To follow up on yesterday's post...so now the Flyers have injured one of their own. Derian Hatcher put a head shot on Steen when the Flyers played the Leafs on Saturday. The force of the blow threw Steen into Joffrey Lupul, who went down hard and cracked the back of his head on the ice. He's been diagnosed with a concussion and a bruised spinal cord.
And this is after Downie got nothing for a cheap, across-the-ref sucker punch on Jason Blake.
I'm disgusted. But is John Stevens? Is Paul Holmgren? Will anything change? C'mon guys. This isn't exciting hockey, this is goondom to the extreme. Fighting does have a place in the game, but not the blindsided, chickenshit variety. If two guys both agree to go, then they go. It's honorable and can fire up a team. But chasing someone down from behind, ala the Bertuzzi-Moore incident or punching a guy that's being held down by the ref is pathetic, classless and gutless.
Between this and the Flyers' management refusal to allow their games to be seen on Center Ice by people who don't have Comcast cable, I wash my hands of them. I'm done. The Red Wings will always be THE TEAM, but I allowed myself to root for the Flyers a little because they were in the Eastern Conference. I go to see them because they're the closest team, but I'll be sporting the opposing team's sweater from now on.
Bettman wonders why people don't watch hockey. Tacit allowance of this crap is a big part of the reason.
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