Sunday, March 6, 2011

Rich Preston: "Loses His Temper"

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Last night's game between Lethbridge and Kelowna was highlighted by a 3rd period incident centering around 'Canes head coach Rich Preston. The play-by-play voices from both teams have done a great job of painting the picture on their blogs so instead of me recapping the scene, here is the Lethbridge and Kelowna perspectives.

The video of the incident has now made its way to YouTube. That and my thoughts after the jump...




I don't think I've ever seen a coach lose his mind but not lose his control like that. That right there is a tirade that would make Gandhi proud. Preston, clearly upset by the disallowed goal is on one hand littering the ice with whatever he can find but is doing so as he takes a leisurely stroll up and down the bench with his hands in his pockets!

We've all seen the classic animated coach explosions made famous by guys like Pat Burns, Michel Bergeron and Don Cherry. By comparison, this was more like a peaceful demonstration as opposed to a riot on the bench.

Like Regan Bartel speculated, I'm sure there will be fines but I think Preston deserves a little credit for keeping his composure. By the sounds of it, any coach would have been pissed off by what happened in this situation so I actually tip my hat to him.

2 comments:

Dean Millard said...

wow....could there be worse coverage of this? Why would you be on the goalies or the Rockets bench while Preston is going nuts??? Keep every camera on Preston during this...would you pan to the crowd during a line brawl???

I am impressed by his passive aggressive rant though.

Guy Flaming said...

I've guessing we were watching the feed that would be on the scoreboard so maybe it was intentionally not focused on the bench.

Still dumb.