This week's Oops Award winners are the NY Rangers' Stu Bickel, Brandon Prust, and Mike Rupp and the New Jersey Devils' Ryan Carter, Cam Janssen, and Eric Boulton for their ridiculous behavior during a game a couple days ago.
Before the opening faceoff, there was some chatter between the players. Just as the referee dropped the puck they all fought each other. They beat each other up so bad, blood spewed out onto the ice and had to be cleaned up before the game could be continued.
This was, by far, the most unprofessional thing I've ever seen in, what's supposed to be, a professional hockey game! To make matters worse, the whole thing was staged by the teams! Apparently this was staged after many incidents in previous games between the teams including a fight that, for lack of a better phrase, tore up Rangers player Brandon Dubinsky. But let's think about kids who were there and saw this happen. Now, what do you think they're going to do? They would probably go home and copy what they saw at the game.
Let's take another sport for example: basketball. What would the NCAA do if, say, UNC and Duke players got into a fight? At the very least they would suspend the players. As far as I know, these players were given a ten minute penalty each and no suspension. That's a slap on the wrist to me! On the other hand, Jeff Skinner gets a two game suspension for kicking someone? As Peter Martin of the International Business Times put it:
"Hockey is a violent game when played by the rules and, much like football, the violence is part of what makes it exciting. But staged fights are exactly the kind of things that give hockey a bad name among the casual fans it so desperately needs in order to stay relevant in many parts of the United States."
I don't care if the teams are rivals or not, show some freaking class! An article on the NHL's website (which basically praised the fighting I might add) stated that most NHL players and coaches liked the fighting and even quoted a Montreal player as saying that this was a sign that "the game is changing." Well if the game is changing to this I want no part of it! I'm definitely not going to spend $100/ticket to watch a bunch of guys beat each other senseless! I can get that with WWE or UFC!
Let's take another sport for example: basketball. What would the NCAA do if, say, UNC and Duke players got into a fight? At the very least they would suspend the players. As far as I know, these players were given a ten minute penalty each and no suspension. That's a slap on the wrist to me! On the other hand, Jeff Skinner gets a two game suspension for kicking someone? As Peter Martin of the International Business Times put it:
"Hockey is a violent game when played by the rules and, much like football, the violence is part of what makes it exciting. But staged fights are exactly the kind of things that give hockey a bad name among the casual fans it so desperately needs in order to stay relevant in many parts of the United States."
I don't care if the teams are rivals or not, show some freaking class! An article on the NHL's website (which basically praised the fighting I might add) stated that most NHL players and coaches liked the fighting and even quoted a Montreal player as saying that this was a sign that "the game is changing." Well if the game is changing to this I want no part of it! I'm definitely not going to spend $100/ticket to watch a bunch of guys beat each other senseless! I can get that with WWE or UFC!
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