Vancouver Canucks: The instigator rule takes a match penalty VS. Yannik Hansen- Suspension to follow?
Jannik Hansen got knocked flat on his ass last night, and the NHL rulebook would just as soon he stayed there.
Morgan Riley's vicious hit added insult to injury Saturday night as the crumbling Vancouver Canucks suffered their obligatory loss against an NHL organization they hate to lose to. I'm always amazed at the HNIC commentators surprise though the years when Canucks/Leafs games turn ugly, I suppose the cliche is true "The eastern media doesn't watch Canucks games" because it seems every time the two teams lock horns it's the spirit of '76 all over again and one can almost here KISS and the Bee Gee's play over the P.A system and smell the spilled bottles of 99 cent beer as helmetless players brawl to the delight of the great drunken unwashed.
But I digress, Ever one of the Canucks tougher players, Hansen was quick to rise and hurry off down the ice shaking off the residual effects of the clean but devastating hit. One may have thought he was streaking off to seek revenge but that was not so. Upon replay one can clearly deduce he was not possessed of any ill will towards his attacker, [his eyes dart between the puck ande his teammates and then to open spots on the ice in an attempt to insert himself as the trailer on the rush. Just as he entered the offensive zone, however 'a whistle was blown stopping play his legs let up
Wish the same could be said for Nazim Kadri,
The obnoxious center whose personality could be the interpersonal equivalent of a kick to the banana cup has had to share the spotlight with two, media hogging, high profile rookies this year in Mitch Marner and Austin Mathews. Never one to let an opportunity for immature behavior pass him by Nazim has been playing like jock itch on skates this week. Desperate not to be outshone by his high-profile teammates Nazim has been terrorizing top offensive players the league over. Iritating and physically abusing anyone with the nerve to both have talent and step on the ice, and it's worked, his name has been in the media all weel for his shrewish dentist-drill playing style and hey, if something works go with it, well Saturday night he may of gone just a bit too far.
On Saturday night just as Mr. Jannik was trying to get caught up with the play, Kadri spun and delivered a solid blow to the head of Canucks star winger Daniel Sedin. Who promptly hit the ice clutching his head.
Getting back to Hansens intentions and the replay in question, it is at this point his intentions change drastically, not in the least concerned with avenging the hit he had suffered (as some media tried to slip past their less attentive viewers) Onc can clearly see Hansen's intent change from connecting with a goal-bound shot to connecting a shot to Kadri's "Please punch me"face.
And truth be known at this point all was right in the world.
Hockey is a nasty game, at least it should be, and while Morgan Riley's hit on Hansen may have been ill-advised and dishonourable considering the score, this sport is fantastic when someone decides to play the role of bad guy and as long as there is no attempt to seriously injure which in Riley's case I doubt there was, all is fair in ice and war,
But Kadri is like that kid you knew in elementary school, who would lose at ring toss, cry and then try and take someone's head off with the ring before collapsing in a heap of tears until his parents picked him up. Daniel Sedin has had concussion problems is not an aggressive player and really didn't have it coming when Kadri knocked him down in the third, he could have affected Daniels life beyond this game and hat is where the line is drawn in playing "The bad guy"
But not to worry! You see hockey is well over 100 years old, started by rugby players in Montreal looking for a wintertime equivalent to keep their aggression on the field and out of the bars. they soon discovered a number of aggressive rugby players skating around twice as fast as a man can run with weapons in their hands on a surface harder than cement was just asking for life lost, so they quickly developed a system by which the line which must not be crossed (The one that could perhaps lead to loss of life) was rarely crossed.
The rule went something like this : "F$%K around? Gert dropped"
And so fighting was brought into the game of hockey. Years before there was even a TV to watch it on, the warriors of the frozen north made sure they all lived to fight another day by meeting out justice instantly. There was no getting away from it either, even your own team-mates would insist you answer the bell if you had given the other team cause to assault you. Under this system, two types of player emerged 1 The non-combatant types. On the meeker side, these players were usually skilled and knew not to cross the line into physicallity lest they brand themselves fair targets 2. The power players who enjoyed the physical side of things and weren't afraid to back up what they did with their fists, still with a keen eye on the line, rarley would such a player break the code and try to serriously hurt someone, they knew how dangerous the game was and didnt want to dio it to anyone lest it be done to them at some point.
