Zed's not dead, baby

Did you hear about what happened to Richard Zednik on Sunday night?

Watch it here.

That is crazy nutso. I am so glad he didn't die, and that it looks like he'll be able to play again. My first impression of Zednik when he started playing for the Panthers this season was, "Wow, maybe he can energize the scoring lines on this team and seriously make a positive contribution." That quickly changed to "Wow, this guy is kind of a spaz, and he can't seem to find the net - he keeps trying the same dumb play over and over again, even when it clearly isn't working. Why, exactly, did we pick him up, again?" But apparently he'd gotten his shit together in the past couple weeks - he even had a hat trick in one game recently. He finally found his groove, yay!

And now this happens. Like the Panthers don't have enough problems already. They actually had a shot at winning the division, had they managed to keep playing like they'd been doing lately. Now, I think we're pretty well fucked. Oh well - that's nothing new for this team.

A couple more things: I love that Zednik's doctor described his artery as "beautiful". :) And the incident has also prompted some discussion about how much protection NHL players should wear (specifically, whether neck guards should be made mandatory). I can understand both sides of the argument. More protection is, in general, a desirable thing; but you can't prevent every freak accident, especially in a contact sport like hockey. While I'm glad that helmets are mandatory (and I think visors are becoming so, being phased in for all new players and optional for older players, as helmets first were - tho' I can't find anything to back that up right now), I'm OK with leaving neck guards optional for now. I don't really know how neck guards work, but I can imagine they'd be cumbersome in a way that helmets and visors really aren't. And neck injuries like this are way more rare than blows to the head in this sport. It'll be interesting to see if Zednik starts wearing one when he comes back. I do wish the NHL would make players wear their helmets properly, tho' - a guy getting his helmet knocked clear off his head should be a much more unlikely occurrence than it actually is. Ah well - the smart ones are already wearing their equipment properly and opting for the extra protection. The ones that don't, well, I guess they know the risks.

In other hockey news, I can't believe the 'Canes traded Mike Commodore and Cory Stillman to Ottawa. Man, I will so miss having Mike Commodore on the Hurricanes, but at least they traded him to another team I like and not someone horrifying like the Thrashers. And this blog pretty succinctly sums up what's wrong with the Lightning now, alas. Oh, yeah, I never did mention here, did I? This Tampa travel guide site contacted me on Flickr for permission to use one of my Lightning pics on their site. I get a photo credit and a link to my Flickr page and everything! (It did not seem to bother them that the picture was not actually taken in Tampa at all.) (Nor did the poor photo quality bother them - they use a really tiny size of the pic, so it doesn't really matter.) Woohoo! It seems like a decent site, so if you're planning a trip to Tampa anytime soon...