Give the right-wing goalie a break.

   When reading a story yesterday, that the Boston Bruins would be attending the White House to meet with President Barack Obama in a ceremony meant to highlight last spring's Stanley Cup victory, I must admit that my reaction was one of "ho-hum". Boring...

   For American sports teams, the Washington visit is one of the perks of winning a championship. Baseball teams, basketball teams, football teams, and United States based hockey teams, go to their nation's capital, pose for pictures, hand the Prez a jersey with his name on it, make a few lame jokes, everybody laughs, and everybody moves on.

   When it's the Stanley Cup champions making the visit, these public relations events usually serve to show how little most presidents know about hockey.

   The image of George Bush The First, not knowing who Mario Lemieux was, or of Bill Clinton calling the Detroit Red Wings captain Steve "Why-Zerr-Man" are two such instances.

   I don't know this for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that Barack Obama isn't exactly an expert on the game. I could be wrong, but I suspect that if asked he would say that hybrid icing has something to do with green technology being used for the freezing of the playing surface.

   So I figured that this visit would be one that would come and go as most others have in the past, a 15 second blurb at the end of the nightly sportscast. But I hadn't figured on Tim Thomas.

   Today, Tim Thomas, an American-born NHL goaltender, declined the invitation to attend the White House and meet President Obama with the rest of his teammates. This of course set off the media and sent the Twitter world, well, all atwitter. 

   Thomas, for those who may not know, is an active member of the Tea Party, an ultra-conservative political movement. Some clues as to his political views can be seen on his mask which include the "In God We Trust" inscription on the front and a stylized Gadsden flag on the back. Thomas has also stated that he is a fan of conservative media figure Glenn Beck.

   So that he is not enamored with this particular President of the United States, is certainly not a surprise. That he decided that his political convictions demanded that he snub an invitation to the White House is  also not really surprising given the highly divisive nature of current American politics.

   Although Thomas stated that "this was not about politics", the reality is that refusing an invitation to the White House is a profoundly political act. Regardless, how it is spun.

   But be that as it may, as a hockey fan, it is a story of little or no consequence. I'm certain that his teammates are not torn in the least about this, so it won't have any effect on the cohesiveness of the Bruins. 

   This is not Carlos Smith at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, nor is in Muhammad Ali refusing induction in the United States Army. A hockey goalie refusing to meet the President of the United States is hardly the type of event that will have sociologists and historians writing about years from now.

    I didn't care about the Bruins visiting the White House earlier today, and even with this controversy, I still don't care.