I’m gonna start with Mario, cause I hate him less. For starters he’s a massive whiner. I know he’s talented, but the way he wants the game played, I could score a hundred goals. Smaller pads on the goalies!?! If you had any talent (which I know you do), this wouldn’t be a problem. And no checking, scrums, etc.? You’re 6’4" and 230 lbs! People smaller than you have no problem with any of the rough stuff. Why can’t you take it? Stupid downy soft waste of space. If you can’t handle it, just retire again. Either way please SHUT THE HELL UP!!!.
Next up is the lovable Claude Lemieux. Stupid overhyped bastard. His only talent is taking cheap shots on opposing players and turtling when somebody tries to pay him back. (he is surely turtely enough to get into the Turtle Club) And what do people say about him? That the cup follows him around and he almost guarantees a cup win. Never mind the fact that he wins the cup that were talented enough to win without him. Now he signs with Dallas and they are now THE cup favorite for adding and over the hill dirty coward. Funny, I thought they looked pretty good before. And he sure as hell didn’t help the Phoenix Coyotes get anywhere near the cup. Chicken shit little bitches like him don’t even deserve to play hockey, much less be linked to the stanley cup. The only consolation is that I’ll likely get to see somebody once again zamboni the ice with his smugly little face.
Mario is still the scoring leader despite the massive padding the goalies are wearing these days and there’s few players in the league capable of keeping the man down.
You’d get run out of Pittsburgh on a rail for spouting such blasphemy.
Claude on the other hand, is fair game…
May I add a hockey rant of my own?
The guys running the show in Montreal should be tied spread eagled to a net and be forced to block Al McInnis slap shots with their nuts for trading Hackett to the fucking Bruins.
Tell me how this trade isn’t going to come back and bite them in the ass really hard?
Blasphemy? I’m sorry. the guy is a professional whiner who belongs back on the golf course. And if you want to talk about bad trades, you have to mention Colorado trading Drury and Yelle to Calgary for a few guys whose names I can’t even remember. Great job there.
Let’s see – he’s suffered multiple back injuries and cancer, but he’s still playing the game, is the scoring leader this season and the #6 in scoring in league history.
When economics was threatening to force his team to fold or move, he put together a financing group and bought the team to keep it where it belonged.
I do believe that Mario Lemieux can say and do just about whatever he pleases about the game of hockey. Whiner? Nope. Not by a long shot.
I’m not questioning the Mario as a good person, and I know he has suffered and is a great player. But he did retire because of the way the game was played and he has stated wanting even less contact and smaller pads on the goalies. He wants every game to be like the all star game and that is just not the sport of hockey. I think it is even more embarassing because he is not a small guy. He’s not the biggest in the league, but he is certainly not the smallest. I’ve yet to hear Theo Fleury or Martin St. Louis say the game is too physical.
Lemieux caught the tale end of an era where players were allowed to skate. Since he’s been drafted, they’ve added 9 teams which means they have rosters FULL of players who should not be in the NHL. How do these players compensate? By clutching and grabbing.
The fact is, Mario’s bitching is getting shit done. He is pretty much single handedly responsible for the league’s trying to eliminate all of this clutching and grabbing. It had to be a superstar like him to do it (the league wouldn’t care if Alyn McCauley threatened to retire). What the league is doing now may be initially unsuccessful but I’d be willing to bet that, given a few years, the quality of play will go back up such that even Mario (and the golden Brett) will be satisfied - all because of his bitching.
On another and only somewhat related note, they need to get rid of 9 or 10 goddamn teams and I don’t even give a shit as to which ones…
Something some people seem to have forgotten… or never learned in the first place.
Hockey is not about fights breaking out on the ice. That’s juvenile.
Hockey is not about who is the best checker - or it shouldn’t be.
It should be about stick handling, about wrist shots, about breakaways. It should be about a persistant offense and brick solid defense. It should be like the damned good games my little brother’s team used to play - both the cleanest and best team in their league.
If hockey was played the way it was DAMN WELL SUPPOSED TO BE there would be a lot fewer injuries. And I might actually watch it.
Nobody (with a clue) has said that hockey is about the fights or about being the best checker. Hockey is a very physical game. It can’t just be a bunch of guys trying to avoid touching each other. Trust me, I’ve seen hockey that way. It blows. It needs checking and fighting and even a little clutching and grabbing. Last years Stanley Cup finals did a lot more to encourage the crackdown on obstruction than Mario. Besides, the league did just fine without Mario and will continue to do so. That is the attitude that pisses me off. Get this into your head. THE NHL DOES NOT NEED MARIO LEMIEUX!!!
