In the wake of Zdeno Chara's devastatingly nasty, overwhelmingly dirty and complete anti-social act of running Max Pacioretty's head into a stanchion that divides the players' benches at the Bell Centre and the NHL's incredibly foolhardy decision not to suspend Chara or even fine him for the incident, Montreal police have been asked to open in investigation into the incident.
As much as I disliked the decision to not impose further discipline on the 6'9" behemoth who reminds some – me included – of the Frankenstein monster, both in size and in mental capacity, I don't know that this is a matter that should be investigated by civil authorities. I have long felt that civil authorities have no place in professional sports – especially those where body contact is legal, like hockey and football.
Don't mistake me, here, though. My gut feeling is that not only did Chara know where he was on the ice, but he also knew who he was jousting physically with. Chara and Pacioretty have a history dating back to January, when Pacioretty gave Chara an innocuous shove after scoring the winning goal in overtime.
After the game, the NESN play-by-play man made a comment to the effect of 'Chara's going to try to take that guy's head off,' and in the two teams' fight-filled Feb. 9 tussle in Boston, Chara gave Pacioretty a two-handed slash to the back of his legs that sent the winger off the ice for more than a few shifts. He didn't take his head off, but the strongest player in the NHL let Pacioretty know he was being watched, in no uncertain terms.
You mean to tell me that Chara didn't know the kid he'd spent months thinking about getting back at was right in his face with a chance to send a message in the last seconds of the second period of a game that had already become a blowout?
Please. I am still relatively young, but I wasn't born yesterday.
Dirty is dirty, and the Bruins know dirty; they know it well after they lost their best player, Marc Savard, possibly forever after he was blindsided with a shot to the head by Pittsburgh goon Matt Cooke last season. It remains a shame that Cooke, a marginal player who can, at best, be classified as an agitator is still on the ice, while Savard, a playmaker of the highest order, remains on the sidelines.
It's not right.
And the keepers of the hockey gospel – I'm looking at you, TSN's hockey chattering class of Dreger, Mackenzie et al. – still sing the praises of Philadelphia Flyers captain Mike Richards, a good player with a thin skin (his comments about PK Subban's jawing reflect the dinosaur hockey mentality), even though Richards helped start the head-shot debate when he blindsided the Panthers' David Booth in the head from the blind side.
The place for this, though, is not in our halls of justice. For one, no good can ever come of it (Todd Bertuzzi was given a conditional discharge for his mauling of Steve Moore after prosecution years ago) and once you let outside forces into your game, they're there forever.
Plus – and this is a big plus – Quebec's justice system is horribly overburdened and its prosecutors are underpaid. Can we at least let them focus on putting real offenders behind bars? Chara's hit outraged me and I sought to brand him a criminal, but upon reflection, I realized it was an emotional response to seeing our best young player lying in a heap at the very time he was blossoming into s superstar. The NHL, on the other hand, seems to be more and more out of touch with reality every day. Just ask Gary Bettman about his franchises in Phoenix, Miami and Atlanta, and how they're doing.