Enter money: 30 or 40 years into its existance hockey had changed. Major league teams were now owned by large edeep pocketed companies, teams played in famous cathedral-like structure s like Madison Square Garden and a flegling new form of media Televistion was showing all of North America what the arctic warriors were made of, earning the players advertsing spots and equipment endorsements. Though thier salaries were low when judged against revenue, they still made quite enough to live comfortabley, probably more comfortable than all the guys they had grown up with. Thier kids could go to collage, thier wives could have fur coats,
As long as they played effectivley that is, this is when a third type of player emerged, entireley distinc and not particularly well liked by the first tewo.
Enter the Rat,
I won't bore you with a long history of this sort of player in the NHL, but they emerged when certain players who were not skilled enough to be finesse guys and not tough enough to be power players decided they were not willing to give up a possible slice of the good life for something as silly as honor. These were smart players mind you, they KNEW that ,needing to protect thier own spots as power players and pugilists the tough players on thier teams were obligated to come to thier aide when they were threatened with retributuion for some daterdly act comited on a skill player of the other team. The tough guys HAD to fight thier battles or the team management would find some other tough guy to play who would, thus the rat had his spot set in stone, his grisly deeds affected the out come of games and usual made his team more likley to win. they make the made the team money, it is with this protection in place thast the rat was forever establishede as the third achetype in NHL hockey.
Until one day a man named Gary Bttman came along, hired out of the NBA it is still unclear as to how muich power he actually wields and how much of what we see is his vision of what the NHL is. Smart mjoney says he is just a figure head paid by Jeromy Jacbs the Late Ed Syder and a few other board of govener power brokers to front for thier agenda, but one thing is clear, he did not think he could sell the NHL to american networks with all the fighting.
Now thast the USA is obsessed with UFC that seems a laughable assertion but it is is true that even to this day the NHL thinks it would be more lucritive without fisticuufs than with them. They have a few good points, for instance games that degenerate into brawls can sometimes be extended by a whole hour, networks don't want to switch programming around so a bunch of Canadian trailer parkers can beat the snot out of each other in front of little Jimmy and Mom, but with that one good point comes 100 bad and leads us to a clear " baby with the bather water"type of situation.
So upon entering office bettman istituted on of the most controversial rues to ever be enforced in North American professional sports
THE INSTIGATOR RULE
The giist of it was essetially this: Anyone starting an altercation was given an extra 2 minuets on top of the 5 they recieved for fighting thus where fights had once removed the combatant parties from the game and allowed the constest get started agin on even terms whoever STARTED the fight would put his team at a disadvantage.
The intention was clear and makes perfeect sence to anyone who knows nothing about hockey right? The guy who starts the fight is the problem, make it setrimental to his team and he will NOT START FIGHTS and then there will be NO VIOLENCE! Right?
WRONG!!
If you are reading this I assume you are a hockey fan, and more than likley you have played the game as well, so you know just as well as I do the monumental stupidity of the reasoning noted above, sing it with me if you know the words:
THE GUY STARTING THE FIGHT ISN'T THE GUY WHO BROUGHT OVER THE LINE VIOLENCE INTO THE GAME, IN HOCKEY IT'S THE GUY BEING JUMPED WHO IS GUILTY
I can count on one hand the amount of times I have seen someone be assulted for no reason in the NHL even less the amount of time a guy who has declared himself a non-combatent has been jumped and beaten up, it has happened, but only on the rarest of occasions and it is always dealt with imeadietly.
Remember the early 90's? That is the time when we began seeing the submarine Ulf Samuelsson hits to the Knees, the Vladamir Konstantinov blind side hits to the head, the Darius Kaspirites 5 secord too late pile ups into the boards, now the guys I just mentionsed were for the most part tough guys who would answer the bell if need be, but the point is they knew the oposition would be just a little more hesitant to demand saqtisfaction if a powerplay against them was to follow.
Also, remember if you will, the glorious game play of the 80's and early 90's this was a time when nearly every team had a 100pt player, 6-5 games occured on a regular basis and coaches moaned and begged thier players to backcheck a little but never actually expected them too. At this time shot blocking was 100 pecent volentary, and if you did it you had guts, not because you would be benched if you didn't.
