Notes On Hockey
from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,
- As the Islanders sink deeper into their season of despair (Saturday’s victory aside), the cold reality Lou Lamoriello must face is that the team he built to win now and which is failing spectacularly at fulfilling that mandate, includes 11 players age 30 and older, seven of them on contracts that extend beyond this year.
Cal Clutterbuck, Zach Parise, Andy Greene and Zdeno Chara are pending free agents and could be gone as rentals at the March 21 trade deadline. But Semyon Varlamov has another year at a $5 million cap hit, while Josh Bailey has two years to go at $5M per and Matt Martin has two years remaining on his deal at $1.5M per....
- Finally, the thought of Alex Ovechkin passing Jaromir Jagr for third place on the NHL all-time goal-scoring list at this moment in time is blasphemous.
The Great Jagr, with a career 766 goals, is the man who always wore No. 68 in honor of the Prague Spring that ended with the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. Now, as owner-player of Kladno of the Czech Extraliga, he has moved the club’s final regular-season home game to an arena with triple the capacity size of the club’s home rink, with ticket proceeds going to Ukrainian families seeking refuge in the Czech Republic following the Russian invasion of their country.
Ovechkin, meanwhile, with 763 goals, is the man who is posing proudly with Vladimir Putin for his Instagram avatar. Even now.
Those fans who continue to wear Ovechkin’s jersey, those folks who chant his name after he scores a goal, what message do they think they are sending the world? Their ignorance is noted. Their behavior is sickening.
more on the first topic plus other notes on hockey......
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