"That's What Happens When You Run Into A Lion In The Jungle"
Okay so by now, everybody knows that Ryan Reaves dummied Tom Wilson last night. The hit, even though it was shoulder-to-shoulder, earned him a 5 & a game. And I’m totally fine with that penalty being called on the ice. People need to start realizing that you don’t need to hit a guy directly in the head to give them a concussion and I think that Reaves probably put a little something extra into that hit considering it was Wilson–which I’m also totally fine with. I wrote a blog titled “The Day Is Eventually Going To Come When Tom Wilson Gets Exactly What Is Coming To Him” back on May 2nd. Turns out that day came around last night. Should anybody feel bad for Tom Wilson? Probably not. He put himself in a position where guys are going to want to take a shot at him because of all the shots he’s taken at unsuspecting players throughout his career. Wilson getting blindsided right there by Reaves is like a serial killer getting the death penalty. Kind of hard to shed a tear for that, ya know?
But that’s not what I’m here to discuss. I’m not here to talk about the hit and whether or not it deserves any supplemental discipline (which the league has already rightfully decided it does not). What I’m here to talk about is what a goddamn quote machine Ryan Reaves is because here’s what he had to say after the game.
What a fucking quote. That right there is the biggest difference between guys like Ryan Reaves and Tom Wilson. Reaves knows that he’s the bad guy out there. He knows that he’s a villain and he plays up to that role. Tom Wilson will go out there and decide to launch himself at a guy like Zach Aston-Reese who has never done anything to anybody in his lifetime, and then try to play it off like he didn’t mean to do anything and that he’s just a misunderstood player out there. Meanwhile, Ryan Reaves is kind of like Batman in a sense because even though he’s a vigilante himself, he’s taking out bad guys and being an alpha about it. Between the “run into a lion in the jungle” line and earlier in the year when he said “if you can’t play hockey hungover, you probably shouldn’t be in the league“, Ryan Reaves has given us two different top 5 quotes of the year so far.
I guess what it comes down to is that Ryan Reaves is just much more likable between the two. I’m sure that Tom Wilson is probably a great guy to grab a beer with off the ice considering 93% of hockey players are. But if you view professional hockey as entertainment and consider these guys to be entertainers, well then Ryan Reaves is just much more entertaining than Wilson is. He’s the bad guy who you find yourself rooting for. The lesser of two evils, if you will.
Plus he’s a grade A bully.