Cheers and Jeers – June 8th

The Good and the Bad of this past week.

It’s Friday. So we close out the "Week That Was" with our latest volume of… "Cheers and Jeers!"

This week, I keep it close to home with some cheers and jeers to my boys from Maple Ridge and CanucksArmy.

JEERS to Roberto Luongo @strombone1 for a major gaffe last night, one for which required several apologies. In a small back and forth with Province blogger SteveintheKT, strombone said that "pumping ur own tires is gay" as in stupid/dumb (I’d link to the tweet, but immediately and sensibly deleted it). While obviously not meant to be malicious, it really was quite an idiotic ting to say, given his position as a public figure and well-known athlete. He immediately apologized publicly and even DM’d a few folks with personal apologies. That’s the correct way to atone for a major mistake.

CHEERS to Harrison Mooney for the Canucks blogging "get" of the year for his interview with Roberto Luongo @strombone1. Mooney asked the Canucks goaltender Twitter funnyman a series of questions via DM and posted the exceptional interview on Pass It To Bulis yesterday, which was a major coup for PITB and Mooney. Kudos, man. Amazing stuff.

JEERS to the truly bizarre ending to Game 3 of Calder Cup final involving the Toronto Marlies and the Norfolk Admirals. The Admirals’ Mike Kostka fired the puck in to the Marlies zone while one of his teammates was in an offside position. Marlies goalie Ben Scrivens, sensing that he had time to safely play the puck, went to the back boards to control the puck for his defenceman. However, the puck took an inexplicable deflection of a stanchion and rolled awkwardly into the Marlies open net. Yeah… and it was in overtime so that was the game-winning goal. The problem is not that the goal went in. The problem is that the goal should never have counted since the Admirals player was offside when the puck was shot in. And the AHL has admitted that the goal shouldn’t have counted, but that they cannot reverse the decision based on their own rules. It was a truly heartbreaking way for the Marlies to lose that game, and are now down 3-0 to the Admirals in the final series.

CHEERS to Dallas Eakins, head coach of the Marlies, for unbelievable poise and calm in reacting post-game to the goal. Sure, we would all love the theater if Eakins went completely ballistic. It would be wildly entertaining and would be shown on YouTube for years to come. But Eakins earns a massive kudos for taking the highest of high roads, especially based on his comments today via twitter, where he stated, "Never forget that @TheAHL is a developmental league for the referees as well. Players and coaches have made mistakes. We all move on." Well done, Mr. Eakins.

JEERS to Charlie Sheen for being an idiot. Like several celebrities, he made his way to the Kings/Devils game on Wednesday, because, y’know, it’s the scene, man. Anyway, the dummy goes outside for a smoke, not understanding or knowing that there are no in/out privileges at Staples Center. Of course, the Staples Center employees, doing their job as they should, prevented the wastoid dweebie dickhead went nuts and started yelling at everybody because he supposed to be allowed to break the rules. I do not adore you. I do not think you are a righteous dude. No, Carlos Esteves, I think you’re a complete dummy.

CHEERS to Metta World Peace (formerly known as Ron Artest) for his love for Vancouver *AND* his spin as Vancouver meteorologist on CTV news. MWP has been in Vancouver for several days now, and has been extoling the virtues of our fair city, despite the horrific weather we’ve been suffering lately. In fact, MWP is all in favour of the dreary conditions, because, he’s all about the trees and earth and stuff. Please he’s taken to twitter to invite fans to dinner with him. I’ve gone on record as not being a basketball fan, but given his love for Lotus Land and his turn on the local news, I’m now a fan of Metta World Peace.

JEERS to CanucksArmy’s own Thomas Drance for proliferating a fake tweet! GASP! Our very own fact checker and stickler for correctness got duped by bad facts! Earlier this week, Papa Army found a screenshot of a Chris Brown tweet where the famous singer/misogynistic-woman-hater picked a fight with Cher and warned her that she needed a slap. The only problem was… it wasn’t real. It was generated using a fake tweet generator. Thomas’s tweet was then re-sent by a WHOLE LOT of folks, including Bruce Arthur, prompting Arthur to go on a tirade about Brown and #teambreezy. Tsk, tsk, Thomas.

CHEERS to CanucksArmy’s own Cam Charron for his new role as the leader of LeafsNation, our Leafs counterparts on the Nation Network. Cam recently relocated to Toronto and is now set to bring LeafsNation to the forefront of the stats-based blog world, much like he helped do here at CanucksArmy. We are proud. We would be even more proud if Cam didn’t already have 900 other blogging jobs too.