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The Chicoutimi Cucumber

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Everything posted by The Chicoutimi Cucumber

  1. Well, losing 7-0, especially in a much-hyped game against a hated rival, does tend to cast a pall over a team, so the fan response is totally understandable. Nevertheless, it *is* kind of ridiculous to see how many commentators are now writing with absolute certainty that the Habs obviously will never be able to beat Boston in the playoffs. I guess there has been a rupture in the space-time continuum such that the previous game, in which we absolutely dominated them, never happened. The play of core guys like Gomer Pyle and Cammy is genuine cause for concern. Other than that, this game had more to do with weird but temporary psychological effects stemming from Chara's brutal attack, injuries and slumping individual players, a sore Price, and a team that's out of sorts at the moment for all of the above reasons, than about decisively resolving the question of which team will win a playoff series several weeks from now. If you ask me these guys looked in the mirror and concluded that they did not have the will, energy, or physical heath to bring the necessary intensity to that specific game; nor did they wish to make the required sacrifices to win the division - something that would demand a supreme effort from here on in - under these circumstances. That is a very different thing from not having these qualities for the playoffs.
  2. I gave up at 3-0. This was first game watching hockey again...that show didn't exactly make me want to come back. It's too bad, but let's keep some perspective. This is a team caught in that infernal transition between having lots of injuries and lots of bodies coming back. It is all too common for teams in that situation to be out of joint. The healthy guys are exhausted and the returning guys aren't 100% either physically or in terms of timing (usually the results aren't this bad, though). I'm surprised nobody is mentioning that Price has a leg strain. He looked slightly off to me, in the first anyway. Slumps by key cogs don't help either. Cammy is a much better hockey player than he's shown this season. It's hard to know what his problem is, but he will turn it around. Gio was never really a top-3 player, so we have to keep his so-so results in perspective. The real problem in the 'smurf core' is Gomez, who I'm pretty sure Gauthier will work heaven and earth to move in the off-season. Also: let's face facts, these guys NEED MaxPac. They needed a player of that profile all along, and he was becoming it. Without him, and with Pouliot still sort of finding his way, we end up back where we were at the start of 2010: short at least one top six forward. (Short at least two, indeed, if you consider Gomez's disgusting performances). Strange as it sounds, motivation might have been a problem tonight. In a weird way the Habs have proved their point against Boston all season long. Now Chara upped the ante last game in a way that is impossible to process, but that's not something that will matter after tonight. Subconsciously their goal may have been just to escape this essentially meaningless regular season game without another life-threatening injury. I got a weird vibe from them out there. You can call it being 'intimidated' but these guys have shown again and again that they are fighters. I think it's something distinct: they just want to put the whole Patches thing behind them and come back fresh for the playoffs. Despite all the rhetoric, laying it all on the line tonight wasn't in the cards, unless they got some early bounces. Finally: the same bunch looked awful at the end of last season. Between age, injuries and size, may be a team that needs to coast into the dance in order to have enough left in the tank to make a charge. It's not panic time. But they definitely need to give Price a game or two off.
  3. Hoping for a career-ending injury to Mark Recchi, because of some stupid remark he made to the press, is totally out of line. I think Brunet called it - too many players in the Habs' lineup who have sat out too many games. They're not in their groove. (Of course, if Cammy and Gomer were playing decent hockey, that'd help too).
  4. Look. The whole pro-Chara analysis has to do with three things: 1. Intent. 2. Whether you like Chara or at least think he is a good guy, not an SOB like Cooke. 3. Whether you hate the individual Chara destroyed, or the team that individual plays for. Practically ALL of the supporters of Chara in the media and among fans accept at least one of these principles as determinant of whether discipline was warranted. On (1), Chara's 'intent' is of course unclear, but since, at least from some camera angles it looks like the sort of play we see happening fairly routinely in other parts of the arena, he gets the benefit of the doubt. (It also helps if you subscribe to (2) or (3). But you don't have to take those extra steps). Now, I suspect that everybody can intuitively sense the problem with relying on 'intent' - it assumes psychic knowledge of what was in a player's mind. And this is why we've seen all sorts of other 'issues' added to further bolster the argument: it's the building's fault, MaxPac 'put himself' in that position, he 'jumped,' etc., etc. These are all just special pleading designed to distract us from the radical weakness of relying on 'intent' as the basis for a verdict. (2) is even more circular. If you 'know' that Chara 'would never' do that (he's such a swell joe) then you 'know' that the intent wasn't there. This is the Don Cherry school of reasoning, where those deemed to be good guys are always in the right no matter what they do. (3) works the same way. It also works in reverse: some fans would indeed be calling for Chara's head whether or not it was warranted. Recchi is right about that much. The real issues, which are whether this was an illegal play (it was) and a reckless play due to its specific location (it very definitely was) - and whether reckless, dangerous, illegal plays should be punishable - are therefore neatly avoided altogether.
