Ilya Samsonov didn’t go there with the back of a spoon on Saturday. Days before the expected matchup against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender called his team “Probably the best team in the league”.
“We have the best doctors, the best therapists, the best fitness specialists, the best coaches and we have the best players,” Samsonov continued.
Of course, the goalie didn’t promise a win against the Lightning, who reached the final in each of the past three seasons. But another first-round elimination for the Maple Leafs would relegate this outing to the ranks of ill-aged statements.
Because as Le Journal told you on Tuesday, recalling the time when Daniel Bouchard, then-Nordiques goalkeeping coach, said that a “fault” had been spotted in Patrick Roy’s game, there are statements that lash out at the squad …and others that have an annoying tendency to whip the opposing team.
Here are some other examples.
- Listen to Jean-François Baril’s sports report on QUB radio :
Jeremy Roenick: You don’t wake up the sleeping Roy
“I can’t hear what Jeremy is saying. I have both of my Stanley Cup rings plugging my ears. If that famous Patrick Roy quote still makes you smile today, Jeremy Roenick has the regret that seems to have awakened one of the greatest goalkeepers in history.
In 1995-96, the Avalanche and Blackhawks met in the second round of the playoffs. With two wins on each side, the teams are neck and neck. However, after the fourth game, Roenick believes he should have gotten a penalty at Roy’s expense as he was stopped by Sandis Ozolinsh when he was alone in front of the goalkeeper.
Roy hasn’t appeared on his plate since the beginning of the series. In Game 3 he gave up four times on 25 shots. But he counters that even if Roenick hadn’t been attacked by his defender, he would have parried at his expense.
” I love that [Patrick] saying he would have stopped me anyway. I would like to know where he was in the third game. Probably looking for his sporting support,” Roenick replies the next day, which will lead to the declaration of the Canadian’s former number 33.
Roenick’s response greatly upset Blackhawks captain Chris Chelios. “You just woke up the best player in the NHL! Couldn’t you have shut up? “Then heard him say Enrico Ciccone in the dressing room.
Chelios wasn’t wrong: the Avalanche won the next two games, then a few weeks later Roy had more Stanley Cup rings than ears.
Source: Podium
Dan Gilbert: Don’t spit on the Savior
Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert didn’t like it when LeBron James spoke about his intention to leave the team for the Heat in 2010. So, within hours of the superstar’s declaration, Gilbert wrote fans a strange letter to club supporters. Plus, with the Comic Sans MS font…
“I personally promise you that the Cleveland Cavaliers will win an NBA title before the self-proclaimed ‘King’ wins one,” the owner said in his letter.
Screenshot of Yahoo Sports!
This one, which remained on the team’s official website for four years, has aged poorly: James won two NBA championships in Miami in 2012 and 2013 before returning to Cleveland to offer the Cavaliers their first title in 2016.
Sources: Bleacher Report and Yahoo Sports
Mark Messier: Thing promised, thing due
It’s arguably the most famous big statement in National League playoff history. In 1994, the Rangers are at the back against the wall
3 to 2 in the conference finals between them and the Devils.
But their captain, Mark Messier, has seen others. Before Game 6, he assured Rangers fans, who had been waiting for the Stanley Cup since 1940, that their team would defeat the rivals.
“We know we have to win. We can win and we will,” he said.
The attacker then moves from words to actions. He scored a hat trick and racked up an assist in that game with no future. The Rangers then won the seventh game of the series, then the trophy, at the expense of the Canucks.
Source: NHL.com
Lance Armstrong: Less smart than he thought
Doping allegations were linked to the Lance Armstrong name for most of his career before the American was finally stripped of his seven titles as champion of the mythical Tour de France.
And Armstrong spent more than a decade shrugging it off, even going so far as to say in 2011, “If you try to hide something, you can’t get away with it for 10 years.” Nobody’s that smart. »
After all, the cyclist had something to hide and “got off lightly” for 14 years, because it was only in 2012 that all the rewards he had accumulated since 1998 were finally withdrawn.
Sources: Bleacher Report and The Guardian