Polemic Hockey

The Minnesota blogosphere is boiling over with righteous indignation over the "sucker punch" by Brad May. I'm not going to defend May, or any of the Ducks. I'm just going to point out that Minnesota is pulling a Toronto here. They are crying about something happening to them when they went out of their way to make sure Boogaard played plenty of minutes, threw plenty of knees, etc.

I'm not sure there's a team out there with clean hands, but if there is, Minnesota isn't it and neither is Toronto. Off the top of my head, the only team I can think of that doesn't usually carry an enforcer is Detroit, but they have Todd Bertuzzi, and used to have Sean Avery.

Hockey scribes know they aren't reporters or journalists--they get their ratings by engaging in metooism and putting into words the feelings of fans. It probably makes rivalries more intense, but it's not reporting.