Crosby suffers for NHL’s playoff double standard

The games might be more meaningful, but stars shouldn’t be subjected to more abuse

Because it’s the Cup — that old NHL marketing campaign, which featured players battling through adversity on their way to a championship, is one way of explaining what happened to Sidney Crosby in Monday’s game against the Washington Capitals.

Playoff hockey is high-stakes hockey. It’s violent, aggressive and sometimes dirty. It’s both ugly and beautiful. It’s putting away the whistles and letting them play.

It’s Scott Stevens knocking Paul Kariya out cold with an open-ice hit, only to have Kariya come back and score the gamewinner. It’s Claude Lemieux ramming Kris Draper’s face into the dasher boards or Nathan Horton being stretchered off the ice in the final. It’s everything you love and everything you hate about the sport rolled into one.

So when Alex Ovechkin swung his stick at Crosby’s head as if it were a baseball in the opening minutes of Game 3 and then Matt Niskanen followed it up by cross-checking the Pittsburgh Penguins captain in the face as he was falling to the ice, it wasn’t surprising that some simply shrugged their shoulders and defended it as a hockey play.

After all, this was playoff hockey. That means concussions — like the one that may knock Crosby out of the post-season — are part of the game. Was it dirty? Well, according to Capitals head coach Barry Trotz, it depends on what team you’re on.

“It’s like a car accident,” Trotz told reporters. “You have your side how it happened and the other person will have his side. I mean, it’s perspective.”

Yes, but why do the playoffs have to become a demolition derby? Why do they have to turn into The Hunger Games?

Only hockey makes its star players run through a gauntlet of slashes and cheap hits every time they touch the puck in the post-season. Only hockey seems to have two rule books: one for the regular season and a much thinner version for the playoffs.

Apparently Crosby should have known what he was signing up for when he drove the puck to the net. He should have known players were more interested in taking him out than taking the puck. You want to see skill? Go watch figure skating.

It’s not just Crosby. And it’s not just this series or this year’s playoffs. A year ago, it was Kris Letang who delivered a headshot on Marcus Johansson. A week ago, Predators forward Kevin Fiala had his leg broken after Blues defenceman Robert Bortuzzo drove him needlessly into the end boards in Game 1. In the first round, Ovechkin nearly had his knee blown out after receiving a low-bridge hit from Toronto’s Nazem Kadri.

I’m not going to say what Ovechkin or Niskanen did was malicious or intentional. Reputations are at stake and not just for Ovechkin — who has been criticized unfairly as a player who cannot raise his level of play in the playoffs — but for the entire Capitals team.

Did they play Crosby harder than usual? Did they step over the line in trying to contain him? If so, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.

Maybe, like Kariya, Crosby will return and play the hero. Maybe, like Bobby Clarke with his slash on Valeri Kharlamov in the 1972 Summit Series, this will be remembered as the time Ovechkin finally was willing to do whatever it took to win a Cup.

Either way, it seems the NHL has another defining moment for its marketing campaign.