He is right about Cherry though.
Cherry has toned down significantly in recent years but it was not right for him to label anyone with a visor as a *****. His constant making fun of European names and calling all russian and euros as dainty figure skaters was just wrong.
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Well Cherry was not wrong about guys wearing visors, esp. if you had someone like Claude Lemieux who was the poster boy for it. I mean even after his career Claude said he made it a mission to be a pest and have people lose their minds and then would hide and not respond to his actions. And wearing a visor was part of it. Now it's a different time cause the NHL are more intolerable toward people not wearing visors. You have to have one when you join the NHL. In many ways, it has not made the league better.
Also if Don was so wrong about Europeans/Russians why did they go ahead themselves and completely changed their training and style of play? When AO came to the league, Cherry almost changed completely his view on them. With one exception when AO showed off after a goal and from then on AO stopped bragging after goals.
Remember also that back in the day, the way Russians viewed hockey was completely different from how North Americans viewed it and they were trained differentely. North Americans viewed hockey like war and leaving your heart on the ice. While in Russia it was more like amateur sport, like training for any other amateur sport for a big event like the Olympics where it keeps that well-meaning sporting feel amongst all nations. It was almost like an artform or ballet for men. And I'm not saying this in a negative way. Everything they did was based on skills. Also since then the NHL only got the most talented Russians while from North American they got tough guys, grinders, etc....So it helped perpetuated the perception of Russians being soft. Eventually you got guys like Emelin, etc...
What happened over time was Russians and Europeans got stronger, bigger and tougher and North Americans got softer by the diminutions of hits and fights in the minor leagues. So you have more similar players coming from all over.