Thursday, December 27, 2007

Colton Orr Who? Let's Talk Maxim Afinegenov

With Damien Cox loitering the net with repetitive rants about enforcers, the instigator, and, you know, physical hockey, it's pretty easy to miss an actual NHL star involved in yet another cheap play.

Case in point... Maxim Afinegenov slew footing Scottie Upshall and attempting to step on him while he was down. Apparently Maxim didn't get word that stepping on your opponent gets you 30 games in the NHL. If he did, he would have surely been deterred and would not have tried a stunt like this some two weeks later. Right Gary and Collie?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qg-_LszVAtU - The embedded video was jamming up the blog. So try the link.

Of course, this is nothing new to the Sabres. Last year, then captain, Daniel Briere, speared Alexander Ovechkin in his groin in retalitation for a hit from behind the game before.

Nowadays, not even team captains are held accountable for being tough players. Forget dropping the gloves and acting like a team leader, ala Zdeno Chara taking on Georges Laraque, spearing and slew footing are the way to go when you won't fight.

Which, of course, begs the question, just how dangerous would this league be without fighting?

More for Cox over at Kuklas Korner. I left a nice comment for him there.

3 comments:

FAUX RUMORS said...

1) Whats with all the Colton Orr/Cullen hit issues? On replay it was NOT interfiefence. His hands came up a bit but mainly to help absorb the blow. It was a clean hit from what we saw. A classic Scott Stevens type open ice check. Period.
2) Perhaps if it was done by someone other than Orr and Cullen wasn't injured no one would have noticed as much? We don't want to see a suspension given out here as it would tend to reduce the hitting that we all love in the game!
3) Keep the fighting/hitting in the game. Get the stick work, skate stomping out!

DMG said...

I agree Faux, I don't have a problem with Orr's hit at all. Shouldn't have even been a penatly

DMG said...

Hey sig, do you have the articles where those numbers are used? I'd love to have them for reference.

Also wondering if you'd seen this.