Just when you thought Mike Duco had a lock on NHL Dummy of the Week, along skates Dan Carcillo, Neanderthal style, on Saturday night. As senseless and selfish acts go, it’s hard to fathom topping Carcillo’s dastardly deed against Matt Bradley, which precipitated the 8-2 Saturday Night Massacre in Philadelphia.
Duco on Thursday night earned 27 minutes of infraction time for his attack on Alexandre Giroux, which allowed the Caps to turn a comfy 4-0 lead into a 6-0 laugher. Last night Carcillo managed to under-wit the Panther punk: 29 minutes for cross checking (2 minutes); instigating (2 minutes); fighting (5 minutes); misconduct (10 minutes); and a game misconduct (10 more minutes). The score was 1-1 at the time, and the Flyers were skating their first game for new coach Peter Laviolette. Carcillo’s thuggery single-handedly made sure that the new bench boss endured one of the worst in-season coaching debuts in Philadelphia sports history.
And relative to Alexander Ovechkin’s action against Carolina’s Tim Gleason on Monday night, which earned the star a two-game suspension, Carcillo’s mayhem ought to earn a weeks-long suspension.
With mystifying and sweeping revisionism Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer claims that a Matt Bradley high stick precipitated Carcillo’s cowardice. In point of fact, Bradley hit Carcillo cleanly, with his shoulder, a shoulder-on-shoulder blow, driving the Flyer knucklehead legally into the boards. Carcillo just didn’t like it. The Inquirer next suggested that the Capitals’ right wing had dropped his gloves for a fair engagement. Not only hadn’t Bradley dropped his gloves when Carcillo attacked, he still had his stick in one hand at the moment Carcillo grabbed a fistful of white sweater. Keith Jones, calling the game for Comcast Sportsnet in Philadelphia, also couldn’t bring any basic discernment of hockey’s Code to the moment (The Philly feed is on the left, Washington on the right):
It’s not even close to honoring the Code. And it all unfolded five feet in front of a zebra — hence the heavy sanctions. Now it’s time for the league to have its say in the matter.
There’s a real good reason for throwing the book at Carcillo as the game’s referees, Dennis LaRue and Stephane Auger, did, and it speaks directly to hockey’s Code and rules of engagement: careers would be ended were Carcillo’s actions par for the course. Quite simply, we don’t tolerate sucker punches in our sport. It was nauseating to watch, this unprovoked violence that very easily could have concussed Bradley. Just because Bradley wasn’t knocked out cold doesn’t mean Carcillo’s actions shouldn’t be condemned.
When two drunks in a bar get mouthy with one another and decide to settle their differences outside, we call that a rough Saturday night at the tavern. When a thug cold-cocks an unsuspecting pedestrian on the street we rightly send him to criminal court. Hockey has rules of engagement; Saturday night Dan Carcillo ignored them.
Of less importance in this matter is a fresh discussion of the absence of an authentic, deterring enforcer in the Capitals’ lineup. Via Twitter last night the Washington Times’ Corey Masisak suggested that the best response to acts of unprovoked violence is to light up the scoreboard during the ensuing power plays: “The Caps don’t need an enforcer — they’ve proven the last 2 nights that taking liberties is not a smart move and they will punish you for it,” he Tweeted.
A scoreboard pummeling is a sweet revenge, but certainly not the safest. For instance, going forward, what if the sport’s violence is directed not at Matt Bradley but at our big guns? Last night I tweeted this reply: “It takes one filthy elbow to one Russian’s head in March to make us wish we had a serial killer in a sweater.”
11 Comments
Ovechkin’s hit (for which he was so publicly suspended) was arguably an accident after __??__ (drawing a blank) turned at the last second and Gr8 took the worst of it physically.
One would hope that this thug on skates (Curcillo) would also be suspended for his pre-meditated and brutal beating of Bradley. Who may yet have a concussion … it’s unknown why he did not return to the game. However, the league appears to be very capricious in it’s handing out of suspensions, so I doubt he’ll get one.
To their (extremely limted) credit the Flyers were not blaming the refs after the game. Their announcers and some fans seem to think that because Bradley had just formed the “intent” to fight (that is, he had just started dropping his gloves), he should get 5 mins. Of course, as OFB points out, the fist was already in his face before he had even had a chance to let go of his stick. So while Bradley might have been deserving of the major had things lasted a little longer – had he had the opportunity to engage at all – the call was right. Bradley had indeed not started “fighting” (whatever his intent).
The other thing is when you are the unprovoked aggressor in this situation, you are rolling the dice with the refs. The Flyers seemed to recognize that (and they repeatedly called out Carcillo after the game).
