Going Home

The Islanders had a fairly dreadful trip to Florida, losing two games and not looking particularly competitive in either. Fortunately, they come home to meet some old friends in the Pittsburgh Penguins.

If you're into sports betting, the Islanders are considered underdogs, which makes sense to some degree. But no Islanders fan will forget the events of this past February. Regardless of where you stand on the fighting issue, you can't deny that the Islanders get a charge out of playing the Penguins. This has become a legitimate rivalry in every sense of the word, and we should be in for quite a game on Tuesday.

Familiarity breeds contempt, and nothing is better than a home-and-home between divisional rivals. Sure enough, the Isles and Penguins are slated to face off once again in Pittsburgh on Thursday. Hopefully the Islanders can continue their good home form while finally getting some points on the road, giving them the psychological edge over a hated rival.

Brashear Asks for Trade...

Excuse me, because it's 4:55 a.m. and I just got home from work/bar and I am just reading up on the hockey news of the day, but did Donald Brashear ask for a trade?

To who? Hartford? Charlotte? Oh, no, wait, the Charlotte Checkers won't be the Rangers ECHL affiliate next year.

Looks like Hartford it is. I hear the Rangers will trade Brashear and his $1.4M contract this season and the next for $1.4M in cap space.

Bringing up the question, why was he signed in the first place?

And why was Colton Orr let go?


Now, I know it's probably tough to be an NHL General Manager, and I'm not saying I'm qualified. Hell, I'm just a lowly restaurant manager.

But I watch the games. I have known for years that Brashear has offered nothing to any team he's been on - Philadelphia, Washington, now the Rangers - and that Orr has graduated into one of the best fighters in the league.

Odd choices, Mr. Sather. Odd choices.

I'm Not Scared of Kovalchuk...

No, I'm not scared of having Ilya Kovalchuk on the Devils for the rest of the season, for a few reasons.

1) The Devils aren't the Rangers' competition this year. If he was traded to a team close to the Rangers in the conference standings, then yes, I wouldn't like it much.

2) Sean Avery is a Ranger.

The Difference in 2 Players; Montreal Update Coming Soon...

I will update later today about the Rangers game in Montreal. For the record, it's the 1st time I've seen them lose in an opposing building (not including the Nassau Coliseum). I saw them win in Nashville, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Montreal before the 6-0 disaster I witnessed first-hand Saturday night.

* * *

Do you know the differences in Dan Carcillo and Donald Brashear? Carcillo has 6 goals and 6 assists this year; Brashear had no goals and 1 assist. Carcillo dresses for games while Brashear stays nice and clean in a suit and tie. Carcillo wins fights (his record this year is 7-3-2, including beating Marian Gaborik and losing to Sean Avery last Thursday) while Brashear skates away from confrontation. In fact, the last fight Brashear won was against Jared Boll of Columbus three days before Thanksgiving. Brashear's record this year stands at 3-4-2.

As for Brashear's claims that he wouldn't fight Carcillo - "I don't even fight a guy like Carcillo. I don't think he's in my league." - and then his claims that he isn't a guy who only goes out and fights staged fights... well, what? Do you fight everyone or will you only fight heavyweights?

"If I would have played" Gaborik would not have been fought by Carcillo, Brashear said. Oh yeah? If you're out there fighting people like Matt Carkner, Eric Boulton, Eric Godard, and Shawn Thornton, is that really a deterrent for people like Carcillo? Will he not get under Gaborik's skin just because there is a chance that Brashear might lose a fight to Aaron Asham or Ian Laperriere?

Did Brashear's presence in the first half of the season stop any team from running over Henrik Lundqvist? Were they afraid he was going to go after Ilya Kovalchuk or Johan Hedberg, or did they know that, no matter what, he would fight Boulton and leave everyone else alone?

Like what Carcillo did or not, he got the Flyers an extra 2 points that night. He got the best player on the team to thrown down his gloves and fight him. He threw an entire team off their game, because they then stopped trying to score and started looking for revenge. The only person nearly capable of getting under a team's skin like that on the Rangers' roster is Avery. Not Brashear.

Guess what, Donald. Carcillo might not be in your league for long - because he'll still be in the NHL for the next decade.

Who the Rangers Should Sign...

It appears Donald Brashear reads this here website. A few nights ago, after the overtime loss in Atlanta, I wrote that the entire team needs to start hitting more; I then singled him out for being a complete waste of money and being a shell of what he used to be. Teams aren't afraid to take runs at Marian Gaborik, Henrik Lundqvist, or the rest of the team, because Brashear isn't going to make them pay with a fit of violence like he used to.

Maybe it's being injured (I don't care, if you're too hurt to play, don't play); maybe it's being scared of the league suspending him (really?); maybe it's him just not having "it" anymore (most probably). Regardless, he hadn't been in a fight since Thanksgiving-time, and he hadn't stuck up for anyone in weeks.

In today's matinee tilt against Boston, he changed his tune. He was hitting people after the whistle, trying to get involved, and even had a fight.

Of course, he was ineffective. He lost the fight - pretty badly. In fact, it was embarrassing. Donald Brashear circa 2003 would pummel Donald Brashear 2010 into a bloody pulp, then sucker-punch Aaron Ward en route to the locker room. He wouldn't even care about the 2-game suspension that follows.

Hell, you know Brashear is useless when Ranger fans would rather see Aaron Voros in the lineup. Atleast Voros cares and sticks up for teammates.

So, you ask, who should the Rangers sign?


That's right, there he is. Ronnie from MTV's Jersey Shore.

Let's look at the facts...

1) He's from New York. He was born and raised in the Bronx. The team needs homegrown talent, not mercenaries born in Indiana and raised in Quebec. You know he'd do NY proud.

