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This is hockey, not a dance recital

Last night, after Kyle Brodziak of the Minnesota Wild enacted his diabolical plot to break Chris Stewart's hand with his face Chris Stewart motioned to the Minnesota bench and did a little hand gesture that was the equivalent of "keep talking assholes". He did not go over and take their lunch money, although he probably could have. In an emotional back and forth game a player has words for the other teams bench. I've seen it happen a ton of times, and it's no big deal. It's part of the game Except apparently I don't know jack since I'm not from the so called state of hockey. Because apparently a little jawing at the bench is a complete and total lack of class.

Don't believe me, ask Minnesota fans, bloggers, and announcers. First the tweet towards Adrian Dater from a Wild fan

@adater what's with your boy Stewie? Is he usually that classless? I bet the team full of early 20-somethings is awful mouthy 2.  

Then Wild Blogger BReynolds had this to say:

The good thing is, the Avalanche players were classy in their victory. I know it is a division game, and I know there is always some heated emotions between the Wild and Avs, but I really detest classless crap like Chris Stewart pulled tonight.

Not surprisingly, the whiniest homer announcers in all of hockey, the Minnesota duo, started it all off when they called Stewart... you guessed it.... classless. What bugs me about when Wild fans are whining about this stuff is that they seem to take their cues straight from these two morons. Classless? Because Stewart's jawing at his opponent? Seriously? Or is it because he's using a non-obscene hand signal? I mean Wild fans cheer for Cal Clutterbuck for god's sake (and Derek Boogard was and is a local legend.) Do they think these guys got under other teams skins solely by finishing their checks? I guarantee that the Wild bench was jawing at Stewart just as much as he was jawing back (and we have some confirmation there too).

Jawing isn't classless, it's hockey. Guess what, had Stewart done this as a member of the Wild, the fan base would have loved it. I'm positive of that, and do you knwo why, because let's take a minute to remember all the way back to April of 2008 when the Wild were responsible for one of the most classless performances in recent history. A performance in which they were admonished by pretty much everyone (Wild Bloggers and Avs fans and bloggers alike.) including local columnists. So did these savvy Minnesota experts on class come out and give it to their team for acting like goons in the previous game... err, not exactly. Unfotunately, I was unable to find the video of the Wild announcers crying it up, and calling Avs players like Ben Guite and Tyler fricking Arnason goons while cheering on Derek Boogard and Stephane Villieux taking runs at Joe Sakic and Paul Stastny.

Wild Baby

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