The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

[sharks]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

I've never seen a team give up and look so defeated.

[Kobalt]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

I don't know what to think about this, except that it's quite funny.

Yea I got a good laugh at that. Reminded me some elementary school bully

[pietasterp]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

Yea I got a good laugh at that. Reminded me some elementary school bully

Bertuzzi is the only old-school roughneck on the squad. No quarter for the enemy. Of course, he'll have plenty of time to play ping-pong pretty soon if the Wings can't stage a show of force tomorrow night...

[BlueNGold]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

Backstrom misses half the season with a concussion, attempts to cross-check guy in the head.

Don't you just love NHL players?

[Kobalt]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

Backstrom misses half the season with a concussion, attempts to cross-check guy in the head.

Don't you just love NHL players?

Mark Olver fought David Booth late in the year. Mark Olver missed pretty much beginning of the season with the concussion and Booth has a history of concussion. When that was going on, I just thought they were both idiots.

[Stu]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

I believe that was after Lucic threw the little punch?

Nope. Lucic was standing in front of the net after the save, not skating towards Holtby and Wideman cross checked him from behind. Lucic responded to the cross check which is when Hendricks and Alzner got involved. Happens about 8 seconds into the video here:

http://www.nesn.com/2012/04/karl-alzner-tells-milan-lucic-hes-crybaby-after-bruins-forward-pummels-him-in-game-3-video.html

[BlueNGold]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

NHL reaps rewards as bodies hit the floor

When the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers compiled 168 penalty minutes in Game 3 of their first-round series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs — the infractions included roughing, fighting, charging, slashing, cross-checking, kneeing, tripping, unsportsmanlike conduct and three ejections — Penguins forward Matt Cooke went unnoticed. Oh, he played; he was on the ice for fourteen minutes and eight seconds, about the same as Philadelphia’s Daniel Brière. But he had no penalties. He was once the league’s foremost cheapshot artist, but when the bodies hit the floor, Matt Cooke was nowhere to be found.

In fact, the playoffs were careering into dangerous places without him. All across the NHL waves of violence — both typical and excessive — have swept across the game. Elbows, fights, concussions, the most penalty minutes in at least five years and four suspensions (and counting, pending further decisions on Game 3 in the Penguins-Flyers series) in the first 17 games played. There were four suspensions in the entirety of the 2011 playoffs.

And yet, Matt Cooke is not among them, because after he was banned for 10 games and the first round of the playoffs last season — his fifth suspension — he is terrified of being suspended again.

“I always just approached it to go for the biggest hit possible, and at the last second, oh, it’s going to get ugly, maybe you try to pull out, and it doesn’t work,” Cooke said earlier this week.

“On the fly, you can’t decide like that. Now … you try to tie up their stick and ride their hips into the boards, so it’s pretty physical, but not trying to crush them.

“I played so long — my whole life — the other way.… Through working with the coaching staff and watching video, I got back to being physical. There are hits that I can hit, and it’s OK. [But] I got a two-minute boarding penalty on Barrett Jackman in St. Louis. I didn’t touch him. And for 24 hours, I was worried about getting a call from the league.”

In other words, Matt Cooke is a walking, skating example of how supplementary discipline can work. He used to hurt people. He has been deterred.

The rest of the league has not. The playoffs have always been a savage place, but in the context of what we now know about concussions — and the price that has been paid by so many of the league’s players — this year is different. San Jose Sharks coach Todd McLellan called it “borderline chaos” Monday. St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock disagreed; he called it “organized chaos.”

Either way it is chaos, and it is at the NHL’s door. If the league’s owners and general managers wanted it curbed, they could do it. Cooke could be patient zero.

But after a strong start NHL disciplinary czar Brendan Shanahan was reined in, and the suspensions were reined in with him. A purely predatory elbow by Chicago’s Duncan Keith on Canucks star Daniel Sedin late in the season? Five games. Nashville’s Shea Weber turnbuckles Detroit’s Henrik Zetterberg’s head into the glass in the dying seconds of a Game 1? A cracked helmet, but no injury, so a US$2,500 fine.

Piecemeal suspensions for Vancouver’s Byron Bitz, Ottawa’s Matt Carkner, Pittsburgh’s Craig Adams — which was an instigator penalty in the final five minutes of Game 3, and therefore an automatic suspension — and a slightly heavier one for the New York Rangers’ Carl Hagelin. Several other dangerous plays went unsuspended — Brent Burns on Scott Nicholl, T.J. Galiardi on Andy McDonald, on and on — and it spreads. As Philadelphia defenceman Kimmo Timonen put it, “It’s a part of the game. If they do that, then we have to do the same.”

