Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

[Diesel]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...ger/index.html

[bceskiesfan]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

We need a "nail-on-the-head" smilie.

[Deathsdoorstep]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

**** LOUD APPLAUSE****

[Esks4ever]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

[Delorean]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

Mike Brophy should read that article, he might actually learn a thing or two.

http://www.thehockeynews.com/en/colu...?columnist=157

[EEForever]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

This is just further proof that some of the spoiled rotten brats like Pronger haven't had a change of attitude in the NHL - they still think it's their God-given right to earn an unfathomable amount of money and, at the end of the day, they don't owe the fans a thing.

[stamphater]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

Wow, that Brophy article was terrible.

[bceskiesfan]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

Wow, that Brophy article was terrible.

He completely misses the point...

[Muley69]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

He completely misses the point...

I agree...

[budha]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

I am not usually a big fan of SI's hockey writing. They consider it a minor league sport and tend to treat it as such. This article though has made me start to think other wise. The reporter hit it perfectly. Com eout and say that you want out. Yes the fans will be pi$$ed, but not nearly as pi$$ed as they are now. The reporter is exactly right when he says that the other people that this has affected, namely the A-Channel reporter, would not have been drug into the mess and people would have booed him, but they would have moved on. Mr. Pronger has shown with not only his actions, but the interview that he did contuct that he is nothing but a 31 year old spoiled brat.

PS I can't get the Hockey news article to load can some give me a readers digest version, or copy the article onto a post, thanks.

[bceskiesfan]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

^at your request, be careful not to puke in your mouth when you're reading it...






Mike Brophy: Don’t vilify Pronger
by Guest Columnist


How soon they forget.

A week after he led the Oilers to within a game of winning their first Stanley Cup in 16 seasons, Chris Pronger is Public Enemy No. 1 in Edmonton. Make that 1A. His wife, Lauren, is 1B.

All because the Prongers had the audacity to request a trade.

It happens all the time, players requesting to be moved, but for some reason, Edmonton fans took this one as a personal affront. Heaven forbid somebody should not want to live in Edmonton.

The organization was aware of Pronger’s desire to be moved early in the year, yet it rode him all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. That’s because even though he wished he were elsewhere, Pronger was professional when it came to doing his job. He played part of the year on a broken foot and through a portion of the playoffs with a partially separated shoulder.

By the end of the year, there was little doubt in anybody’s mind that he was once again the most complete defenseman in the game. Nobody possesses the ability to control a game, plays the quality minutes he does or has the ability to shut down opposing star players, as does Pronger. His 21 points in 24 games was the most by a defenseman in the playoffs since Brian Leetch scored 34 for the Rangers in 1993-94.

It was, from this little corner of the world, an injustice that he was not among the Norris Trophy finalists or awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP in the playoffs.

But a week after Edmontonians anointed Pronger their hero, they made him out to be a villain. And they dragged both Chris’s and Lauren’s names through the mud as vicious rumors of infidelity, circulated on the Internet and by word of mouth, were cited as the reason why they wanted to skip town.

There are some issues at hand here. If a wife is unhappy with where she is living, regardless of what her husband does for a living, does she not have the option of speaking up? Or is it a case of, if you are married to a pro hockey player in Edmonton, you forfeit all your rights?

“Shut up, Bea. Look after your husband and your kids and quit your complaining!”

I don’t know about you, but if I tried telling my wife where we were going to live without any input from her, I would spend the rest of my life walking with a limp.

During the playoffs, Edmonton fans showed themselves to be the loudest and most enthusiastic in the NHL. Was that real or just an act to get attention? When I stood inside Rexall Place and felt the goose bumps on my arms and back of my neck as fans belted out the American and Canadian anthems, I couldn’t think of anyplace else I’d rather be at that moment.

I have a friend who was raised in Burlington, Ont., where winters are relatively shorter and warmer than they are in Edmonton, who swears God created Alberta first and then built the rest of the world around it.

