Sinbin time not always wasted
Brandon Prust gets to know the officials as a frequent penalty-box occupant
It was in the final minutes of Thursday’s game at Washington’s Verizon Center when the puck hit the sideboard glass and caromed into the visitors’ penalty box.
The cry of “Heads up!” didn’t come soon enough for a veteran NHL official, who took the deflection on his shaved skull.
Canadiens forward Brandon Prust was in the box serving his roughing minor and fighting major, seven minutes of punishment that would keep him confined, feeling shame, until the final siren.
At which time he would go free.
Prust saw the puck ding his blazered neighbour, one of five NHL officials in the box performing various duties.
Immediately, he grabbed a towel and helpfully offered it to the official, who took it and dabbed his head, happy to find he wasn’t cut or injured by the puck.
But the projectile’s target quickly suffered the slings and arrows of his playfully sarcastic colleagues, and of Prust, for putting his cranium in the way of flying vulcanized rubber — which the Canadien picked up off the penalty-box floor and flipped into the crowd as a souvenir.
“He started chirping his buddies right away,” Prust said Friday, laughing. “He was saying, ‘Thanks for the heads up — after the puck hits me.’ They were giving it to him, saying, ‘You wouldn’t even feel it with that head!’
“He was joking that he was going to file for workman’s compensation. When I knew he wasn’t hurt, I told him, ‘It seems like you’ve eaten a lot of pucks in your day,’ and he said, ‘My whole life, since I was a little boy in Cape Breton!’ ”
I relayed Prust’s heckling on Twitter, and almost immediately came a response from Nova Scotian Marc Quenneville, who proudly identified the puck-dented official as Jim Wiseman, his Glace Bay, N.S.-native greatuncle-in-law.
Ultimately, Wiseman figured he’d got enough attention, being beaned for the first time in that Verizon Center penalty box but for the second time in his decades-long NHL career — the first came in a warm-up off the stick of Quebec Nordiques’ Michel Goulet — and politely declined to chat for this column.
“Jim told Brandon that he’s never been a bleeder,” Quenneville said, “and that he’s been in spats where he took harder hits than that.”
Prust loves the penalty-box crew in Washington.
“I was in there earlier,” he said, sent off for high-sticking in the fourth minute of Thursday’s third period. “They kinda have a lot of fun in there.”
Prust is familiar with the NHL’s sinbins, having been assessed 628 penalty minutes in his 282 games. If he’s the 2012-13 Canadiens career leader in minutes-per-game average (2.23), he’s not the most penalized man overall. That honour belongs to Travis Moen, with 685 minutes through 573 games (1.19); Erik Cole is chasing Prust, with 607 minutes in 705 games (0.86).
“They’re all great guys,” Moen said of the NHL’s five penalty-box officials assigned in every arena for each game — one per team with a broadcast coordinator, game timekeeper and penalty timekeeper.
“Some of them are focused and some are comedians. You get your mix, depending on the barn you’re in.”
Cole got a great kick out of the ribbing Wiseman took the night before, saying: “The whole crew in there was giving it to him pretty good. It was pretty comical.
“I’ve spent some time in that box with (Wiseman), he’s a super nice guy. They have an interesting bunch down in Washington.”
Prust said the officials at New York’s Madison Square Garden, where he’s been nicked for 202 penalty minutes in 92 games, “have got to know me pretty well. I can be chatted up in there, but they’ll give you your space if you need it.
“(Thursday) night, the guys in Washington were telling me how they started their season and the road trips they have coming up. It depends how long you’re in there. You can’t have too much of a conversation if you’re only in for two minutes.”
Prust was practically a second son to some of the penalty-box attendants in his early days as a pro.
During his 2005-06 rookie year with the American League’s Omaha Ak-Sar-Ben Knights, Prust served 294 minutes in 79 games, a singleseason record for the defunct franchise.
The following year, he served 211 in 63 games. The 505 minutes in those two seasons stand as a career record for a Knight.
Prust fondly remembers the visit to Omaha of his parents, Kevin and Theresa, during his rookie season.
“I got a penalty and my parents were behind the box, a few thousand in the crowd,” he said, laughing. “My mom walked down and knocked on the glass behind me to say hi. I gave her the dirtiest look, as if to say, ‘What are you doing?!’
“It was my best ‘ Get the heck outta here’ look. She put her head down and walked back up, and my dad was like, ‘What were you thinking?’ ”
But Prust, who jokes that “I’ve probably been in the penalty box of every arena in North America,” pulls his favourite sin bin memory from the following season, from road trips to San Antonio.
“The guy in the box had candy in there, and I’m a candy guy,” he said, beaming, of this unofficial Halloween.
“Jujubes, Skittles … one night I had about 20 minutes in penalties and I ate so much candy I had stomach cramps.
“Whenever you got a penalty, the guy had candy for you. And I never said no.”
Which leads you to ask Prust the obvious question:
“Did a competitive streak or a sweet tooth motivate your game?”
And all you get is a grin in reply.