. Which is what I said originally- getting severely hurt is a big part of hockey. Not in comparison to the NFL, mind you, just in general.
OK, so let’s assume there are more concussions in the NFL. What does that prove? Concussions are still prevalent in hockey. Despite my medically inaccurate wording, I was also referring to the loss of teeth, loss of eyesight, and things like that. The fact that the NFL is also a dangerous place to be doesn’t change the fact that the NHL is.
Once again, though, I think you’re reading too much into this. I do like watching hockey. I’m not here trying to say it’s a stupid sport. Said that from the get-go. My post was intended to show that I can portray hockey as a silly game, just like akennett was portraying basketball. All sports can be looked at as kind of dumb, if you’re not into it. All I said was, look, it’s a bunch of guys skating around whacking at a puck, and scoring very infrequently. Obviously, that statement is framed in a less positive light than you would frame it yourself. I get that. The subsequent quibbling over the details is kind of irrelevant.
I think, probably, I should drop it, because I’ve taken over the Stanley Cup thread. Maybe that rings hollow considering that I just spent half an hour typing all the above. I do want to make it clear that I wasn’t attacking the sport, just pointing out that to an outside observer, they’re doing their share of silly things. Just like basketball is a bunch of overly tall guys bouncing a ball off the ground and throwing it in a hoop, and football is a bunch of guys pushing on each other, and somebody getting jumped on, hockey is a bunch of guys whacking at a puck in little bunches along the wall.
You seem to have taken it very seriously, so I’m sorry if I offended you. I never said hockey was stupid. I said it’s stupid to compare one game to another, and say that the other one is for little kids.
How about this? I’ve never watched a lot of hockey, but the Cup playoffs hook me every year, I also like college basketball quite a bit, but the NBA, even the playoffs, is like watching flies fuck. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ - Sorry, dozed off just thinking about it.
After the little opening speech ESPN gave last nights game, I’m wondering how long it its going to be before Bush declares war on Canada. US vs Canada, north vs south, cold vs hot…I know this is a lockout year, but please cut back on the hype.
I did like the talk of both teams being fairly offensive minded though. Maybe more teams will pick up on the concept and open things up again.
Gloat about Game 2? Does the race for the Stanley Cup not deserve better? Even if the game in question was a thorough beat down - I mean a really embarrassing, punishing loss for the Flames, who revealed their petulance in their defeat - (and that defeat was a total defeat, mind you) - should we really be gloating? Why would we want to do that?
No time for such foolishness, we’re down 2-1 in the series!
