Big Move of May 18th

Ben being a little too eager to play Wednesday night, which led to four minor penalties and two Vancouver goals. If you didn't pick up on it already, Ron Maclean is the guest writer for BMOD today. I don't know who should be blamed more for Eager's negative impact on the game for the San Jose Sharks, himself or his coach Todd Mclleland? It's pretty bad when a fourth liner costs your team a game in the regular season let alone the playoffs. The one person who can completely mitigate such a player from changing the outcome of the game is the head coach so I'll put the blame on Mclleland for this loss. I just can't see why he would trot this guy out after his first penalty and he really doesn't have any place on the ice except to get in the odd meaningless fight with the opposing team's equally worthless player. So why have him out in the third period at all? His hit on Sedin was unbelievably dirty and changed the momentum in the game as the Canucks answered back with a power play goal and stormed to 4 more unanswered. I still can't believe Eager only got two minutes for that hit and was not suspended, which only further highlights the NHL's double standard between regular season games and playoff games. If that were game 45 of the regular season Eager would get at least four games for that hit but somehow got nothing. No matter, I can't see him playing much more if Mclelland has any brains. I'm sure Eager will lobby his coach to let him in game 3 though and point to his outstanding meaningless goal in the third. He'd be best served to highlight that statistic instead of the 34 penalty minutes he's compiled over his last 30 minutes of ice time in the last two series combined. By the way, how ridiculous was Eager's trash talking over Luongo after he cut the Canucks' lead to four goals with five minutes left in the third period?!?!? Even his teammates appeared to be disinterested by his antics with a look on their faces that said 'here we go again...where did we find this guy again?'. In a way it reminded me of the scene in Super Troopers where Thorny rolls his eyes when he has to go fish his idiot partner Farva out of a meaningless fight with a teenage cashier at a fast food restaurant.