Love-of-Team Tilts and The Skate-By
When Clark Gillies is your Dad, you can say this:
During the Coyotes/Lightnight game, Paul Bissonnette fought Matt Walker (first names learned after extensive Googling). Bri, Clarks daughter and my fiance, says “Oh…. oh this is awkward. I can’t watch. *glancing through fingers* …Just so embarrassing…”
I laughed my ass off. Cause really… a fight where two semi-mad guys have good defensive jersey holds…. ain’t no Clark Gillies tilt (Bossy gets run in the corner just before the fight - long version is on YouTube):
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And actually, that video is a nice intro to this weeks USA Today column. I write a bit of a theory on why we’re seeing more players get their cantaloupe’s cracked with no suspension and rarely a real follow-up fight. Enjoy.
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I hate the “goal-score skate-by”.
HATE IT.
There’s no quicker way for your teammates to build lingering resentment towards you than to score a goal, and insist on skating somewhere past the closest guy to get your extra four seconds of glory. Curtis Glencross, my teammate in Alaska, was the king of this. He’d skate by your open arms after a back-door pass he tapped in to go jump into the glass. God, he loved him some glass jump.
This was not me. The whole fun of the celebration is the stupid nonsensical shit that gets said in the pile anyways. Especially in college, where skating down the bench is allowed -- guys are so fired up half they time they hustle more than they did on the actual goal.
But watching the NHL today, there’s still a large number of (*cough*euros*cough*) people doing the skate-by. Which is why I was extremely happy to see the Penguins overtime winner the other day. Dupuis scores, starts to skate mach six in the other direction, realizes that Staal went behind the net, stole the puck and passed it to him, and throws on the breaks. I officially like Dupuis now. Showed he has a conscience.
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What a finish to that game. You know it’s a dangerous 3 on 2 when Sidney Crosby has the least dangerous shot on the rush. Attaway Billy G.
I'm a hockey player turned writer. After playing for Alaska Anchorage in the WCHA (NCAA), I carried on with an NHL tryout (New York Islanders in 2007) before spending a couple seasons in the AHL/ECHL (last year was 2008-09). My father, Bob Bourne, won four Stanley Cups with the Islanders in the '80's, as did my fiancee's dad, Clark Gillies. I'm now the web editor for theScore's hockey blog "Backhand Shelf."
