I know this is a little dated, but I hadn’t had a chance to watch this video until today. On February 11th, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the New York Islanders played one another in New York, a game that fans speculated would be a fight-happy one due to events that occurred in a previous game, when Maxime Talbot injured Blake Comeau, and Brent Johnson (Pens goalie) literally broke the face of Rick DiPietro (Isles goalie). OK, so I can see why the Islanders would be motivated to crush some specifically selected skulls, and I would expect some jaunty fighting as well, just for good measure. But what happened on February 11th was a whole other animal of fighting. This wasn’t just fighting: this was rage-filled fighting. Rage-filled fighting that bred itself in practically every player on each team, as they fed upon the frustration and anger of one another. The result? A sloppy, sloppy mess of an NHL game.
When all was said and done, the Islanders won 9-3, there were 346 penalty minutes, and 15 fighting majors were handed out. Yeah, I meant it when I said “sloppy mess.”
Not long after the suspensions were handed out, Mario Lemieux commented that he felt the League didn’t do enough to “protect the integrity of the game and the safety of our players.” He even went so far as to say that he would have to consider if he even wants to be involved with the NHL anymore after what happened. Bold statement, if you ask me. Let’s consider a few details:
1) It was the actions of Talbot and Johnson—who play for the Penguins, the team that Lemieux principally owns—that mostly incited the events of February 11th.
2) At the end of the game, the Pens had 6 players left who had not been escorted off of the ice.
3) Suspensions totaled 23 games, and players fines over $100,000. The League also fined the Islanders team an additional $100,000 for failing to control the conduct of their players.
4) Eric Godard was one of the suspensions (in fact, for the most games, which was 10) who received said suspension for deliberately leaving the Pens bench to join an on-ice fight. I guess Godard wasn’t there when Lemieux held his “protect the integrity of the game” Lunch n’ Learn workshop.
I don’t know. Seems to me that, the Islanders got the brunt of the disciplinary measures despite the fact that the Pens were at least equally to blame for the violence that occurred in the game. And, if you ask me, there were plenty of disciplinary actions taken in response to the February 11th hoe-down.
In other words, much to my chagrin, I agree with Don Cherry.
Sublurbanite
