Jeremy Roenick praised the Philadelphia Flyers' Chris Pronger for his competitiveness and success, but Roenick didn't like hearing about Pronger picking up game pucks and throwing them in the garbage after the first two games of the Stanley Cup finals against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Roenick was told Ben Eager, who's a fourth-line forward for the Hawks, wanted the puck after scoring the game-winner in Game 2, but Pronger kept it and threw it in the garbage. The two had words and received 10-minute misconduct penalties.
"That's bush league," Roenick said on "The Waddle & Silvy Show" on ESPN 1000. "That's total, total bush league.
"He is a fierce competitor, no question. He's strong, he's big, he's talented. And I think he does have that 'I don't really give a crap about you' mentality. So does that make him a bad guy? I don't know him enough to comment on that. I do know he's not a very popular person around the National Hockey League."
Pronger said he put the puck "in the garbage, where it belongs."
But Roenick, who played for the Hawks and Flyers and is now an analyst for NBC, also praised Pronger, who won a title with the Anaheim Ducks in 2007.
"He won a Cup and he's in the finals again," Roenick said. "Obviously, what he does works for him.
"He's had a very great career, or long career, and 10 years from now you're not going to know if he was a good guy or not, you're just going to see his stats."