Photo: Bruce Bennett

San Jose rookie Tomas Hertl was amazing against the New York Rangers on Tuesday. He scored four goals in 11:12 of ice, including a spectacular nifty between-the-legs move on Martin Biron (who sported a .762 save percentage). It was a showboat move– most players would be afraid to try it in a real game for fear of missing– but it worked, and it got the broader sports world talking.

Capitals head coach Adam Oates didn’t like it though. He told The Washington Post’s Katie Carerra that he thinks Hertl made “a rookie mistake” and that he should not “disrespect the league.”

Oates has done his time in the league, and as a Hall of Famer his opinion matters, but he seems a bit out of proportion here. There are way worse things out there than cool-looking goals.

First, the goal in question:

A beauty. A fun goal, particularly for those of us whose mission statement it is to make reading about hockey fun.

Is it disrespectful? Maybe. Disrespect is kind of a nebulous word, but yeah, maybe it is disrespectful.

Still, there are a great many things that are more disrespectful than scoring a nifty goal. Perhaps we should consider Hertl in context of the following, each of which may be more disrespectful:

The way the Rangers sandbagged the back-half of the game in question

Alex Ovechkin’s hot-stick celebration

Teemu Selanne’s machine-gun celebration

Every spinorama shootout attempt ever

Actually, the entire shootout concept

The league’s woefully inadequate “quiet room” policy

Matt Cooke’s existence

Pairing the league’s most exciting player, Alex Ovechkin, with Jay Beagle

The continued employment of Pierre McGuire

Coach’s Corner

Cyrillic-to-Latin alphabet name translations (Remember Simeon Varlamov?)

The lockout

The lockout before that one

Gary Bettman’s insistence on injecting himself into the Cup presentation ceremony

The devaluing of outdoor games by introducing more and more of them

Jay Mohr

The way Jay Mohr pronounces “Vezina” like it’s an Italian plumber in a video game

The NHL’s lukewarm treatment of Wayne Gretzky

The curious, persistent absence of an international Wayne Gretzky holiday

The hypocrisy of allowing players to fight, but mandating that they wear helmets

The instigator penalty

Dale Hunter’s wardrobe

The Flortheast Division

Actually, the entire Florida Panthers franchise

League-owned teams

The Washington Redskins

Okay, that last one doesn’t count, but it’s good for SEO

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