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Which Way To Go
by Paul on 02/25/07 at 08:56 AM ET
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from Joe Starkey of the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review,
But the goonery hasn’t gone away. Its insidious presence is what has the Penguins apparently pursuing hockey’s heavyweight champ, Georges Laraque—so he can “protect” Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
Surely, you don’t believe Laraque’s presence would prevent some cementhead from taking a shot at Crosby, do you?
Only the league can protect its players. Or not.
It would be so much easier to respect the NHL if it would go one way or the other.
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To me, the most illustrative comment in the piece is this one:
Surely, you don’t believe Laraque’s presence would prevent some cementhead from taking a shot at Crosby, do you?
If I am a coach, and have a small-impact (salary and ice time) brute on my team, I know my thoughts in this situation. I see that there is very little in the way of repercussions for me if I send him out to take out Crosby’s knee. Sure, he will get clobbered by the Penguin’s tough guy (whoever it is in this hypothetical scenario), but if the hit can be rationalized as somewhat legal, he won’t even be suspended. If I can plausibly deny that I intended to hit a star and put him out of the game, I won’t suffer either. And even if the goon I sent out is supended, so what? He has minimal impact on my team anyway, and I have weakened an opponent for weeks or months while their star is in rehab or surgery. To me, in a cut-throat business like this, it would even be worth a fine if I can improve my team’s prospects by hurting an opponent. I win this trade off and I take the chance.
And if the only solution is for the Penguins to send their goon after my team’s stars in retaliation, then after a while all the game’s stars will be injured or hurt, and the only players that will be able to display their skills are the fighters. There has to be some middle ground.
Posted by Baroque on 02/25/07 at 10:17 AM ET