Elessar wrote:
Crosby may do a bit of diving and whining, but he certainly gets run at a lot.
Yeah. For the first couple years he played, he used to retaliate and beat the living **** out of the people running at him, but that caused him to take penalties. Due to Crosby's skill, this was always a net gain for the unsportsmanlike assholes running at him, and understandably got him in his coach's doghouse. So he had it impressed upon him that he was not to retaliate. This left only one option - make sure the refs are aware of whats happening...because while the league has prevented teams from protecting their stars, they haven't ensured that the referees step up and pick up the slack, and it's ruining hockey.
It used to be that if someone ran at your star player, they paid for it, and likely never did it again. If some ******* ran at Gretzky, Dave Semenko would pulverize their face, the faces of their linemates, mothers, etc. People learned not to run at Gretzky. The teams policed themselves. Now with instigator rules and game misconducts and suspensions, teams cannot protect their own, and have to rely on the referees to notice. This gives unsportsmanlike jerks free reign to run at star players. That's not how hockey was meant to be played, the Broadstreet Bullies of the 70's notwithstanding. Hitting and fighting are part of hockey, but it was clean, it was sportsmanlike, there was an honor code. That's disappearing, and instead teams just get goons to try to equalize the playing field. If you take enough cheap shots, you can bring the stars down to your level. I hate it. If they're not going to let teams police it themselves, the refs need to start calling it everytime someone breathes in the direction of marquee players, until the goons cut out the bullshit.