Timonen was not talking about hurting people, though. Few will argue that animosity and emotion are not a reason why playoff hockey can be great. Ask most players, and their eyes shine when they talk about it.

“That’s the way hockey should be,” Brière said. “It’s intense. Players are passionate, coaches are passionate, fans are passionate. This is what it’s all about. You come to a game, you want to see passionate teams go at it. You don’t want a boring game, with nothing going on. I think people that paid a price to come watch a playoff game, that’s what they want to see.

“There’s a fine line there, where there’s a couple examples of things that went a little too far, but overall, I think it’s a good thing for hockey to see players care, coaches care, fans care, the way you do in this series.”

The problem with playing on that edge, of course, is when players tip over. Ottawa’s Daniel Alfredsson was concussed by a reckless high elbow from Hagelin, who earlier this season told reporters the highlight of his all-star weekend was meeting his fellow Swede, a hero back home. Hagelin got three games. Sidney Crosby and Claude Giroux and Kris Letang risked further concussions in fights. As Brière put it, “At times, we all cross the line.”

It’s a fine line, is what it is.

“I think if you look around, the whole playoffs it’s been like that,” said Timonen, whose first career fight occurred in Game 3. “It’s not just our game. I watched the games last night, and it’s been like that. I don’t know what that is, but I’m disappointed. There’s some guys running around and they’re not usually doing that, and I don’t understand that.

“If you can hit guys without the puck nowadays, that’s dangerous. I understand the rough game, I understand the guys with the puck, you can hit it, I love the rough game. But when guys don’t have the puck and you hit them blindside, I don’t understand that. The league should get on that.”

The man he was talking about, Pittsburgh’s James Neal, had a pair of hearings with the league.

But there is no disincentive, unless the league cares about its players more than it cares about the fact that TV ratings are soaring. TSN is up 56% over last year; NBC’s weekend games were up 50% over this time last year; Game 3 between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia was NBC’s most-watched non-Stanley Cup game since 2002. The NHL is reaping the whirlwind, in every way. And when it is done, we will count which bodies hit the floor, and which ones got up.

[ManiacMatt1782]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

^^^ Good article.

[Stu]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

Yup and further goes to show what DrJones (and others) have been saying all along. Shanahan was neutered after the all-star break and the league really doesn't care about player safety no matter how much they try to pretend they do.

[slickdtc]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

Everyone sees it but the NHL. Even the damn players see what's going on this playoff season.

It's crazy out there.

[kai123]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

Everyone sees it but the NHL. Even the damn players see what's going on this playoff season.

It's crazy out there.

It doesn't matter. The NHL is a business, these bad hits and shenanigans are making them money and getting people talking. In the states, people are finally watching hockey again and even in Canada the ratings are going up.

[jyoung]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

It's clear that the league and its commissioner are very much enjoying all the fighting and goonery going on in the first round because it's getting the NHL talked about and shown more prominently around the media than the NHL playoffs normally would if every game was just "normal boring hockey."

[SidVish]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

Shaw gets a 3 game suspension.

So this is 3 times as worse as what Carkner did? Or maybe next time Shaw should just take Smith's head and bash it into the glass?

What are Asham and Neal going to receive?

And Mike Smith is fine and will play tonight.

I give up predicting these things. It's such a farce.

[ManiacMatt1782]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

Shaw gets a 3 game suspension.

So this is 3 times as worse as what Carkner did? Or maybe next time Shaw should just take Smith's head and bash it into the glass?

What are Asham and Neal going to receive?

And Mike Smith is fine and will play tonight.

I give up predicting these things. It's such a farce.

If that got 3, Neal better get 15.

[pietasterp]

Re: The Official 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs Thread

Ratings are up big-time...

To be honest, I'm kind of torn. I have very fond memories of the all-out wars between the Wings and Avalanche back in the mid-to-late 90's, and a big part of that rivalry was the outright violence with which those two teams faced off with. And I love all the physical play in this first round, including the fights. But I feel like there's a difference - albeit a small one - between rough play and guys squaring off, and cheap shots and totally out-of-play violence. I can make a point-by-point argument for each individual act, justifying (or not) each one, but ultimately it all breaks down and I'm left with just a feeling that this play or that was/wasn't dirty. I will freely admit that line is VERY blurry, and I have no firm ground to stand on whilst also wondering about player safety/discipline. It's a bit of a Catch-22 for me.

And to top it all off, the ratings are doing awesome. It's "Slap Shot" all over again...