Brandon Dubinsky is suspended for one single game - essentially a day off - for one of the stupidiest and most vicious things you'll see in an NHL game. Most hockey hits look worse than they actually are once they're slowed down and you see them fifty times. In reality, they are plays that occur at such a high speed that players can be forgiven - or given the benefit of the doubt - for what often seems like a murderous play.
But what happened last night isn't worthy of any of those excuses. It was a vicious cross-check to the neck of the NHL's best player and marquee star. It was then followed with a second cross- check to the back. As if the first one wasn't enough.
At first I thought he threw the stick away so he could fight if Crosby got up, but what actually happened was that he broke the stick. Broke his $300 composite stick by cross checking a dude in the neck. Nice.
And the NHL gives him just one game? You could paralyze a guy by cross-checking him in the neck. He could have ended the season of the NHL's most important player. I don't care if he's never been suspended before, a single game is ridiculous.
The NHL will one day wake up to a tragedy, and they will have an inquisition and in hindsight ask themselves how they could have been so negligent for so long. Dirty plays call for much harder suspensions. The current system is not working and doesn't work; the are no more enforcers either.
It is idiotic that the criteria for suspensions include the past history of the player and whether the guy he attacked is injured long term, neither of which stands up to logical scrutiny.
The NHL should either drop the instigator rule or start handing out suspension that are four to ten times more harsh then they currently are. Probably both.
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The Coyote won their second in a row and third in their last four games last night to beat the Flames, and move back into a Playoff spot. Hurray.
The Coyotes didn't play a very good game, and I hope that the absolutely atrocious play of the Domi / Duclair line doesn't get them broken up. Duclair ended up taking some shifts with his old line because he and Domi (10%CF !!!) and Jeffrey were getting killed.
My thoughts would be that Jeffrey isn't exactly a quality NHL player and that it can't be that hard to get someone who is. I mean, (expletive deleted) Tyler Bozak isn't exactly "good" but he is to Jeffrey what Polly Jean Harvey is to Adele. (Well, maybe not, but you get my point!)
Or, if we're sticking with the Leafs, they also have Peter Holland and Marc Arcobello, both of whom are vastly superior to anyone playing centre in the Coyotes organization above the junior level and not named Martin Hanzal.
Marc Arcobello, who used to play for the Coytoes, is in the AHL and is a career 51% possession player who draws penalties, plays both ways and scores at a very decent clip of 1.42 pts.60.
The only reason he isn't an NHL regular is because of bias against size. Run every single stat - he's better than almost all bottom six players currently in the NHL and it's a crime he isn't in the Show right now. What'd it cost to get him? A fourth? A seventh?
Why totally waste this incredible start to the season by running out Vermette/ Chipchura/ Jeffreys?
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Tonight's game is against the Senators.
Now, no one ever talks about this, but we all agree that the Senators have the absolute, no questions asked, not debatable, worst logo in pro-sports, right?
I assume we are in agreement.
Do you know what I do like? The X-Files. I started watching the series over again, and I don't really understand why they cast a 25 year old to play Scully but then gave her grandma hair so she'd seem older. Grandma hair or not, Scully is one fine lady - but it makes no sense that her character is just 25 when the show begins.
The show is great, but even in episode two, you're like "Did Scully not remember what happened in episode one?" which was always the only thing preventing the X-Files from being the greatest show of all time. How is she that skeptical about Mulder's theories after she just witnessed a dude wake up from a coma, walk into a forest and get enveloped in light from what appears to be a space-ship?
I don't know......isn't this supposed to be a game preview? Oh yeah! Sens vs. Coyotes. OEL vs EK. Book it!