The Most Corrupt Man in Sports

I am not picking on Canadians as a whole today I am done with that, just one Canadian in particular. Colin Campbell is single-handedly trying to ruin the Caps season for the second year in a row. He is having an exceedingly tough time doing it because George McPhee actually knows something about hockey and put together the best team in the game, but Campbell is doing his darndest nonetheless. Unfortunately Gary Bettman is to afraid to step in and stop it, taking the Nazi prison guard approach. So in my effort to stop my frustration at the league's and the Pen's mantra "if you can't beat them, cheat" I wanted to get to the bottom of why they are trying to sabotage the Caps. The anti-Russian sentiment has already been proven but is there more?

Let me tell you a little about C. Campbell, the NHL's current Senior VP and Director of Hockey Operations. He likes to be called "the Sheriff," because he clearly has issues. He was an unsuccessful coach of the Rangers and was fired mid-season. His son Gregory plays for the Florida Panthers who just looked atrocious last night. And he got to where he is by having no semblance of hockey knowledge, over-exaggerated talent, by turning his a blind eye towards truth and reality, and the expectations of having everything handed to him. So it makes sense he broke into the league when he was drafted 27th overall by the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1973 and went on to play for them for a few years. So lets get this straight; his son plays for the Panthers, he was a Penguin, and he has a slight affinity for the Rangers but they fired him so only kind of.

One would think that maybe he could keep his favorite teams out of mind when deciding on suspensions and dealing with his employees the refs, but the flow of games and most importantly the numbers prove otherwise. Lets see how these suspensions favored his two favorite teams. He has handed out 23 separate multi-game suspensions thus far this year. I'm going to take out Matt Cooke's suspension for his hit to the head of Artem Anisimov that was given out begrudgingly. (And once again how was that worse than what happened to Savard. I thought prior history of the offending player came into account for suspensions.) So we are left with 22 suspensions. In those 22 suspensions, teams had to go without their offending player 11 times against either the Pens or the Panthers. That is a rate of 50%; 6 Pens games missed and five Florida games missed. And that does not even count the controversial Mike Green ruling that happened against the Panthers. 6 Pens games were effected, 5 Florida, and I am counting the players in the Western Conference as well, who play these teams only once a year. There have been 11 of them suspended. Since the Olympic break, 66% of suspensions have taken players out against the Panthers who are struggling to catch up to the Savard-less Bruins for the 8th seed. I can not prove that Campbell is intentionally taking players out against his favorite teams, but the numbers do not lie.

I looked these stats up because OV only played in 2 out of the 6 games against the division rival Panthers the entire year because of Campbell's unjust suspensions. It is one more case of, we can't beat the Caps so lets cheat them . Fortunately the Caps are so good this year they swept the Panthers anyways. Even when we are being cheated we are still the best in the league. Lets look at last year's playoffs to see his inconsistencies. There were three different hits to the head in the waning moments of games in the first round of the '08-'09 playoffs last year: Carcillo (Phi) on Talbot (Pit,) Cammalleri (Calg) on Havlat (Chi,) and Lucic (Bos) on Lapiere (Mont.) Lets see how Campbell justice is meted out.

Carcillo Cammalleri Lucic

Blow to head: yes yes yes

While holding stick: yes yes yes

In-game Penalty: no yes yes

Prior suspensions: yes no no

Suspended: yes no yes

What is the rhyme or reason to any of this? They were all the exact same infraction, but why didn't Carcillo get a penalty. And if a penalty has to be a prerequisite for a suspension, why was Carcillo suspended, because he was playing the Pens in a series? Was Cammalleri not suspended because he had no prior history? Lucic didn't have a history either, so why was he suspended? All this chicanery leads to is confusion. OV still has no clue what he did wrong on Sunday. He is sorry B. Campbell got hurt, but he is going to continue to play clean, aggressive hockey until the NHL suspends him again for screwing up their marketing plans. Here is another story to confuse. 19:41 into the 3rd period of Game 2 of last year's Stanley Cup series, Malkin got called for an instigator penalty when he tried to square up with Zetterberg. This is an automatic suspension in the regular season, and is usually more in the playoffs where there is no fighting. Unless its one of the Penguins stars. Campbell said: "He wasn't trying to send a message, he wasn't seeking retribution. Neither was the case here and therefore the one game suspension is rescinded." What? Has anyone ever been in a fight in there life where it wasn't about retribution or sending a message? Any Pens fan that thinks they legitimately won the cup last year is out of their deluded skull; the 08-09 names on the Cup are nothing more than graffiti on the most revered trophy in sports. Campbell and his bias boggle the mind.

Colin Campbell said today that if Brian Campbell had not been hurt, OV would never have been suspended. If that is the case why was Cooke suspended for his hit on Anisimov who skated off the ice before the whistle blew, and not for a more vicious hit on Savard who left on a stretcher for the year? Until the NHL legislates the act and not the consequences, which they can't even do consistently, people will continue to get injured, and no one will have a clue why. The NHL and Campbell are trying to disguise there bias as concern for the player's safety, but if they were so concerned they would already have a concrete rule in place to protect them instead of bending vague rules to help out the PR department. Here is a perfect example of how things get out of control under the blind eyes of Campbell. Six years ago Steve Moore of the Avalanche took a cheap-shot at Markus Naslund, concussing him. There was no penalty or suspension for some reason. Next time the two teams played, Bertuzzi concussed Moore, and also broke three of his vertebrae. Moore never played hockey again. If Ovechkin was half as corrupt and had half the blood on his hands as Colin Campbell, the NHL would have Pete Rosed him out of the league a long time ago.