Wake Up Seguin

I'd say its about time for me to take off my stirrups and cleats and lace up some skates and grab a stick. Well that didn't entirely come off exactly how I wanted it to. So I'll just say I'm going to talk about hockey for a smidge. Work for you? Let's go.

The future of the Boston Bruins, Tyler Seguin, was recently a healthy scratch for missing a team meeting. More specifically he had a 3 hour window to make an appearance at a brunch. Not an 8 o'clock wake up call after getting into Winnipeg in the wee hours of the morning, but 11 o'clock.

When Seguin was asked about the incident he made some asinine notion about his clock was set on "Boston time" not Winnipeg's. Well that's all well and good, except for the fact that Boston time is an hour ahead of Winnipeg's which would mean if you had an alarm you would have been up an hour before you had to be somewhere. Jeez man, if you're going to lie, come up with something a little bit more difficult to find out than my daily glance of the time charts around the world.

There are three things that could have possibly deterred him from being at this meeting and only two of which I will give him a pass for.

1) Alcohol- Legally he can drink in Canada. I'm sure he drinks his fair share in the US, but he is of no consequence to knocking a few LaBatt Blue's up on America's Hat. I will give him a pass because he is 19, if any 19 year old is reading this and is abstaining from alcohol, you are a far better man than I.

Speaking of abstaining...

2) Women- Look we all have our vices, it's tough being a 19 year old stud-muffin (spoken from experience, of course). If he has a little nookie lined up for himself after they touch down at 2AM good for him. Get after it. But what kind of "performance enhancer's" is this guy on if he can't get to the team hotel between 11AM and 1PM. This is worthy of another pass in my book.

3) Teammates- Let's say on the off chance he actually was in the hotel (not likely). His roommate for this trip was Jordan Caron. Theoretically he could have woke him up to go down to the meeting but that didn't happen. Which leads me to believe if this were the case that his teammates are not too fond of him and/or his antics, and decided he needed to pay the price.

For all of you saying, "We were in the middle of an amazing win-streak, what's Julien doing taking the leading scorer out of there." He's doing exactly what a good coach/mentor does. When a player/student gets out of line no matter how good that player is you need to teach him a lesson. Seguin has been a habitual offender, per Julien, and everyone needs to play by the same set of rules.

The Bruins lost, their first regulation loss in over a month. But Seguin no doubt could have helped the Bruins in that game and he knows it. The hardest thing for a player to do that loves playing their sport is to be told they can't play, especially when they are physically ready.

Ultimately, this can/should be a non-issue. Much like when Larry Bird was busted for drinking his rookie year as a Celtic, it ended up being a small misstep and Bird became synonymous with winning and the cornerstone of a dynasty. Wake up, Seguin. You have the skillset of a transcendent player, let's hope you have the mental makeup as well.

Stay Tuned

Norton