Don Cherry
Former NHL and AHL hockey player and a former NHL coach.
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The thing that makes me laugh about this whole thing, is our Fair Play Commission and our Penalty Commission they never...that’s violence, everybody asks me about violence. That’s violence, that’s career-ending. That should be put out of...but don’t worry about it. His [Samuelsson’s] day is coming. But the people I feel sorry for with Ulf Samuelsson are the referees. Last week, we’re not going to show it, [Mike] Gartner gave him a little tap, he falls down, he lets on he’s hurt, he gets a five-minute major and he plays the power play. I know for a fact, not them, that when he suckers in the referees, when he suckers them in, he goes to the bench – he goes to the bench and he winks and he laughs. Big deal! Listen, I’m so glad that he signed a three-year contract in the National Hockey League. His day is coming folks! It’s only a matter of time and I want to know who’s going to be the hero.
Cherry: You know, I’ve been home now for 24 hours. I must’ve been asked 9,000 times about that incident, we don’t have it [the footage], but I want to talk about it. Figure it out: Here’s a guy who gets eight stitches, eight stitches in his chin. What happened? Who did it? Nobody knows, ok? Nobody knows, ok, so here’s what happens. The referee calls the guy over and he says ‘Did you see what happened?’, ‘Whoaa, not my side’ ‘Did you see what happened?’ ‘Well wait a minute if I tell you, that means five-minute major.’ If the linesman says five-minute major...
Cherry: …Yeah he’s gone anyhow, going into overtime. Gretzky, verge of elimination. So, what do we do? They say ‘What do we do? How about he [Doug Gilmour] gets hit with the puck? He gets hit with the puck, he’s laying on the [sic]'. The only way he’d get hit with the puck is if his chin was on the ice. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say about that. [Gretzky] gets the overtime winner and that’s wrong as far as I’m concerned. Andreychuk got a five-minute major, he [Gretzky] should’ve got something! At least a slap on the wrist or a dirty look!
Ron MacLean: No, no, it could be a four-minute penalty...
You can call it a cheap shot, blind shot, a late hit; you can call it what you want and it should’ve been a suspension as far as I’m concerned. It’s unbelievable that it’s not a suspension. What it did, it gave meat to everybody that’s against the National Hockey League—this’ll be the poster boy…[while showing clips of controversial hits by Cooke over the years] You think he’d do this stuff against [Wayne] Gretzky, if [Dave] Semenko was there? Do you think he’d do this against [Steve] Yzerman if [Bob] Probert was there? No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you, he wouldn’t do that stuff.
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