Is This The Most Off Color Comment of the Season?

Joe Thornton. And Joe Thornton's foul mouth.

I really don't even know where to begin on this one...

We all know where this one is going though, right? "If I scored four goals..."

And you should probably warned, there will probably be some inappropriate language, innuendos and puns in this. So don't say you didn't know.



The Backstory
On Tuesday night, the San Jose Sharks faced off against the New York Rangers. The Shakrs were absolutely lighting up the Rangers, and their rookie, Tomas Hertl was having a pretty decent night with three goals before half of the third period was done. Hertl then scored his fourth goal of the night, and it was quite something. Here, just watch it, if you haven't seen it already.
Like any play of this kind, there are always backlash about showboating from a select group of people in the industry - some in media, some in team management, some from players. It's inevitable.

Joe Thornton
Upon hearing Patrick Marleau being questioned about Hertl's "showboating," Joe Thornton took the captainly role and interrupted the interview with..."Shut up, have you ever played the game?" Then the media turned to him, which is where his comments went from being captainly to being very frank. Joe responded with, "I'd have my cock out if I scored four goals. I'd have my cock out, stroking it." Yeah. Okay...

The FalloutWhen this quote first broke, the reactions of the fans and media were absolutely predictable. You get the former players going off about how that was probably said off the record and how it shouldn`t have been reported. You get the fans that are downright confused. You get the media that is applauding their colleague for reporting that quote. Then as the shock wore off, people started to see the humor in it. Tumblr and Twitter (both scary places in the hockey world) blew up with jokes about this whole thing. There were the unavoidable comments about Thornton`s nickname being Jumbo Joe. Then there were the Jiri Tlusty comparisons about his photo scandal (which, really, make Joe's comment look like nothing, I mean there's no photo evidence in this case...)
Like these gems:
"There’s a new book coming out , it’s called 50 Shades of Joe Thornton."
“Here comes Joe Thornton, dangling!”

This one was the last picture in two pictures titled “A summary of what happened this morning, via photographs.“

Now that took balls for Joe to say, even if he thought that was off the record, that's pretty off color to say to someone not on your team. And for him, or anyone else to think that that comment would be taken as off the record is damn foolish. He's talking to reporters, and that's a great quote, of course that's going to make it out,
It's hilarious that he said that in the first place and all the power to him, but hopefully this comment will not follow him around for too long. Thornton is a respected guy. We all know that locker room talk, for lack of a better name, exists so why burn at the stake the guy who takes it out to the media?
But now the questions become, will Joe put his money where his mouth is? (Oh my, that phrase adopts a whole new meaning in this context...) And what would Joe do if he scored 5 goals? I don't even know that I want to know...




(As for the pictures and the quotes, they were all taken off of Tumblr and it is difficult to accurately track down the original poster, so I apologize for that.)