With all the talk of late about a need for policemen on the ice and more protection for the star players, Damien Cox of the Toronto Star finds a bit of hypocrisy in it all.
With Tomas Kaberle laying crumpled on the ice, the victim of a hit from the Devil's Cam Jannsen the talk about just what is good hard physical hockey and what is goonery is ramping up again.
The last month has seen a number of incidents highlight a more physical nature of play, but a style of physical contact more reminiscent of the early 1970s. With the GM's recently seeming to sanction the work of the team policeman, it seems that more than a few liberties are being taken at the expense of those players the league is supposedly trying to protect.
It's a hard line to follow we suppose (though common sense says it really shouldn't be), between a harder hitting game and the outright muggings that seem to be taking place, but for the sake of the game they had best find that line pretty quick.
While hockey fans like hard hitting action and even the occasional scrap, nobody is paying top dollar to watch Cam Jannsen skate around the rink, let alone launch into a top end player. The more frequent those types of events become and the more likely we're to see more articles like this one from Cox.
No comments:
Post a Comment