Remember when playoff series were so rife with indiscretions, that FedEx had to assign a courier to each town, simply to get all those game tapes to NHL head offices?
Can you recall the days of Montreal-Quebec, or Edmonton-Calgary, when each spring meant a new round of sucker punches and spears south of the ol' bread basket? All that was missing from some of those series were the foreign objects and a pair of wrasslin' trunks.
Well, if you are one who thinks the game has tamed down perhaps too much over the years, the latest round of whining out of Vancouver will make you laugh.
After Game 1 Canucks coach Alain Vigneault complained that the St. Louis Blues weren't just skating through Roberto Luongo's crease and bumping into him a couple of times, they were spraying him with (gasp!) snow.
"I'm embarrassed to talk about that. It's ridiculous. Nonsense," said St. Louis winger Keith Tkachuk. "There is no way our game plan is to go out and try to spray their goalie. You have to stop on the puck - just in case he tries to play it.
"You can tell the game has changed over my 17-year career, when you complain about something like that. As opposed to runnin' someone from behind or starting a brawl."
Vigneault did not want to address the situation again on Thursday. He said on Wednesday that he would talk to the league about his concerns.
Luongo had little or nothing to say about it, and was not at all disturbed.
St. Louis coach Andy Murray, meanwhile, challenged Luongo to move the puck, if he doesn't like players stopping in his crease.
"Roberto is a great goalie," Muray said. "In those situtaions there was no reason for him to freeze the puck. He had ample time to move it."
We think the Canucks should install microphones near the benches for Game 2. Then they can complain to the league if someone from the Blues calls one of their players a nasty name.
