Game Day - Minnesota @ Ottawa, 7:30PM, Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Big Ev wrote:Booing Gonchar in the intro is just as bad as people yelling SHOOT on every single PP.

It is a bigger faux pas than that, if you ask me. A ceremony is an occasion to celebrate. You respect that. You don't like Gonchar, fine, don't cheer, and boo his Donkey when he's in the game handling the puck. Booing someone in a ceremony / celebration is subversive and disrespectful, and that's because it goes against / disrespects the spirit of the thing itself. It's like clapping & laughing at a funeral, or jeering at a wedding. There is no room for booing in a public ceremony / celebration.

The VAN fans who remained in the building after game 7 of the SCF were at their best at that moment because they stayed to cheer and celebrate the ceremony itself, in its proper spirit. It would have been easy, but also classless and disrespectful to the league & the city, to boo because their team lost after all. But they put aside that crap and bought into the ceremony. That's being respectful. Too bad those other idiots outside the building Dung all over that moment.

I agree: anyone who booed Gonchar or Kuba (or anyone) during the opening ceremonies are pretty damn stupid - I can't think of a better word...

Now later in that game, I gave Gonchar a solid booing for sucking, but during the opening ceremonies of a friggin 20th Anniversary season? Diddle off. Seriously, go away. Hated it - and again, I tried to cheer for them so they wouldn't hear the boos - I was THAT embarrassed.

And dammit it all to heck - a left handed D-man can't play the right side unless they've been trained to do so. It's like saying a C can play wing with no training - wrong, it takes practice and time to know where you need to be. A lefty uses the middle of the ice for breakout passes, but can also skim it off the wall, doing that on the right side requires an awkward pivot and a step. And in the NHL, that step will have you on your arse and the puck turned over. Same applies for righties. It simply doesn't work that way. I'll admit, it took me time to get that right, but it's INTEGRAL to being able to talk about lines properly - knowing who can play where.

rooneypoo wrote:
Ah, as long as it's on the ICE, which I'm paying to watch, then it's fair? So, again, I can boo

1) the anthem singer, and the anthem songs
2) the Timbits kids
3) the kids on the zamboni, and the zamboni drivers
4) the refs, the linesmen, and the ice shoving crew
5) any one else they bring out during the opening ceremony -- i.e., retired cops, people serving in the military, old hockey players, cancer patients, etc., etc.

Right? That's all OK? After all, I'm paying for my seat, and that money is going into the pockets of the people who put on, participate in, and arrange this spectacle.

Boo the players if you must while they're playing. That's fair. But this was a Cussing ceremony. It was disrespectful and classless, and the failure to acknowledge it as such as absolutely mind boggling.

Since you don't seem to get the difference between booing an underperforming player and a member of the military, I'm not going to bother to argue with you.

tim1_2 wrote:

rooneypoo wrote:
Ah, as long as it's on the ICE, which I'm paying to watch, then it's fair? So, again, I can boo

1) the anthem singer, and the anthem songs
2) the Timbits kids
3) the kids on the zamboni, and the zamboni drivers
4) the refs, the linesmen, and the ice shoving crew
5) any one else they bring out during the opening ceremony -- i.e., retired cops, people serving in the military, old hockey players, cancer patients, etc., etc.

Right? That's all OK? After all, I'm paying for my seat, and that money is going into the pockets of the people who put on, participate in, and arrange this spectacle.

Boo the players if you must while they're playing. That's fair. But this was a Cussing ceremony. It was disrespectful and classless, and the failure to acknowledge it as such as absolutely mind boggling.

Since you don't seem to get the difference between booing an underperforming player and a member of the military, I'm not going to bother to argue with you.

Which is to say, "I can't make a convincing argument to the contrary to support my position, so I'm going to bow out with a failed attempt to wrestle the upper hand." Yeah, what I thought.

rooneypoo wrote:Which is to say, "I can't make a convincing argument to the contrary to support my position, so I'm going to bow out with a failed attempt to wrestle the upper hand." Yeah, what I thought.

