Berbs Blurbs

Courtesy www.nhldigest.com

The return of the Broad Street Bullies…….

In the 70’s it was Bobby Clarke, Dave “The Hammer” Shultz, and Ed Van Impe…..the original Broad Street Bullies….Tough, rugged, in your face hockey players……

In 2007 instead of tough and rugged, it’s more like cheap and dirty…..The Broad Street Bullies are back and they are head hunting….literally……

Steve Downie, Jesse Boulerice, and now Randy Jones….already 40+ games in suspensions between Downie and Boulerice and just a matter of time before a few more are added on for the latest cheap shot Randy Jones laid on Bruins forward Patrice Bergeron this past weekend.

What’s going on in Philadelphia?? This is the 3^rd incident in less than two months where a flyer has made news for injuring someone. First it was a cheap hit by Downie, next an awful crosscheck by Boulerice and now a shameful hit from behind by Jones.

At this rate the flyers won’t have anyone to put in the lineup come March. What’s worse is the on ice antics of three players is really taking away from the fact that the flyers are a much better hockey team than last year…..In fact, they are one of the top 5 teams in the league right now.

This is not the way to bring the Broad Street Bullies back to town. This type of hockey doesn’t intimidate other teams or send a message; all it does is give the NHL a black eye.

It gives sports writers who know nothing about the NHL more ammo to trash talk the league. Instead of showing highlight real goals like the ones Rick Nash and Jonathan Toews scored last week all we will see is Randy Jones crushing Bergeron from behind in the corner followed by replays of the Downie hit and Boulerice slash…over and over again.

Should Bergeron have protected himself going into the corner a bit better? Sure….but Randy Jones has to know better than to lay a check on a guy’s numbers. Hitting from behind happens way too much in the NHL. Just watch a game, your bound to see 2 or 3 questionable hits a period.

It needs to be stopped or next time we will be writing about a player being paralyzed after being checked from behind near the boards. Patrice Bergeron got lucky. But will the next player be so lucky?