Where the Tough Guys Are – Big Hockey Betting, Bigger Hockey Hits

Frank Doyle looks ahead to the weekend action, and thinks about just how tough you need to be to play hockey in the first place.

Washington is a red hot favorite tonight when Carolina visits the Verizon Center. Washington has been a disappointment during the season – people expected all guns blazing offense and that just wasn’t there during the year.

But now, with the playoffs in sight, Washington has woken up. The Caps have won six straight and people are taking notice again. Washington is a red hot home favorite in NHL betting tonight against Carolina. Washington has beaten Carolina in all four games this season, and tonight it looks an awful lot like it’ll be five.

Montreal travels to Pittsburgh on Saturday in a game that involves two teams that are second in their divisions, the Atlantic and Northeast respectively. Pittsburgh extended coach Dan Bylsma’s contract until the 2014, which is an indication of how well Pittsburgh is doing to be still in contention in the absence of both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

Montreal got shut down in St Louis by the Habs’ former goalie Jaroslav Halak last night, but the injury to Max Pacioretty earlier in the week is what really haunts the Habs. How could it not? If you’re a Bruin, it’s a hockey play, one those things that happen. It’s your guy with his head whacked off the turnbuckle, it’s a bush league cheap shop and time to call the cops.

While the debate was raging during the week, the always excellent hockey blogger Down Goes Brown tweeted a link to a You Tube video of hockey plays of the week from 1987 that feature two similar collisions. This is the video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycg97kKRV4s&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

The turnbuckle collisions similar to the Chara on Pacioretty incident this week are about one minute in to the video. The second is Dale Hunter mashing Joe Nieuwendyk against the turnbuckle in a game between Washington and Calgary, but the really frightening one is the first, when the Flyers’ Brad Marsh gets double-teamed against the boards and his head hits the turnbuckle as well.

Only thing is, Brad Marsh isn’t wearing a helmet.

Brad Marsh left the London Knights of the OHL to join the NHL in 1978, and if you joined the League before 1979 you didn’t have to wear a helmet if you didn’t want to. Marsh didn’t want to. How his head wasn’t smashed like a melon after that hit is hard to understand.

You can read more about the great Brad Marsh and his career on the Broad Street Bullies Blog. It takes tough guys to play hockey. Makes hockey betting seem easy in comparison.