Standing at 5’11”, 190 pounds, Vancouver Canuck Rick Rypien is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the NHL. The hilarity of there being such a thing as a "best pound-for-pound fighter" in a hockey league aside, nobody in hockey has as much disregard for his body as The Ripper.
He’ll take on anybody... hype him up with enough Red Bull before a Boston Bruins game and he may just fly up (it gives you wings, you know) to meet the monster that is the 6’9” Zdeno Chara eye-to-eye in the hopes of getting him to go toe-to-toe with him. After all, what’s five minutes in the penalty box if the other team’s best player is off as well?
Taking into account this fact, he still made a huge mistake on Tuesday night when he opted to take on a Minnesota Wild fan. After earning a 10-minute misconduct, Rypien, seemingly unprovoked, went after a fan in the stands on his way to his team’s dressing room.
Now, Rypien was clearly in a foul mood. His team was in the midst of losing to the woeful Wild by a score of 5-1 (the final score ended up being 6-2), goalie Roberto Luongo apparently got caught up in thinking he was in Vancouver and interpreted all the applause as a sure sign that his deathly accurate impression of a sieve was being enjoyed by all and, to top it all off, Rypien’s inability to get anything going for his team was compounded by his inability to get free of the weakling referees holding him back from the Wild’s Brad Staubitz. However, none of that is an excuse to go after a fan. If anything, it’s one to go after Luongo between periods (how the phrase “chase the goalie” came to be).
Really, there is no excuse to go after a fan, period. Even if the fan is yelling “Yo Momma” jokes all evening long, you just take it for three periods... and then wait for him in the parking lot. Considering all this fan did was clap his hands at a Canucks player getting sent to the dressing room, not even that is necessary. No one’s honour is on the line there, least of all that of your mother, Ripper. But after your made yourself look like an idiot on television for all the world to see, she did apparently raise a fool (please don’t meet me in any parking lot; I’m sorry).
Rypien got suspended indefinitely on Wednesday, and for good reason. The league can’t have the safety of fans needlessly put at risk, or the legal ramifications would be insurmountable. Just think back to when Mats Sundin was suspended one game for throwing his stick into the crowd back in 2004. And just for giving one lucky fan a souvenir. Imagine what’s in store for Rypien for trying to give a not-so-lucky one a knuckle sandwich.
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