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Denis Potvin apologizes for calling Daniel Sedin ‘low life’

Ah, the life cycle of the media controversy.

It began with Florida Panthers announcer Denis Potvin offering his pointed opinion about Daniel and Henrik Sedin of the Vancouver Canucks during their game on Jan. 11. Please recall Potvin claiming, as the twins pointed fingers at the Panthers bench, that “normally they only use those fingers to lick the peanut butter off of their bread.”

Please also recall, rather infamously, that Potvin called Daniel Sedin a “low life” during a postgame scrum at the benches that occurred following Sedin’s game-winning goal against the Panthers.

It continued the following day on XM NHL Network Radio, as Potvin doubled-down on his criticism of Sedin. This despite several reports that Sedin was responding to on-ice trash talk of a disparaging nature – the Vancouver Province reported that a Panther said they were “the same old sisters.”

Potvin said:

“It ended badly because of Sedin’s actions. In any decade, if a player turns around and starts goading the other bench after the winning goal … could you imagine that in Philly? Or Boston?” 

“Usually when you beat a team that’s on a streak, you talk about incredible respect for what they were able to accomplish. Instead of that, you had a team score a winning goal and then goad the opposing bench.”

And now the cycle is complete, as Potvin has apologized to Sedin and the Canucks through the Panthers’ public relations staff on Wednesday:

"My choice of words at the conclusion of the Vancouver game on Monday should have been more appropriate. In the passion of the moment and under the circumstances of how the game ended, they came out wrong. For that I'm going to extend my sincere apologies to Daniel Sedin, Trevor Linden and the Canucks organization."

As we spoke about on our podcast, Potvin had those competitive juices flowing at the end of the game and just blurted out something regrettable. And though it took a while, he did the right thing here to apologize. Because Daniel Sedin is anything but a “low life.”

But we can’t give Potvin a total pass here, to be honest. Not until he reveals what in the hell that peanut butter line was supposed to mean …

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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