Are you an expert?

I have plenty of objectivity.
Cooke should have been suspended for the Savard hit.
Roethlisberger should be suspended now.
When one of the players for the teams I follow is penalized for a legit reason, I've no problem with it. I've got a problem with the player -- like Jordan Staal's ridiculous slash at the end of period 1 vs. Ottawa. I did not blame the call. I blamed Staal for losing his cool with no time left and a chance to escape clean into the period break with a 1-0 lead.
So that's another thing you got wrong.

 

Harold Ballard is in the Hockey Hall of Fame. What's your point?

I'll say it again - anybody who says Sutton threw an elbow or a forearm is a liar. For a reporter to write it, after all of the replays proving it didn't happen like that, is reprehensible.

 

You win Twoback, it was a terrible hit, worst I've seen. The 2 guys on PTI and you say so. I mean what does the rest of the hockey world know? I will have to concede to you and those 2 experts. The coaches, GM's, the league and the other 1000's of people who follow the game msut be completetly insane.

 

To cross sport so to speak, this really seems like it's in the spirit of the Hines Ward rule in the NFL.

If you make the case for what Sutton did, do you condone allowing Ward to hit away?

Altho0ugh it is fun to watch, IMHO, you cannot allow Ward to do that away from a play. If he is stopping a guy from hitting his guy, then fine, but a lot of it has nothing to do with the ongoing play.

 

Sutton's hit was, as they say, a "north-south" hit. He stepped up and hit Leopold straight on; he didn't come from Leopold's blind side. Isn't that what the Hines Ward rule addresses, blind-side hits?

 

I think Ward hits pretty much straight on, they just don't see him coming. Very rarely does he clip.

 

Isn't it more of a crackback than a clip?

I like the way Ward plays, he plays to the whistle and that pisses a lot guys off. I'm sure he's a little dirty but these are pysical, brutal at times contact sports.

 

93Devil, to your addition to your first Hines Ward post, Sutton didn't hit someone away from the play. That would have been an interference penalty. Sutton hit the puck carrier. There really is no similarity at all between what Ward has done in the past and what Sutton did.

 

That is because you forgot the universal rule of covering hockey which reads something like this....

"If you cover a team, you must act like a part of the team, call the players by nicknames and be an unbelievable homer that always defends the home team's honor and rips anyone who doesn't root, root, root for the team they cover and anyone who has the audacity to question something that a player from said team has done gets ripped as well."

Once you learn this you will have a much easier time stomaching what passes off as hockey coverage.

The replay clearly shows the guy threw an elbow and he was being a douche about it instead of just answering the question.

Of course, the "reporter" from Ottawa is exhibiting the worst kind of homerism known to mankind. I am wondering if he is hoping that in writing this he has kept his hopes alive to be invited to Andy Sutton's next party.......

 

The way I see the Ward rule is what the player are doing is fine and within the rules, just don't do it so full force.

Sutton could have gotten the puck with a good solid hit, but he did come at him full speed. I don't think anyone can argue against that. He used force that was not necessary. The only reason to use that much force is to put the player out of the game.

Old school, that is fine. Play at your own risk. But maybe in my old age I do not want to see people getting their career ended.

 

JC -- Did the reporter say the hit was illegal? Did he even hint it? Or did he ask about the elbow being up?

I'm not sure what you are even trying to argue at this point - that it makes a reporter a shill because he asks a player a legitimate question about a play in the game?

 

I think it more has to do with asking it over and over. Stating it as fact, that it was an elbow when 99 % of people disagree. Shill was probably the wrong word as I'm not familiar with his work. Sutton could have and should have handled it better.