MVN - Most Valuable Network

Welcome, Kyle

In their worst-kept secret most intentional leak (to build buzz) of the season, the Islanders are indeed calling up Kyle Okposo for Tuesday’s home game against Toronto. He will practice with the team Monday.

With Tuesday nights being a tough sell in any market — but particularly so at Nassau Coliseum — and the Isles closer to 15th place in the conference than eighth, the Isles are also offering a late 50% off tickets for Okposo’s debut. We’ll see if that helps goose the reception for the kid’s big night.
The Islanders, decimated by injuries and continuing their season-long offensive drought, could sure use the infusion after another loss, 3-0, in Montreal Saturday.

Ironically, their injuries and trial-by-fire of young fill-ins during the season’s final stretch may also jeopardize the playoff chances of their AHL affiliate in Bridgeport.

That would be too bad. Ideally, some of these kids would experience another pro playoff series (or more) once the NHL season is over.

But that’s a worthy price: To me, the first priority is to get these kids exposed to NHL competition (and the season-ending Rangers home-and-home) and get coach Ted Nolan familiar with them so he’ll feel more comfortable fitting them in next season.

Pronger, Revisited

After seeing the league-wide, blogosphere-wide vitriol and reaction to the whole Pronger stomp and subsequent NHL snafu, I naturally feel quite insane for originally being uncertain about the gravity of the crime.

I still reluctantly stand by my independent-juror’s perspective on the video evidence, as it’s seen in real time and if you ignore the history of the combatant: To me, it looks suspicious but not absolutely, beyond-certainty vicious, given the circumstances (struggling go get one’s skate loose from a pest while being put off-balance by that pest). Of course, you have to pretend not to know Pronger’s play to reach that conclusion.

Slow-motion replay looks much worse, but I just don’t think it’s fair to judge intent via slo-mo replay. More precisely, I don’t believe Simon’s premeditated act (reaching out, tripping, then stepping on pest Ruutu during a line change) is equal to Pronger’s heat-of-the-moment struggle to escape from an illegal hold by his pest opponent.

And part of me suspects that the NHL fan base hates Pronger as much as the league office hates Simon.

That said, wow did the NHL botch this one, particularly after we saw in Buffalo, in way too great a detail, how dangerous a skate blade can be.

What a joke that the league can decide so swiftly on shaky evidence that there was no crime, then suddenly reverse course after a popular outcry and after miraculously discovering “new” evidence. How can the league that supposedly scrutinizes the video of every goal in real time not have access to a rather standard wide-shot — and make an initial decision so hastily knowing they should have better video?

Likewise, even if one accepts — and I don’t really expect anyone to — my parsing of the difference between the Simon Stomp and the Pronger Stomp, how can the league decide repeat-offender Pronger’s punishment should be less than a third of repeat-offender Simon’s?

The answer, as everyone outside the league office has already concluded and spread far and wide, is that there is a double-standard. At least one (goon Simon vs. MVP Pronger) is at work, and perhaps many more (Islanders vs. Stanley Cup champs; crazy Wang vs. Brian Burke; indigenous person vs. … well, you get the idea).

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Hallucinations, Kyle Okposo, Chris Simon, Ted Nolan, NHL, injuries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.