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Hurting people on purpose

Thursday 5/16/24

I'm quite curious about this Rangers-Hurricanes game tonight. The Rangers were up 3-0, now it's 3-2, with this game being in Carolina. Coming back from 3-0 to so much as force a Game 7 is a rare deal. While I would like to see that, I don't want to necessarily root against the Rangers. I have a buddy up in Maine who knows his hockey and he's a longtime Rangers fan, and another friend has a widowed dad who hasn't been doing well for a while and he seems energized by the Rangers' run. It's not like it's the Bruins, so I think I would rather see the Rangers win because it would please these people, but yeah, that's interesting.


Brad Marchand, asked about the hit--and the little punch at the end of it, which to me was more of a rub/swot--that knocked him out of the line-up for two games, basically said the right thing. Stuff happens and that the opponent got away with one.


If you're Marchand, it's not like you can go off on some moral crusade. This isn't the Rat lighting out to Canterbury on the pilgrim's road, is it?


But it speaks to how clueless people are about the simplest things that Marchand's subsequent quote about players trying to hurt other players in the playoffs created such a buzz and surprise.


Of all the things people shouldn't have to tell you.


During every playoff game, guys are trying to hurt other guys.


What do I mean by hurt them? Ideally, make it so that they can't play. They leave the game, they're out for the next game, they're out for the series. Or, at least, make them physically compromised. Make it harder for them to play their game.


That's how it works. It's what just about everyone is doing. It's what has always been done. You can Woke and safe space the world up the ass, but this is just how this is. And it's how it should be.


I'm not saying you take your stick to the back of someone's head. Obviously not. But when your opponent has his head down, and the puck in his skates, you're trying to scramble his brain, dislocate his shoulder, what have you. So it goes.


It beggars belief to me how little sports fans know about the rudiments of sports. How ignorant everyone, near about, is when it comes to everything. I don't understand (I'm talking in terms of grand design; why have a race of morons?) how humans can be so across-the-board clueless. An earthworm, yes, but how much more aware of things are humans?


People who make millions of dollars a year talking about sports--despite have no qualifications besides sounding like idiots who sound like all the other idiots--don't know these basic things.


It's some big surprise to them, when the fact that it is is really all that deserves comment. That's the story here--the ignorance. Not that this is how what's happening.


And if you have intel about injuries? If a team knew that Connor McDavid's wrist was bothering him, you don't think they'd be going after that wrist? Why wouldn't they?


I can scarcely conceive of not knowing this, and have known it since I was about five.


This hurting thing takes all forms. When Ray Bourque played, for example, teams in the playoffs--when you could be facing each other seven times in two weeks--would make a point of dumping the puck into Bourque's defensive corner so he'd have to go back and retrieve it, and they'd try and bury him. If they couldn't bury him, they'd hit him. He'd feel it. Game 1, okay, fine, whatever. But come Game 6? That adds up.


It didn't actually add up that much with Bourque, but that's because he's the second greatest defenseman in the history of the game and he may have been the best ever at retrieving those dump-ins.


But you see what I'm saying. There's nothing unethical or wrong about any of this. It's part of the game. And everyone who plays the game is aware of that, though apparently most who don't aren't.



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