Sens at Land’s End

Last night, Chris Pronger stomped on the leg of Vancouver’s Ryan Kesler. He stepped on his leg. During a game. With skates on. Earlier this season, Chris Simon was given a 30-game suspension — the longest in the history of the NHL — for stepping on the leg of Pittsburgh’s Jarkko Ruutu during a game. I will just take a moment to compare Pronger and Simon:

• Simon: has been suspended 8 times, for 65 games total (that includes one 30 gamer and one 25 gamer — take those away and it’s 6 suspensions, 10 games), during his 15-year career.
• Pronger: has been suspended 7 times, for 14 games total, during his 12-year career, including twice in last year’s playoffs (the most recent suspension being 1 game during the Stanley Cup Final for elbowing Dean McAmmond in the head).

So, logically, one would assume that Pronger, who is, like Simon, a repeat offender and a notoriously dirty player, might receive similar disciplinary action for this incident. Unless one follows the NHL closely, in which case one would be NOT AT ALL FUCKING SURPRISED to see that Pronger is not going to be punished at all.

How does this guy get away with this stuff? He and his whole damn team piss me off so much, it’s going to give me an ulcer. I wish they would just disappear. If I turned on SportsCentre one day and heard the words “Chris Pronger was delivered a potentially career-ending injury today,” I would only feel it’s proof that karma exists. And the one positive thing I do have to say about the guy is that I think he accepts that. So, fine. At least he’s not a hypocrite. A douchebag and a goon, but not a hypocrite. Go Pronger.

This whole thing would be blatantly stupid in any circumstance, but it seems especially so now, so soon after Richard Zednik having his neck cut, when you would have to think the league would be especially conscious of the bad things that can happen when skate blades are involved.

I feel like starting a petition to Hockey Canada to keep Pronger off the Canadian Olympic team in 2010. I don’t care how good he is; I don’t want him anywhere near it.