The Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues have made it clear in their first-round series that the two rivals don’t like each other a whole lot. Now, that nastiness is making its way to the airwaves.
Before Game 5 got underway at the Scottrade Center on Friday night, the hosts of “The Fast Lane” radio show on ESPN 101 in St. Louis joked about raising money to place a bounty on Chicago winger Bryan Bickell, CBS Chicago reports.
But not all of their listeners understood that it was a joke. Blues fans were eager to exact revenge on Bickell, who delivered a brutal knee-on-knee hit on Vladimir Sobotka during Game 2, but received no discipline for the hit.
“Apparently, management is not too happy with us,” one of the co-hosts said, per CBS Chicago. “For those of you who don’t understand, we were just playing around and kidding.”
Some fans took it so seriously, in fact, that collectively they pledged almost $5,000 to make this bounty happen.
“We had $4,825 committed,” the co-host continued. “So it was probably going to go to charity when Bickell was knocked out of the game. Well, it was going to go to charity, since the players couldn’t take it.
“We’d never really advocate a bounty, but you get what we were saying about this guy. He’s earned it.”
Radio hosts everywhere can now add “bounties on players” to their list of things not to joke about on the air.
Photo via Twitter/@Germanbsfan
