| Max King of the Wild said: izaaz - earlier you said canucks cant keep losing steam late in the game. i dont think that was ever the case. the hawks always were mediocre in the first period as this series has shown. only once out of 6 games they scored first. the team would always rebound in the late going during season play. also that brashear hit - it was late, it was an elbow, it was a head shot, im pretty sure he targetted him, and it broke the guys orbital bone. i think 6 games was generous. i think if you intending injure someone and its pretty obvious your trying just that you should be out for as long as they are. also the caps didnt get punished at all. it allowed them to reactivate one of their best players. brashear averaged less than 3 minutes of ice time... no loss really. and wasnt the ranger who got injured one of their better players? |
Going by the regular season stats found here, Chicago scored first 43 times out of 82 games and had a winning % of 76.7 (5th in the league). In the 39 times they trailed, they managed to come back and win only 13 games, for a winning % of 33.3 (14th in the league). It seems to me that they were a team that usually lead and won, rather than always rebounding.
As for the Brashear hit, I didn't see him hit with his elbow. I saw him lead with his shoulder, and his elbow came up during the follow through, but after Betts head was on the way down already. Betts dumped the puck in, turned around and got smoked......the whole sequence took barely longer than a second. As for targetting, Brashear was maybe 10 feet away, saw a player dumping the puck in, and went and hit him....doesn't seem like targetting to me. However, with that said, he probably shouldn't have hit Betts, since Betts was in a prone position.
There's 2 other hits along the same vein I've seen in the playoffs (with regards to timing and a player being in a prone position): Ben Eager on Rick Rypien and Mike Brown on Jiri Hudler. Rypien wasn't injured, so Eager didn't get suspended or get a penalty. Hudler was bleeding, but not injured so Brown got a 5 minute major (and I think a game misconduct, but I'm not sure). I'm not surprised that Brashear got 6 games.........this league suspends on the consequence of a hit, rather than the hit itself.
