How much do you make? Less than a million? Let's fight!

A few days ago, Ryane Clowe had a rather unfortunate quote in a Pollak blog post.  That quote?

I told him I wasn’t going to fight him, that I’d fight Barch.  I probably should have fought him (Morrow), but I have a hard time fighting guys who are the top players on other teams. I don’t know.”

Really the only way to take this is, “I get my ass kicked in fights against great players, so I’ll try and save myself some embarrassment and fight Kris Barch instead.”  Although Krys Barch, in both of his fights against Clowe and Jay Leach had a perfectly placed grab hand (right in front of the opponent’s right shoulder), effectively taking the right hand away from both guys.  And as I mentioned on the podcast this week, neither elected to go to the left, like Brad Staubitz does.  Say what you will about Staubitz, but he’s the best pound-for-pound fighter on the team, and it’s not even close.  That being said, it certainly doesn’t make up for his consistency in taking idiotic penalties.

Unfortunately as a result, Clowe looks like a wuss, passing up an opportunity to put the Stars’ best player in the box for 5 minutes.  Not a whole lot of hay was made about this quote, though I did see a couple of comments in the thread, and Doug was pretty incensed about it.  I didn’t really give it much thought, until last night when I was trying to ignore the Sharks getting worked by Calgary.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BVRIXg5laU[/youtube]

I’m not sure if someone talked to Clowe about his aversion to fighting top players, but he made a statement, maybe one of the only high points in the Sharks’ collective game all night.  It was an active and entertaining scrap, with Clowe fighting one of the biggest stars in the game-  probably the best-fighting big star in the game to boot.  My little theory is Clowe was trying to redeem himself for running away from Morrow.  These two things have to be a little related, right?

I can’t endorse the sentiment Clowe expressed above, but I admire his balls for taking on Iginla.  You can handle yourself against top players just fine, big guy.  Don’t back away anymore.