  5. Not with that piece of crap Auld as backup. There's only so many injuries a team can absorb. This is absurd.
  6. The NHL is being widely praised for the Cooke suspension, and I agree they got it right. But on the other hand, it's just more of a smokescreen to disguise the pathologies of their disciplinary regime. The whole thing is predicated on presuming to have psychic insight into a player's 'intent.' What this means in practice is that if a player is a good old boy, respected around the league as a basically decent fellow (Chara) then he gets a free pass. If a player is actively disliked, why then he gets nailed. I can't wait until PK Subban inflicts a controversial hit on someone. Judging from the essential arbitrary nature of such a system, where 'justice' is based on personal likes and dislikes, I would expect him to get a fairly stiff punishment, supported by the same pious media frauds who assured us that Chara is a saint and therefore obviously undeserving of even a token suspension for nearly killing someone with a reckless hit. Subban is a jerk, so he deserves it, see? The entire system works like Don Cherry's mind: axiomatic biases and personal likes and dislikes, dispensed as some sort of Code and Moral Truth.
  7. It is bewildering. Was the concussion deemed 'severe' based just on the visuals of the impact, or on some kind of medical assessment of actual damage done? And I share your concern about Patches' longer-term future. One thing the HBO special made painfully obvious (in the way that both Crosby and Staal were handled) is that it's generally left up to the player as to when they are good to go. Since these players are, first, cocky young guys who 'just wanna play' and have no conception of the implications for the rest of their lives, and second, part of a macho culture of 'sucking it up' rather than admitting 'weakness,' and thus under considerable peer pressure not to look like pansies by protecting their health, this approach is guaranteed to lead to dire consequences. Look at Marc Savard: his desire to play to trumped common sense, which would have dictated that he take a year off. Now he's concussed again and his career is almost certainly over. We don't need Patches suffering the same fate.
  8. The disturbing thing is that, as Wamsley points out, Cole hasn't been the same player since.
  9. Happy to hear this. Finally a bit of good news. I must say, though, that I haven't watched a game since The Hit and still feel no itch to do so. I guess I'm taking Bruce 'The Human Turd' Boudreau's advice to heart.
  10. They're calling MaxPac 'Wolverine' for his mutant healing factor - and that certainly makes sense It seems unreal, actually. I was one of those who - once I realized he wasn't killed on the spot - thought his career might be compromised. Yet here he is looking at a relatively prompt recovery period. I just hope that they err on the side of caution, because the Canadiens need him to become the kind of player he has the potential to be and cannot afford to f*ck him up. Sadly, the criminally negligent NHL and its defenders will quietly use this to reinforce the message that the Chara hit was 'just a hockey play.'
