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‘Visibly annoyed’ Bylsma responds to Foligno’s Crosby critique

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James

Sidney Crosby’s elbow on Nick Foligno didn’t net any discipline from Brendan Shanahan, but it produced quite a bit of debate around the NHL. Foligno more or less called Crosby a hypocrite for doing the exact thing he railed against during his recovery: delivering a hit to the head. (Feel free to agree or disagree about that in the comments.)

NHL.com’s Arpon Basu reports that Dan Bylsma was “visibly annoyed” by Foligno’s comments.

“We’re talking about a player that bumped into our goalie three times,” Bylsma said. “With the score 5-1 and intentionally going into our goalie, he can expect more than Sidney Crosby coming at him and talking to him during the game. That’s how we feel about those situations. He was in our net falling over our goalie, and I don’t think there was any question about the intent.”

Crosby distinguishes himself as a star player who frequently goes into the dirty areas; some might even say that he feeds off of contact. Of course, with that commitment comes a physical toll and plenty of feisty moments. The Penguins star hasn’t always handled those situations in an ideal way and even Bylsma would likely admit that his response to Foligno wasn’t perfect.

That being said, Crosby remains a big target. In an age in which enforcers are simply too big of a liability to regularly protect those marquee talents, the Crosbys of the world must stand up for themselves every now and then.

In future incidents, it would be nice if his elbows aren’t involved like they were with Foligno, though.