{"id":692,"date":"2009-05-09T09:59:30","date_gmt":"2009-05-09T14:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/?p=692"},"modified":"2009-08-31T12:08:45","modified_gmt":"2009-08-31T17:08:45","slug":"comparing-apples-oranges-mlb-nhl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/2009\/05\/comparing-apples-oranges-mlb-nhl\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing Apples & Oranges – MLB & NHL"},"content":{"rendered":"

For sports fans, it’s a great time of year.\u00a0 We have the start of Major League Baseball, plus we’re in the midst of the NHL’s 2nd Season, the NBA Playoffs, and the PGA Tour is going full force.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there are spoilers out there.\u00a0 You know, the spoilers, the players or team affiliates giving their respective team or sport a black eye.<\/p>\n

The Major Leagues seem to be suffering the worst.\u00a0 Just this week, Dodger slugger Manny Rameriz was suspended for 50 games for taking a banned substance (knowingly or unknowingly it hasn’t been determined).\u00a0 However, this is another bad mark on Baseball after the recent forthcoming of news of Yankee’s infielder Alex Rodriguez taking steroids.<\/p>\n

Coram Deo has been a critic and disappointed<\/a> with the illegal and\/or banned steroid\/druge\/substance abuse in the game.\u00a0 However, that’s not what I want to focus on.\u00a0 I want to focus on the league’s themselves, especially after the NHL’s controversial play last night involving Capitals star Alexander Ovechkin and Penguins Assistant Captain Sergei Gonchar.<\/p>\n

If you can see this, then you might need a Flash Player upgrade or you need to install Flash Player if it's missing. Get Flash Player<\/a> from Adobe.<\/object>\n\t\t\n\t\t<\/p>\n

Give credit to the Major Leagues for suspending Manny for 50 games this season.\u00a0 I don’t care if he knowingly took a banned substance or not (we could go off on a tangent here about Bonds & others but ….).\u00a0 You’re being paid millions of dollars, please take some responsibility for what you’re taking into your body.\u00a0 The MLB has a list of banned substances, cross check the list, not that hard is it?\u00a0\u00a0 If so, have your team trainer do it, or somebody else, or get a second opinion.\u00a0 So good for the MLB for not worrying about what player they were suspending, whether a star or not, kudos to them!\u00a0 Now, some will say he should be gone for life or nothing at all.\u00a0 That’s not my point in this post, it’s just the fact the MLB gave the suspension w\/ disregard to the name on the back of the jersey.<\/p>\n

So back to the Ovechkin – Gonchar knee-on-knee hit last night.\u00a0 Let me break it down for you, Gonchar went to play the puck, pushed it aside and did his best to side step a what would have been a legal body on body hit from Ovechkin.\u00a0 Problem is, Gonchar did one heck of a job of side-stepping ….. until Ovechkin stuck his knee out and slammed into Gonchar’s (which is illegal in all levels of hockey to the non-hockey rules familiar fan).\u00a0 To the refs credit, Ovechkin got 2 minutes.\u00a0 However, in my opinion, 2 minutes too little.\u00a0 The severity of that hit immediately deemed a 4 minute penalty.\u00a0 But I move on …. to the league now:<\/p>\n

Watch any sports highlight show outside of Pittsburgh and every analyst says that because it was Ovechkin, he won’t be suspended.\u00a0 The man stuck his knee out, what do you think he was doing?!\u00a0 Here’s some hockey insight for you (I play, I know), when a player sticks their knee out, they’re trying to get a piece of the guy, doesn’t mean it’s right, and he got a piece of Gonchar, so much so that the man couldn’t skate off the ice under his own power!\u00a0 The league needs to take a page from the MLB’s rule book and suspend Ovechkin.\u00a0 However, I don’t think they will, they have less than 24 hours to make a ruling before the next game and Ovechkin is half the star credit the NHL has been building up w\/ Crosby for this series.\u00a0 However, do they want some publicity?\u00a0 I’m thinking “yes”, so suspend him.\u00a0 Show all sport fans you mean business, show the players you won’t back down from cheap shots (unless their a “goon” the NHL has no problem giving suspensions), and make the Penguins – Capitals\/Ovechkin – Crosby saga even better by suspending the Caps star for cheap shotting.\u00a0 If the Caps win without him, what does that do for the story line?!\u00a0 If they lose, doesn’t that boost Ovechkin’s name and increase the intensity of the saga?\u00a0 Not that I’m asking for a suspension just for the publicity, I’m not.\u00a0 I’m asking for a suspension because 1) it’s the right call and 2) I’m trying to point out the NHL’s fear of suspending a star player is unsubstantiated and moot.<\/p>\n

So get it right NHL, take a page from MLB’s book and suspend Ovechkin, you’ll still have your intense game saga, don’t make your own cheap shot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For sports fans, it’s a great time of year.\u00a0 We have the start of Major League Baseball, plus we’re in the midst of the NHL’s 2nd Season, the NBA Playoffs, and the PGA Tour is going full force.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there are spoilers out there.\u00a0 You know, the spoilers, the players or team affiliates giving their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":908,"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wjfuoco.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}