GETTING EVEN FOR JOHNNY?
Flames play down talk of revenge
Ten years ago, Eric Godard and Derek Boogaard would almost certainly have opened a game like Friday’s tilt by taking it upon themselves to help settle a score.
You see, the last time the Calgary Flames and Minnesota Wild met was two-and-a-half weeks ago when Johnny Gaudreau had his season digitally altered by an Eric Staal slash.
It wasn’t necessarily a fluke, as the Wild channelled their inner Jedi by purposely wielding their sticks like lightsabres.
The goal was to make Johnny Hockey’s evening as uncomfortable as possible.
It worked, as he is still recovering from surgery to repair a broken finger.
He was, put quite simply, targeted, as most of the league’s most dangerous snipers are.
Flames GM Brad Treliving took it up with the league, suggesting Gaudreau received 10 such unpenalized whacks before the decisive blow.
Now it’s time for the Flames to take it up with the Wild. Or will they? “Today’s NHL is not the way it used to be in the old days,” Flames coach Glen Gulutzan said when asked about the frontier justice that used to dominate the league.
“The red dots are going to be on a few guys to make sure they let them know we didn’t like what went on, but I think that will be internally in the room.”
You can bet Staal, who has long been the recipient of such stick work, will be the Flames’ primary target after hacking Gaudreau significantly on two occasions.
However, before the Flames send any sort of message, Staal sent one of his own.
“I know Eric Staal extremely well and he texted me to say he was sorry,” Flames winger Kris Versteeg said.
“He’s a good friend of mine and I don’t think it was intentional. Obviously it looked that way but I don’t think he wanted to smash his finger and put him out.” Yet, he did. And surely the hockey mentality — no matter how sanitized it has become — dictates the culprit must be served some form of retribution, no?
“I think there’s a response in that we’ve got to go out and beat them, first and foremost,” said Versteeg, who isn’t helping the Flames sell tickets with that sort of attitude.
“I think we’ll just let them know it’s not acceptable, but I think we’ve done that with the league. We’re not focused on that. I just think guys have got to keep each other honest and no one needs to get hurt. If that’s the primary focus of our game plan, we’re dead in the water. Obviously Johnny and Monny (Sean Monahan) are the heartbeat of the team, but it’s all about winning and getting back into the playoffs so you have to let that stuff go.”
Don’t let Brian McGrattan, Tim Hunter, Rocky Thompson, Sasha (The Basha) Lakovic or any of the Flames’ old guard hear things like that.
“What are we supposed to do, run around slashing everybody?” shrugged Troy Brouwer, who didn’t even know it was Staal’s smash that did the damage that will keep Gaudreau out until next week at the earliest.
“I don’t think that will be the case. That play happens 20 or 30 times a game. It’s just unfortunate he ended up breaking his finger. I gave (Leafs sniper Mitch) Marner a few good whacks on the power play (Wednesday) and Steeger (Versteeg) got one on the power play, too. It happens.
“Have we been thinking about it? No, not necessarily.
“Are we going to put any emphasis on it? No, but we’re going to finish our checks and key on the normal guys we key on, but I don’t see any redemption in the works right now.”
As frequent as the hand and wrist slashes were their last meeting, Gulutzan said while several were punishable, none were egregious in nature.
As fighting was driven from the game, the trade-off was always going to be the introduction of more stick work.
And, somehow, that appears to be fine with most.
“There’s a time and a place to do that but our focus is on winning the game,” said veteran Matt Stajan, when reminded of how an injury to a star used to be handled by two big lugs on the next shift or following meeting.
“Obviously it’s in the back of everybody’s mind it happened, but you can’t go out of your way and put your team in a bad situation with a bad penalty. But at the end of the day our most offensive player got taken out so in the back of everybody’s mind we have to make sure we’re finishing hits when we have a chance to — you go about it that way.”
OK, OK, we get it: retribution will be on their minds but no blood will be on anyone’s hands.
Somehow, it seemed so much simpler back in the day.