TAMPA — So here we are in Tampa’s St. Pete Times Forum watching Alexander Ovechkin score his 50th goal of the season when all of a sudden he’s warming his hands over his red-hot stick.
Almost immediately, as one looked around the press box, you could assume someone was going to be pissed right off. Ovechkin’s little post-goal, Tony Award-winning celebration combined with the look on the face of Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Rick Tocchet clearly suggested that there would be words in the post-game scrum.
No one was disappointed.
“It’s hard for me to accept, just to see that happen in our building,” Tocchet said. “I grew up as a player in the days of the old Spectrum in Philly and if that happened in the first period at the Spectrum, it would have been a three-hour period.”
Great, so why didn’t it happen at the Forum in downtown Tampa? Well, for one thing, the Lightning are done and most of them don’t care and for another, you can’t hurt Ovechkin.
And that’s what has made all this fuss about Don Cherry’s remarks on CBC a month ago, and I’m paraphrasing, that “Somebody is going to get Ovechkin.” It’s a complete crock.
That’s because Cherry, and all the knobs in the print media, forgot that Ovechkin has already been got.
Hey boys, ever wonder why Alex doesn’t have any teeth when he does post-game interviews? That’s because, on Dec. 30, 2006, Colton Orr of the New York Rangers cross-checked Ovechkin in the mouth and took out his front teeth. For his oh, so violent act, Orr was suspended five games.
So why did Orr do it? Ironically, not because of anything Ovechkin did. He did it because he told the Caps Donald Brashear that if he goes after Brendan Shanahan again, “I’m going after Ovechkin.”
Well, sure enough, Brashear punched Shanahan after a whistle. So on Orr’s next shift, he jumped over the bench, cross-checked Ovechkin and rattled his chiclets.
Ovechkin was stunned, but got up and continued playing. Orr was handed a minor penalty and two days later, the suspension. But everyone marveled at Ovechkin’s toughness.
The guy is not afraid and you can’t hurt him.
But still, the old guy who wears clown suits on TV, gets ripped by the national print media for suggesting someone’s going to go after Ovechkin. Sadly, no one in the print media remembered (or bothered to look up) the Orr incident.
So not only was Cherry wrong, but the entire mainstream media was wrong for simply assuming ol’ Don knew what he was talking about. And, hey, we even helped ‘em get it right by talking about Colton Orr’s cross-check on radio stations in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg. Sadly, the mainstream newspaper industry is hopeless.
In the old days, someone in the print media would have looked up “any incidents involving Alexander Ovechkin” before going off half-cocked. Now, the people who rip bloggers for having no editors, don’t even bother doing what they were taught in J-school.
The mainstream media is dying not just because newsprint prices are rising or labour costs are increasing, but because the content is weak.
Alexander Ovechkin is one of the greatest players in all of hockey. When he’s done, he’ll be remembered as one of the greatest of all time. But he shouldn’t have been showboating in Tampa. Like Teemu Selanne’s penchant for shooting down his glove with his stick after a big goal at Winnipeg Arena, Ovechkin’s little performance was a home town dance, not a road taunt.
If Colton Orr was playing for the Lightning in Tampa — in last place or not — he’d have made Rick Tocchet happy.
Meanwhile, it seems that every time I read a newspaper, I just feel dumber for the effort.