Don't Mean A Thing If It Don't Wear the Wing(ed Wheel)

Damn it, now I'm getting songs stuck in my own head.

Okay, so rest assured that this will remain a Red Wings blog. I have no intention of dignifying Little Gary's League by spouting off about just any ol' NHL news that happens to come along. But once in a while, every once in a while, I'll have to take a short detour away from Motown to mention something about something other than the Wings.

Rest assured, this will almost always be prompted by an upwelling of bitterness and vitriol in what passes for my soul.

Today's rant--Alexander Ovechkin Received a Two Game Suspension.

I'm fine with the suspension, which I believe fits perfectly in the grand scheme of the NHL's official suspension policy. Ovechkin deserved it. When Kronwall got hit on the 21st, I think we all agreed that a suspension in a similar situation was necessary, since it's not at all cool to stick your knee out on another player.

What I'm not fine with is, a) that the reason Ovechkin got 2 games probably has more to do with the fact that he's Ovechkin than that the guy he hit managed to skate in the next game, and b)his own damned coach was quoted in print talking about how he "admires" Ovechkin.

Why do these things piss me off? Because players like Ovechkin (who I realize is talented, don't get me wrong) seem to be growing more and more common in the NHL. Players who are treated like rock stars so often that they begin to believe their own shit doesn't smell. Gary is determined to make the NHL into a league of superstars instead of a league of teams. He pimps players like Ovechkin and Rosby until their damned dicks must be chapped, while real, talented stars like Datsyuk and Zetterberg and Lidstrom have the class not to read their own press aloud before bed every night, thus preserving their modesty and getting about 1/100th of the accolades.

One of the reasons why my love for hockey took root so deeply and so fast was because the hockey I love is a team sport. It's not basketball with a bunch of rich assholes showing up on the society pages as often as the sports pages. It's not football with idiots going to prison for running dog fighting rings out of their backyards. It's hockey, and it's about hard work and skill and sweat and communication. And I, for one, don't want that to change.

Yes, I realize that sounds ridiculously idealistic. I mean, we have Patrick Kane getting arrested for punching cabbies and Sean Avery choking on his own damned kneecap when his stupidity works faster than his mouth, but those incidents seem to happen a lot less often in our sport than in the other major American sports. And the NHL at least has the courtesy to express disapproval most of the time.

And how often do you ever see a Red Wing involved in that kind of garbage?