Claude, Ulfie, Shayne Corson and Dale Hunter can all take the express bus to the bottom of Hudson’s Bay IMHO. Those pricks cost many good players years off their careers with knee-shots, two-handers, stancion implants, etc. I bet those fucking Cro-Magnon wannabes wore cast iron braces, cause they couldn’t care fuck all about being able to skate. I love fights, hard hitting, good checking AND players that can do all that and still score around 100 points a season. These assassins skate through the slot in warmups and instinctively try to run the nearest body into the goalpost :o
Mario is one tough sonofabitch. He speaks up because he wants to put asses in the seats with exciting hockey, not the clutch-n-grab shit that makes regular season hockey a complete waste of time. About the only regular season games worth watching are some combination of Dallas, Detroit and Colorado. The playoffs are still very cool, but I can’t fathom paying $75 to watch hockey at 75-80% speed with all the neutral zone crap… I mean trap. He’s an owner, he doesn’t want to go bankrupt because he can’t get people to pay the ridiculous price of an NHL ticket. I mean, c’mon… cancer, back surgeries, being a marked man for all those years… and you can’t deny he takes the abuse a helluva lot better than Lindros.
sorry, Harborwolf, I know some physical contact is inevitable - but you’re not going to convince me ever that fighting is a necessary part of the game. It might draw some gawking but it’s NOT NECESSARY.
I wasn’t so much railing against the OP but rather against what NHL games are like compared to a lot of the games I watched growing up - and how fighting, crosschecking, someone constantly in the penalty box seem to be accepted and even encouraged to be part of the game. It’s a tad bit of a sore spot with me.
Avoiding touching each other isn’t at all what I mean. A nice hard body check is most definately part of the game and nobody wants to eliminate that. Clutching and Grabbing in any form is not what the game needs. It slows the game down and doesn’t allow actual talented players to skate.
If you’re talking about the Olympics, go away.
please. There are plenty of teams who deserve to be in the final before Colorado.
Mario is spot-on about goalie equipment. It’s a joke. Look at Patrick Roy, and look at Ken Dryden or any other goalie from the 70s or earlier. Massive goalie equipment (there ARE rules about its size, but they are rarely enforced) is just one of many reasons why nobody scores anymore.
As for Claude, I agree whole-heartedly. The guy is a grade-A jackass and one of the most overrated players in the NHL.
As a long time Dallas Stars fan and an even longer time Claude Lemieux hater, I want to chime in.
Ahh, it is a shame that most people only hate Lemieux for the Chris Draper thing. I feel so much cooler for having hated him since his playoff performance in his rookie year. Back in the day, Claude wasn’t a cheapshot, he was a whiney diver. Probably 2 or 3 times a game Claude would fall down like a sack of hammers and writhe around as if a sawbones just took his leg off, without using ether.
Pretty much everybody called him on it - sportswriters, Don Cherry and even his coach, Jean Perron, said the refs should just leave him alone out there (lolling on the ice) so he can make a bigger fool of himself.
There is a simple reason why he has the reputation of hanging with Stanley, it is his 19 GWG’s in the playoffs. Say anything you want to about him, but you can’t take away the fact that he scores timely goals in important games.
Personally, I won’t cheer for him. Any personal sucess that he has will be acknowledged only for what it contributes to the Stars overall sucess. Lemieux himself won’t get my support.
As for Mario - calling him a
is just plain wrong. Also, please tell me where Mario ever complained about physical hockey? He knows what the game is about. He knows that people love to see good hits. He also knows that people want to see some goals. What he has complained about, frequently, is the clutching and grabbing that many less talented teams employ in this era of watered down talent. I for one would rather see Mario moving through the neutral zone with a full head of steam, than some yutz waterskiing behind him. BTW, Gretzky complained of the same thing his last few seasons. Brett Hull and others also complain about the same thing. When the likes of those talents think there is a problem, then there probably is.
You might get your wish. There’s been rumors that Buffalo or Ottawa (both currently bankrupt) may move to Portland to join the Western Converence and Detroit would switch to the Eastern Conference. That would set up the potential for a Wings/Avs finals.
As for Claude and Mario, whether you love them or hate them, you have to admit they both add excitement to the game.