There was a symbiotic relationship between fighting and offense. fights would occur and just like the game itself had taken a hit of crystal meth, all of a sudden emotionally charged teams were trading end to end rushes, D-men were leaving thier possitions to deliver bone crunching hits and what went on in front of the net could honestly and truley be called a war. Like shot blocking no one told you you had to go there, you went there if you had the guts.
Enter the instigotaior rule, enter one of the first star-coach teams in the NHL and one of the worst thigs to happen to hockey, the cap on emotion brought on by the instagator, allowed men like Jaque Jacque Lamaire to fully impose his will on the moderratley talented group of castaways he had been placed in charge of as coach of the New Jersey Devils, he used his extra influence to impliment a system that had reportedly been used in Sweden for a few years a system that woukld put the word "System"[on the lips of hockey fans for the first time in history, where once they talked about Action, now they taled aboyt "Systems" and so the disease was caugtht....
Enter the neutral zone trap, again I will not bore you with a recap of an era that should nevr be recapped, but suffice it to say that the game of hockey became largley un watchable. Contests of "Red rover" on ice turned of US veiwers by the millions as the NHL deal with FOX went down the tubes due to god awful product they put on display. This was the dead ice era and it would never have happened had the instagotor penelty not been implimented, it was nessasary to remove a good portion of the emotion from the game before play like this was possible but under this new set of conditions it was possible for a team to win a Stanley Cup not by playing hockey themselves but by devoting all their enegy to making sure the other team was unabvble to play it. And then there was Bettman, at this point he proved he had no idea whatsoever about the game, how could he? It would only be possible for someone who didn;t know the difference between bad and good hockey to have allowed that syle to be played, it went on because he honestly didn't knoew the difference, he was glad he could talk to potential sponsors about the reduction in violence.
But was the a reduction in violence? In fighiting yes, there was also the rise of the "Show fight" a pathetic display when two pugilists fought each other for absoloutley no reason at all fans would give them a half hearted cheer but for the most part, most of us felt sorry for them having to put on such a pathetic exhibition. Thus netralized the tough guys of hockey have slowly and surley like the monstrous dinosaurs of old been sliiping away steadily each new season, one day soon they will be no more.
But while that group dwindled another one thrived, this is the time of the rat, the player who spends most of the game comiting minor penelties undetected, who flops as an oposing player skates any where near him and devotes all his remaining energy to trying to convinve the refs to call a penelty in his favor, where once NHL players duked it out at cemnter ice it is now not un common to see two players whining to an annoyed reffery who tries to skate away from them, like two spoiled brats who want the last piece of candy.
And when he isnt doing that he may be doing something with more dire consequences, and with that we come fiull circle to this past satuday night.
Now, I know Nazin Kadri is a tough guy and willing to back up his play, but ther fact is, if The Bob Proberts and Stu Grimsons still patrolled the wings of NHL arenas I really dont think he woukld have done what he did this saturday, he's got guts but he isnt stupid. Kadri took his best shot at Daniel Sedins oft concussued carnium and at that moment crossed the line, but there was no bob probert anywhere to be found,
Yet there is still some honor amongst thieves and for every Kadri there is a Hansen, who wasted no time going straight after the leafs center once he knew what had been done.
The scrap was over after a few seconds with no clear winner no one was even close to being hurt and though Nazin wasn't scared, he now knows he won't get away unchallenged whenthere is a Hanson on the ice
One might think after a long road trip to Vancouver in the dog months of an NHL season, the Kadri's of this league just might decide to pass up such oportunitys knowing all they want to do is grab an ice pack and plop into the seat for the long flight back to the real workld,
Or maybe not, because the dangled bait of a power play may be the difference between winning and losing. may be ther difference for a lot of guys as to whether they are offered a contract the year after, to get paid you need to be effective and how much more could a would-be Kadri be efective then by knocking out an oposing star AND putting his team on the power play
This is the main effect the instagator rule has had on NHL play, there is now a reward system in place for the worst type of player, an enviorment in which they can do thier dirt unchallenged.
So this past saturday, for being a stand up guy Yannik Hansen was given a PENELTY in light of all we have gone over perhaps the world has gone insane when a guy who does the right thing is punished and the scum who needed dealing with is rewarded. but that is EXACT^LY what happened Saturday night.
Betteman, NHL, Board of goveners, for your negligant and bad intentioned handling of the NHL rule book, I award you a match penelty.
