OFFICIAL GDT: GAME 2 PENS @ CAPS

[shafnutz05]

OK, I'm not the only one

[shmenguin]

I legit don't see the problem but I fully acknowledge its presence

[PFiDC]

- We lost Game 1 by a close margin after playing flat all game.
- We won Game 2 with 5 defensemen for essentially the entire game.
- We won Game 2 despite a BS call that lead to a BS powerplay goal.

The odds are in our favor. Let's stick it to them at home and put these ******* down.

Let's Go Pens!

Not sure we are watching the same games.

Game 1 the pens were the better team playing a good game for 45 minutes. The caps also played with 5D most of that game and won.

I do, however, agree with your 3rd point. I was livid for a good 10 minutes.

[PFiDC]

When I woke up today I thought for some reason that we lost, but then I remembered and I was like ...

Same. I woke up and immediately felt let down. While brushing my teeth I had a moment of clarity and muttered "**** YEAH!" spraying the mirror with toothpaste...

[shafnutz05]

That Letang penalty in the third was trash, but completely expected. After missing all of those PP chances in the second, it seemed almost inevitable that the Caps would convert on a third period power play. Like I mentioned last night, however, the real pleasant surprise was seeing the Pens continue to battle and earn a hard-fought second goal.

Not gonna lie, the last three minutes of that game were the most nervewracking moments I've felt since the end of Game 7 in 2009. It felt like an eternity.

[PFiDC]

Pens/Caps playoff hockey is my favorite and least favorite part of the season.

[NTP66]

Pens/Caps playoff hockey is my favorite and least favorite part of the season.

[Dan H]

Source of the post As long as the sport doesn't take those incidents seriously, though, we'll remain a fringe sport.

This seems like kind of a red herring though, no? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying, is hockey a "popular" sport in America if it starts having heavier suspensions...? I'm really not sure that's what is driving people away...

(snip)

Now, I'm not saying players shouldn't wear helmets certainly...I'm just making a connection, again, that in the name of speed/safety sometimes you make a more dangerous environment...

(snipped out a lot of the reply just for brevity; it's one page back in case anyone wants to follow)

OK, I'll totally give you that my last statement was oversimplified enough that it may be misleading. It isn't only on-ice goonery that keeps ice hockey as a fringe sport in the USA. Its nature as a cold-weather sport in a largely warm country, expense to play, and other factors are larger reasons. But I think the goonery is one reason, and it's easier to fix than most of the others. We can totally have a physical sport in which players risk something without accepting completely unnecessary sideshow risks.

You make the claim that Bertuzzi-level incidents have largely faded over the years. But I think Thornton on Orpik a few years ago was that level. I don't think I'd have to search that long to find other blatant attempts to injure an opponent in the past several years, especially if I expanded to AHL/ECHL/major junior hockey in North America. There is still a culture problem. And within the past several years in beer league, I've witnessed a number of completely disgusting incidents. I've had guys baseball-swing sticks at me away from the play for no good reason (e.g., the puck went to the net and I followed it hoping for a rebound, then stopped 2 feet from the goalie when there wasn't one, and the d-man gets mad because I'm in the same zip code as the goalie and slashes me a second or so after the whistle blows. This exact thing happened to me a few months ago. He broke my wrist, although it wasn't immediately obvious and I finished the game. No penalty was called.). One of my teammates has been out for almost a year because at the end of a game we were winning about 7-1 an opponent boarded him away from the play with 15 seconds left while he had no reason to expect to be hit. His ACL and MCL were blown out. I've seen head shots, people kicking each other with skate blades, sucker punches, slewfoots, cross-checks to the neck, deliberate hard body checks in no-check games, you name it. The usual response from the refs is along the lines of "stay on your skates" or "it's hockey - you will be touched." Sometimes they bother to call something (the ACL/MCL hit was penalized, although the offender still plays in our league), but usually there's a sort of disdain for low-level hockey, an attitude of "if I blow fewer whistles the game will go faster and I'll have to watch less of this crap and get back to watching the NHL players on TV." I've played in beer leagues in four different US metro areas, and it's pretty much like that everywhere. Ridiculous violence seems to be an accepted part of the culture; if it's OK for the NHLers isn't it OK for us? Now, I've played checking hockey and I enjoyed the physical aspect of it. When I signed up for checking hockey, I accepted some level of risk of injury. But right now the only leagues available to old guys like me are no-check leagues. I still accept some risk to play, but I do not think it's reasonable to accept a risk of someone breaking my neck with a deliberate attempt to injure. There is some crap that just isn't part of the game and should not be. Why is this stuff part of the hockey culture? Don't most people know how to play a physical but clean game, at least to the point that plays that aren't clean are accidents? This is a sportsmanship and respect issue that most other sports know how to handle. Isn't hockey supposed to be a sport? If so, it should be able to find a more appropriate line.

Now, when I miss games with a broken wrist or when my wife objects to the idea of pushing our 8-year-old to play hockey because of all the violence, it diminishes interest in the sport. Sure, we're only one family, but hockey's entire player base is made up of families making these sorts of decisions. How can I tell my wife that our scrawny 8 year old won't get his throat slashed on the ice when she saw a guy on my team lose his temper and kick another dude in the chest with his skate blade last year? I don't have a leg to stand on, y'know?

So now maybe there's one fewer hockey fan in the world in 20 years because my kid will grow up with other interests instead. Just one fan, right? But I really doubt we're the only ones, and hockey can ill afford to lose future fans. Maybe it's hard to make hockey more affordable, but I think it would be easy to make it a little safer just by taking our own written rules seriously.

When the Orpik-on-Maatta hit happened and you posted something like "it's tough to climb the ladder" up the 5-minute-major/game misconduct penalty because it's unlikely it was deliberate targeting, I was wondering how much your viewpoint has been colored by this collective referee culture condoning unnecessary crap. I don't think Orpik deliberately targeted Maatta's chin, either. But I think that play is a 5-and-game play, cut-and-dry. The major penalties for interference and for hits to the head are in the rulebook for a reason, aren't they? That's exactly the sort of missed call justified by referees that drives me nuts. And maybe they missed that particular one because they didn't see it, and that happens. But that isn't the whole problem. The refs everywhere let a lot of that stuff go even when they see it.

And yeah, I know you're just one dude who refs local hockey games, nobody ever likes the refs, and you've gotta call the game consistently with the others in your area, which necessitates a certain viewpoint. But how can we improve our sport? Maybe we need some sort of grassroots movement, because I doubt the NHL is going to do much about it until they get a massive class-action lawsuit from former players or something.

So, I'll give you that fixing this problem won't magically make hockey a popular sport. But it's an important problem, it does diminish interest in the sport, and it isn't just a red herring.

[doublewinder]

Anybody here go to the game?

[count2infinity]