Orpik was an awful teammate and I'm glad he's gone. When Tocchet said the kind of toughness we want is the willingness to take a hit to make a play, the first thing I thought of was Orpik and his passing into everyone's skates all night or just coughing it up to avoid contact. Not to mention I can't ever recall him coming to a teammates' defense.
And then he goes and shoots his mouth off to the press and in the room about everything wrong with the team.
If he was less gutless we would be scored on less. His gutless ness applies to every facet of his game. Aiastelmon's right.
Orpik letting an opposing forward camp out in front of Fleury was a result of a) him trying to protect himself by keeping an eye on where the puck is coming from or b) taught by the coaching staff to front the puck. Although b) is more likely as many have pointed out before, I don’t think a) is completely negated, especially considering much of the front the man theory usually entails that the defensive player try to block the shot. And the physical confrontation known as checking a player after he’s scored goes on the Orpik gutless checklist – let’s face it, Orpik knows a player will be more happy he scored as opposed to angry he hit them….he knows physical confrontation is not coming.
I am thrilled Orpik is gone. There are 1000 reasons to criticize him. The fact that he doesn't fight people after he makes big hits isn't one of them.
I don’t disagree. His gutless play saturates throughout his entire game though.
but if he fought after his hits, he would be a less effective player. Fighting would just get him sent to the box, and he's almost certainly better than whoever is trying to fight him. Add in the fact that he actually draws penalties a lot of the time, and he would be stupid to fight in those situations. The goal is to win games, not be respected by fans of other teams.
so the best answer for why guys like Orpik and Kronwall should fight is karma.
You’re not wrong. Kronwall just rubs me the wrong way. I think his hits are predatory and not definitively clean most of the time. He targets mostly finesse players in vulnerable positions and attempts to injure them. His older hits of leaving his feet were pretty blatant, but his new tactic is much more underhanded. Now he takes backwards steps (cleverly avoiding charging) and backs his ass into the midsection of the player, forcing the opponents upper body to bend down at the waist, only to raise his back/shoulder pads into the forward leaning face of the opposing player. Once he’s thrust himself into the player’s face, it’s easy to say his feet are coming up just due to contact. He’s trying to injure by targeting the head while hiding behind a technicality. His intent is the same as a player throwing a dirty hit. I have zero sympathy when players throwing dirty hits are attacked. Kronwall falls into that category to me.
It would certainly be interesting to compare what posters wrote directly after the incident to what they're writing right now. I bet there's a couple of nice 180s. Sadly, this is par for the course when a player leaves the team.
Not true. I haven’t seen anyone say Thornton wasn’t a POS, just like everyone was saying after the incident.
the thing that pisses me off the most is Bylsma's use of Crosby. It's one thing to play through an injury, but the best player in the world had a serious wrist injury and the playoffs were locked up. Why keep sending him out for face-off after face-off? Why have him play his normal "do everything" role?
You can play him 18-20 minutes a game and make them easier.
Gotta win 82 regular season games, Dan.
Stay on topic!
I’m sure Sid had a lot of say in whether he was going to sit, but how you could watch him biff passes and shots and not sit him….pretty inexcusable.
