New York Rangers Issue Statement On Tom Wilson Situation
- Thread starter Knuckle Ball
- Start date
In case you haven't noticed, fighting is waaay down from what it was. The league has made great strides, but this is a backward step for the league's image.
I don't think that they mind an occasional fight that happens spontaneously in the heat of the moment. Those don't bother me. They happen in every sport.
What they do mind is staged, thuggish preplanned brawls across the ice surface. That is what they have been very good at eliminating, which is why you see so few enforcers on teams now.
The fighting in this game will be broadcast from coast to coast and it will not presented in complimentary way. The league will be shamed for it.
The league does not want displays like this and if they had a brain, they'd have realized that suspending Wilson for 2 or 3 games would have prevented this.
If you are a fan of these types of brawls, then I expect that you'll disagree with me. Why do you think that there are less staged fights and less enforcers than there used to be? Hint: it didn't happen by itself.
His point was that the game has changed since the Flyers teams that you referenced. Your example is outdated.
An esteemed member on this board recently wrote: 10 years ago that would happen 5 times a game
I'm having trouble following the mathematical gymnastics of looking at games from 10 years ago and at the same time some of the Flyers games from the '70's.
Thanks for clarifying...
My point was that shit was nothing more then a common hockey scrum. If this is the kind of shit that that's going to be a major story, yes the league is way to soft more my liking now. The way the talk shows and new were talking about it, it sounded like like he did something 20 times worse then Bertuzzi punched Steve Moore. Didn't expect to be basically your average hockey scrum.
To be honest, the actions of the aggressors were not all that different.
The difference is what the outcomes were to the receivers of the blows. If Moore had not been so severely injured, not a single person would remember the incident.
I agree that fighting is way down...but the league could also get rid of it completely if they wanted to; but they choose not to.
You don’t see fighting in the NFL or NBA because it leads to an automatic ejection from the game plus supplementary discipline.
You don’t see a lot of fighting in baseball except for occasional bench clearing brawls (and, of course, the time that Roughned Odor punched Jose Bautista in the face). When it comes to fighting no other sport comes close to hockey.
They were totally different. Bertuzzi punched Steve Moore in the back of the head while he was skating away. Tom Wilson punched a guy who was actively involved in a melee.
Huh?
Tom Wilson punched a guy in the back of the head who was lying face first on the ice and was no threat to him whatsoever.
Tom Wilson is reckless and big... He survives because he's big. I certainly wouldn't call him "tough". He's opportunistic.
In the fighting era of hockey, he'd be challenged every single night. That would weight on you mentally... He's already mental.
In the fighting era of hockey, he'd be challenged every single night. That would weight on you mentally... He's already mental.
They both took shots at (at that moment of time) a defenseless player from behind. Players' heads hit the ice in both incidents.
The outcomes of those two plays could have easily been reversed.
Would you remember the hit on Moore if he hadn't have been so badly injured?
What clip are you watching??? I'm watching the one where Wilson and Panarin were shoving each other and Panarin falls to the ice face up and Wilson gives him one last hockey gloved shot the face. As I said, this is childes play compared to the hockey I grew up watching.
Your point is valid, however everything is relative.
In the old days, Wilson's behaviour would appear benign because of the tolerance for random fighting and general brutality.
Fast forward, in today's game Wilson's behaviour appears thuggish/goonish with all the changes in the game,
especially because what he did was outside of on ice legal parameters.
I can't watch a lot of the classic games with all the fighting, scrums,
dirty hits, cheap penalties, obstruction (except maybe for some of those Montreal/Boston games).
I've been watching hockey since the late 60's and it all seemed normal at the time, I think the changes have made it a much better game,
I'm not sure what he deserved but that stuff doesn't belong in the game anymore.
I thought you were talking about the Buchnevich punch just before. It was not a very forceful punch and there was no injury but that was dirty and gutless.
As far as Panarin goes, I agree with you. In fact, Panarin instigated that situation when he jumped on Wilson’s back; Panarin has no one to blame but himself for what happened next.
I'm pretty impressed by the response by the Rangers players here. They showed a lot of heart standing up for their fallen comrade. As was said by the panel during the intermission between the period this could provide a real team building experience for them. I think it will.
I was listening to Mark Messier's comments on the radio yesterday about Tom Wilson. He basically praised him as a hockey player and said that you have to beat a team in the alley to beat them on the ice sometimes. That's an old school mentality that the soy crowd just can't stomach I know. Intimidation and toughness have always been a part of the game and always will be. Fights have a way of evening out the animosity that develops.
Don Cherry is right. the vocal minority squawks endlessly about removing fighting from the game yet whenever there is a fight in a game the fans are going nuts and nobody at home watching is turning off their TV.
I was listening to Mark Messier's comments on the radio yesterday about Tom Wilson. He basically praised him as a hockey player and said that you have to beat a team in the alley to beat them on the ice sometimes. That's an old school mentality that the soy crowd just can't stomach I know. Intimidation and toughness have always been a part of the game and always will be. Fights have a way of evening out the animosity that develops.
Don Cherry is right. the vocal minority squawks endlessly about removing fighting from the game yet whenever there is a fight in a game the fans are going nuts and nobody at home watching is turning off their TV.