2) He comes to the defense of teammates. Who could forget when Snooki got punched in the fact by that guy at the bar and he went looking for blood? If that gentleman wasn't arrested, Ronnie would've delivered his own brand of vigilante justice.

3) He'd be a cheap Salary Cap hit. With virtually no ice hockey experience, he'd be signed for the league minimum and he'd be on a two-way contract. If it didn't work out, they could send him to Hartford and not fear him being picked up by a different team.

4) He's cocky. He has a swagger. He's overly confident. The last time the Rangers had an enforcer like that, well, it was last year with Colton Orr. Orr went into every fight knowing he was going to win. Ronnie has the same mentality. Maybe he'll even have the same sadistic win every time he knocks out Todd Fedoruk.

5) He'd be a great deterrent. And, uh, he's pretty strong. Look at those muscles! And did you see the size of the protein powder he brought with him for his month at the Jersey shore? No one in their right mind would run over Lundqvist in the crease with Ronnie sitting on the bench waiting to knock someone's skull in.

6) He whooped that guy on the Boardwalk. He delivered about 5 or 6 solid shots to that guy's head. And you know every time they play the Devils he would get up for that game.

If anyone has Glen Sather's number, let him know.

Orr vs. Brashear, Round I...

If Colton Orr and Donald Brashear square off against each other Monday night when the Maple Leafs come to town, who are you going to root for?

Injuries

I've been thinking a lot about injuries lately. Namely, the paradox that exists in sports today. Players are in better shape than ever. They train harder in the off-season than they do during the regular season. Teams employ nutritionists to help players stay on specific diets. The players of today are not only bigger than ever, but faster than ever. And yet, despite all of this, players get hurt today more than ever before.

There are a number of theories attempting to explain this, the obvious one being steroids. That explains why a 38-year-old slugger breaks down in record time, but it doesn't explain why both the Islanders and Mets have had literally more than half their team on the DL at any given point in 2009. A more plausible theory states that the collisions caused when two large, fast athletes run into each other creates a far more severe impact than in the past. We'll come back to this in a little bit. Another theory would be that doctors know more about the after-effects of injuries and prevent athletes from returning from injuries too soon. And, of course, the final theory is that modern players are pampered babies who only care about their paychecks. What's the answer? I don't know.

In the end, it would seem that a lot of this is luck. The Mets were relatively healthy, Pedro Martinez notwithstanding, for much of the past three seasons. This season, they more than made up for their good fortune. While the Mets put $90 million of their payroll on the DL, the Yankees have had virtually no injury troubles this year outside of Alex Rodriguez and Xavier Nady. That's life, especially in baseball, where injuries are almost always incurred outside of person-to-person contact.

But what about hockey? Can you really separate the fact that the Islanders lost over 500 man games to injury in 2008-09 from the fact that they had zero toughness in the lineup on most nights? And can we ignore the fact that the Anaheim Ducks, who routinely lead the league in fighting majors, are the NHL's third-least injured team since the lockout? Yes, luck does play a role, and the top teams usually do a good job of avoiding injuries. But that doesn't mean a team shouldn't use any and all means available to them to avoid injuries. And if avoiding injuries means dressing a goon that actually plays more than two minutes a night, then that's a chance Scott Gordon should consider taking.

Here's the other thing. If we can agree that injuries are getting more frequent, and we can agree that injuries are getting more serious, and we can also agree that injuries in the NHL are preventable on some level, then we can go so far as to state that teams who don't do everything possible to avoid serious injuries are being negligent in protecting their players. Let's face it, hockey is a violent game. Always has been, always will be. And if you watch a game from fifteen or so years ago, you'll see a lot of open ice. That open ice hasn't been taken up by huge pads, it's been taken up by huge players who move a lot faster than they used to and hit a lot harder than they used to. The team that doesn't protect itself takes a serious chance, not only of injury, but of something far more serious than that.

***

If you saw last year's AFC Championship Game between the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers, odds are good you remember the hit Willis McGahee took at the end of that game. We had people over that day, and some of us were convinced that he actually died after that hit. Turns out he's fine. But he's been demoted to Baltimore's second string and it doesn't even bother him - he's just glad to be healthy. That's not the point. Cincinnati quarterback Carson Palmer was quoted as saying he believes someone will die as the result of a hit during an NFL game. This is a conclusion I have come to myself, and an on-ice fatality in the NHL isn't as far off as people think.

Over the past five years, we've had the Steve Moore incident and the Richard Zednik incident. We've also had Don Sanderson, who died during a fight, but not in the NHL. Despite all this, NHL players refuse to take even the simplest measures to protect themselves. Players wear their helmet chin straps as loose as possible, don't bother to wear face shields, and choose not to wear neck guards, all in the name of masculinity and "The Code", whatever that means. And that's a shame. We all know the NHL will turn a blind eye to all of this until it's too late. And it'd be nice if the Player's Association could get its head out of its ass long enough to ensure the safety of its players, but that won't happen either. Of course, the one player who takes a stand will be mocked for doing so, just as baseball players, writers and fans alike mocked David Wright for wearing a large, but safe, batting helmet last week.

***

The point is, this injury epidemic is manifesting itself with random injuries that might seem insignificant, but seem to be building toward larger problems. These are problems nobody seems interested in solving right now. And it seems hypocritical to say that the solution to injuries is to bring in goons, but if that stops even one opposing player from taking a run at your star player, then that's one less injury you have to worry about. Those who argue against the instigator rule are on the right track. More fighting certainly isn't the answer, but at least then the violence is limited to the willing. We don't need tough guys injuring skill players anymore. Hockey has made great strides since the lockout. Let's ensure that the next time the NHL makes big news, it isn't because someone got blindsided and is seriously injured - or worse.