Milan Lucic sends handshake message that, while it's not cool to bully, it's okay to threaten to kill

    1 of 2 2 of 2

      Based on his on-ice performance on Wednesday night, one might legimately ask who really penned Not Cool to Bully in School. According to the cover, the book was written by Boston Bruins forward Milan Lucic, with help from Jon Goode and Cleon Daskalakis. Available for purchase at www.notcooltobully.com/, it encourages children to “Read and learn about his journey as a young hockey player that taught him the core values to let him follow his dreams.”

      Presumably, those core values include following long-established codes of conduct. Like (and I’m quoting @Steve_Dangle): “If testes are near give them a spear.”

      And, even more egregiously, using the handshake that comes after the final game of a series to act like a complete asshat.

      As those who watched the Montreal Canadiens defeat the Boston Bruins on Wednesday night are probably aware, Lucic isn’t exactly going to win the Jarome Iginla award for the classiest man in hockey. He is however a new frontrunner in the category of Man Most Likely to Unseat Brad Marchand as the Most Hated Man in Hockey.

      Unless you count flexing his muscles at Montreal’s P.K. Subban on the bench, and beating his chest like an enraged ape after scoring empy net goals, Lucic didn’t do much of anything in the series. He did plenty to get himself noticed in the postgame handshake.

      One of the most time-honoured traditions in hockey (and the strangest in professional sports), the handshake that comes at the end of a series is where players prove that they are indeed the gentlemen who arrive at the arena wearing suits, as opposed to the toothless knuckle-draggers you often see on the ice.

      It’s where, having just done horrible things to each other in a protracted war, players put down their weapons and congratulate each other for a battle well-waged. At the end of the Boston-Montreal series, you had Shawn Thornton wishing Subban well, despite the fact they’d spent the previous two weeks in a vicious back-alley brawl (this including Thorton being fined by the NHL for squirting water on Subban and visor from the bench in Game 5.)

      It was all good until you got to Lucic meeting Canadiens fourth-liner Dale Weise in the lineup. Weise managed to get under Lucic’s skin in the series, mocking the Bruins’ chest-beating routine after scoring a goal in Game 6, and aping his arm-flexing in scrums on the ice.

      The hockey code dictates that Lucic congratulate the better man for having won. Instead, he took the opportunity to look at Weise and utter what the Canadiens forward described later as disrespectful things. Lucic then reportedly uttered the same threat to Montreal’s defenceman Alexei Emelin.

      In a postgame locker-room interview, an agitated Lucic told reporters it was none of their business asking what he said, arguing that what happens on the ice stays on the ice.

      Weise also declined to get into specifics, but sports analysts and trained lip-readers have reported that his message was this: “I’m going to fucking kill you next year.”

      As he skated away from the Canadiens, Lucic reportedly then winked at the camera and said, “Don’t forget to pick up your copy of Not Cool to Bully in School”.

      Comments

      9 Comments

      CCC

      May 15, 2014 at 7:08pm

      Just start testing for HGH and steroids in the offseason. Will get rid of this mouth breather, more likely a maximum fine of $2,588.66.

      Bruins would do well to drop Lucic at the curb

      May 16, 2014 at 2:17pm

      There is some evidence that Milan Lucic is both a sociopath and stupid:

      (1) Sociopath -- see "Lance Armstrong"; these guys will never, ever be sincerely sorry for anything they ever do that contravenes societal norms. They will however, be sorry (and blame others) that they get caught, and work to make themselves out to be the 'victim'

      (2) Stupid -- this didn't 'leak' because Weise said something. Someone was ALWAYS going to zoom in the video on those two Lucic "grab and talks" with the two individuals he had run-ins with over the recent past (play-offs / regular season), being Weise and Emelin. Lucic is stupid if he thinks he can get into a multi-angle video’d handshake line, hold two (only) guys for a discussion, and have those two people be his run-in people (Weise and Emelin), and yet not expect multiple people to do a lip-reading investigation for their own interest and/or purposes.

      Note: someone ran lip-reading on Markov who appears to have told Lucic in line to "look the player in the eye" (when you shake hands). Neither Lucic nor Markov 'leaked' that.

      Eddie

      May 16, 2014 at 9:40pm

      Even Boston management pointed out that all he had to do was skip the hand shake ceremony if he felt too angry to act with class. So why did he do it. Why did he participate in the hand shake ceremony on the one hand and make threats on the other? For the same reason that he taunted Montreal players giving them motivation to work harder. He cares more about getting attention then he does about the welfare of his team. He is an attention seeker and as long as he keeps getting attention he doesn't care that his team was eliminated. That's why his play was so uninspired. That's why I like him. He distracts his own teammates.

      Alan Layton

      May 17, 2014 at 8:24am

      I think I understand now why he was punched out on Granville St last year. I have a feeling it wasn't as 'unprovoked' as he made it out to be.

      Norms = Slavery

      May 17, 2014 at 8:33am

      People who believe in constraining the best and brightest to "societal norms" believe in slavery. I'd rather live with free sociopaths than be enslaved to mediocrity.

      AC

      May 17, 2014 at 9:32am

      Lucic acted like a little baby. And so did Weise yapping about it. Don't know how old these characters are but time will bring them wisdom. At least Selanne was there to balance out this nonsense.

      Love

      May 17, 2014 at 9:50am

      I love this article. I'm now going to lose my playoff hockey pool seeing as Montreal is killing it, but it's totally worth the $20 entry fee to see Beantown go down in flames. Suck it Boston.

      germs

      May 17, 2014 at 2:30pm

      Asshat is not a funny word nor a legit insult. I hope the person that invented it gets speared in the balls. And this whole Lucic story has been beaten to death.