Even before the All Star rosters were announced on January 11th, Brendan Shanahan, who is the ASG overlord, was quoted on NHL.com as saying, “Without identifying specific teams or players, there were players that reached out to their general managers, who then reached out to the League to quietly say, ‘This guy is playing but he has a nagging injury and he’s asked me to ask you leave him off.'” Shanahan went on to say that. “We have to respect that.” It was quickly made known that Detroit’s Henrik Zetterberg, who has been playing with a sore back, was one of those players.
Since the ASG rosters were announced, players have been dropping like flies. First, Jarome Iginla asked to be excused
Last week, the Oilers announced that they were pulling both Ales Hemsky and rookie Jordan Eberle from ASG activities. Hemsky himself having suffered a concussion was a natural ally for Crosby. Eberle has an ankle injury which conveniently allows him to also show support for his captain.
Once the movement gained momentum, it became official this weekend that Crosby would not be participating in the ASG. Along with that came the anticipated word that Malkin, as a show of solidarity with his teammate and captain, would most not likely participate as well due to his nagging knee injury.
Rumors are flying around that, while Fleury and Letang will be fine to play tomorrow against the Isles, Shero may ask that they be excused from the ASG to rest. Fleury may need to rest his wrist from waving the Terrible Towel too much on the ice at Saturday’s game and has a little bit of a headache from Potash making him do an entire interview while wearing his Steelers helmet. Letang may need to rest his arms from practicing taking shots on net. Word got around that Bylsma made him practice until he got ten shots on net and that took an entire day.
In another truly interesting development, we learned from a source close to Jordan Staal (some guy named Jared)
So, hold on tight folks, we could be in for a ride over the next few days! We know how important this completely meaningless game is, and while we would rather our injured players partake in it, there is no stopping what Sid has started. It will be curious to see how this all plays out. Will the roster end up being all Caps and Flyers players? Oh, and just to clear one thing up, Kovalchuk was not a part of this protest. He did not have a premonition that this would happen, he just sucks this season.
Of course, tommorow I could tell you that this is just all my opinion and that I refuse to recant my opinion. Or, I
In case you couldn’t tell, I would have written this whole thing in my universal sarcasm font, if I had found a way to invent it yet…or a bullshit font, take your pick on this one.
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