Tuesday Caterwaul - Panthers GameDay Open Forum

Oh, just a little, but man I enjoyed watching the game where he faced the Flyers the first time after coming back. Gotta give Richards credit, though – he was a man about it. Wonder if Matt Cooke will do the same the next time he comes face to face with Marc Savard, although that’s not where I’d put my money.

Still, glad he’s back, It’s never cool to see a guy get hurt like that.

Im pretty sure the arena upgraded to Windows 7

Its like he woke up or something. :)

first off, yes, I am a Flyer fan first, but a Panther fan second, so the continued reference of Richard’s hit to Booth as being dirty irks me a little bit. I must also say that Booth is my favorite player, probably outside of Richards, so I don’t have as much bias as say, the typical Philly fan, so let’s look at all these incidents in context.

The Richards hit on Booth is an example of a player coming across the center of the ice with their head down. The more realistic comparisons are Scott Stevens hits on Kariya and before that Lindros. Yes, some consider them dirty, but in the context of the game, they are an example of what happens when you skate with your head down. Also, Richards has zero history of dirty hits, which makes his intent on the Booth hit, more an unfortunate series of events than malicious intent. Richards also answered the bell on more than one occassion, first fighting McCabe and then Booth himself. Yes, I find it unfortunate that Booth missed 45 games (and so does my fantasy team), but sometimes these things happen.

Cooke in this same context has a well-documented history of dirty play, which makes his hit on Savard clearly different than Richards from the perspective that history itself tells us that Cooke’s actions/intent was probably more clearly set on injuring Savard, then simply checking a player.

Finally, AO, at this point as well, has a long documentation on his “reckless” play which again leads context to his push on Campbell. While, if this was an isolated incident and AO had not shown a history of dangerous play, this play might have fallen in the category of unfortunate incidents, but it doesn’t based on Ovechkin doing this more than once in his career. So for someone to say “well, if he would have been 2 feet closer to the boards…” is fine if Ovechkin had never shown a careless disregard for other players safety (which he clearly has not) thus leading me more to think Ovechkin deserved far more than a 2 game suspension at this point. Furthering this point, arguing that if Campbell was 2-3 feet closer to the boards, could also lead me to say that if Booth hadn’t been looking at his pass over his shoulder, the Richards check would have resulted in him falling to the ground, instead of getting concussed…..it’s all relative.