Electrophile

We should focus on playing 20 minutes of solid hockey before we move up to playing a whole 60 minutes. Baby steps.

I don't know why I have to quote my own post for my image to come up, but there you have it.

......

I watched this game on ESPN. It was hyped like no other hockey game I could remember at the time. I also recall screaming at the TV "HIT HIM HARDER!" Ahh, memories. Like the corners of my mind. Misty, water-colored memories. Of the way we were.

I'll just be happy if we make the playoffs. Anything past getting there will be gravy.

That's not patriotism. That's called "American Exceptionalism" and it's dangerous. It's the idea that we're perfect, every other country is s***, and thus we do no wrong and only do right. We all know that's a crock of horsepuckey. People that think this way scare the living daylights out of me. Moving on to the topic of the thread, I'd rather Nick retire.

At least we made a game of it, right? They could have packed it in when we were down 4-1, but they rallied back to force a shoot-out. That says something about character or improbable verve....something like that. All I asked was for the Wings not to embarrass themselves, and while they did so early on, they redeemed themselves. It makes the loss a little easier to take, at least.

In my own personal opinion, the suspension wasn't nearly long enough. He has too long a history of s*** like this, and you could reasonably deduce from the fact he's had as many incidents like this as he has, that he doesn't really give a damn if he severely injures someone or not. I mean, if for example you know that walking backward without looking where you're going will knock someone down and hurt them, and after several incidents where you do just that, you continue to do it anyway.....any reasonably sane person would look at you say, "You don't care if you hurt someone, do you?" Same thing applies here, really. He knows head shots are dangerous and can not only end someone's career, it could cause serious physical harm......but he keeps doing it anyway. Either he thinks he's invincible, or he's too mentally unstable to be playing hockey. Hockey is already a very physical, aggressive sport. Why make it that much more dangerous for other players by letting this idiot out on the ice? Why let someone continue to put themselves in the position to deliberately do things they know are not only against the rules of the sport, but beyond the level of physicality required to even play the sport in the first place.

Just don't embarrass yourselves. That's all I'm asking for.

"Never ascribe to malice that which can easily be explained by incompetence."

For those that were curious, Ava's middle name is actually called a patronym, and it's common in Eastern European countries, especially Russia. For example, Pavel Datsyuk's daughter is Elizabeth Pavlovna, as Pavlovna is the feminine patronym for Pavel. In English, that would be like naming her Elizabeth Paula, since Pavel is Russian for Paul. So Ava Ruslanovna means "Ava, daughter of Ruslan." The famous Romanov children, the last Imperial rulers of Russia, all had the patronym Nicholaievna or Nicholaievitch, as the father's name was Nicholas.

Mario, after you publicly jam a hockey stick up Matt Cooke's ass, then I'll entertain your ideas about dealing with teams with multi-suspension players. K? Awesome.

No, it was plagiarized. If you read a few posts up, Shoreline found out where the poster got it from.

Hank is a s***ty, self-centered person? News to me.

What's with all this "go watch soccer" bulls***? Knock it off.

He's an *******. A douchey, smarmy, little sneering *******. It doesn't matter if he's good at the job he was hired to do. He's a douchey, smarmy, sneering little ******* that's good at the job he was hired to do. Sidney Crosby is good at what he does too, but that doesn't make him any less of a turd. I've taken plenty of management classes and plenty of economics classes -- I was a business major, after all. The point is, if you have an unlikeable personality or otherwise present yourself to be the undisputed King of All Yambags, nothing else really matters, now does it?

Wait, we just scored? What the ******* f***?

What's happened thus far? Jack s***. How we're down 1-0 to the Oilers? We ******* suck.

You deserve a million +1's for this. Sookie's mad.

Of course Bettman got a contract extension. You think Sidney Crosby wants to go back to blowing sailors for $5 a pop at The Manhole to cover his rent?

This comment was necessary?

More headshots. Fabulous PR for the league. Especially with the Air Canada situation going on. It would be nice if Gary Bettman woke the $@#% up and decided to pay attention to stuff that's going on right now, instead of sitting around with his thumbs up his ass. I understand physicality is a part of hockey, and I don't think anyone wants the players to go around knocking one another into piles of eiderdown, but is there anything that can be done to curb the excessive contact to the head? Anything at all?

I already said in my first post in this thread that Air Canada should have done this more professionally, and not taken it to the press. However I'm honestly surprised that there's that many people who don't understand that this happens all the time (albeit not in the press) and has happened for as long as there's been businesses and sponsors of those businesses. Air Canada is a major NHL sponsor. The NHL is in the eyes of Air Canada, promoting or condoning behavior they think is beyond what's acceptable in the normal course of a hockey game. So they said publicly (which they shouldn't have done) that if Gary Bettman and Co. don't do something about the excessive headshots, they're pulling their sponsorship and taking their business elsewhere. Which would be a bad thing if it does in fact happen. You can argue about whether or not they did it in the right way, but I see no argument that says they have or had no legal standing to do it. Look at all the sponsors that pulled advertisements from Glenn Beck's program -- they didn't like the message he was peddling, so they yanked their ads. This is no different in concept, it's just a sport and a sponsor, rather than a TV program/network and its sponsor.

If you want a business, and the NHL is a business, to change some of their practices, you hit them where it hurts -- their wallets. Sports rely a lot on sponsorship deals or other such arrangements, and if said sport is doing something or promoting something that X sponsor thinks is unacceptable, it's perfectly reasonable for X sponsor to say "Hey, either knock this s*** off and/or do something about it, or we're taking our business elsewhere." Do any of you understand that this is how business are at times, forced to change and adapt? Some of you are acting like this is some new-fangled thing, and it's never ever happened before.