I feel like there is bias for sure. I think a lot of people fail to see the other end of the spectrum. If Kassian laid out someone on our team twice in what is a legal however blatantly obvious targeted hit and didn’t answer the bell we would be clowning on him.
You don’t have to answer for legal hits. But if your going to target a guy and go out of your way to lay him out you should expect to drop the mitts. And at the least when his gloves are off and punches are coming to defend yourself.
Did I personally lose respect for Tkachuk? Nope. He knew what he was doing and he knew he’d get mocked for turtling and I’d imagine he was hoping the result would be the penalties that Kassian wound up getting or more. But I can’t help but wish that he’d of whooped Kassians ass instead either.
And on a whole other note, man am I pumped that Kassian is back for the next BOA. Either way you look at this, it’s an awesome time to be a fan of either team with gasoline poured right back all over this rivalry again. A lot of the games in the past couple years haven’t felt they used too even a decade ago. So I for one welcome all of this as a fan
.