Vancouver Canucks enforcer Brandon Prust was fined $5000 by the NHL for spearing Bruins forward Brad Marchand right where the sun don’t shine. That’s right, you can stab a player in his groin area and get out of it with a minor dent in your checkbook in the NHL. While NHL fans had their laughs, and their jokes, Brandon Prust decided to have his own jokes on the matter:
Hear from Brandon Prust following Sunday’s practice at Rogers Arena. https://t.co/gY9MW8H8Wz
— Vancouver Canucks (@VanCanucks) December 6, 2015
If you watch the video, you’ll hear Prust say “best money I ever spent.”
Have your laughs. I don’t like Brad Marchand one bit. Never have, never will. The fact of the matter is that Brandon Prust is taunting the NHL, and showing that it’s system of punishing players for unacceptable plays is severely flawed. The funniest part? Prust isn’t going to receive a damn bit of disciplinary action for his comments, even though he absolutely should.
The game we love, our beloved sport with such “high-class” that we always scream about from the mountaintops is dwindling. A player can blatantly try to injure another player, and come away with his wallet marginally lighter. That’s a problem that the Department of Player Safety must address.
What has essentially happened is that a player has been hit in his groin, with intention to injure, and it has been turned into one big Internet joke. Good job, NHL. You have made your concern for player safety a jolly ol’ laugh. A meme. Nothing more than a blip on the radar of what’s at hand: Enforcers ruining the game. If you ask my opinion, and this goes back to when Milan Lucic speared Danny DeKeyser in the groin, any play like this should be automatic suspension, without pay. That is the only way you will teach these buffoons to knock it the hell off.
Remember when Brandon Prust went on the Players’ Tribune, and said this:
Three games into the season, they called me up and I never missed a game after that. I started off fighting lightweight guys and I realized I kind of had a knack for it. By my second year in the OHL, I was fighting the top heavyweights in the league. I realize I’m a bit biased, because fighting got me to the NHL, but I truly believe this: The NHL needs fighting to keep the game safe.
So, does spearing another player in his genital region merit as “keeping the game safe?” The answer is no. Players like this are doing nothing but ruining the integrity of the game. It’s a joke, and if the NHL has an ounce of care in it’s soul, they will come down on this sort of behavior. Especially Prust’s asinine comments making a mockery of the NHL’s already laughable player safety practices. I know you can try and counter my comments of “integrity” by saying that Brad Marchand is the epitome of those comments, but it’s not about that. It’s about player safety, right? Right.
