Image c/o GeekyTyrant
Friday funnies brought to you straight from hockey’s own players, media personnel, and broadcast botches. We’ll be mucking it up every week right here, examining puck ups, puns, tweets, and more!
Earlier this week, an incident occurred in a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the San Jose Sharks. On the play, San Jose forward Patrick Marleau receives a pass and begins to build speed while current Toronto forward, and former Philadelphia Flyer forward, James van Riemsdyk is back checking through the neutral zone. Then, Toronto defenseman and team captain Dion Phaneuf sees an opportunity to levy a clean body check on Marleau with the intent to separate him from the puck.
Phaneuf steps up to deliver his hit as the players are nearing the red line, but he misses the mark and absolutely crushes van Riemsdyk with a brutal hit. The head of van Riemsdyk is not the principal point of contact, but Phaneuf definitely got a piece of it. Phaneuf is known for delivering big hits, and this one is no exception, but we are not quite sure as to why he hit his own teammate and not the guy carrying the puck who was on the other team. It is important to note that while van Riemsdyk did remain on the ice for some time and did leave the game, he returned to game action and suffered no apparent injury to his person on the play, but surely his pride and loyalty may be feeling a little worse for wear.
Anywho, check out the video here:
To be perfectly honest, it was a good clean hit just on the wrong player. The Flyerdelphia Department of Discipline cannot suspend Phaneuf, but we strongly believe that he should be publicly shamed for this act and frankly, the only thing that would make this better is if Scott Hartnell scores a game winner and then immediately drops the gloves with the Maple Leaf captain again for hitting his former teammate with such force the next time these two clubs meet.
We'll catch you next week when somebody else does something funny related to the game of ice hockey!
