Around the NHL: Sabres, Leafs, Devils Lose, Pacioretty Leaves Game On Stretcher

He checked a player into the boards without the puck. It was an interference call at most. He didnt push him headfirst into the post or pull off a dirty hit at all. It was a clean hit that was late it was in a poor area of the ice which completely sucks for Pacioretty. That is one of those shitty instances but it wasnt a dirty play to me.

Good news on all the losses though. Anyone notice that the Islanders are 2 points behind the devils and no one is saying they have a shot at making the playoffs. Kind of funny how they stuck so tight to the devils with all the winning the Devils have been doing.

Hopefully this hit was just one that shook him up a bit. I expect to hear that it gave him a concussion, but I hope not.

We can see what that type of thing does to careers, and you can see David Booth’s regression as an example.

Selfishly, I hate what this does for American hockey. Those are two wingers that could represent the USA well in the 2014 Games.

get the suspension :-) lol

no seriously – i didnt see anything but a minor interference penalty on the play – like some of the guys say up here – unlucky place for the hit but nothing but a minor penalty.

“I conducted a hearing with Boston Bruins’ defenceman Zdeno Chara with respect to the major penalty for interference and game misconduct that he was assessed at 19:44 of the second period for a hit on Max Pacioretty of the Montreal Canadiens,” NHL vice-president of hockey operations Mike Murphy said in a statement.

“After a thorough review of the video I can find no basis to impose supplemental discipline. This hit resulted from a play that evolved and then happened very quickly — with both players skating in the same direction and with Chara attempting to angle his opponent into the boards,” continued Murphy. "I could not find any evidence to suggest that, beyond this being a correct call for interference, that Chara targeted the head of his opponent, left his feet or delivered the check in any other manner that could be deemed to be dangerous.

“This was a hockey play that resulted in an injury because of the player colliding with the stanchion and then the ice surface. In reviewing this play, I also took into consideration that Chara has not been involved in a supplemental discipline incident during his 13-year NHL career.”

Ridiculous, and a despicable play coming from someone who is generally not a particularly dirty player. Virtually every view is conclusive in my opinion. Pacioretty pokes the puck while he’s a good five feet off the boards and at the blue line. Chara has the opportunity at this point to turn away — they’re away from the boards, the puck is no longer near them — but Chara instead decides to, quite literally, throw Pacioretty into the glass stanchion. In the video posted previously, you can see that at the beginning of 0:40, Pacioretty has already poked the puck up the ice and is well off the boards. He then takes another step and a half or so up ice before Chara, at the beginning of 0:42, with the puck already beyond the red line, throws his weight into Pacioretty, with the contact with the stanchion occurring at the end of 0:42. At the start of 0:41, you can even see Chara turn up ice briefly to come alongside Pacioretty,. It even looks as though Chara might have been looking at the glass itself while making the hit (see middle of 0:42), though by that time it was too olate for either player to do anything about it. What’s especially clear (and damming) is that Chara doesn’t throw Pacioretty perpendicularly into the boards like a player normally would. Chara is in fact behind Pacioretty (maybe a half step or so, see 0:23) when, at the middle of 0:23, he pushes Pacioretty up onto the boards, and then at the end of 0:23, you can see Chara’s arm coming up as though he pushed or shoved him into the boards.

This is absolutely inexcusable. I don’t care what the intention is — Chara is 6’9" and weighs in at 255lbs (according to Wikipedia), while Pacioretty is listed at 6’2" and 215lbs. While Pacioretty is not small, even for an NHLer, Chara has to know how much bigger he is than everyone else, and he needs to play accordingly. You can’t just throw people into the boards there. It’s a matter of knowing where you are on the ice.

Further, a piece of discussion that has been missing I think is the fact that there were 15 seconds left in the period. Not that players should stop playing for those last few seconds in the period (they shouldn’t), but they should know the time left, and be able to recognize that the situation may not warrant a huge hit. Not much is likely to happen in 15 seconds, especially since the Bruins defensemen were back and had control of the puck when the play was whistled dead.

It was entirely unnecessary. Part of the NHL’s reason for no further discipline was that Chara had never been seriously disciplined before. This reasoning is ridiculous. Accidental or not, these players make a lot of money to be the best in the world. They ought to know where they are on the ice. The game is dangerous, sure, and players get hurt sometimes, but that doesn’t excuse those who do the hurting. They ought to know better than to expose themselves or someone else to a dangerous situation.

Intent is hard to figure out. It’s definitely late, and not just a little bit, but by a full 2 seconds. And it’s not as though he was riding him into the boards the whole way — he merely threw him into the boards right at the stanchion. What I can say with certainty is that Chara was looking to push him into the boards there. My guess is that he was trying to hit him a bit earlier so that he would have (in theory) just rolled off the stanchion. My hope is that he was actually aiming to hit him up against the glass directly. However, especially with that final shove at 0:42, it doesn’t look like that, and I would have to say there were definitely intent of some kind. Probably not to hurt him that badly, but definitely to make Pacioretty (or anyone else) think twice about trying that on Chara again.

And these two have a history. Let’s not forget that.