St Louis, MO
Any fool can see the strategy of the Blues, beat you into submission. Target the best players and risk a suspension. That policy has been working since the 1st round, so why change horses midstream?
Yes I know, you say hockey is a contact sport. It’s a man’s game, man up. The other team is free to retaliate and those are all valid points. What I will point out is, that style has to be in your DNA, in your identity. As the San Jose Sharks found out, they could not compete with the deliberate maiming style of the Blues forecheck.
If your team doesn’t have the same skill set as your opponent, there is a remedy. Punishing hits, delivered over and over add up. The star players, the ones the FANS pay to see are rendered ineffective or too injured to play up to their skill level. The attrition game is one that is well played by teams with less skill.
The sad part is, the NHL seems to want their game to be like the NFL, with video clips of players getting blown up, spitting out teeth, broken jaws and concussions. Personally, that isn’t why I watch the game. Yes, I know what you’ll say. That’s what people want. I don’t know if that’s really true. I don’t really have a solution to the trend, the rules committee and the player safety organizations don’t seem to have the answers either.
As the Finals wind down, it is now best 2 out of 3. St Louis came out last night and hit everything that moved. To be fair to the Bruins, they withstood the onslaught well and could have stolen the game with a couple of bounces going the other way. However, I am not suggesting that Boston was robbed in any way.
Ryan O’Reilly was the hero last night, scoring 2 goals, including the winner with 10 minutes left in the game, putting in a rebound of a shot by Alex Pietrangelo. Boston was down their best defensive D man Zdeno Chara, after he took a shot to the face. He appears to have a broken jaw, deep cuts to his mouth and several chiclets missing. He returned to the bench in the 3rd period but was unable to skate even one shift. A six foot nine inch cheerleader.
To be clear, no one on Boston is whining. They all know what has to be done, all the cliches are in play here. I’m not going there. But as a fan of hockey, I’m very disappointed in the way the game has continued to unravel or devolve as it were. Some say it is because of the mandatory helmet rule, that players now bring their sticks up high with impunity. Others say it is the reduced role of fighting in the game, that the threat of a sound beating kept most of the shenanigans out of the game. Now that’s gone the way of the Dodo Bird.
It is a code amongst players that they’ll do ANYTHING to win a Cup. Never has that been more evident to me than this year, as one highly skilled team after another has fallen by the wayside. If I wanted to watch the WWF or Raw or whatever that dumbshit is I would.
What happened to my game?