Wednesday night, the Toronto Maple Leafs visited the Anaheim Ducks on their annual three-game California road trip. American comedian and musician Dave Hill was announced as the anthem performer and performed both anthems on the electric guitar.
During the American National Anthem the 'The Star-Spangled Banner', Sportsnet's cameras panned over the William Nylander on the Leafs' bench doing his best to hold in his laughter during the "shredding" of the anthem, but he was unable to, leading to a bit of an uproar. Yesterday, Boston Bruins superfan Pete Blackburn laid into Nylander on his podcast "What Chaos Show" and failed miserably.
Nylander was clearly entertained, for lack of a better word, by the completely unnecessary guitar solo in the middle of the anthem. For those that actually took Blackburn's comments seriously, how many times in the last month have anthem singers for American-based teams screwed up the Canadian national anthem? A handful at least, and all we do is laugh at how bad it was, which is essentially all Nylander was doing in this case.
Two American-born players also thought it was unnecessary as during the opening faceoff, as Ducks forward Trevor Zegras lined up with Leafs forward Matthew Knies, and a 'hot mic' picked up the two saying that the anthem was 'the craziest' and 'not the best' as well. Do they hate the troops too, Pete? Give me a break.