In the words of the great Rene Lebec"....You go to the box...you feel shame''''
Morgan Riley's vicious hit added insult to injury Saturday night as the crumbling Vancouver Canucks suffered their obligatory loss against an NHL organization they hate to lose to. I'm always amazed at the HNIC commentators surprise though the years when Canucks/Leafs games turn ugly, I suppose the cliche is true "The eastern media doesn't watch Canucks games" because it seems every time the two teams lock horns it's the spirit of '76 all over again and one can almost here KISS and the Bee Gee's play over the P.A system and smell the spilled bottles of 99 cent beer as helmetless players brawl to the delight of the great drunken unwashed.
But I digress, Ever one of the Canucks tougher players, Hansen was quick to rise and hurry off down the ice shaking off the residual effects of the clean but devastating hit. One may have thought he was streaking off to seek revenge but that was not so. Upon replay one can clearly deduce he was not possessed of any ill will towards his attacker, [his eyes dart between the puck ande his teammates and then to open spots on the ice in an attempt to insert himself as the trailer on the rush. Just as he entered the offensive zone, however 'a whistle was blown stopping play his legs let up
Wish the same could be said for Nazim Kadri,
The obnoxious center whose personality could be the interpersonal equivalent of a kick to the banana cup has had to share the spotlight with two, media hogging, high profile rookies this year in Mitch Marner and Austin Mathews. Never one to let an opportunity for immature behavior pass him by Nazim has been playing like jock itch on skates this week. Desperate not to be outshone by his high-profile teammates Nazim has been terrorizing top offensive players the league over. Iritating and physically abusing anyone with the nerve to both have talent and step on the ice, and it's worked, his name has been in the media all weel for his shrewish dentist-drill playing style and hey, if something works go with it, well Saturday night he may of gone just a bit too far.
On Saturday night just as Mr. Jannik was trying to get caught up with the play, Kadri spun and delivered a solid blow to the head of Canucks star winger Daniel Sedin. Who promptly hit the ice clutching his head.
Getting back to Hansens intentions and the replay in question, it is at this point his intentions change drastically, not in the least concerned with avenging the hit he had suffered (as some media tried to slip past their less attentive viewers) Onc can clearly see Hansen's intent change from connecting with a goal-bound shot to connecting a shot to Kadri's "Please punch me"face.
And truth be known at this point all was right in the world.
Hockey is a nasty game, at least it should be, and while Morgan Riley's hit on Hansen may have been ill-advised and dishonourable considering the score, this sport is fantastic when someone decides to play the role of bad guy and as long as there is no attempt to seriously injure which in Riley's case I doubt there was, all is fair in ice and war,
But Kadri is like that kid you knew in elementary school, who would lose at ring toss, cry and then try and take someone's head off with the ring before collapsing in a heap of tears until his parents picked him up. Daniel Sedin has had concussion problems is not an aggressive player and really didn't have it coming when Kadri knocked him down in the third, he could have affected Daniels life beyond this game and hat is where the line is drawn in playing "The bad guy"
But not to worry! You see hockey is well over 100 years old, started by rugby players in Montreal looking for a wintertime equivalent to keep their aggression on the field and out of the bars. they soon discovered a number of aggressive rugby players skating around twice as fast as a man can run with weapons in their hands on a surface harder than cement was just asking for life lost, so they quickly developed a system by which the line which must not be crossed (The one that could perhaps lead to loss of life) was rarely crossed.
The rule went something like this : "F$%K around? Gert dropped"
And so fighting was brought into the game of hockey. Years before there was even a TV to watch it on, the warriors of the frozen north made sure they all lived to fight another day by meeting out justice instantly. There was no getting away from it either, even your own team-mates would insist you answer the bell if you had given the other team cause to assault you. Under this system, two types of player emerged 1 The non-combatant types. On the meeker side, these players were usually skilled and knew not to cross the line into physicallity lest they brand themselves fair targets 2. The power players who enjoyed the physical side of things and weren't afraid to back up what they did with their fists, still with a keen eye on the line, rarley would such a player break the code and try to serriously hurt someone, they knew how dangerous the game was and didnt want to dio it to anyone lest it be done to them at some point.
