Well, it was bound to happen eventually. The secret society of old, decrepit members of hockey media recently had a meeting and decided that Don Cherry would be the latest ancient asswipe to drone on about the Carolina Hurricanes and the team’s postgame celebrations. For those unaware, one of the most easily-forgotten teams in the NHL decided this season to start celebrating their home wins with a rendition of the famous Iceland viking clap and a choreographed celebration of some sort immediately afterwards. It’s usually a lot of fun. The fans love it, the players love it, and the celebrations keep getting more and more creative.
But Cherry was having none of that on Saturday and vomited out some diatribe about this not being the “right way” to enjoy the game of hockey.
If that sounded like he spent most of the time babbling incoherently, it’s because he most certainly was. Here’s my attempt at transcribing some of that drivel:
Alright, now listen, listenlisten: This is the National Hockey League. Brind’Amour is a good coach he pla- These guys, to me, are jerks. You have to do this the nas- They’re still not drawing. This is, to me, and I’ll tell you one thing, they better not do this in the playoffs. What I don’t understand is Brind’Amour is a straight shooter, he always was. This is a joke! The rest of the guys, “young men, expressing themselves, for joy of winning” you don’t do this thinginthe nat-this is professional hockey! What are these guys, jerks or something? And I tell you one thing: they do this in the playoffs, making fun of the other team they’re not...
[a merciful Ron MacLean interrupts]
The Hurricanes, for their part, responded well to the rant on Twitter. They hatched up an “Old Man Yells At Cloud” image, they changed the account’s bio to “the bunch of jerks with fun celebrations,” and, best of all, they used one of Cherry’s dumb arguments against him:
It’s not that it’s a surprise that people are still arguing about something so trivial ruining the “sanctity” of this sport, it’s just irritating that someone with a brain as melted as Don Cherry’s is getting a lot of money to go on TV to give his bullshit opinion on it. Let people have fun watching hockey, you joyless bastard.