After New York Ranger Chris Kreider’s inadvertent collision with Montreal Canadiens goalie Carey Price saw the latter ruled out for the rest of the season, Les Habitants surrendered a second straight game at home, losing 0-2 hole behind rookie net-minder Dustin Tokarski.
Game 3 at New York’s Madison Square Garden started with a bang.
Brandon Prust, a fan favourite when he wore a Rangers jersey and now a Canadiens role player, became an instant enemy in the eyes of the Garden faithful.
A late hit on Rangers forward Derek Stepan left the key cog in the Rangers machine motionless on the ice for a few very scary minutes.
Replays showed that the puck was nowhere near Stepan when Prust hit him high and late, and it later emerged that Stepan had sustained a broken jaw.
That means surgery, and it also means that Stepan will play no further part in the series. Shockingly, the referees missed calling any penalty on the play.
On Prust’s very next shift he was challenged by New York’s Derek Dorsett, and the two dropped the gloves. In the middle of that fracas, Rangers enforcer Daniel Carcillo somehow still got involved.
Details of how and why are still a little sketchy, but what happened after Dorsett and Prust were separated was the real story.
Carcillo was given a game misconduct, and would play no further part. Replays and eyewitness accounts from fans tweeting inside the Garden showed that Carcillo made contact with an official, going so far as to land – what looked like – a light sort of punch across the official’s chin.
It was a dumb move by Carcillo, and although it happened in the heat of what was a very combustible moment, it’s inexcusable. Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said that Carcillo would deserve the punishment he got.
I’m not condoning what Carcillo did, but I do have to wonder what on earth the people in charge of discipline are doing. The day after the game, Carcillo was assessed a ten-game penalty for his actions.
They weren’t as bad as Prust’s, so you’d expect Prust to get at least that long, and perhaps more, right? Wrong.
For the hit on Derek Stepan that put him out of the series – and the Stanley Cup Final, should the Rangers progress – Brandon Prust was slapped with a two-game suspension.
If that isn’t exactly condoning a vicious, late and overly-violent message, it’s certainly saying to guys out there that you can get away with injuring another player and expect to sit for only a few games.
It’s a token punishment at best. Maybe the NHL has been listening to the Canadiens and the rabid press in Canada. After all, Montreal coach Michael Therrien didn’t think there was anything wrong with Prust’s hit. He thought it was “clean”. If that’s his definition of a clean hit, then Therrien needs to get his head checked and either his eyes checked or his glasses cleaned.
We have the two contrasting penalties here, and an eight-game divide. Carcillo’s bone-headed manhandling of an official, which really wasn’t a giant thing, principle (which I understand) aside, and Prust’s actions putting a player out of a series. This, ladies and gentlemen, is bizarro world.
Those suspensions should be the other way around. That it’s shaken out this way, that the NHL has decided that Carcillo’s actions were eight games more vicious than Prust blatantly levelling Derek Stepan when the puck was in another county, is laughable.
Sure, if Carcillo had really whacked the official, then it would make more sense. I get that the NHL are trying to send a message here that officials can’t be touched, no matter the situation, but this isn’t the time, not in the face of what Prust did.
There’s lots said about the entire Canadiens franchise, not to mention certain sections of their fan-base, and their sense of entitlement. I don’t think there’s a more loathed franchise in the entire National Hockey League, and there’s always been a perception that the league favours Montreal in rulings and judgements.
With this decision, NHL powerbrokers in Toronto or New York City haven’t done a particularly good job of dispelling that theory. Carcillo’s punishment laid to one side for the moment, I find it hard to believe that the league can hand down only a two-game punishment for a hit that was obviously a head-hunter.
Kreider running into Price was an accident – he was slashed pretty good, which cannoned him into the Montreal goalie – but Prust’s hit on Stepan wasn’t. He sits for his meagre punishment now, safe in the knowledge that he’s taken out one of New York’s bigger offensive threats.
You can’t wrap that hit up in any other fashion than that. It was late, it was high, it was dirty and it was damn sure meant to injure. Well, it’s done it’s job.
Shame on the National Hockey League for not doing their job in providing a deterrent to other players who might be thinking about doing the same thing.
If the Les Habitants come back to win the series and advance to the Stanley Cup Final, the Prust-on-Stepan hit may well be the biggest talking point from the East Finals.
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