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So the NHL referees are tired of watching the game, that’s about it, Amirite?
The Capitals’ Tom Wilson, showing off that life-time release card he was given by the ridiculously named Department of Player Safety, hammered Brandon Carlo’s head into the glass on Friday and the league immediately went into contortions . try to find the technicality to keep the predator away from Washington.
You see… see right there… when you slow down, it grazes Carlo’s wrist, the glove first… no, slow down even more… you see…?
This is what happened following the stroke, on which referees Dean Morton and Pierre Lambert called no penalty on the game, which sent Carlo of the Bruins to the hospital from where he was. released Saturday night.
But earlier on Saturday, in what was believed to be a response to the firestorm unleashed in response to this example of blind justice, the league invited Wilson to an in-person videoconference hearing that ultimately led to a suspension of seven games without pay.
We’ll see, but it looks like Commissioner Gary Bettman may finally have had enough.
There is more, however, for Bettman to address if he wants to get into the weeds.
A dangerous and apparently intentional kick imposed by the Hurricanes ‘Brett Pesce against the Red Wings’ Robby Fabbri on Thursday shot only a minor trip penalty and no other league discipline, when a match penalty and the suspension of several matches have been earned. for the blatant act of violence.
NHL Rule 52.2: “Any player who is found guilty of a kick off shall be assessed a game penalty.”
Except, apparently, for the matches in which TJ Luxmore and Frédéric L’Ecuyer are the referees.
In 1998, when Colin Campbell took command as vice president of hockey operations in charge of supplemental discipline, three players were suspended for patrol at the end of November. The NHL was on a particular crackdown.
But in this brave new world, there has been no NHL player suspended for missing a foot in over six years, since the Bruins’ Brad Marchand received a two-game sentence for defeating the Derick Brassard. of the Rangers in January 2015.
This represented Stéphane Quintal’s first year as head of the player safety department, a position he held until 2016-2017. Since George Parros took over from Quintal (finally) in early 2017-18, no player has been held responsible for this cowardly and dangerous violation of rules and etiquette.
So it was Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday, the Capitals ‘Alex Ovechkin threw the Bruins’ Trent Frederic in the family jewels as if he was the matador Manolete goring a beast in the arenas, got a two minute minor for, get this, cutting, and was happily sent on his way with a fine of $ 5,000.
Deterrence seems to be a thing of the past, much like making the playoffs in Buffalo.
The hockey folks in the league have no appetite for a crackdown, and neither does the union, which continues to oppose tough sentencing guidelines. That won’t change until the overwhelming majority of players who fall prey to predators demand a change from the union.
But do you know what is also true for the vast majority of players? They just seem to think guys from other teams should be suspended.
And as I have written over and over again, if they don’t care about their own health and safety, why should anyone else? own health and safety, why someone else?
It’s a small circle of friends, as Phil Ochs might have observed, from which NHL teams are now hiring.
If he wasn’t curious enough that the PPP-Penguins dragged Brian Burke out of his well-deserved retirement in the cold to lead the team’s hockey operations, couldn’t the Flames find a more creative way? to replace Geoff Ward behind the bench than to come back. into the future for Darryl Sutter?
Yes, Burke presided over the Stanley Cup title’s GM title in Anaheim in 2007, but Jean Perron already won a cup as the Habs coach in 1986 and no one has put him off a decade and a half longer. late to end up behind an NHL bench. .
Burke was NHL general manager or president of hockey operations for 19 seasons. Outside of the two-year run at Anaheim in which the Ducks advanced to the conference finals in 2006 and then won the title a year later, his teams have won the grand total of two playoff rounds.
But he is the man Mario Lemieux has chosen to guide his team into the future. Progressive Thinking in Pittsburgh.
The same goes for Calgary, where the Flames are on their fourth coach in five seasons and have nothing more creative than hiring the last behind their bench in 2005-06.
And after? Doug MacLean is back behind the bench in Columbus if it’s for John Tortorella?
On Friday night, the Sharks were playing in alternate gray uniforms and no player could be identified by number. Meanwhile, the Red Wings’ retro reverse looks like replica training jerseys, something you could buy at a schlock store.
But … if you’ve noticed how the numbers and names on the Ranger Statues of Liberty appeared last weekend compared to the first few times they were worn, Equipment Chief Acasio Marques, who redone numbers and names by lightening dark shadows, gets 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 the Herb Brooks Smurfs, who died Thursday in tragic circumstances. May he find the peace that eluded him during the last years of his life.
Finally, when they created the mold for what a hockey parent should be, they did it in 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 to all his friends and to the masses of children he touched and inspired, he was a role model just as much as No.99.
Walter Gretzky’s passing surely leaves a hole in the heart of the game, but he will be forever filled by his spirit of generosity that will live on for eternity.
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