toby91_ca

Anyone that thinks wearing a visor is for ******* is basically an idiot.

Correct. You don't have to go back to 2008 to find his last suspension, Shanny referenced that he's had 3 or 4 suspensions since that date (basically illustrates repeated behaviour in a short period of time). If Smith doesn't do anything again for the next 5 years and then something happens, I don't think this incident will factor too much into any ruling. If he does something again in a few months, it will factor in and it should.

Because?

No injury though.

No, no I'm not....

You might want to brush up on the rules. Edit...sorry, this is not to say that Neil will be suspended, but if he isn't, it won't be because Grabovski was facing him and it wasn't blindside or from behind.

Didn't you just say that you'd put Darren Veitch ahead of both Chelios and Coffey? I'm almost afraid to ask....but......why?

I think there are two differences between the hits: 1 - The Steckel hit was 100% contact with the head, the Neil hit was probably a head shot as well, but I haven't seen great video of it yet....at a minimum, it wasn't as clean of a hit directly to the head. 2 - The Neil hit looked intentional for sure, he was looking in another direction when he was coming in, but then took a step to the right to lean into the hit. With the Steckel hit, he's probably the only one that knows whether it was intentional or not (or anyone that he told).

Neil didn't just brace himself, he stepped into the hit, it's pretty clear. If he didn't make contact with the head, then no big deal, but if he did (I haven't studied the video enough yet), then a definite suspension should come, especially since the player didn't have the puck.

You know, I think it's attitudes like this that are the problem. With education comes positive change, that's what is happending now. I don't think hits to guys heads or hitting guys from behind into the boards, or elbowing guys in the head are "good hits on people." Perhaps a guy like Scott Stevens would have been suspended a lot under the new rules, perhaps he should have been, perhaps a few players careers would have been saved. You could go beyond that and suggest a few players quality of life could be saved. Anyway, maybe, just maybe, these types of suspensions will actually be DETERRENTS, because the way it has gone up till now they haven't really been. The hope is that players will get the message and stop committing these types of acts and then you'll see the level of suspensions fall, hopefully dramatically.

Ovechkin's a repeat offender as well, so it will be even more interesting. If he does something, as a repeat offender, you'd expect something big would be coming, but would Shanahan follow through like with other "non-stars"?

So, if Howe won 15 Norris trophies over his career, would you remove that fact from the argument because Clarke wasn't eligible for that?

It isn't arguable because there is no logical argument as to why Howe was a better Flyer than Clarke. Perhaps it isn't the best term because EVERYTHING is "arguable" for the most part, which is why I added the term "logical." When 999,999 people pick Clarke and 1 person picks Howe, I guess you can say it's arguable, but is it logical? I'm in very dangerous territory here though as I don't want to suggest Clarke is the better player because that's simply what everyone else thinks. My opinion is simply based on all the detailed facts that you can gather as well. Even when you stripped away facts (which didn't make much sense), it still didn't look logical at all to pick Howe over Clarke.

Well, Howe, the Hart contender throughout his prime only finished in the top 10 in voting 3 times in his career (3rd, 5th and 7th). Clarke actually won the award 3 times and had another 6 top 10 finishes (2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th and 10th twice). I know you've tried to spin the defensemen never got the attention they needed for voting, but is that really your best argument? I'd have less of a problem if you simply tried to argue that Howe was a better player (I'd still disagree big time), but to argue that Howe was a better Flyer just doesn't seem to make any sense at all. Just for fun (on the who's the better player, regardless of considering their time with the Flyers, I just checked the Hockey News' top 100 players of all time (I know all of these are just opinions, but as I said, just for fun): Clarke is in at #24. Howe isn't even on the list of 100.

Okay, actual agruments then (I know Clarke was a forward and Howe was a defenseman, so it's tough to compare point production, but I will anyway since that was one of the reasons Howe was so good and he played in a higher scoring era). All stats below relate to time played with the Flyers. Clarke: GP - 1,144, PTS - 1,210 (reg season), GP - 133, PTS - 116 (playoffs) Masterton Hart - x3 Selke Lester Pearson Lester Partick Lionel Conacher (Canada's male athlete of the year) Lou Marsh (Canada's athlete of the year, male or female) NHL allstar - x8 NHL 1st or 2nd team allstar - x4 Captained Flyers to Stanley Cup - x2 Flyers team MVP - x2 (the award is now know as...you know...the Bobby Clarke award) Howe: GP - 594, PTS - 480 (reg season), GP - 82, PTS - 53 (playoffs) NHL allstar - x4 NHL 1st or 2nd team allstar - x3 Flyers team MVP - once

Hasn't he worn an "A" for a long time?

I'm very confident in saything that if you had 100,000 people and you asked them to pick either Clarke or Howe as Philly's best all-time player, 99,999 would pick Clarke and the other person would be Eva. Actually, it's funny, if you want to go through all the various lists that are floating out there on top Flyers of all time, Clarke is 1st on all of them and most of them don't really provide any argument as to why, they basically say "it's Clarke, everyone knows that, then they go on to provide detailed discussions on the rest. Howe normally pops up around #5.

Calling that a penalty is borderline, writing an article and linking a video + potetial suspension is simply pathetic.

But how much weight does that hold when there's only 6 goalies in the league (apart from a few backups that rarely played)?

You know, I knew you had a lot of love for Mark Howe. There's is absolutely no question he was a great player, but I think you may be the only person on the planet that actually think he's a better Flyer than Bobby Clarke, that's just insane. I won't bother mentioning anything about your comment that he was as good as Bourque in the 80s.

You said second greatest American hockey player though, you didn't say anything about "born".

What I find interesting is how you pretend that your "opinions" are facts, it's strange. By the way, no love for Brett Hull? Or do you consider him Canadian and not American?

I guess it's good to get it out of the way early.

Maybe that is part of the reason for his refusal to take the blood test (i.e. results of the test would have shown something). This probably wouldn't have been good news when it comes to league discipline, but right now, there is nothing that shows he took anything illegal, so really no matter for the league to address (I'm guessing), but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a legal issue to deal with as noted. Pretty serious legal issue.

Savard has a long history of concussion problems which started way before he ever came into contact with Matt Cooke.