So Pittsburgh Penguins owner and president, Mario Lemieux, didn’t like the discipline handed out by the NHL to the New York Islanders this past weekend?
Not surprising. Mario has a lot on his plate right now. He has a concussed Sidney Crosby who is likely out of the lineup until mid-March at best and he has Evgeni Malkin out for the rest of the season with a knee injury. With his two best players on the sidelines, Mario has noticed his Pens aren’t very good. Between the injuries and the circus on Long Island last week, ol’ Mario is angry.
Trouble is, he lives in a glass house.
Now let’s not point the finger solely at Lemieux for his little outburst this week. National Hockey League organizations have been releasing written statements that disagree with a suspension handed out by the NHL’s vice-president of discipline, Colin Campbell, for a lot of years now. However, the statement released Sunday afternoon by Super Mario was nothing, if not blunt.
Responding to the $100,000 fine to the Islanders, the four-game ban to Matt Martin for drilling the Pens Maxime Talbot with a sucker punch that would have made Todd Bertuzzi and Marc Crawford proud, and the nine-game suspension dished out to Trevor Gillies after his hit to the head of Eric Tangradi, Lemieux expressed his “disappointment” with the NHL’s decision.
WE QUOTE: “Hockey is a tough, physical game, and it always should be. But what happened Friday night on Long Island wasn’t hockey. It was a travesty. It was painful to watch the game I love turn into a sideshow like that. The NHL had a chance to send a clear and strong message that those kinds of actions are unacceptable and embarrassing to the sport. It failed.”
Hmmm. Mario should probably be fined, but he won’t be and give him a little credit, he got his anger off his chest.
Mario’s problem is that the NHL has no desire to clean up the “sideshow.” After the lockout ended in 2005, the league said there would be a “new NHL,” one where the star players could be star players, where they could score goals and where the referees would call hooking, holding and interference exactly as those rules were outlined in the NHL rulebook.
Unfortunately, the stricter officiating lasted about 3/4 of a season and while the NHL maintained that the players had become accustomed to the “new” of interpretations of the rules, the fact was, the officials just went back to the way it was before the lockout. With that, NHL general managers started loading up on goons and now every team has at least one player in its organization who can step in, beat the crap out of its opponents and not worry aboiut missing any ice time because he couldn’t really skate anyway. Today, “the new NHL” is loaded up with the likes of Zenon Konopka, Colton Orr, Derek Boogaard, George Parros, Jared Boll, and on and on and on, guys who can kick the living shit out of another person without so much as a hint of conscience.
Because the NHL wouldn’t call the infractions on the ice, teams had to take the law back into their own hands. And they did so. Now, everybody has a goon and when everybody has a goon, the occasional circus will come to town. As long as the officials refuse to call the rules as they are described in the rulebook, coaches and GMs will make sure they can control the ice themselves.
Which brings us back to Mario. Mario’s problem is that he’s part of the whole mess. His Penguins have a headhunter named Matt Cooke. This is the guy who has, evidently, ended Marc Savard’s career. He’s a 32-year-old enforcer with a reasonable amount of skill who can pass for a legitimate player. However, if the Penguins need someone to end an opponent’s career, Matt Cooke is ready and willing to do whatever it takes. Most recently, Cooke was handed a four-game suspension (on Feb. 9), for hitting Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Fedor Tyutin from behind. It was a vicious, stupid hit delivered by a vicious, stupid man.
However, it’s Mario’s man and as a result, when Lemieux talks about “sideshows,” he forgets that Cooke is one of the biggest clowns of the bunch.
What Matt Martin did to Max Talbot last Friday is exactly what got Todd Bertuzzi a year-long suspension. Martin should have had the book thrown at him. No doubt about it. Trouble is, what Matt Cooke did to Fedor Tyutin could have left Tyutin attached to tubes for the rest of his life. Too bad Mario forgot about that one in his little rant.