Цитата:
Q: Tell me I was hearing things, that there weren't actually boos for Sidney Crosby during the Olympics introduction at the beginning of the game (Tuesday). What a joke. OK, don't cheer, but how do you boo? This guy has done nothing but worked his butt off for Pittsburgh, the Penguins and himself. Led a team to a Stanley Cup as the youngest captain ever. That booing should (result in) an immediate removal from the arena for an idiotic move like that.
Clint Rauscher, Cambridge Springs, Pa.
MOLINARI: Tossing people out of the arena for booing Crosby obviously would have been way, way, way over the top, but the reaction of some people in the crowd -- whether they were jeering Crosby himself or just the replay of his Olympics-clinching goal being shown on the arena scoreboard -- really was unnecessary. And, in a lot of ways, disappointing.
As you noted, if fans didn't want to applaud Crosby's achievement, that was their right, but they could have simply sat out their hands. Or, better yet, stuffed them into their mouths.
And people shouldn't blame the Penguins for this. What were they supposed to do, ignore one of the great moments in the career of the guy who is the cornerstone of their franchise and the driving force behind the revival that produced a Stanley Cup in just his fourth year in the league? Should they only have acknowledged those players who played for the U.S. at the Games, because that's the team that the vast majority of their fans wanted to finish first?
The Mellon Arena crowd did itself proud by the way it put aside normal rooting interests and applauded Buffalo goalie Ryan Miller, who was so brilliant in leading Team USA to the silver medal. Some of those same fans, however, did a complete reversal when they jeered Crosby and/or the replay a few seconds later.
It's completely understandable that U.S. fans didn't want Canada to win the gold-medal game, regardless of whether Crosby got the goal that decided it or not. But booing him two days after the fact wasn't going to change the outcome, and even if they didn't want to celebrate what he did, it shouldn't have been too much to expect that they not do anything to detract from it.
Отбуууукали Кроса, в общем.