“Who wouldn’t love living in Alberta?” Louise Diduch wrote to me in an e-mail.

Well, uh, me for one. Quite honestly, I have never enjoyed myself at games during a Stanley Cup final as much as I did this year during the three games played in Edmonton. That said, I find Edmonton to be a great place to visit, but I’m way too much of a wuss to handle the cold. I went to Edmonton for the outdoor game a few years back and I swear I nearly lost my will to live. But hey, that’s just me.

On the other hand, there are roughly 33 million people in Canada and 32 million choose not to live in Edmonton. Are they all bad people? Oh, and here’s another thought: By reacting this way to Pronger’s trade request, Oilers fans aren’t exactly doing the organization a world of good in terms of trying to attract new players.

There is such a thing as the business of hockey. Decisions are made that don’t please everybody, but life goes on. A player may decide to sign with a team as a free agent, in part because he likes the location of the franchise, but if that teams feels it can improve itself by trading him, he’s gone.

Conversely, for years during the Glen Sather regime in Edmonton, grinder Kelly Buchberger was held up as an example of a player who took less money to stay with the team he loved. But at the end of it all, he was left unprotected and chosen by Atlanta in the 1999 NHL expansion draft. That’s life in the big leagues.

Fans need to remember that.

[griswold]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

WAY TO GO SI!!!
EAT **** MIKE BROPHY

[budha]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

I resisted the urge to , but it was hard. Brophy IMVHO is a hack of a writer, hwo thinks that he is an expert on Edmonton becuase he spent 4 days here. Go back and cover the center of the hockey world and leave the real fans alone.

[Spectacle]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

At the risk of being thrown under a bus.........

I agree with some of Mike Brophy's points. I don't think he expressed all of them very well, but some if it did make sense.
Wanted to kick him in the nuts for his comments on not being able to handle the cold here. He's obviously ignorant to the fact that the weather at the Heritage Classic game was extreme for us, as well.

Pronger had all the right in the world to ask for a trade. I'm not an Oiler fan, I'm actually the complete opposite (no, not a Flamer fan). Was very surprised when the Oil signed Pronger, as he is one of the most selfish hockey players in the game. I know someone on the Blues, and he said that the only person that liked Pronger, was Pronger. Told all my friends that Pronger was going to screw it up somehow. It was the one time I didn't mind saying, "I told you so."

Still think he's a selfish piece of poo, though and could have gone about this in an entirely different way.

[Deathsdoorstep]

Re: Sports Illustrated rips Pronger

At the risk of being thrown under a bus.........

I agree with some of Mike Brophy's points. I don't think he expressed all of them very well, but some if it did make sense.
Wanted to kick him in the nuts for his comments on not being able to handle the cold here. He's obviously ignorant to the fact that the weather at the Heritage Classic game was extreme for us, as well.

Pronger had all the right in the world to ask for a trade. I'm not an Oiler fan, I'm actually the complete opposite (no, not a Flamer fan). Was very surprised when the Oil signed Pronger, as he is one of the most selfish hockey players in the game. I know someone on the Blues, and he said that the only person that liked Pronger, was Pronger. Told all my friends that Pronger was going to screw it up somehow. It was the one time I didn't mind saying, "I told you so."

Still think he's a selfish piece of poo, though and could have gone about this in an entirely different way.

You, like Brophy, miss the point.

It wasn't so much that people were upset that he didn't want to play in Edmonton. It's that he leaked it to Strachan, fled the country, and never explained squat....all just days after the city was kicked in the junk by watching their team lose game 7 of the Cup final.

Now, there's no doubt that Pronger would have been made an enemy had he just said "I don't like it here", but at least that would have settled it, and there would have been no rumours or speculation or any of that chit.

Finally, Pronger was under contract for 4 more years. A contract he wanted, and signed less than a year before. So, no he didn't have any "right" to demand a trade.