What is this BS about choosing principle over friendship? People can disagree about a variety of topics and have events happen that forever change lives, yet still maintain a friendship.
Even the people who are most against what Cherry said can probably see that it wasn't the worst transgression ever. He may have crossed the line and framed his thoughts in poor taste but there wasn't a slur involved, there wasn't a physical or verbal altercation.
This was an 85 year old man who is passionate and has talked about the lack of poppy's on people before, this time he did single out some people as well but I don't think it was meant to cause the storm it did. This wasn't a hate fueled speech or anything, he was talking about several different things at once and in typical Cherry fashion, mixed everything into the bowl together and the end result wasn't very good.
In all the interviews Cherry has talked about how he is hurt and how Ron is still a friend and now we have Ron saying he choose principle over friendship. This whole thing stinks and Ron isn't doing a great job in my opinion. He pretty much summed it up as
1) Ron didn't see the trouble coming and for that he is sorry (Debatable but fair point)
2) He doesn't agree with what was said and felt the need to apologize needed to happen because of the uproar (fair point)
3) Don wasn't going to apologize despite needing to in order to keep the show and his job. Don choose on path and he choose another (fair point)
What I do think Ron should have said is that Cherry is an honest man, says what he means and cares passionately about hockey, children charities, the troops, the military, first responders etc etc.
We literally have decades of tapes and video of this man who has a big heart and has done a ton of great things in this world and countless tributes. He's honored people sometimes better than their government or their own teams or affiliation. He could have told what the vast majority of viewers have seen for years before their eyes.
Instead we get this about him being more principled, apologizing for in essence not referring the last show better, apologizing for not returning media calls and wondering out loud where Don is when he normally picks up the phone.
Great last " We honor Don Cherry on this last Coaches Corner" ohhh, and we love you.
Poor all around in my opinion.
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