Right. Man, you're smart. You saw right through me.

Moving from the right to the left side at even strength on on the PK is really hard. It's not impossible but everything is backwards. It's like saying to someone "write with your wrong hand", sure, you can do it and some can do it better than others but it's still going to be tough to do and chances are it will look like Dung.

First of all, here's a difference between a right-handed defenceman and a right defenceman. There are players who are more comfortable playing on one side than the other, that applies not only to defence but wing as well. There are right handed players that play the LW, and some that play the right wing, just as there are left-handed players that play either side, one more comfortably than the other.

Now that we have established that, we can now focus on the operative word "comfortable" - it doesn't mean impossible.

I have played hockey (not competitively) mostly as a forward (because of skill nothing else) on either wing. I have a tendency to favour the left side as a right handed shot (for the inside shot) but also like the right side for rushing. But this isn't about me, its about a professional team with professional players being paid to do as the coach tells them.

And I am not "Cussing clueless" because I disagreed with your gross over-exaggeration that booing paid professionals is equal to booing paying members of the crowd or non-paid members of the hockey team. I also never agreed nor disagreed with the act of booing a player during the ceremonies - in fact I stayed quiet and opinion-less on the matter. Does not mean I ack an opinion, I am just witholding it.

Dash wrote:First of all, here's a difference between a right-handed defenceman and a right defenceman. There are players who are more comfortable playing on one side than the other, that applies not only to defence but wing as well. There are right handed players that play the LW, and some that play the right wing, just as there are left-handed players that play either side, one more comfortably than the other.

Now that we have established that, we can now focus on the operative word "comfortable" - it doesn't mean impossible.

I have played hockey (not competitively) mostly as a forward (because of skill nothing else) on either wing. I have a tendency to favour the left side as a right handed shot (for the inside shot) but also like the right side for rushing. But this isn't about me, its about a professional team with professional players being paid to do as the coach tells them.

And I am not "Cussing clueless" because I disagreed with your gross over-exaggeration that booing paid professionals is equal to booing paying members of the crowd or non-paid members of the hockey team. I also never agreed nor disagreed with the act of booing a player during the ceremonies - in fact I stayed quiet and opinion-less on the matter. Does not mean I ack an opinion, I am just witholding it.

For the record, it hasn't been me making the big deal about left- and right-handed D, but rather D who play the left side & D who play the right side.

Anyway, all the money in the world can't make a guy comfortable playing his offside when he's been playing the other side of the ice for 10-15 years, and that's all I have to say to this "the coach tells you to do it" argument.

And the same goes for booing during a ceremony: you could own the Cussing rink and the whole goddam team, and it would still be a stupid, ignorance, childish, classless thing to do if you booed a player during the ceremony. Ceremonies are for celebrating and respecting. You check anything else at the door; you don't want to celebrate or respect, then shut your mouth and be quiet. Boo the player on the ice, but don't boo him or the team during the ceremony.

This is, like, manners 101.

rooneypoo wrote:This is, like, manners 101.

You sound like a hoighty-toighty Englishman.

rooneypoo wrote:...
And the same goes for booing during a ceremony: you could own the Cussing rink and the whole goddam team, and it would still be a stupid, ignorance, childish, classless thing to do if you booed a player during the ceremony. Ceremonies are for celebrating and respecting. You check anything else at the door; you don't want to celebrate or respect, then shut your mouth and be quiet. Boo the player on the ice, but don't boo him or the team during the ceremony.

This is, like, manners 101.

I can get behind that. Except that I thought we were supposed to heckle the timbits ...

I was there - it was brutal that people booed Kuba and Gonchar. I don't have the energy to read the back and forths, but man did it ever look bad on the fans that did it.

SpezDispenser wrote:I was there - it was brutal that people booed Kuba and Gonchar. I don't have the energy to read the back and forths, but man did it ever look bad on the fans that did it.

The point's been made before but we ridicule Habs fans for this kind of behaviour. They are the fanbase that originated the "my ticket entitles me to be a jackass" attitude.

