Daily Cupcakes- January 6th, 2012

Wasn’t this exactly what was predicted a few years ago when the instigator penalty was created? Star players would start getting hit more and hurt more and no one could do anything about it.

Fighting wasn’t used to just get back at dirty hits or to change momentum. It was used anytime people got to rough with star players or captains. Look at the last game where LA drilled Hejduk 2 or 3 times on one shift. None of the hits were dirty or illeagal, but I seem to remember that would not have been allowed to happen in the past.

Also in the past I seem to remember that if a guy did something questionable or was going over the line someone would skate up to him and drop gloves and he had a choice of fight or get the shit kicked out of him. Now if you skate up to someone and drop gloves and they don’t do it then you get a penalty and a large one. They can just turn and run away and you go to the box or locker room.

Because they were fooled by Roly’s good playoffs

Heh, I just asked that very question in a different thread. Maybe the shoulder injury scared them off?

If teams like Buf, Van, and Min are in no hurry to deal their backups, I’d be surprised if a few teams like maybe Tampa & Columbus didn’t give Sherman a call about Cedrick.

Only going to get worse there too – as of this week at least 8 of their precincts will be closed from 4pm to 8am. Wonder if they make Wings jerseys out of Kevlar?

The case against Crawford was completely moronic. The NHL has no indemnity clauses in their contracts (which is standard) and Bertuzzi’s lawyers (with assistance from the NHLPA) thought they could pass blame onto Crawford as a stalling tactic. That is precisely what happened. By bringing Crawford in they added at least three years of time to the case and it was clearly planned that way because there is a lengthy precedent of American cases that reject that. Sadly, in Canada the precedent was not so lengthy so the court let it continue until it actually had to face muster; when that occurred it was dropped.

I am not sure if it was planned this way by the attorneys or not, but by adding the Crawford suit and using stalling techniques, Bertuzzi was allowed to continue to play. It’s possible that that the attorneys see Bertuzzi losing and wanted him to get as much playing time in before he “might” be sent to jail. Since Canada has an absurd Tort system, Bertuzzi’s salaries would barely be touched and his attorneys did a good job for him. Their goal seems to be that if Bertuzzi goes to jail, it will happen AFTER his playing career came to its own end.

Let’s see if this worked….