I am not at all shocked that Boulerice got 25 games for his crossfacecheck on Ryan Kesler. The way the league has been handing out suspensions lately, he was gonna get a big one. What I am surprised about is that I felt myself thinking it was too long. Every hockey fan who knows me knows that I am a raging homer (Pest and Collision insert ‘raging homo’ joke here) and that I will vilify every player who has wronged a Canuck, and give martyr status to any Canuck injured or slapped with a suspension. So, when Boulerice commits a suspension worthy offense against Kesler, it’s my time to shine, right? Well, yeah, a little, sure, take Boulerice out back behind GM place and shoot him in the face and all that. But, it’s a little half-hearted, knowing that Colin Campbell uses each of these stupid incidents to set tougher and tougher precedent so that, pretty fuckin’ soon, a good heads-up hip check will get you two years in the State Pen. Couple that with the fact that it’s the same number of games as Chris Simon got for slashing Ryan Hollweg in the face and only five more games than the much less fucked up Downie incident and you have one conflicted and confused Jefcanuk. I mean, fuck, if this is 25 games then the Simon slash is 30-35 and Downie is 5-10. How about a little consistency? But no, Campbell doesn’t care about consistency, he cares about handing out the longest suspensions he can get away with. He is Gary Bettman’s bulldog, pushing the players, teams and fans around, forcing them into a Family Fun Center NHL. Fuck that. I am glad Boulerice got 25 games, but I hate that it furthers a fucked up agenda.
Boul of Dicks
This was written by jefcanuk. Posted on Friday, October 12, 2007, at 5:10 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.
4 Comments
Sure. That was an ugly ugly hit. Kinda reminds me of Chris Simon—and it has that extra “Deliverance” flavor.
When I watch in Slow-mo (which is about as close to a “homo” joke as I’m gonna get. Sorry, Jefe) the look on Boulerice after the hit with his gloves half off as if he expects Kesler to get up and fight is extra creepy—like he’s gonna drag him off through the Zamboni entrance into the bowels of the building and fuck the rest of the life out of him. Scares the shit out of me.
Note to Boulerice:
Dude. You just wrapped the short end of your fucking lumber around that guy’s adam’s-apple. He ain’t getting up.
Where Downie got 20 games on something like a million technicalities, Boulerice got his 25 for pure hard feelings and savagery.
I ain’t a Downie fan, but he didn’t deserve a suspension just shy of what Boulerice earned for that cruel nugget.
I dont know what they’re feeding the Flyers, but I’ll tell y’all now, next time I’m in Philly—I ain’t drinking the water.
Keep your head up.
Pest
Yeah, standing over him, taunting… gross. I think what we are seeing may be the effect of Bobby Clarke back in the office.
I agree completely that the suspensions have gotten way out of hand. Go ahead and call me bloodthirsty, but for the sake of comparison I think Moore got what he deserved from Bertuzzi for walking away from the fight that he initially started with Naslund. (I’m not trying to bait Collison, but after that Chicago crack, I’m just gonna let the chips fall where they may, because I can’t pick them up. My fingers are too thick and stubby.) In this circumstance, it was Boulerice who was too chickenshit to fight Kesler straight up after baiting him, so he pulled the coward move. That’s why his gloves almost came off: fear. If your sucker punch doesn’t work, you better hit him while he’s still getting up & you’ve still got a chance, otherwise someone will prove what a gutless wanker you are like Downey did to Boulerice with that one-timer to his jaw.
Despite my desire to return hockey to the days of Nero (I mean, fuck, they do -or did recently- play in places called Coliseums and Forums), I’d like to see no penalty given for these sorts of infractions. This is such a cowardly act that we should rely on the game to rectify it. A 25-game suspension and it might happen again & the quality of play still suffers. Without a suspension, then soon enough quid pro quo will be doled out by some thoughtful vigilante and it will wind up with Boulerice drowning unconscious in his own teeth. Best of all, you haven’t halted the spirit of the game by having players speak to their attorneys before every check. As in the glory days of baseball, if you went after someone’s head, you knew what you were doing, because in an inning or two, they’d be throwing back at you. Kinda funny how little Pedro Martinez hasn’t been throwing at anyone’s head now that in the NL he’s got to put a bat in his hands. I know this sounds curiously Neo-Classical/Adam Smithian coming from an avowed Socialist, but this is one circumstance where I do suggest letting the invisible hand of the game rectify physical inequities and transgressions.
Before I descend from my pompous soapbox, I must admit that I think hockey players as a whole are nearly worth of canonization, for the simple fact that if you hit me hard and I’ve got a stick in my hand, damned if I’m not going to use it, and I’m not sure any fine or suspension would talk me out of that. Knowing that I’d get a fair chance to return what I have been given very well might, though.
Hey, I’m all for lassiez-faire enforcement. Bring on the goons—but things being as they are, counting on NHL players to be self-policing might result in a murder or two on the ice, and that I don’t want to watch.
Witnessing the killing is one thing. Cleaning up the corpse is another.
I just get a little pissy when the officials feed into that good ol’ bad feeling by stepping in BEFORE the offender takes his beating, y’know, the genuine, spontaneous fighting thats becoming far to rare in the “new” NHL.
… and here we go again.
I was watching the Avs/CBJ game today (maybe in a futile attempt to get inside the convoluted inner workings of Chris Collision’s mind) and some dumb motherfucker did it again.
Now, I’m getting awfully sick of debating dirty hits and suspensions, but, in light of recent events, how stupid do you have to be to crosscheck Scott Parker in the face? No. Really.
I hope y’all read it here first—even though I’m hiding it in the comments because I refuse to drag this shit though the mud on the marquee again—Duvie Westcott has to be the biggest idiot on the planet.
I dont really give a shit about the hit in the grand scheme of things, but you HAVE TO KNOW that the league is gonna hand down some kind of draconian sentence for ANOTHER facecheck the same week they shackled Boulerice to the water-heater in the basement for the forseeable future.
The last thing I want to happen is for this kind of news to elicit a Lindsay-Lohan-News-Item reaction in me. I really do want to keep on giving a shit—but a constant diet of this kind of garbage is eventually gonna back up the pipes.
Sigh… Flyers fans rejoice. Colin Campbell’s giant thumb has been removed from your asshole, and replaced in the tightly puckered anus of the Blue Jackets.
Please. More Hockey. Less Tard.
Keep your head up.
Pest
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