Rigamarole - A Foot In The Crease - Episode 2.17

www.afootinthecrease.com

Sometimes I think the NHL presents a double standard with their often questionable decision making. After a fight filled game between the New York Rangers and Washington Capitals this past week which included several incidents that cross the line of acceptability, everyone knew suspensions were going to be handed out. The next day, suspensions were handed out so let’s get out the noisemakers and party hats, the NHL got that one right, but that’s where it stopped.

Colton Orr receiving five games for a cross check to the face of Alex Ovechkin still does not seem like enough punishment but comparatively speaking with the one game Donald Brashear got, at least I can live with it.

One minute the NHL preaches a new dawn of fast, skilled, clean, obstruction-less play, the next they barely punish an action that severely tarnishes the image the NHL seems to be trying to convey.

For giving Brashear only a one game penalty for a sucker punishing Aaron Ward not once but TWICE is absurd. Brashear is an unskilled thug with no respected for the game itself or his fellow players. He already has been slapped with a three game ban earlier this season and comparing his actions to a similar incident where Scott Nichol received nine games for sucker punching Jaroslav Spacek, something just doesn’t add up.

Brashear’s place on the Capitals is in theory to protect one of the brightest young stars in the game. However when he goes out and attempts to injure the Rangers star Jaromir Jagr with a knee on knee hit, he only antagonizes the Rangers to retaliate against Ovechkin. Brashear doesn’t go after Jagr’s knee, Orr doesn’t go after Ovechkin. Simple as that! Brashear’s action sparked the entire course of events in that game and for that he should have been handed a much stiffer penalty. But hey, all that was just rigamarole.