NHL 'Justice'

To me the Crosby one looks accidental. They were both grabbing each other and calamity ensued.

That looks exactly like how I broke my foot.

Wow. The lack of respect in the league is getting alarming. I don’t like Crosby, but that was painful to watch. And obviously the message is not getting through because its the same guys that keep pulling this crap. Someone needs to skate out there and club them like a baby seal, or the NHL needs to do something. NOW. FWIW, I think Ovie was reckless but didn’t mean to hurt the guy. I’ve seen that play many times before turn out harmless.

I think both warrant 2 game suspensions, injury to Crosby or not. That was clearly intentional IMO.

The Crosby hit deserves a suspension of 5-8 games at least. Clear cheap shots and attempts to injure deserve rapid and severe responses. Protect your players to protect the excitement and marketability of the game. People want to see star players, they don’t want to see 2nd/3rd liners playing because the league won’t take care of the superstars. Yes it would be a different philosophy than the Broad Street Bullies but if the NHL ever wants to be something more than the 4th or 5th sport they need to take steps.

The Ovechkin hit was an accident.

Uggh, watching that makes my knees hurt. Honestly, hockey goes so fast it’s easy to watch the a slow motion replay and say that was a 100% attempt to injure, but sitting in a neutral position (I neither like nor dislike either of those players) I have to wonder if it truly was malicious or if they just got tangled up. For obvious reasons, I hate thinking about players hurting their knees during tangles.

But man, if that was Dutchy, intentional or not I’d have to beat him down myself.

Sid v. Ovi
Rock v. Paper v. Scissors

I really don’t care about any of them, but just watching the plays Ovechkin’s hit was unfortunate. How many times does a player get pushed at the end boards after flipping the puck away?

Downie, on the other hand had no reason to be in that position. That’s not how you fight for position. He should’ve been punished for that move.

Welp, you asked. Ovie’s looked like a physical play that ended up badly, unfortunately. Downie looked like a guy dicking around to try to cause trouble.

I HAVE SPOKEN. NOBODY CARES.

I bet nobody really cares, but I have to pat myself on the back on the two gamer for Ovie. Thing is, the guy plays out of himself too much and needs to learn how to rein it in.

Wonder if that fat fuck Boudreau’s re-evaluating his comments about Koci-Green? Probably not, but he’s got the most reckless player in the league on his team, and it’ll get Ovechkin hurt some day, I have no doubt about that.

I agree with Dan, the fact that burger toting fat fuck boudreau is flapping his gums about this being like the Koci/Green hit just blows my mind. Him and Ted Leonosis need their damn heads examined for even trying to defend Ovi, who, as great as he is, is becomming a cheap prick, like the guy plays with an edge yes, but he’s putting other guys in danger. Plus do you REALLY want your captain flying around disregarding others safety? (Iggy is my perfect grit v. Skill captain FWIW) As for the crosby play, fuck downie, he’s lucky the C.C Wheel of Justice came up empty, or they were to busy dealing with ovie

You can see Ovi extend his arms in an attempt to push Campbell. He meant for Campbell to go flying. Injure? Doubt it, but he sure wanted Campbell to go far in that direction. If that had been Quincey with his collarbone and ribs broken, we would be evoking Steve Moore’s name and calling for this repeat-offending cheap-shot artist to miss the rest of the season. Downie? That play is just fucking retarded. I expect the goalies to get involved in the brawl that will happen when those two teams meet again, to be followed by the same thing when Pitt plays Boston again. Control of the game has been lost.

We were all wondering how the NHL could sabotage itself after such a great Olympics, and here it is. The media’s attention is on the stupid penalties and not on the game. Wonderful.

Ovie 2-4 games.

Downie 4-6 games.

Do we need any other evidence for the waiver of the instigator penalty? I’m not a fan of fighting or goonery generally, but I am continuously astounded at the NHL’s incapacity to protect its players, while I never saw a European game (lived there for 4 seasons) or situation in which the players weren’t taken care of in the absence of knuckledragging idiots who couldn’t skate.

Since Colin Campbell et al can’t pour piss out of a boot with directions written on the heel, let’s see if some of these douchecanoes would give second thought to punking a guy when they knew that the other sides’ good would be let off his leash to snuff out their bitchy little existences.

I don’t know why we’re discussing this. Bettman will make sure that Downie gets a ton of games for hurting his baby.

Couldn’t really see the Downie hit, till that last angle..fuck me, my leg hurt in sympathy…looks like Crosby’s thighbone wanted to bend in half. .

Didn’t Don Cherry call out Downie a while ago for being a twat?

I’m kind of ambivalent about, Crosby. He’s like the Manning of hockey for me. They are both so cookie-cutter, poster boy perfect that I actually resent them. Perhaps if they weren’t so overexposed, it wouldn’t feel like being force fed a steady diet of wonderbread and I wouldn’t dislike them.

That said, I think the play by Downie is utterly despicable and ought to end his season. Why such an outlying opinion? It seems everybody only pays attention to the effect and the big, high speed hits make a lot of noise and cause a lot of injury and drama. But those plays happen at high speed with multiple bodies in motion.

If Ovechkin times his hit a half second later and comes in on the guy’s hip after he turns to skate behind the goal, it is a play we have yawned at hundreds of times. If these headshots get shoulder instead of chin it’s nothing. These are matters of inches in a situation where two highly skilled players are skating at full speed.

Downie’s is a slow, deliberate act of skating up behind Crosby, lifting his own leg to tuck his knee in behind Crosby and then twisting him down. While some seem to think its lack of high speed violence makes it NBD, I think it is precisely that that makes it reprehensible. It took him several seconds of deliberate, calculated work to try to take Crosby’s knee out. I think it is one of the sneakiest, dirtiest plays I have ever seen.

Even the Pronger stomp was better because that was just a temper tantrum by a giant toddler, this was nasty, nasty, nasty, and if he gets away with that, you have thrown opened the floodgates for marginal players to end the careers of great ones.

Forgive me Mr. Lobster, I just don’t see how anyone chooses such a slow train wreck, “accidentally.”