Let’s start by saying one thing. When Dan Carcillo dives without getting touched, it’s embarrassing. Even when it’s effective, it’s embarrassing. Carcillo needs to stop that stuff. What else is embarrassing, though, is the way Don Cherry ranted about Carcillo last night on CBC.
The video:
Cherry complains about the diving towards the end there, and that part we can all agree with. But to call Carcillo out for not fighting a goon like Orr and to call Carcillo out for drawing a penalty on Marc Savard, one of the Bruins best players? That makes us laugh at you, Don.
Talk all you want about Carcillo being a “bully” and a “coward,” but there’s nothing embarrassing about baiting a dumb hockey player into a penalty. As we wrote the day after that incident with Orr happened…
Carcillo’s intelligent play came to a head on Sunday night, as he stood in and accepted abuse from Toronto’s Colton Orr without retaliation. It was the perfect reaction to Orr’s advances in that situation. Orr had been at Carcillo’s back for about five seconds, shoving him several times as the Flyer skated toward his bench. An initial cross-check penalty had already been called on Orr and Carcillo certainly noticed.
As he reached the boards, he turned to face Orr, who then engaged him with a few shoves to the upper body. As the linesman stepped in to peel Orr off of number 13, a frustrated Orr took one final swing at Carcillo’s head. Another two minute penalty for roughing was rightfully handed out to the goon who, as Carcillo pointed out post game, doesn’t really have much else on which to fall back.
Four minutes in power play time were the result of Orr’s stupidity and Carcillo’s brilliance. But please, Don, continue to take the context out of your terrible argument.
And there’s nothing wrong with baiting a star player into a penalty, either. Carcillo’s job is to get under the skin of the opposition, getting them off of their game. He does that by not fighting Orr and he does that by going after Savard in a scrum. It’s effective, it doesn’t disrespect the game, and it’s laughable that Cherry has a problem with it.
We already knew Don Cherry was a laughing stock anyway, though, so I guess this really isn’t news.
