Two Jerks, One Desk: The Beatings Will Continue Until Intelligence Starts


Well, this pissed me off last night:

This pathetic display was shown after the Dallas Stars shootout loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins Wednesday night on the NBC Sports Network.  It’s is what passes or hockey talk in America these days, Jeremy Roenick and Mike Milbury yelling over each other for five minutes.  Ridiculous.

Jeremy Roenick isn’t much of a broadcaster.  He is unpolished, and brought on because he has a personality and a mouth.  He needs to wait his turn, which is what starts the issue.  Mind you, Milbury was going on and on, and it was questionable if Roenick was even going to get a turn.

The main argument was whether or not the point of contact was with the head or the chest.  This is enough to get this angry about?  At the 1:40 mark of the video (and at this point, I can’t believe there is still two and a half minutes left of this), Milbury watches the replay, and you can hear him start to soften his view on the point of contact, but then gets rankled by JR to the point that he isn’t going to back down.  None of this is shocking, but the fact that it lasted this long is amazing to me.

And the saddest part is Mike Milbury telling Roenick that he needs to leave, and it’s the last time he will be on the show.  Perhaps Milbury has that kind of power and will choose to exercise it.  But doing so on the air is a pathetic move.  He was obviously tired of the debate (as were the rest of us), but commenting on someone’s job like should have no place in front of other people.  Not that Milbury cares about what kind of image he projects.  And in the end, I hope that he is right.  I hope Roenick doesn’t come back to the show, if only so we don’t get these two guys in the same room again.  Who would have thought we would be appreciate Pierre McGuire next to Mike Milbury as an alternative?  That’s desperation.

We don’t need this.  Every conversation about hockey doesn’t have to be an enlightening experience.  Every moment doesn’t have to be about ‘selling the game.’  And as proven multiple times, it doesn’t have to necessarily be smart.  But it should at least be a conversation, or a debate.  Or intelligible.  If two particle physicists were yelling at each other like this, they would still be acting like jerks and babies, even if they were smart jerks and babies.

Hockey post game shows don’t need to be like reality TV.  They don’t need to be about yelling and being tough guys.  Excitement, sure.  But this isn’t excitement.  It’s just sad.  We deserve better than this.  And there is a better way, folks.


One response to “Two Jerks, One Desk: The Beatings Will Continue Until Intelligence Starts”

  1. What a great article and opinion. I missed this on tv, so thanks. I would say this, I don’t mind some of the rawness of this display between Roenick and Milbury. I hope they can figure out a better way to debate – lay down some ground rules for the future b/c there is a very interesting rapport here between all of them. Roenick is raw and needs some work. But let’s seem them show their “good characters” and continue to work together. I don’t think a good, strong working relationship is irretrievable.