Don Cherry Swings At Nail Yakupov And Hits Himself Square In The Face

Full Transcript Below:

Don Cherry – And hey listen, if any time you want to make our highlights at the start just act like an idiot like this, you’ll get on our highlights. Okay. Now look at this, look at this. He puts it in and I want you to watch what happens after to Quick. Look he lays down, watch this, you’ve seen it one hundred times, I’m not going to talk over it. Now go back to, here’s the MVP of the National Hockey league, here’s the guy, the best goaltender in the world. He’s embarrassed him. Laying there like that.

I am telling you the, LA, is gonna remember this, LA is going to remember this till the dying day that you don’t do stuff like that. And you know, everybody says to me "Yeah, but what about Fleury?" Show Fleury, go ahead. Show Fleury. And he was on TV today. Watch this here. Alright, I’ll tell you about this here game. This was in Edmonton and he won the game. Now watch him act like an idiot, running around like this. Nice to be known twenty years later for something [talks over MacLean]

Ron MacLean – A kid though at the time.

Cherry – I don’t care what he is, you don’t act like that. Now let me what happened here. Now they going into the dressing room and they come back to Calgary and Calgary runs up a score, 3-0, and Messier goes in the dressing room and says ‘Are we gonna lose to these guys, with that Fleury acting like that, embarrassing us? We gotta go out and win this game. And they went out and won the game. You cannot act like that. When you do that all you do that all you do is turn guys against you. People are turned against, hockey players, people that know. I know you’re going to say… (talks over MacLean)

MacLean - I didn’t know Messier said that.

Cherry - I know. Oh I know and I should have said it, because I talked to Craig Simpson. He was in the dressing room. Don’t act like that kids, you’ll be in trouble every time. Not only did he hurt himself he hurt Edmonton too.

Except that Don Cherry is lying. Or at least his views on goal celebrations have changed significantly with age and added fat deposits around the brain:

I do remember Don shaking my hand after scoring that goal in Edm and him congratulating me. Did an interview with Ron right after the goal.

— Theo Fleury (@TheoFleury14) January 27, 2013

I could get into the fact that Cherry is the most garishly flamboyant person involved in professional hockey and has no room to speak down to anyone on the subject, that by his very nature, his rants on HNIC define "idiot" quite well, and I could argue about just how wrong he is. But I won't because Cherry is doing this solely for ratings and clicks, and even if he believes what he's saying, at this point, he's the hockey equivalent of the fat old uncle sitting in the corner, drunkenly mumbling about how great the jobs were in the 60s.

The frustrating part about this all of the ridiculous wanna-bes he's spawning. From Doug MacLean, who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an NHL arena, to Mike Milbury, who shouldn't be allowed out in public, panelists and studio "analysts" have made bombastic part of their weekly act. More frustrating? These people are all on the most popular broadcasts in the sport.

Everyone just ignore them and avoid eye contact so that hopefully they'll pass out and stop bothering everyone.