Finally, the refs didn’t give the Caps any goals. The Caps didn’t let up, taking advantage of the power play, and the Flyers’ listless goaltending.
The other play of the game was Fehr stepping up on that Flyer before that first goal. No idea how the puck stayed in the zone, but the Flyers wanted to come out strong, and that goal was huge.
All great, great points, Jeremy. I actually listened to Philly sports radio WIP after the game last night (my new favorite radio station), and there was considerable attention paid by both the studio host and the at-game correspondent to the reaction to Carcillo in the Flyers’ room. Pronger didn’t mince words. Mike Richards actually retrieved Carcillo, who was hiding, and apparently told him ‘You made this mess, you’re gonna face the music’. (I’m paraphrasing.) There does seem to be a leadership tension on that team, but Richards did the right thing in the postgame last night, from my vantage.
I agree Pucksandbooks. The Comcast Philly website (my first venture there) has the Flyers’ postgame interviews, and they are in line with your comments. Re: the leadership tension, Richards had an odd moment where he says, very quietly, something like “I am prepared to lead the team.” It was not exactly convincing. Of course the real leadership comes when the cameras aren’t around, and it sounds like he had a conversation with Carcillo.
Per tsn.ca, he got a four-game suspension: http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=301359
While I’m not arguing that Carcillo is a goon, first and foremost, Bradley does drop the gloves every few games, and Carcillo was clearly trying to get a fight going with the Caps only player passing for an enforcer, which Bradley was happy to oblige, it seemed. The problem wasn’t necessarily that he threw a punch too early, but that the one he threw happened to be the knockout blow. I’ve seen lots of fights that start in similar ways, with one guy throwing before the other guy is totally ready, but they rarely end after one punch.
As a side note, can we somehow get word to Matt Bradley that maybe fighting just isn’t his thing? That’s 3 times in very recent memory I’ve seen him get annihilated and come away bloody (the last being against the Rangers, if I recall correctly, prior to scoring on that beautiful breakaway).
We hear about “The Code” all the time. The intent of such a code (in large part) is to keep players safe by promoting a fair fight. If fighting is the way that you want to settle a score or attempt a momentum swing, the code is there to keep the guys safe who’s job it is to do the dirty work in the context of the game. No one REALLY wants to seriously hurt an opponent(with few exceptions).
No mater Bradley’s intent (and it does look like he’s trying to drop the glove to swing when he gets hit), he hadn’t had the opportunity to decide to fight and square up. That’s not a fight. That’s assault, and the on-ice officials got the call right.
While I’m glad that the Caps got the 9-minute PP, does anyone else think it is strange that Carcillo got a 4 game suspension and Duco didn’t get anything? I think Duco’s attack on Giroux was far dirtier than the fight. Duco actually tackled Giroux and kept punching him on the ice. At least Carcillo walked away after his punch on Bradley (who, while he may not have been able to defend himself, did see it coming).
The problem with the NHL is that they will give punishments more frequently if someone bleeds regardless of what actually took place. In my opinion, Ovechkin’s check against Buffalo’s Kaleta should have been okay but Kaleta fell and got scratched up in the process and Ovie got a GM for it. Bradley got cut open in his fight. Had Giroux received a bloody nose from Duco, we probably would see Duco sitting for a few games. However, that wouldn’t make the attack any dirtier.
Duco should be suspended for what he did, regardless of how easily Giroux walked away from it. The NHL needs to start punishing people for their intent, not just the outcome.
@Sam
Some people think that “Il Duco” will not be long for the NHL anyhow.
If anyone told me before yesterday’s game that a Flyer would get even more penalty minutes against the Caps than “Il Duco” did, I would not have believed it. Even though we’re talking about Philthy.
The provincialism of the Philadelphia sports media surprises me again. Not. There was no high stick. There was not, as suggested in another paper, an exchange of cross-checks.
Keith Jones going into full apologist mode was shameful.
Your tweet hit the bullseye on the enforcer issue. That power play may be nice, but it doesn’t matter for jack if your first line winger is sent to the hospital.
If the goal of Sir Johnny Thug-A-Lot is to take out a top line guy through nefarious methods, I don’t really see how having a goon on our side is really going to stop them. The thugs big enough won’t care about getting in a dust-up with our guy and the ones dumb enough (I’m looking at you Carcillo) won’t either. I think the last two games have shown that the league, and maybe more surprisingly, the refs aren’t afraid to put their collective foot down. That being said, I do think we need some grit on our D, but more to wear down our opponents rather than as some sort of cold war escalation policy.
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