Friday, December 19, 2008

Enforcing the Rules

Perhaps in the construction of this team, GMGM took into consideration that the star player on this team is more than capable of standing up to his opponents. But when Ovechkin is needed to stand up for the other star player when liberties are being taken on him...

Something's not right here.

Full kudos to him for charging in to the defense of his fallen line mate, but when everything was said and done... everything was said, but nothing was done. No penalties from the officials (not even to OV), and nobody really held David Backes truly accountable for his cross check that put Semin out of the game. Donald Brashear went out looking for takers, but no one would play.

I think I'm calling my hockey team soft.

It's clear that the officials just aren't policing the game according to the rule book. So when the policing has to be issued by the old time code of hockey, who among our ranks has the snarl to set things right?

Our goalies get run, Semin and Backstrom take slashes and cross checks, and I'm beginning to get a bit frustrated here. Did the playoff series against Philadelphia teach us nothing last year? If the zebras aren't going to be the deterrent, does that mean Ovechkin has to be?

Really?

2 comments:

Reed-CK said...

It looked like Brash wanted to go at least twice but noone took. Also BB already got an unsportsmanlike penalty, so getting an instigator would result in some fines. Not happy about it, but it's over now.

Anonymous said...

Brash laid a MONSTER hit on a Blues D-man, and had at least one other big hit right after the cheap shot. Plus, he was begging Tkuchuk to drop the gloves, and Tkuchuk skated away. Backes literally jumped onto the bench every time The Donald stepped onto the ice.

Thats the problem with being one of the top 2 or 3 heavyweights. It takes a certain kind of courage to go. The Blues didn't have that courage. They were the soft team, not us. If Brash had just picked one and pounded away (like I originally wanted him to), then we might have given STL the long power play to get back into the game (see Boston, last season).

I'm not happy at all about the cheap shot, but us being stupid and falling into a Bloodlust wouldn't have changed the fact that Backes is a pansy, Tkuchuk has a shell of his former backbone, and Bouds is smarter than us all...