  11. If he says it wasn't his intention, then OBVIOUSLY he shouldn't be suspended. Poor Marchand. What an injustice.
  12. 1. Bettman's statistics have to be assumed to be BS. As anyone who works with statistics will tell you, you can make the numbers say anything, and he is bound to massage the numbers to make whatever case he wants to make. 2. The safety of arenas is a legitimate issue. The error is in trying to make it the only issue. As Wamsley says, doing so is a dodge, a smokescreen designed to obscure the more serious problem, which is lack of respect. 3. On 'lack of respect:' old-school people like Cherry have been griping about this for years and years (generally blaming it on equipment and the instigator rule). On a rational level, then, it IS surprising that they almost unanimously refuse to put 2 & 2 together and say that the Pacioretty hit constitutes the ultimate example of this. Technically not a direct shot to the head - just a catastrophically reckless play of the sort we never would have seen in earlier eras. What the hell is 'lack of respect,' if not that?? 4. An illegal play (i.e., a hit away from the puck) is NOT a 'hockey play' any more than a hook or a high-stick is. The whole proposition that Chara's hit was a hockey play represents a classic case of Newspeak. 5. The replay angle. It is a very, very disturbing question whether the people jumping to Chara's defence actually paid much heed to the 'bad' angle. Or did they just see the most common one, which does look sort of like a 'normal' hit (albeit still a reckless one, see above)? In other words, is there anything resembling due diligence in either the media or Campbell's office? 6. One thing incident reveals is just how much goodwill Chara has accumulated by virtue of not taking full advantage of his physical strength over the years. It's almost as though there is a sense of gratitude toward him for not abusing his power and systematically destroying all comers. This is grotesquely distorting the entire issue. 7. The desire of so many people involved in the NHL to deny the problem is surreal and requires explanation. It can't be that they're afraid of taking the physical part of the game away, because we had very physical hockey long before the era of life-endangering reckless hits. I suspect that what's actually going on here is another case of warped NHL machismo. They feel that we're pansies for being concerned about people getting hurt (and in this respect it doesn't help that the NHL has been under attack for decades from people that I would agree are basically pious bleeding-hearts - the whole 'if only we could get rid of this awful bodychecking and fighting' crowd). The real concern of the Chara defenders is the perceived sissification of the game. REAL men can take it. A REAL man shrugs off a damned concussion. A REAL man wouldn't moan just because Chara steered his head into the stanchion. I mean, this is a league where Mark Messier's attempts to develop a safer hockey helmet have found little response because the players feel that protecting their heads better makes them look like pussies. Such a culture is incompatible with common sense, and will lead directly to paralysis and death. In short: WE are not the ones who are crazy. Think for two seconds about the implications of our position - a safer game where players show each other basic respect on the ice - versus that of the NHL - ruined lives, paraplegic former players, people killed on the ice - and you realize that immediately. What we're seeing is a classic case of 'spin' and media manipulation, where you emit a rhetorical fog ('arena safety!' 'hockey play!' And most of all: 'intent!') designed to redefine an issue in a way that neutralizes it as much as possible. Politicians do this all the time. You get ahead of the issue by reframing it. The NHL and its media peons have done a world-class job of this.
  13. Just to clarify, I wasn't asking whether this incident is turning people off hockey. Just NHL hockey. The NHL is not the Game Itself. As for me, I'm still dipping into this site here and there, and I did at least check the score for the Penguins game even if I had no desire at all to watch it. I suspect that I'm probably taking a hiatus but not permanently gone...time will tell. If I'm not re-engaged come playoffs, then something really big has happened in my psyche as a result of this incident.
  14. That is absolutely brutal. 'So they kid might have ended up in a wheelchair. People in wheelchairs live great lives!' Of all the inanities that have been spewed in relation to this incident, this is a new low. If Ron is so full of admiration for the paraplegic way of life, he should throw himself off the roof of the CBC building so that he can enjoy that life to the fullest. Otherwise, for God's sake, SHUT UP.
  15. Good for them, although I wish they'd put their money where their mouth is.
  16. What makes matters worse is that so many people are seeing this as a 'Habs fan/Montreal' issue. (Just check the responses to TSN's Via Rail story of you doubt it: Via and Air Canada are being widely ripped as 'sour grapes by loser Habs fans'). I can't speak for others. My reaction has little to do with the Habs, except for one thing: as a Habs fan I had some prior emotional investment in Pacioretty, as I do (or did) with all those guys I follow(ed) on a daily basis. It's that attachment, I think, that truly made what happened such a shock. All your life you've been pulling for these guys or others like them. Then in two days you realize that the NHL doesn't give a rip if they live or die, and neither do other players, the media, or other fans. And that because of that, any of them could be next. As Wamsley says, to everyone else it's just some guy they've hardly ever heard of in a jersey they don't particularly like. It's just a bad incident, but abstract. Because for us right now it's NOT abstract, I think we can see the situation for what it actually is - a horror show. The tragedy is that so few people can see it, or see that it will happen to THEIR guys sooner or later. I'm not tuning out because my team got a raw deal (which it did). I'm tuning out because I have no interest in seeing people get permanently injured or killed because of gross negligence. Period.
