Why do I love the feature from the PGA called “Shots of the Week” so much? Because you know what’s coming beforehand, and that only sets the tension bar higher. You see the predicament (or just the golfer far away in the fairway), you hear the announcers in their normal golf-bored tones, and then… IT’S IN!
Of course it’s in. Otherwise it wouldn’t be on Shots of the Week. So here’s this week’s including a bunker save by Billy Mayfair out of what looks like a 15-foot divot that’s filled with sand. Remember: you can’t golf like this, so just watch.
If you’ve been watching the NHL playoffs you might have noticed that the guys in the league seem hell bent on knocking each other into oblivion, and not in necessarily “legal” ways. While I’m not going to show any of the numerous cheap shots I will embed one that I (as a Blackhawks fan, so loyaties obvious here) didn’t think was a cheap shot — the Andrew Shaw/Mike Smith collision.
From all the angles it looks like to me that Shaw was going for the puck, and Smith lifted his head into Shaw’s as Shaw circled behind the net. The head to head shot looked bad (and Smith perhaps added some drama — I mean, the guy never came out of the game so how bad was it?) but I don’t think Shaw was trying to do anything bad. You can tell by his reaction immediately afterward — he throws his hands up as if to say, what can I do when a guy moves his head into mine?
But the bottom line — the acting job worked, the Hawks got a 5-minute major and Phoenix scored the winning goal on the power play. You be the judge: Accidental or deliberate?
UPDATE: The NHL suspended Shaw for three games, which I think is a ridiculous penalty. You can say he didn’t try hard enough not to hit Smith, but you can also say Smith did a pretty good soccer-flopping act. Shaw just isn’t going fast enough to warrant Smith’s tragic spin (and the guy didn’t miss a second of play), and he barely clips the bottom of Smith’s mask. Here’s the NHL’s weirdly produced video statement.
