Carcillo is a repeat offender (and a goon) – he was suspended 2 games for this hit on Carolina’s Pittkanen on 10/28. Guest Starring Rob Blake!!

Calgary’s Rene Bourque got a 5-game ban [link] and a lifetime spot on my s&%$ list for his elbow to the precious face of Nicklas Backstrom.  You all saw it, and I don’t want to watch it again.  As mentioned yesterday, Bourque is also a repeat offender for this hit on Chicago’s Brent Seabrook in December that got him suspended for two.

Dale Hunter gave no conclusive update on Backstrom yesterday, but his brother posted an update to Twitter:

This was obviously not team-sanctioned news and was quickly taken down.  Silly people with inside info, you are not publicists!  But no worries, because Nicky participated in a full practice this morning and is expected to make the Caps trip to San Jose today, for the game Saturday.

It’s not just elbows and knees getting people into trouble.  The Panthers’ Krys Barch has been suspended 1 game for an alleged racial slur against PK Subban.  The remark was overhead by a linesman during Saturday’s game and Barch was ejected [link].  There are a lot of things we’d like to say to PK Subban, but none of them are that.  And all of them come after, “Can we have Stamkos’ number?”  I’m sure there’s a lot of hearsay in this case, but this argument is looking pretty valid:

And Rangers’ coach John Tortorella was fined by the NHL after some pretty inflammatory comments following Monday’s Winter Classic:

“I’m not sure if NBC got together with the refs or what to turn this into an overtime game,” Tortorella said Monday. “For two good refs, I thought the game was reffed horribly. I’m not sure what happened there.”Maybe they wanted to get into overtime. I’m not sure if they had meetings about that or what. But we stood in there. I don’t want to … because they are good guys. I just thought it was, in that third period, it was disgusting.” [link]

Torts apologized and will fork over $30k for the outburst.  New Yorkers will love him more.

Hey! I'm walking here!

So, anyone else want to have a go today?  Got some leftover 2011 aggro hanging around?  Let it go, it’s a new year.

watch out vancouver, he's lethal with a water bottle

The incident happens at the 1:20 mark. The only film available is on Youtube: (I got it to embed for you – Pants)

Puck Daddy mentions this YESTERDAY before Game 7 :

“Before the 2010-11 season, the NHL made it clear that players spraying fans with water bottles, even when there’s penalty box glass in between them, was outlawed. ”

You may remember, John Tortorella, the coach of the NY Rangers, was suspended for a game for spraying a fan with a water bottle and NOT throwing anything. This was during the 2009 playoffs. But there was a big who-ha about this when it happened. And I am not going to compare this to Rick Rypien of the Canucks because that is silly.

But the NHL did NOT suspend Horton nor provide any disciplinary action for the incident. However, there was a precedent and where is the disciplinary consistency? But if they HAD, would Boston have won game 7 against Tampa Bay since Nathan Horton snagged his second game winning goal? He now has a NHL record of scoring two game winning, game 7 goals in the same playoff year.

I was a little shocked that no media asked either coaches about this nor Versus or the CBC brought this up during the post-game analysis. It seems like everyone wanted to just sweep it under the rug.

I’m not trying to take anything away from Boston or their win tonight, nor Nathan Horton but I certainly hope perhaps the classy Tim Thomas takes him aside, sits him down and has a long talk with him about sportsmanship, being a professional and keeping his emotions in check. Because watching game 7 and then seeing all the interviews with this young man afterward, knowing about his shameful behaviour towards the Tampa Bay fans, made it a little hard to feel good about his achievements. I hope he realized he dodged a huge bullet.

i am master of the universe!

On a lighter note, Tim Thomas gave the BEST QUOTE ever, post-game when Scott Oakes asked him how he planned on handling Vancouver, “Well .. obviously, ah, I just plan on stopping as many pucks as possible!”  Good plan Tim. How can you not love this guy?