from Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Sun-Times,
The Blackhawks have been lauded for building their organization on speed and skill, rather than brawn and bruising hits, but hockey, at last glance, is still hockey. Thus, Jordin Tootoo.
The Hawks have signed the tough guy to a one-year contract. Tootoo isn’t Andrew Shaw, the on-ice antagonist whom the Hawks shipped to Montreal in a salary cap move. He lacks Shaw’s offensive productivity. But where Shaw was a nuisance, Tootoo is a menace. He’s a fighter, having dropped the gloves 86 times in his career and amassed 982 penalty minutes.
Hockey is probably the only sport in which penalties are looked upon positively, at least as they pertain to enforcers. General managers take notice when a minor-league player leads the team or league in penalty minutes. It means he’s fighting. It means he’s sticking up for his teammates.
To many of you, it means that hockey is one messed-up sport.
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