And here they come for the fifth overtime. Aren't they warriors? Aren't they courageous? Isn't this the best part about the NHL playoffs?
No, no and no.
Hockey players are not warriors, and they are not courageous. They are incredibly skilled, strong-willed, athletic professionals who can make their bodies do outrageous things, such as play 140 minutes of hockey or more in a night. But they shouldn't have to show us that mental and physical strength. It shouldn't be allowed.
End it now. OK, next playoffs, to be fair. But end it, already.
Give the teams two 20-minute overtime periods, then go to the shootout. Even two extra periods might be too much, but this is called a compromise.
The shootout isn't real hockey, you say? The bastardization of the game that's allowed in the regular season shouldn't even be considered when it matters most? Fine, but it also isn't real hockey -- particularly not NHL hockey -- out there on slush in the third, fourth and fifth overtimes with guys who barely can lift their legs and goalies fresh off of IV fluids at the last intermission.
If the shootout is a good enough way to decide how teams get into the playoffs, then it should be a good enough way to decide who wins the games once they're there -- after teams have been given a long enough chance to finish things off with that "real hockey."
Asking these players to play beyond two overtimes is unfair, unhealthy, mentally and physically exhausting and detrimental to the quality of hockey that comes in later games. During the regular season, teams cannot play three nights in a row. Why is it OK to ask them to play more than nine periods in three nights during the playoffs?
Who is she? Someone's mother? Should we end a baseball after 14 innings to spare the poor dears? (We could decide the game with a bunting contest.) We could also do away with multiple OT's in basketball as well, by playing a game of HORSE after the first overtime.
Jesus Christ. It is people like this that have made the NHL the third tier sport it is today. They have systematically removed each and every thing that gave the game its unique identity. Enough is enough.
Kara Yorio please stop writing about hockey. You don't know what you are talking about.
3 comments:
Agreed. Yorio has exposed herself as a non-hockey fan over and over since apparently being assigned to the NHL section of the Sporting News.
To me, this smacks of trying to create controversy to drive up hits and media interest, similar to a move when one of their boneheaded (and Royals fan - or is that redundant?) web editors wrote a huge piece about Cards fans being bad baseball fans last year.
Yorio is a hockey moron and probably just biding her time as an NHL writer until a baseball spot opens up...like most of the hockey coverage people in this town.
How did such a moronic thesis get published in a national sports magazine? Shouldn't an editor somewhere along the line have said, "Ummm, no. That's just wrong."
This is the sort of thing that happens when publication either stop caring about a sport, or never did. TSN used to have good hockey writers involved, but I guess those days have passed.
It is sad that the NHL gets the kind of press coverage usually reserved for MLS.
Actually, in a couple of years MLS will probably get better coverage.
Don't get me wrong, as you can see from this blog, I'm a fan of both the NHL and MLS, it is just sad to see hockey with its long history relegated to the media backwaters.
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