Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Boston Fans Boo Mason Raymond's Broken Spine

When Mason Raymond collapsed to the ice with a broken spine, the initial reaction was a chorus of boos by the crowd in Boston, who thought he was diving. This has been the default reaction of Bruin fans (and some ESPN personalities) every time a Canuck gets hit, whacked, slashed, or punched. The ESPN people (among others) have labelled this a team of serial divers and now all players are assumed guilty. This has been a brutally officiated series and a brutally officiated playoffs, where Brad Marchand can just skate up to a Sedin twin and punch him in the face 4 times without getting a penalty. A player collapses to the ice with a broken spine and the fans boo. Something is wrong with this picture. I can't understand why the referees are giving the Sedin brothers so many unsportsmanlike penalties when these two are honourable men who have no history of diving or faking injury. In the first period of game 6, Zdeno Chara was called for interference and they called Henrik for unsportsmanlike conduct just to even out the calls.

I'm not going to sit here and claim that Burrows and Lapierre are fine sportsmanlike players, but it is inappropriate to extend labels to the entire roster. I'm going to say booing the busted spine is bad enough karma to cost Boston this series.

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