Cherry was right

Most NHL players who wear visors are indeed European or French, just as Cherry said on Coach's Corner last week:

Don Cherry was right when he claimed mostly French-Canadian and European NHL players wear hockey visors, says a Winnipeg lawyer who crunched the numbers.

Curtis Unfried told Newsworld on Wednesday that his investigation of data showed 59 per cent of European players wear visors, followed by 55 per cent of French-Canadian players.

Among North American players born outside of Quebec, only 20 per cent wear face shields to guard against injury.

"At the end of the day, when you boil it down to [Cherry's] one particular sound bite…, the numbers speak for themselves and clearly show what he did say is correct," Unfried said.

My own thoughts on this nonsense are simple: if it's okay for Rick Mercer to call Americans down to the dirt on CBC, what's wrong with Cherry saying uncomplimentary things about Europeans or Quebeckers? I don't think anyone can make a case that the Swedish are a disadvantaged group in this country, and while the sales clerk at Eaton's may have refused to speak French in 1960, the Quebecois really haven't done too badly these past few decades. (Oops! Did I say that?)

And you can't tell me "anglos" aren't regularly subjected to derogatory remarks on SRC, either.

Posted by damian at February 11, 2004 05:07 PM