rofl@ Schneider talking about "showing up in support" of your team after that embarrassing team display in last year's cup finals. A rookie holding their captain's jersey and punching him in the face and nobody on that team even bats an eyelid, and they have the nerve to talk about supporting their team. How does that team lose more credibility every single time one of them talks to the media? Maybe if they were less worried about what Boston is doing they would have won last year. If there's even a single person in the NHL whose opinion matters the least on this story, it is the backup goaltender on the team that lost the Finals to the team in question.
As stupid as it was for Thomas not to go, I think it's even stupider that the Bruins haven't suspended him for it.
Wtf lol? Suspended for not attending an explicitly optional event to honor something that happened last season on the day before a game?
It's funny that he put a huge picture of Thomas' black+white helmet there, which he adopted after getting pissed at Bruins ownership for their trade talks last year. That symbol should be more of an issue than Thomas not wanting to give the President a photo op. Nobody gave a shit when Theo Epstein and Manny Ramirez didn't visit President Bush in 08, why should anyone care about Thomas now? Is the NHL really that devoid of news this week?
Thomas' decision has absolutely nothing to do with hockey and absolutely nothing will come out of this story. If you think that him not visiting the President makes the Bruins team doubt him or his commitment to the team's success, you're completely kidding yourself. Nobody will look back at this in June and say "well if only Thomas had gone to meet Obama, then the Bruins would be a better team". I've never seen a more baseless attack on a player before in my life.
The only problem that should be being discussed is the inability for the Bruins organization to keep the message straight. If this happened on the Patriots, everyone in the organization from top to bottom would give the same answer in unison and nobody would doubt it. Instead we get Thomas' statement, the Bruins' PR statement, a statement from Neely, etc, and the messages are all different. It's worrying because Jacobs is a hilariously bad owner to the point where people wonder if he was intentionally fucking up, and now we get this display of disorganization. Then it comes out that Thomas had notified them of his decision months ago and the Bruins STILL let it devolve into a media attack. They clearly have no control over the messages that come out about this team, such a sharp contrast to the Patriots that they try to idolize.