I find this:

"And frankly, there have been too many games like this, too many really bad goals given up, and a lack of awareness and feistiness on the ice to believe that Rutledge will rebound to salvage a career already teetering on the brink."
 
to be considerably more inappropriate and out of bounds than this:

"This team is an embarrassment."

nm

but if you ask any journalist (or Red Berenson for that matter) I think you'll find 99.9% would have no issue with my verbiage but would think calling the team a total embarrassment is over the line. 

I think my time in the New York media market has made me figure people will write and say whatever they want about sports teams, though of course that's for pro teams, not college.

calling this team an embarrassment is over the line. If the shoe fits..... They are 10-18-2 and have been blown out at home numerous times to teams we usually blow out. This team is going to miss the NCAA and break a very proud streak of UM hockey. They have played uninspired, sloppy, undisciplined hockey most nights. I think embarrassing just somes it all up.

I think anyone who feels embarrasment at how a team they cheer for plays needs to rethink whats really important. I certainly wish the team was playing better, but life won't end because the streak does. I'll back the Michigan team to the very end and hope for better tomorrows.

It doesn't have anything to do with cheering for them or thinking the world would end. However, as a fan if you can't be honest about your own team what can you do. I can take off the maize colored glasses and call it for what it is. I have been a UM fan my entire life and always will be, but I'm also honest

Just to be clear. I did not say I was embarrassed by the
team but that they were an embarrassment to M hockey.
M hockey clearly being held to a very high standard
of excellence.

This was after watching captains repestedly coasting by neutral
turnovers versus ND. That said, playing in front of this type of goaltending
at this level of play could be extremely frustrating causing
top players to give up.

Fire away!

 Well, since I started this thread - it was my attempt to recreate, by inference from reading another thread, a post that got zapped before I read it.

I'm against criticizing indivduals for poor play or lack of talent, at least here on the World Wide Web.  If it were 2 or 3 of us talking in a bar, that's different.

I do think criticisms of the team as a whole are appropriate, and are much more in line with my view of the nature of the game of hockey.  This isn't gymnastics or swimming where the team score is basically the accumulation of points scored by individual athletes in individual events.

"This team is an embarrassment" - that's probably inappropriate IMO.  An embarrassment to whom? As someone else stated somewhere in this discussion, as a fan you may have some deeper issues if you feel the college hockey team is an embarrassment to you.

But - "The team embarrassed itself tonight" - probably OK.  And our guys have probably thought that about their performance after a number of games this season.