HOCKEY RIVALRY
It's hard for any Vancouverite to label Bruins fans and Boston sports media a disgruntled, hyperbolic crowd of bad losers. No one has to flip a car to merit such a charge. Sportswriters cherish a heated rivalry, and in many cases the fuel that feeds the fire is poured from the pressroom. Boston Globe commentator Dan Shaughnessy revelled in the gloves that littered the ice Saturday morning at the TD Garden in a 4-3 Canucks win over the Bruins and tossed his own gloves, dissing Vancouver's skaters as "posers and floppers, arrogant and cowardly." He goaded, "It's hard to believe Cam Neely ever wore [a Canucks] sweater."
But the columnist, dubbed Shank by we-read-him-so-you don't-have-to bloggers at Dan Shaughnessy Watch, stops fanning the flames to light the kindling, pile on wood, stoke the fire and blow hard rhetoric when he concludes, "Beating them up is just so much fun, and flipping one of them butt-over-tea kettle sweetens the day."
When smart hockey analysts, current and former players and medical professionals are discussing the psychological and physical trauma of violence in hockey and specifically the unknown long-term damage of concussions (with which Sami Salo was diagnosed after he was taken out by Brad Marchand, who was suspended five games), Shaughnessy's conclusions are short-sighted, irresponsible and inflammatory. Whether you feel fighting is an integral and traditional quality of hockey, taking glee in spilled blood and a bruised brain reduces the sport to an arena of Gladiators. But then again, Milan Lucic did go in for a headlock.
The game earned its billing and will be commemorated as a classic-a heated, bad-blood rivalry, thanks in no small part to button-pushing columnists.
Read this complete column at vancourier.com/sports.