Enter money: 30 or 40 years into its existance hockey had changed. Major league teams were now owned by large edeep pocketed companies, teams played in famous cathedral-like structure s like Madison Square Garden and a flegling new form of media Televistion was showing all of North America what the arctic warriors were made of, earning the players advertsing spots and equipment endorsements. Though thier salaries were low when judged against revenue, they still made quite enough to live comfortabley, probably more comfortable than all the guys they had grown up with. Thier kids could go to collage, thier wives could have fur coats,
As long as they played effectivley that is, this is when a third type of player emerged, entireley distinc and not particularly well liked by the first tewo.
Enter the Rat,
I won't bore you with a long history of this sort of player in the NHL, but they emerged when certain players who were not skilled enough to be finesse guys and not tough enough to be power players decided they were not willing to give up a possible slice of the good life for something as silly as honor. These were smart players mind you, they KNEW that ,needing to protect thier own spots as power players and pugilists the tough players on thier teams were obligated to come to thier aide when they were threatened with retributuion for some daterdly act comited on a skill player of the other team. The tough guys HAD to fight thier battles or the team management would find some other tough guy to play who would, thus the rat had his spot set in stone, his grisly deeds affected the out come of games and usual made his team more likley to win. they make the made the team money, it is with this protection in place thast the rat was forever establishede as the third achetype in NHL hockey.
Until one day a man named Gary Bttman came along, hired out of the NBA it is still unclear as to how muich power he actually wields and how much of what we see is his vision of what the NHL is. Smart mjoney says he is just a figure head paid by Jeromy Jacbs the Late Ed Syder and a few other board of govener power brokers to front for thier agenda, but one thing is clear, he did not think he could sell the NHL to american networks with all the fighting.
Now thast the USA is obsessed with UFC that seems a laughable assertion but it is is true that even to this day the NHL thinks it would be more lucritive without fisticuufs than with them. They have a few good points, for instance games that degenerate into brawls can sometimes be extended by a whole hour, networks don't want to switch programming around so a bunch of Canadian trailer parkers can beat the snot out of each other in front of little Jimmy and Mom, but with that one good point comes 100 bad and leads us to a clear " baby with the bather water"type of situation.
So upon entering office bettman istituted on of the most controversial rues to ever be enforced in North American professional sports
THE INSTIGATOR RULE
The giist of it was essetially this: Anyone starting an altercation was given an extra 2 minuets on top of the 5 they recieved for fighting thus where fights had once removed the combatant parties from the game and allowed the constest get started agin on even terms whoever STARTED the fight would put his team at a disadvantage.
The intention was clear and makes perfeect sence to anyone who knows nothing about hockey right? The guy who starts the fight is the problem, make it setrimental to his team and he will NOT START FIGHTS and then there will be NO VIOLENCE! Right?
WRONG!!
If you are reading this I assume you are a hockey fan, and more than likley you have played the game as well, so you know just as well as I do the monumental stupidity of the reasoning noted above, sing it with me if you know the words:
THE GUY STARTING THE FIGHT ISN'T THE GUY WHO BROUGHT OVER THE LINE VIOLENCE INTO THE GAME, IN HOCKEY IT'S THE GUY BEING JUMPED WHO IS GUILTY
I can count on one hand the amount of times I have seen someone be assulted for no reason in the NHL even less the amount of time a guy who has declared himself a non-combatent has been jumped and beaten up, it has happened, but only on the rarest of occasions and it is always dealt with imeadietly.
Remember the early 90's? That is the time when we began seeing the submarine Ulf Samuelsson hits to the Knees, the Vladamir Konstantinov blind side hits to the head, the Darius Kaspirites 5 secord too late pile ups into the boards, now the guys I just mentionsed were for the most part tough guys who would answer the bell if need be, but the point is they knew the oposition would be just a little more hesitant to demand saqtisfaction if a powerplay against them was to follow.
Also, remember if you will, the glorious game play of the 80's and early 90's this was a time when nearly every team had a 100pt player, 6-5 games occured on a regular basis and coaches moaned and begged thier players to backcheck a little but never actually expected them too. At this time shot blocking was 100 pecent volentary, and if you did it you had guts, not because you would be benched if you didn't.
There was a symbiotic relationship between fighting and offense. fights would occur and just like the game itself had taken a hit of crystal meth, all of a sudden emotionally charged teams were trading end to end rushes, D-men were leaving thier possitions to deliver bone crunching hits and what went on in front of the net could honestly and truley be called a war. Like shot blocking no one told you you had to go there, you went there if you had the guts.
