Bruce Boudreau Threw A Fit About Seth Jones Playing After Skipping NHL All Star Weekend Due To Sickness

Boudreau on Seth Jones playing tonight, after missing ASG with an illness: “I think it’s ridiculous. It’s wrong, and I don’t know how it can be justified. The rule states that if you miss the All-Star Game, that you miss the next game ... or you missed the previous game.”#CBJ

— Brian Hedger (@JacketsInsider) January 30, 2018

Boudreau says it’s “ridiculous and wrong” that the NHL is allowing #cbj’a Seth Jones to play tonight despite missing All-Star Game with the flu. He says rule is cut and dry, Toews had to miss game few yrs back bc of illness, and now there’s a “gray area forever and ever” #mnwild

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) January 30, 2018

Ridiculous and wrong. Quite the choice of words if you ask me. Unfortunately, it's readily apparent that old tomato face and I have wildly different ideas of situations that might best be encompassed by the combination of those two adjectives. You see, I tend to think "ridiculous and wrong" would be better suited for a grown ass man whining about the availability of an opponent that was asked - by the league - to stay home from a meaningless talent showcase so as to get healthy (which, wouldn't you know it, he did) and make sure others involved stayed that way. 

I get that the only benefit to the NHL's suspect statutes is that the semantics can be occasionally clung to in hopes of giving your team a slight competitive advantage, but it simply doesn't get more shameless than appealing to a rule that was clearly created as an empty threat. Seriously, will someone swaddle that fat, overgrown baby so he stops crying about how the sicknesses on teams other than his own are inconveniently timed as they pertain to his schedule? Even my brother wouldn't resort to this type of premature bellyaching, because - while he may be the worst loser on the planet - at least he waits until he actually loses to start bitching and moaning about the unfairness of common fucking sense. Bruce Boudreau is either the oldest prepubescent person on the planet or a future author of children's literature, because you have to be either 10 years old or a disciple of Dr. Seuss to use the phrase "forever and ever" - without even so much as a hint of sarcasm - as a closing argument.

Take away the spirit of the rule - which is quite obviously to stop the league's most talented players from taking a weekend long vacation from hockey instead of accepting the honor of representing the sport on one of it's biggest stages - and ignore the NHL's situational complicity in breaking said rule. Do you know what you are left with? The coach of a professional sports team whining that he has to prepare for the best possible version of his competition because he's made furious by a 23 year old, two-way defenseman recovering too quickly from an illness. That's like your neighbor coming over on Monday morning to desperately plead with you to keep little Johnny and his mild cough home from school for just one more day because it would give her son Billy a better shot at the lead role in the school play. 

I'm almost glad the Wild beat the Blue Jackets while they had Seth Jones in the lineup, because it makes their head coach look like even more of an infant for putting up such an outrageously diaper-disinegrating stink that it rivals the one he exudes hours after after taco night at the Boudreau household.