Even though next season will see the Chicago Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks only play each other twice, their rivalry still continues to burn hot. Their next tilt will not take place until January 31st, but that did not stop center Dave Bolland from throwing a couple of jabs at the Canucks’ Swedish tandem of Daniel and Henrik Sedin.
In an interview with David Kaplan of WGN Radio in Chicago, Bolland referred to the twins as the “Sedin sisters”, and had some strong words on whether he would want them on the Hawks:
“Well, they’ll never become Hawks. I don’t think we’d let them on our team. We’d be sure not to let them on our team. And yeah, they probably still would be sisters. I think they might sleep in bunk beds. The older one has the bottom one, and the younger one is on top.”
Bolland also went on to say that he hates everyone on the Canucks, and he talked about his desire to stay close to his hotel room when the team travels to Vancouver, not to avoid having shirtless pictures taken of him, but instead because “there’s a lot of weirdos there. You don’t want to be out there too long.”
Of course, these comments are made with Bolland’s tongue firmly in his cheek, but Canucks head coach Alain Vigneault didn’t take too kindly to the swipes that “The Rat” took at his players. He told TSN “Dave Bolland has an IQ the size of a bird seed and a face only a mother can love.”
Aside from the fact that AV felt it was in his best interest to comment on these silly statements by Bolland, there are a couple of things that have to be kept in mind here. The first, of course, is that all of these comments by Bolland were made in a radio interview that saw him repeatedly egged on by Kaplan, and the other is that Bolland’s tone was clearly one of sarcasm, so the comments shouldn’t be read that deeply into.
The sarcasm and the setting have to be kept in mind, but if you want to dig a little deeper, Greg Wyshynski has you covered. In his piece for Yahoo’s Puck Daddy, Greg had this to say:
“And that’s the only point we’ll make about these otherwise harmless comments by Bolland about the Sedins: They’re lazy…..
Personally, the bigger news here is that a member of the Chicago Blackhawks would “be sure not to let” two of the NHL’s leading scorers on their team. Now why is that?”
Examining that blurb from the piece, Wyshynski does nail it on the head when he suggests that Bolland would be crazy to not really want the Sedins on the Hawks. Obviously their offensive talent would fit well in just about any market in this league, and there is a reason that the Canucks made it a point to sign them to huge extensions a few seasons ago.
The opening paragraph there is a more intriguing one. It seems as though Wysh is throwing down the gauntlet for Bolland to step up his taunting game, and that is a welcome challenge for Hawks fans. Will Bolland respond? Only time will tell, but one thing is for certain: there’s nothing wrong with a little old fashioned trash talking in this sanitized age of the NHL.