Interview with Dupuis on the Sutton hit

Cari — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:03:01 -0000

Can anyone write a FanPost about anything? I've never tried this before...

But, I found some interesting comments by Pascal Dupuis about the Sutton hit and the aftermath. The comments, unfortunately, appear in a column by Ron Cook where he's making some point about how hockey players play through painful injuries "with no regard for their health" and it's so hardcore. But we'll ignore his opinions and look at the quotations. First, what Dupuis remembers about the injury:

"The first thing I remember was the ref saying, 'Stay down. It's pretty bad. The trainer and doctor are coming,' " he said. "I knew it was bad. My helmet was a bucketful of blood."

Dupuis also reveals that Max Talbot immediately called his wife to let her know that he was okay, and that Chris Kunitz gave him a ride home that night. He also says that his parents were watching the game when it happened. I can't imagine watching that hit happen to your son.

When he got home, Dupuis immediately wanted to watch the hit on the internet:

The first thing he did after showing his wife the doctor's stitch work was get on the Internet to see Sutton's hit. "I watched it from every angle," he said. "It was pretty bad."

It's a little strange to imagine Dupuis jumping onto the computer and typing "Dupuis" and "Sutton" into YouTube just like the fans. But, I'm starting to get the impression that the coaches and the players are a lot more plugged into online fan activity than they let on. For example, on an episode of the Dan Bylsma show, when they are talking about player nicknames, Bylsma says in passing "haha I saw that one on Pensblog." We know that Crosby can recite the standings and where he falls in the scoring race. And most of the players are young enough to be part of the plugged-in generation, and rich enough to buy fancy computers and laptops. It's human nature to be curious when people are talking about you. In fact, I bet Sidney Crosby will print out this post and tape it up in the locker room with a note, "Cari on Pensburgh finally figured out Fanposts."

Finally, from the same column, Jordan Staal made a comment that might get him in a bit of trouble:

As Penguins center Jordan Staal said the other day, "They'll replace you pretty quickly if you start complaining about injuries too much or missing too many games."

I'm sure he meant that the team expects players to come back as soon as they can. But, he implies that players might come back too soon because they are worried about their jobs. I'm not shocked that this happens or anything -- we all know that players feel pressure to play through injuries in sports -- but it's interesting that he said it to a reporter.

The full column is available here: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10025/1030894-87.stm

SB Nation User Blog: Cari

Interview with Dupuis on the Sutton hit