BOSTON — Obviously, the finger has been the most famous body part when it comes the Bruins’ run in the 2011 Stanley Cup playoffs.
First there was the rise of Andrew Ference’s middle digit, and then came Alex Burrows’ bite of Patrice Bergeron’s right index finger.
In Game 2 and 3 of the Stanley Cup Final, fingers were flying from Maxim Lapierre, Mark Recchi and Milan Lucic. Bruins head coach Claude Julien expressed his disgust with the latest display of fingers, and NHL VP of Hockey Operations Mike Murphy expects there to be less finger pointing starting with tomorrow night’s Game 4 and as the 2011 Stanley Cup Final carries on.
“Kris King is in charge of the series. We’ve addressed it,” said Murphy today at Boston University on the series’ off day. “We’ve addressed it with the teams as early as this morning. I will be speaking with both general managers and coaches before the day’s over about the crap that we’re seeing, the garbage that is going on, some of the issues.”
Yep Murphy pretty much threw gas on the fire with the finger issue.
Honestly had he just said “biting is not going to be tolerated but we are going to fine Burrows because we don’t believe it warrants a suspension” I think things would have settled.
Instead he makes this BS “no evidence” ruling and does nothing. This invigorates the Canucks who know they got by with something. Had the Canucks just sighed with relief and moved on-things probably wouldn’t have exploded, but they decided to taunt the B’s on and off the ice (I am actually far more bothered by the Sedins taunting in the introduction than the on ice stuff since on ice trash talk is pretty much a given in hockey).
Hopefully Murphy learned that sometimes you don’t throw good, honest players under the bus to avoid making a decision. I suspect Recchi indeed was pretty pissed off-and his on ice taunting was awesome at least for that game.
How does this league take itself seriously?
Rich – +1
queens will wish it was only fingers come wednesday night.
Rich beat me to the punchline. My sentiments exactly Rich.
Murphy, you idiot, if you had handled the bite appropriately, this wouldn’t be an issue.
You did basically the right thing with a third-pair d-man, but didn’t have the balls to do the right thing with a first-line forward.
It’s your own damn fault.
Biting = OK
Finger Pointing = BAD
Idiot.
Canucks are just getting what was coming for them after that hit on Horton! We’re doing it for him, GO BRUINS!
Finger pointing = BAD
Face wash = GOOD
Go B’s Go!