Angry Little Elf
My wife came back
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Wow that sack of crap in Calgary could have ended his career without any supplemental discipline. The league is a joke and hopefully a massive lawsuit is launched that Alberts can be part of because there is no way the league can argue they are actuallly protecting these players.
You mean a NHL coach like Hartley that pulls cheap azz stunts throughout his career.Also, screw Bryan McGrattan. Nothing but a one-note goon who doesn't belong in the NHL and never did. Unfortunately, as long as Brian Burke is in the league, guys like him will be sitting on roster spots that should be given to players who can play hockey rather than just injure others.
I called this in the injury thread
Good luck to him in the future.
This is the NHL’s shame: for all its talk about eliminating blows to the head, all the outrage and rancour every time a star player is injured on a questionable hit, the league watched a career enforcer take a run at Alberts at the start of a game and knock him out with a head shot, and did nothing.
And now Alberts’s career may be over.
Andrew Alberts never heard from McGrattan, either.
“I don’t think that’s in his nature,” he says. “I think there should have been some supplemental discipline. If I’m Sidney Crosby, it’s probably a 15-game suspension. The frustrating part is I’m working my ass off trying to be on the team and get in the lineup, something like that happens and the guy gets off free and now here I am just hoping I can have one day without headaches
On the last day of the Vancouver Canucks’ season, which was 3½ months after Andrew Alberts’ final game, the defenceman begged his way onto the ice at Rogers Arena and for 20 glorious minutes was a National Hockey League player once more.
Accompanied only by assistant strength coach Eric Renaghan, and watched by nobody on the morning before the Canucks’ April 13 game against the Calgary Flames, Alberts skated and passed and shot the puck in full gear and felt like a kid back on the frozen pond where he had learned to play hockey all those years ago in Minnesota.
“It was more like a couple of buddies just passing the puck around,†Renaghan remembers. “But he got to dress in gear and we went out there, and it was cool. He was stress-free at that point. We weren’t doing specific drills or monitoring his fitness. We were just out there passing the puck around and doing stuff that was fun. I knew it meant a lot to him, and it felt good for me to be able to do that with him.â€
Alberts pleaded for the ice time because he knew it was not only the last day of the Canucks’ season, but possibly last time he would ever cinch his skates, dress in equipment, pull on a jersey — even a practice one — with an NHL crest, and work as an NHL player.
“I just wanted to go out there and twirl around because it could be my last time on an NHL sheet,†Alberts says. “I had to beg Burnie (medical trainer Mike Burnstein) to let me out there. I said: ‘Just give me 20 minutes.’ I went out there with Eric. Just us and a few pucks on the ice. I knew it might be my last time.â€