No retribution? No problem, says Green
Florida blue-liner Matheson suspended for two games for concussing Pettersson
PITTSBURGH Travis Green made a bit of a declaration of principles on Monday about what he wants modern hockey to be.
It was smart. It was insightful. It was passionate.
“Hard to play against” is an expression that’s often kicked around as a desired trait in sports. The presumption is it has to do with physicality, of being the team that provides the most friction, which in hockey gets connected with fights and checks and sometimes more.
Green was speaking after the Vancouver Canucks practised at PPG Parts Arena in Pittsburgh, almost two days after Elias Pettersson, the young star of his team, was concussed when flung to the ice during a game against the Florida Panthers.
He laid out a newer vision of what “hard to play against” means.
“I want our team to be hard to play against, I do. Winning teams are hard to play against and by hard to play against, that means many things,” Green said.
“That means playing fast. That means making good puck decisions, winning puck battles. For me, ‘hard to play against’ is a burning desire to win that comes from your group and I want our group to stick up for each other and stick together. And that’s what winning cultures have and I want that in our group. I do want a group that will stick together and will stick up for each other at the appropriate times without being barbaric or (doing) something stupid.”
Before even taking a question from the assembled media, Green spoke for more than three minutes about how upset he still was about how the Panthers’ Mike Matheson threw Pettersson to the ice after a hit on the end boards, about how he’d reacted in its immediate aftermath and about how his team did as well.
The National Hockey League announced Monday afternoon that Matheson had been suspended two games, declaring his actions to be clear interference and unsportsmanlike conduct.
“This is not a hockey play,” the league said of Matheson’s flinging Pettersson to the ice following what it deemed an otherwise legal check.
Green stood by his comments from Saturday, when he called
the play dirty and repeated what he said about his team.
“When you talk about composure when something happens, when you lose a great young player and another centreman in the game, I am proud of our group and how we won the hockey game,” he said.
“Am I mad at the play? Extremely mad. I’m really upset. I still am. We lost a bright young player to an injury that I don’t think was necessary. I’m pissed off right now still, talking about it. And yet, composure is part of coaching and it’s part of playing.”
In the wake of Pettersson’s injury and the fact that the Canucks didn’t show any kind of physically aggressive response toward Matheson — they scored the goahead goal just a minute after Pettersson left the ice, with Sven Baertschi and Bo Horvat streaking around Matheson on the way to the net — a good number of Canucks fans expressed displeasure as well as did critics in the media and some former players.
“I understand it,” Green said. "(But) the game has changed ... it’s still a man’s game and guys take care of things when they can.
“The days of tapping guys on the shoulder have long been gone.”
Green repeated what he and his players had said on Saturday, that what happened to Pettersson wasn’t seen by anyone on the team live, either on the bench or on the ice, and he wasn’t able to to pull a replay up immediately on the iPad that he keeps behind the bench.
“They didn’t have an emotional vision in their head of how it happened, plus you’re playing to win,” he said.
“This is not the time to go chasing people around the rink and jumping on top of people. That doesn’t happen any more.”
If players had seen it live — as Derrick Pouliot did last year in fighting Andreas Martinsen after Martinsen had levelled Brendan Leipsic, or when Travis Hamonic fought Erik Gudbranson earlier this season — Green believed the immediate reaction might have been different.
“In the game of hockey there are times when there’s reactions to hits and two guys occasionally fight ... and that wasn’t the case on that play,” he said.
Scoring quickly thereafter just reinforced Green’s position.
“Now you’ve got emotions about the goal, we got a big goal, and I’m telling our team, let’s keep our composure and let’s win the hockey game.”
Green said Pettersson was now following the league’s concussionrecovery protocol.
The young centre had shown some positive progress over the previous two days, Green said, but wouldn’t guess at a timeline for his return.