Booing a guy that is grossly underperforming is not acting like a jackass. Whether you boo him during the player intros or during the game. It's the only way for fans to voice their displeasure and have themselves heard by the player.

It's not like it was out-of-the-blue...he sucked for an entire year.

tim1_2 wrote:Booing a guy that is grossly underperforming is not acting like a jackass. Whether you boo him during the player intros or during the game. It's the only way for fans to voice their displeasure and have themselves heard by the player.

It's not like it was out-of-the-blue...he sucked for an entire year.

It's funny because I think everyone agrees that he deserves to get booed. Some of us just happen to think it's classless during a ceremony like that.

tim1_2 wrote:

rooneypoo wrote:This is, like, manners 101.

You sound like a hoighty-toighty Englishman.

Seriously. Don't laugh & make jokes at a funeral, don't laugh at or taunt the elderly or the handicapped, don't jeer at a wedding, don't pick your nose or scratch your balls in public, and don't boo at a celebratory ceremony.

If hoighty toighty Englishman are the only ones who adhere to these codes, then I will happily class myself among them. And I imagine most people who pretend to any class or manners, or who just want to be thought to be relatively decent people, would join me there.

You can scratch your balls in public or boo at a ceremony all you want -- just don't pretend it's anything other than classless, childish, and ignorant.

SeawaySensFan wrote:

tim1_2 wrote:Booing a guy that is grossly underperforming is not acting like a jackass. Whether you boo him during the player intros or during the game. It's the only way for fans to voice their displeasure and have themselves heard by the player.

It's not like it was out-of-the-blue...he sucked for an entire year.

It's funny because I think everyone agrees that he deserves to get booed. Some of us just happen to think it's classless during a ceremony like that.

Cussing exactly.

tim1_2 wrote:Booing a guy that is grossly underperforming is not acting like a jackass. Whether you boo him during the player intros or during the game. It's the only way for fans to voice their displeasure and have themselves heard by the player.

It's not like it was out-of-the-blue...he sucked for an entire year.

When he is standing there, being introduced, and totally exposed it is.

Would you be proud if your shot a deer that was died up and unable to move? "Look at this buck I got me!". (Not like I hunt). Fact of the matter is it was classless because people decided to pick their spot when most of the people that were doing it can barly keep up with the game and probably don't even know what numbers they wear.

Guys, I go away to attend a couple of demos and you all go insane.

Rooney, you were full of it. While I completely agree that booing during player introductions (your *own* players) is stupid and classless, and that this doesn't change just because you paid money for a ticket, it doesn't justify what you were doing or saying. You resorted to name calling (poor Dash -- he wasn't even the one arguing with you) and that's just not necessary.

Tim, face it, you haven't a leg to stand on. There is *nobody* else here on your side. Booing during the player introductions for the inaugural home game of the 20th season is wrong. Plain and simple. However you're right, that it's not at all similar to booing the anthem singer, honorary puck-droppers, zamboni kids or those Timbits kids skating around with the flags. Both are wrong but different.

Now, Nikita Filatov may not have played 10-15 years but, oh wait, yes he has. He is 21 and has probably been playing the left side for 10-15 years. Mostly. Probably. At least 5-10. Yet here is coach MacLean asking him to play on the right side. I realize playing wing is not the same as playing D and, just like Dash, I've never played competitive. But I have played many years and tried every position (including goal; one night only; never again). You certainly get used to one side, but you can certainly adapt. When there is a two-on-one you don't see the defenseman staying on his usual side. And when a defenseman pinches the forward covers for him. They are not interchangeable but they also are not 100% set in stone.

Now, from experience, we know that Gonchar sucked (last year) on the left. But he's been playing right, exclusively, and still sucks. We've got Cowen who probably needs to spend a day or two observing. Do you bring up Borowiecki or do you ask Gonchar to switch for a game or two? Frankly, I don't think it's something all that horrific. I certainly wouldn't criticize the coach fo trying it.