So the NHL referees are tired of policing the game, is that it, Amirite?
Capitals’ Tom Wilson, displaying that lifelong exit card from which he was bestowed by the Player Security Department with the ridiculous name, threw Brandon Carlo’s head on the glass on Friday and the league immediately went into contortions trying to find the technicality to free the predator from Washington.
Look … look right there … when you slow down, he rubs Carlo’s wrist, first the glove … no, it slows down more … you know …? “
It happened after the coup, in which referees Dean Morton and Pierre Lambert did not take penalties in the move, which sent Carlo dos Bruins to the hospital from which he was discharged on Saturday night.
But early Saturday, in what was believed to be a response to the storm triggered in response to this example of blind justice, the league invited Wilson to a personal videoconference hearing that ultimately led to the suspension of seven unpaid games.
We’ll see, but it looks like Commissioner Gary Bettman has finally gotten tired of it.
There is more, however, for Bettman to address if he wants to go into the bush.
A dangerous and apparently intentional spinning foot charged by the Brett Pesce of the Hurricanes against Robby Fabbri of the Red Wings on Thursday brought only a minor penalty for tripping and no additional discipline in the league, when a game penalty and suspension of several games were deserved by the blatant act of violence.
NHL Rule 52.2: “Any player guilty of homicide will receive a gambling penalty.”
Except, apparently, for games where TJ Luxmore and Frederic L’Ecuyer are the referees.
In 1998, when Colin Campbell took over as VP of Hockey Operations at the helm of supplementary discipline, three players were suspended for somersault in late November. The NHL was in a particular crackdown.
But in this brave new world, there hasn’t been an NHL player suspended for somersault in more than six years, since Brad Marchand dos Bruins received a two-game sentence for taking down Derick Brassard from Rangers in January 2015.
This represented Stephane Quintal’s first year as head of the player’s security department, a position he held in 2016-17. Since George Parros succeeded Quintal (well) in early 2017-18, no player has been held responsible for this cowardly and dangerous violation of rules and etiquette.
So that was Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday, Alex Ovechkin of the Capitals speared Trent Frederic dos Bruins in the family jewels as if he were the bullfighter Manolete stabbing a crossbow in the bullring, got a less than two minutes to, take this, cut it and was happily sent his way with a $ 5,000 fine.
Deterrence seems to be a thing of the past, as is getting to the playoffs in Buffalo.
League hockey personnel have no appetite for repression, nor does the union, which is always opposed to harsh condemnation rules. This will not change until the vast majority of players who are victims of predators demand the change of the union.
But do you know what is also true about the vast majority of players? They just seem to think that guys from other teams should be suspended.
And as I have written many, many times, if they don’t care about their own health and safety, why else would anyone care? own health and safety, why should anyone else?
It is a small circle of friends, as Phil Ochs must have observed, from which the NHL teams are making their signings.
If it wasn’t curious enough that the PPP-Penguins dragged Brian Burke from well-deserved retirement into the cold to run the team’s hockey operations, the Flames couldn’t find a more creative way to replace Geoff Ward behind the bench than back in the Darryl Sutter’s future?
Yes, Burke chaired the Anaheim 2007 Stanley Cup title as GM, but Jean Perron once won a cup as a coach for the Canadiens in 1986 and no one was holding him back a decade and a half after going behind an NHL bank.
Burke served as general manager of the NHL or president of hockey operations for 19 seasons. Apart from the two years of racing in Anaheim when the Ducks went to the conference finals in 2006 and won the title a year later, their teams won the grand total of two playoff rounds.
But this is the man Mario Lemieux chose to guide his team into the future. Progressive thinking in Pittsburgh.
The same in Calgary, where the Flames have been their fourth coach in five seasons and have achieved nothing more creative than hiring the last one behind their bank in 2005-06.
What is the next? Doug MacLean behind the bank in Columbus, is this for John Tortorella?
On Friday night, the Sharks were playing in alternative gray uniforms and no player could be identified by their number. In the meantime, the reverse look at the Red Wings looks like a replica of practice t-shirts, something you can buy at a cheap goods store.
But … if you noticed how the numbers and names on the Rangers’ Statues of Liberty appeared last weekend compared to the first few times they were used, the main equipment manager Acasio Marques, who redid the numbers and names by lighting up the dark shadows, understand the credit for improvement.
A farewell to Mark Pavelich, the troubled member of the 1980 Miracle Team USA and popular Ranger who was one of the faces of Herb Brooks’ Smurfs, who passed away in tragic circumstances on Thursday. May he find the peace that has eluded him in the last years of his life.
Finally, when they created the mold of what a hockey dad should be, they did it in the person of Walter Gretzky. Wayne Gretzky’s father was humble, supportive, understood that youth hockey should be fun and had a heart as big as his beloved Canada.
Known as Wally by all his friends and by the masses of children he touched and inspired, he was a role model as far as No. 99.
Walter Gretzky’s passage certainly leaves a hole in the heart of the game, but it will be filled forever by his spirit of generosity that will live for eternity.