Enter the instigotaior rule, enter one of the first star-coach teams in the NHL and one of the worst thigs to happen to hockey, the cap on emotion brought on by the instagator, allowed men like Jaque Jacque Lamaire to fully impose his will on the moderratley talented group of castaways he had been placed in charge of as coach of the New Jersey Devils, he used his extra influence to impliment a system that had reportedly been used in Sweden for a few years a system that woukld put the word "System"[on the lips of hockey fans for the first time in history, where once they talked about Action, now they taled aboyt "Systems" and so the disease was caugtht....
Enter the neutral zone trap, again I will not bore you with a recap of an era that should nevr be recapped, but suffice it to say that the game of hockey became largley un watchable. Contests of "Red rover" on ice turned of US veiwers by the millions as the NHL deal with FOX went down the tubes due to god awful product they put on display. This was the dead ice era and it would never have happened had the instagotor penelty not been implimented, it was nessasary to remove a good portion of the emotion from the game before play like this was possible but under this new set of conditions it was possible for a team to win a Stanley Cup not by playing hockey themselves but by devoting all their enegy to making sure the other team was unabvble to play it. And then there was Bettman, at this point he proved he had no idea whatsoever about the game, how could he? It would only be possible for someone who didn;t know the difference between bad and good hockey to have allowed that syle to be played, it went on because he honestly didn't knoew the difference, he was glad he could talk to potential sponsors about the reduction in violence.
But was the a reduction in violence? In fighiting yes, there was also the rise of the "Show fight" a pathetic display when two pugilists fought each other for absoloutley no reason at all fans would give them a half hearted cheer but for the most part, most of us felt sorry for them having to put on such a pathetic exhibition. Thus netralized the tough guys of hockey have slowly and surley like the monstrous dinosaurs of old been sliiping away steadily each new season, one day soon they will be no more.
But while that group dwindled another one thrived, this is the time of the rat, the player who spends most of the game comiting minor penelties undetected, who flops as an oposing player skates any where near him and devotes all his remaining energy to trying to convinve the refs to call a penelty in his favor, where once NHL players duked it out at cemnter ice it is now not un common to see two players whining to an annoyed reffery who tries to skate away from them, like two spoiled brats who want the last piece of candy.
And when he isnt doing that he may be doing something with more dire consequences, and with that we come fiull circle to this past satuday night.
Now, I know Nazin Kadri is a tough guy and willing to back up his play, but ther fact is, if The Bob Proberts and Stu Grimsons still patrolled the wings of NHL arenas I really dont think he woukld have done what he did this saturday, he's got guts but he isnt stupid. Kadri took his best shot at Daniel Sedins oft concussued carnium and at that moment crossed the line, but there was no bob probert anywhere to be found,
Yet there is still some honor amongst thieves and for every Kadri there is a Hansen, who wasted no time going straight after the leafs center once he knew what had been done.
The scrap was over after a few seconds with no clear winner no one was even close to being hurt and though Nazin wasn't scared, he now knows he won't get away unchallenged whenthere is a Hanson on the ice
One might think after a long road trip to Vancouver in the dog months of an NHL season, the Kadri's of this league just might decide to pass up such oportunitys knowing all they want to do is grab an ice pack and plop into the seat for the long flight back to the real workld,
Or maybe not, because the dangled bait of a power play may be the difference between winning and losing. may be ther difference for a lot of guys as to whether they are offered a contract the year after, to get paid you need to be effective and how much more could a would-be Kadri be efective then by knocking out an oposing star AND putting his team on the power play
This is the main effect the instagator rule has had on NHL play, there is now a reward system in place for the worst type of player, an enviorment in which they can do thier dirt unchallenged.
So this past saturday, for being a stand up guy Yannik Hansen was given a PENELTY in light of all we have gone over perhaps the world has gone insane when a guy who does the right thing is punished and the scum who needed dealing with is rewarded. but that is EXACT^LY what happened Saturday night.
Betteman, NHL, Board of goveners, for your negligant and bad intentioned handling of the NHL rule book, I award you a match penelty.
In the words of the great Rene Lebec"....You go to the box...you feel shame''''
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