Penspal wrote:Great post bhaw. I know walls of text scare off a lot of people, but to get a point across, sometimes you need the synergy that multiple sentences can give you.
I ripped out a lot to highlight my next point. I want to thank you for being the ONLY OTHER post/article/mention ANYWHERE that I can find that thinks the Rupp knee on Staal was, at the very least, questionable. In my thread "Game 39 vs. NY - Thoughts from the morning after", only one person even commented on it, and more or less to say I was wrong.
I've been a die hard fan for soooo long I'm not sure I can tone it down to casual, but the thought has crossed my mind. I think the NHL is like most everything else in the world right now, FUBAR'ed. Let's hope it does not become SNAFUBAR'ed. It is not to late for Shanny (and COMMITTEE, its not just him) to get back to stiffer sentences.
I didn't like the Marchand hit, because it was Marchand "the rat", and the context of the game was nasty. There was already another dirty Boston hit, and against a team that they defeated in the cup by playing questionably dirty playoff hockey.
Victories cannot come at the expense of players health. It is a game, a form of entertainment, it is not a war. There is a trophy given every year for sportsmanship - The Lady Byng. I think that everyone who has won that the last 10 years should form a committee and submit ideas for how to clean up the attitude, which is the cause, the injuries and suspensions are just the effect.
Thanks. I don't think getting the Lady Byng winners is a great idea. Definitely creative, but to clean up the game, they need to just call the rules as they are written. They need an outside person to head up punishment. Someone who watches a hit and reads the rules. Stop getting people who can "tell what the guy was thinking." Problem is that the old guard and hockey "purists" would never allow someone from outside of hockey to infect the game. He won't understand the unwritten code or doesn't know what it's like to be in that situation or can't comprehend the speed of the game, blah blah blah. It's all excuses for continuing what's going on.
I hope people do read my wall of text. I didn't start putting all of that together until recently. When people say "this stuff always happened, they are just diagnosing more concussions," it just gets accepted. So I went back and looked. It's not true, plain and simple. We have just come to accept that it's impossible to prevent these hits and that things happen to fast and that players were always getting hit in the head. The video proves it.
No one really answered my question, which I realize was just more for thought and not discussion, but I think it's an interesting exercise. I honestly think that if Bertuzzi did what he did to Moore TODAY (and it hadn't happened before), he gets no more than 5-8 games. And people would have accepted it. The refs have gone lax so much over the last half decade and the NHL has blurred the lines so much that rules aren't really rules.
As for Rupp's hit... I think my assessment is dead on. Sure, I know Rupp is a genuine guy from what we all see. And I don't think he wanted to hurt anyone. But what he meant/wanted to do vs what happened is not relevant. I just know that in the 90s and early 2000s, a knee was a knee. Sometimes guys got away with it, but no one would deny it's a dirty play. The NHL bending the kneeing rules to keep AO from getting suspended for so long just butchered that rule. Can you imagine someone arguing that Ulf led with his shoulder on Neely when it happened?
