Photo by John Slipec, via Wikimedia Commons
In case you missed it at 1 am this morning, Gary Lawless of the Winnipeg Free Press decided to add to a chapter in his future collection, Gary Lawless Gets Tough – Online Version (CD of Lawless Gets Tough – Radio Version coming soon!), by declaring Claude Noel needs to reduce Dustin Byfuglien’s minutes. The chapter, titled “Black Players,” is the longest of the book, filled with relentless reminders of how the players in-question aren’t anything like Gary Lawless.
The spark for the uproar, uproar being a requisite thing in the sports talk world where blowhards and mittenstringers are made to look hard-hitting and important, was an admittedly bad weekend for Byfuglien, who made a few costly errors that contributed to Jets losses. I get that “admission” from Byfuglien himself, as he’s quoted in the Lawless column: “Not playing my top. Something I have to figure out myself. Slow down and play the game I should be. Keep it simple. I might be playing a little too fast for myself right now. Tighten it up.”
That explanation, for Lawless, is “a refusal to be responsible with the puck.” But that’s just the beginning.
Hockey Graphs 