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Thread: WHL -- still intense or soft like the OHL?

  1. #1

    Default WHL -- still intense or soft like the OHL?

    It's been a long time since I've been a regular in WHL arenas, but I spent a lot of my life in various junior hockey rinks. I'm out in Ontario now and completely dismayed at the state of the OHL. It's run with an iron fist from Dave Branch -- suspensions galore, match penalties on clean hits (more than once), phantom penalties abound, and the result is a lack of intensity and physical play. The league is an incubator for high end talent who are (over)protected at all costs. Muckers and grinders need not apply.

    It's not like I remember. Intense, do anything to win playoff games, are replaced by players who don't mind losing as they might get in a few AHL games. Players don't look like they're having fun. And they're justifiably scared to hit, lest they get a very lengthy suspension.

    My question is..does any of this sound familiar in the WHL, or is the game still the same entertaining, intense game it's always been?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
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    I have a friend in Ontario who says the same thing about the OHL here is a clip of 1 of the dirtiest hits i have seen in the WHL in a few years & it only got a 12 game suspension. I bet my arse that in the OHL Brendan Shinnimin would of got anywhere from 40 games to the whole season.


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27ymvQ_5s2Y


    I find the WHL still wants the rough & tough style of game as it has always been played in the Western League. There needs to be a line drawn though forsure. I still think 12 games was abit light of a suspension i thought 20 to 25 games would of been a fair suspension.

  3. #3

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    Yeah, I saw that hit. Not a good hit. See, the Liambas hit on Fanelli....I was there and I've seen it at least 100 times. I believe it was clean, and Beanch even said so in handing down the suspension. It wasn't a head shot, not from behind in my opinion, and he glided in and stayed on his feet -- not a charge.

    Yet the worse suspension, IMO, was when Zac Rinaldo of Barrie got suspended 12 games in the playoffs. He hit Sudbury's Foligno in the first round on a hit that would have been clean, except the puck hopped over Foligno's stick, making it interference as he never quite touched the puck. Foligno took about 30 seconds to get up, then played the ensuing power play. The call was a match penalty. Seriously. Then Branch, instead of overturning it as he should have, makes it a 12 game playoff suspension!! Not regular season, but 12 playoff games!! Barrie had a good, physical team with several guys bound for the NHL (Burmistrov, Brodie, and Clifford have already this year). The team quit hitting the rest of the playoffs -- why risk a suspension if you're set for the NHL once you get out of Branch's league?

    I also saw a match penalty dished out on a completely clean check with no injury two weeks ago. It was called a slew foot, saw the replay 25 times, couldn't even stretch the truth to make it a slew foot. Then there's Jordan Nolan, who got a 20 game suspension for punching too hard in a fight.

    I miss the WHL......

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