Klesla gets the ban hammer dropped on him, and SI.com's total ignorance.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
So Rusty Klesla is suspended for two regular season games for the supposed knee job he did on Turomo Ruutu of the Chicago Blackhawks during a pre-season game last week. With no video replays, and nothing but my memory of the radio commentary to go off of as well as the bare bones news articles, it's really hard to say whether or not the suspension is justified, or if the 'clipping' penalty looked intentional, or anything of that sort. Drew at EoB does a much better job at touching on this situation, and so I'll pass the torch over to him to cover this situation. All I know is that this won't help the Blue Jackets' already rather thin blue line at the start of the season. Two games isn't a lot, but a good beginning means a lot to this team and the fans.
With the Klesla suspension taken in to account, here is who will be missing from opening night ...
-Sergei Fedorov (injury/shoulder)
-Alexander Svitov (injury/shoulder)
-Rusty Klesla (suspension)
And then there's concern recently about Bryan Berard and some soreness he's been feeling. If Klesla's loss at the blue line isn't scary enough, Berard's questionable status should be a dose of soberness to anyone having any expectations for opening night. But let's just hope for the best, since it's all we can do here in Columbus.
Moving on ... okay, what cracked out sport's writer wrote the season previews for SI.com? No mention of Anson Carter, and Radoslav Suchy -- as much as I like the guy -- being talked up as though his loss to free agency means a coming of the apocalypse for the Blue Jackets' defense? Oh, and don't forget the no-mention of Pascal Leclaire's save percentage and instead going only with the goals-against average. Then pretty much dismissing every single player besides Rick Nash as worthless. Since when was our weakness this season our forwards, anyway? I mean, yeah, it's no Atlanta Thrashers offense, but it's far from what we had last year going by what's on paper.
(Edit (7:04 PM EST): Just as an aside, and to show that I'm not getting on their cases for homer-ish issues only ... they also outright fail to mention the Zherdev dispute. Now understandably this was just a capsule-type prediction for all teams in the Central Division, but even so, they sure as frell went out of their way to talk up the Predators right at the beginning with quite a bit of content. So it isn't like they were lacking in space to go in-depth with some of the other teams.)
Obviously I've yet to take kindly to any op-eds on the Blue Jackets' hopes or possible finish this year, as can be seen by my snarky entry on Robert Picarello's predictions last week. But for God's sake, get your information right. Don't go pulling stuff out of yourass magic hat and trying to pass it off as a professional prediction on a site like SI.com. It's obvious that the person who wrote the predictions for the Central Division there in is really not in the know.
With that, I have some evening exercising to go get out of the way before I start winding down for the night.
With the Klesla suspension taken in to account, here is who will be missing from opening night ...
-Sergei Fedorov (injury/shoulder)
-Alexander Svitov (injury/shoulder)
-Rusty Klesla (suspension)
And then there's concern recently about Bryan Berard and some soreness he's been feeling. If Klesla's loss at the blue line isn't scary enough, Berard's questionable status should be a dose of soberness to anyone having any expectations for opening night. But let's just hope for the best, since it's all we can do here in Columbus.
Moving on ... okay, what cracked out sport's writer wrote the season previews for SI.com? No mention of Anson Carter, and Radoslav Suchy -- as much as I like the guy -- being talked up as though his loss to free agency means a coming of the apocalypse for the Blue Jackets' defense? Oh, and don't forget the no-mention of Pascal Leclaire's save percentage and instead going only with the goals-against average. Then pretty much dismissing every single player besides Rick Nash as worthless. Since when was our weakness this season our forwards, anyway? I mean, yeah, it's no Atlanta Thrashers offense, but it's far from what we had last year going by what's on paper.
(Edit (7:04 PM EST): Just as an aside, and to show that I'm not getting on their cases for homer-ish issues only ... they also outright fail to mention the Zherdev dispute. Now understandably this was just a capsule-type prediction for all teams in the Central Division, but even so, they sure as frell went out of their way to talk up the Predators right at the beginning with quite a bit of content. So it isn't like they were lacking in space to go in-depth with some of the other teams.)
Obviously I've yet to take kindly to any op-eds on the Blue Jackets' hopes or possible finish this year, as can be seen by my snarky entry on Robert Picarello's predictions last week. But for God's sake, get your information right. Don't go pulling stuff out of your
With that, I have some evening exercising to go get out of the way before I start winding down for the night.
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Jes is right on the Berard thing. As far as warm bodies are concerned, that's the only issue that concerns me regarding him being missing. He provides an offensive spark, and if we can get enough depth to have him fit on the third pair and get some PP time we can minimize the complete lack of defense.
Berard is an exciting player to watch because he's going to be involved with a goal. The question is whether it will be for the good guys or the bad guys.
Sports Illustrated...since when have they ever had much to say on Hockey that was on the mark? Relax... chill... go to a site that knows hockey, or buy a good book like McKeens or the Forecaster.
Of course, when your defense has Bryan Berard as a lynchpin, you better expect the losses to pile up.