You should be ashamed of yourself, Rick Bowness.
Bowness said he wanted Joel Kiviranta’s speed and energy against the Wild. Which is exactly the opposite of what he got from the forward on Thursday Night.
Tufte is from Coon Rapids, 25 miles northwest of the Xcel Energy Center. He was supposed to be playing on the fourth line with Radek Faksa and Luke Glendening. Stars coach Rick Bowness said in the morning that he hoped to use the same lineup as the previous two games, when Tufte was with Faksa and Glendening.
“It’s pretty crazy the amount of people that reached out, saying they’re coming to the game tonight,” Tufte said.
When Riley Tufte found out he was expected to be in the lineup for the Dallas Stars, he went and spent his entire salary from being called up on tickets for his family, friends and agents.
However, coach Riley Tufte had other plans and decided an hour before the puck drop that Riley was to be a healthy scratch in the 7-2 blowout loss to the Minnesota Wild.
“It’s a big ask for him to go into a big game like today,” Bowness said of Tufte. “Kivi sat a couple games. We wanted to get some speed and some energy from him. Riley hasn’t played very much, he’s only played four minutes one night, and seven minutes the last. That’s a tough ask to put him in those situations.
Dallas Stars fans are not happy with the coaches decision, and are voicing their opinions on twitter.
All those interviews, all that money spent on tickets for his loved ones, and all of that emotional build up leading into the biggest game of Tufte's young career all went to waste.
Kiviranta, who replaced Tufte in the lineup, had an ice time of 10:23 and was on the ice for two goals against in another poor performance from him this season.
I hope this is the spark that Tufte needed to really improve his game, and to show Bowness that he made a shameful mistake.