  17. The problem is this. Why invest yourself emotionally in a team's players, when you now know that those players can be obliterated (injured, paralyzed or killed) at any moment by a vicious, irresponsible play, with the complete support of the league? And why invest yourself emotionally in a team, when that team can be ravaged with catatrophic injuries caused by reckless play that undermine its chances of success, all with the full blessing of the league? What's the point? It's not hockey. It's something else.
  18. I'm noticing a lot of posts and bloggers expressing the sentiment that they find themselves suddenly feeling indifferent to the sport we've all been obsessed with for most of our lives. 'The Habs lost/won...ho hum.' habs29retired just launched a thoughtful thread about how the Habs should deal with the absence of MaxPac and I find myself just not giving a sh*t. What is the point about caring about a league that is so catastrophically stupid and negligent? How many of you are experiencing this reaction to Tuesday's events and the subsequent reaction of the league and its cronies? Just tuning out? Is it possible the, at least for some of us, our love of pro hockey will be permanently diminished? Anyway, I just thought it worthwhile to start a thread where we can track our own attitudes to the game post-Chara-hit.
  19. Well, I couldn't agree more about the last part. It's incredibly frustrating. I can't decide if it is just bum luck, or if it illustrates just how much depth you need to have to truly be a contending team. Look at Detroit overcoming the catastrophic loss of Norris-calibre defenceman Konstantinov, the Flyers sailing along with or without Briere, or even the Bruins and all the crazy injuries they've had to absorb. Still, the pattern has been going on in Montreal for a long time. Koivu was emerging as a top-5 NHL superstar, then BAM! His knee is shattered and he is never the same. We acquire Donald Audette, at the time a legitimate top-line player, and BAM! 5 games later he has his arm sliced off and his career ends. Richard Zednik emerges as the league's leading playoff scorer and BAM! he's clotheslined, never to approach that level of performance again (and some say permanently gun-shy). I keep waiting (God forbid) to something equally dramatic to happen to Subban. As for whether one player matters, what can I say. I see your point but I don't accept that all players are interchangeable. He was a big piece of the emerging picture and now he's out. That ain't helping.
  20. Love the Thornton quote. 'I'm not saying it's because Campbell's kid plays on the Bruins...' Which is, of course, EXACTLY what he's saying. The guy's got a future in politics. And very classy of the Canucks' players to take the side of decency, notwithstanding the NHL's bullcrap and the cone of silence it tries to impose on all dissent. Bravo.
  21. It's also worth remembering that MacPac had 11 goals in his last 20 games. Strange as it may be to say about a rookie, but given our need for an extra top-6 forward AND a power forward to boot, he was a key part of our roster. With Gomez gone permanently fishing he was even more important. In pure hockey terms this incident could cost us significantly.
  22. At least we get some comic relief out of this. To hear Chara tell it, he has no idea what a hockey rink is, let alone who all those weird fellows in red jerseys are What a douche.
  23. Habs showing leadership: http://www.habsinsideout.com/main/46892 I know what Wamsley is saying - if it's not your team, you wince and move on, until it's YOUR guy who is lying there twitching. But I prefer to think that this incident has at least a chance of serving as a catalyst for change. Speaking for myself, the Crosby hit was where I got truly concerned that the league was 100% out of control. To see the league's greatest player destroyed by a reckless hit, with absolutely zero disciplinary implications, was shocking. The horror-show on Tuesday raised it to another level because it was within a hair's breadth of being fatal - it would be surprising if that didn't cause people to sit up and ask what the hell is going on here. Pacioretty is the canary in the coal mine. Someone WILL die if change doesn't happen. We were just 'lucky' it wasn't Patches.
  24. Only in Conservative la-la land does this become an issue about left-wing nuts and the CBC. Can we get a grip, please?
  25. I e-mailed my letter to Air Canada's media relations people: media@aircanada.ca. Unfortunately their website does not seem to contain a general e-address, so hopefully this is an appropriate venue. Johnny, your idea of pressuring Tim Horton's is excellent. I just sent them an e-mail reinforcing your message. If they don't respond, we should consider organizing a boycott.
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