pens/islanders reaction. aka. national thuggery league

i haven't blogged in quite awhile. but what i saw last night could not be contained to a facebook status update or any number of twitter posts

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if you are a new york islanders fan right now, i feel sorry for you. i feel sorry that the team you support turned last night's game into at best thuggery, and at worst, an embarrassment.

am i saying this just because it was against the penguins? no. i am saying this because. i'm saying this because what i saw last night has no place in the nhl. or any other hockey league. i may come off as a biased penguins fan, but don't tell me that the penguins are just as much to blame. it can be nothing but perfectly obvious to the neutral fan that the islanders attacked the penguins physically and the pens had no choice but to respond to the physical violence.

the thing is, it could have all been avoided. if rick dipietro doesn't clothes line matt cooke last week with less than a minute to go in a game that they had already lost, then NONE of this would have happened tonight. and i wouldn't be calling the islanders once proud franchise, an embarrassment to the league.
let's take a look at some of the facts. matt martin attempted to sucker punch max talbot in retaliation for a hit earlier this year on blake comeau. if it weren't for the fact that talbot saw him at the last minute, it could have turned into a todd bertuzzi/steve moore kind of moment. max escaped, eric tangradi wasn't as fortunate.

tangradi, whom it is well documented that i really don't rate as an nhl'er, was headhunted by islander enforcer trevor gillies. tangradi immidiately went to the ice, obviously injured, but that wasn't enough for gillies who still attempted to start a fight with him. gillies was ejected, but still stood at the door to the ice near where the doctors were taking care of an ailing tangradi. he stood there and yelled and taunted the fallen penguin. oh, and by the way. tangradi now has concussion-like symptoms.

then there is michael haley. during one of the many third period meles he fought max talbot (i guess the attempted sucker punch to the back of max's head by his teammate wasn't enough) he was then left alone to go down and throw down with brent johnson. during that fight is the only time when i will criticize the penguins for their actions. eric godard jumped off of the bench to come to johnson's aid. i umderstand why he did it, but he knows that he's going to get suspended, and with so many player out of the penguins line up, the team really can't afford that.

the final penalty numbers, combined, for both teams, was somewhere in the mid 300's. that's the number that everyone will remember. which is sad. what they should remember is the fact that the islanders won 9-3. that number doesn't matter because the islanders rendered it useless with their actions during the rest of the game.

april 8th in new york should be interesting. and the league needs to make sure that they have their best officials working that game, not a rookie, and a veteran that needs to retire. they are just as culpable as the islanders for what happened in that game last night.