As I flipped through the channels late last night, I stumbled upon MSNBC's post game show for the Quarterfinals game between Canada and Russia. Canada won by a whopping score of 7-3, former Islanders coach and GM, and now NBC hockey commentator Mike Milbury expressed his frustration at the Russian team by saying this:

"I was shocked that it was this one-sided. And I was really disappointed that these guys came with their euro-trash game. It was just, no heart, no guts, no nothing there to back it up. I mean Alex Ovechkin was an average player tonight. I know they're going to bounce back, but to be that poor and to be that intimidated physically by the Canadians, that really shocked me."

Milbury's co-hosts were jaw dropped at the poor usage of words. One of panelists, Bill Patrick, responded by saying "Did you really say euro-trash? Did that come out of your mouth?"

Apparently, Milbury has an extensive history of these gaffes. He referred to former Islander Ziggy Palffy's agent Paul Kraus as a "moron way over his head" (oh no, he didn't stop there); he later notes that "It's too bad [Kraus] lives in the city. He's depriving some small village of a pretty good idiot." Even more recently in this Olympic tournament, he compared the German team to a "fire hydrant" getting peed on.

As I turned away from the television to ponder on this for a moment, I thought to myself "what was NBC thinking!?!?!"

But It's not like Mike Milbury has ANY hockey credibility anyway... This is the man who ran the Islanders into the ground!

During his tenure in the Islanders' front office, he threw away young players who have turned out to have remarkable careers. These include defensemen Zdeno Chara, Wade Redden, Bryan Berard, Eric Brewer (whom Milbury described as "playing like he's sniffing glue"), Darius Kasparaitis, and Bryan McCabe; goalies Tommy Salo and Roberto Luongo (about whom Milbury quoted "We're rolling the dice here a little bit...He is a class act and a kid I know we would have been happy to ride with. But hell, I've gotta send him off."), as well as forwards Olli Jokinen, Todd Bertuzzi, Tim Connolly, and Raffi Torres. Subsequently, Milbury threw away 2001 second overall pick Jason Spezza as part of the Alexi Yashin trade. Milbury has also come under fire for his draft day decisions such as choosing injury liability and goalie Rick DiPietro first overall in 2000 over Dany Heatley or Marian Gaborik.

No word has been given by NBC on whether Milbury will apologize or not. I just want to see if we will get any more childish, unprofessional sound bytes in tomorrow's semi-final games.

Until then, GO USA!

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