Friday, November 13, 2009

 

The Return of Friday

**The trapezoid was back in the news again, and the usual Devils/Stars fans were agitating for its removal. (As well as some new people who have decided that, as a means of reducing boarding, it makes more sense that penalizing boarding more harshly.) I was chatting with Cosh about this nearly 3 years ago, and he nailed it IMO:
me: I find the whole "why should one of Goalie X's skills be neutralized by some rule?" to be very uncompelling.
Colby: It's not a bad question to ask, but when the obvious answer is "Because X's skill really has nothing to do with the essence of the game and isn't any fun to watch", why bother asking.

**Also on the GMs: what's interesting to me is not so much the fact of the change (or "softening") of position on head hits, but rather the way the change was framed. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if George McPhee really thinks the NHL rulebook can be employed with this kind of surgical precision...
“The only issue I have is when the player is vulnerable, there is a blindside hit and the only contact is made to the player’s head. [...] If there are three or four of those a year, maybe we can attack and eliminate a lot of them.”

...he's just dreaming. As I wrote a couple of autumns ago, in the course of getting rid of some unwanted physical play, you're going to end up eliminating some wanted physical play. If someone (besides Bob McKenzie) wanted to be grown up about it, they could just be frank: there will be a bit of a tradeoff, but it's the right decision. Which, it is.

**My favourite contribution to #unpublishedNHLbooks on Twitter yesterday (I'm @FenwickMatt btw) was, "Now I Can Die In Peace", by Tom Benjamin. Nothing personal Tom, I just went for the most well-known Canucks fan I could think of (and thought using Jim Hughson or Michael Buble would confuse the gag).

**There is no way no spin Olli Jokinen's awful performance this season in a positive way. I'm changing my assessment of him from "Bad player with a good shot" to "Bad player with a hard shot".

** This month's Post I Wish I Had Written: Kent's appreciation of Craig Conroy. I second every word.

**Pleasant surprise of the season: Kipper. If he's back as a Top 10-15 NHL goalie, that mitigates a lot of other worries.

**Flames @ Slugs tonight. They haven't won in Buffalo in 13 years, so I think I'll just cheer for no one to get injured. Go Flames.

Comments:

When I published that post, I expected you to come by for a point and laugh. I certainly deserve it for being such a bonehead about the Conroy issue the last couple of years.
 


As well as some new people who have decided that, as a means of reducing boarding, it makes more sense that penalizing boarding more harshly.

DING DING DING!!! We have a winner!!!
 


This was my birthday so I took a break from searching where to acquire ceiling repairs in Calgary and focused on the game.
 

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