Did the crime, he’s got to do the time
Byfuglien’s nasty cross-check must be punished
Today’s things to be outraged about:
1. Dusti n Byfuglien’s Thursday phone hearing — not inperson, meaning his suspension will be five games or fewer — for his earnest attempt to separate New York Rangers forward J.T. Miller’s head from his torso via cross-check on Tuesday night.
2. Neither referee, Wes McCauley nor Dan O’Rourke, calling a penalty on the play.
3. Alex Burrows’ escape from further discipline for his hit on Paul Gaustad in Nashville, when the Predators forward didn’t have the puck and went down like he’d been felled by sniper fire.
4. Stupid April Fools spoofs that get picked up and printed as fact, then have to be retracted.
It would be easy to merge all four under the heading “It’s That Time of Year” because the beginning of April is not only for fooling the unwary, but it is the stretch run of the NHL season, when every result is magnified and every reckless act inflames one team’s fan base while drawing a “What’s the big deal?” from the other.
Byfuglien’s attack, though — Miller had just fallen outside the Winnipeg crease after whacking at a rebound when the Jets’ man-mountain approached from the rear, leaned over and delivered an appalling, and very late, cross-check to his neck — is going to be hard to write off as anything less than an intent to injure, and injure badly.
“Violent, deliberate, could have broken his neck,” a seething Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said, and he was right on all counts.
Give or take Rogle forward Andre Deveaux’s axe-like sneak attack on a Vasteras opponent in a Swedish second-division playoff game last week — for which the former NHLer will be under arrest as soon as the police can find him — video of Big Buff ’s assault on Miller may be as graphic a piece of senseless violence as we see this season.
If the NHL’s Department of Player Safety goes soft on Byfuglien, it can only be because it is in “don’t mess with the playoffs” mode and the Jets are still in the hunt for a post-season berth.
Missing the 6-foot-5, 265-pound force of nature for most of their remaining games, especially if they then miss the playoffs, would be a gut-shot for Winnipeg fans and teammates and coach Paul Maurice, because Byfuglien is a nearly unique combination of size and versatility — maybe in a class of two (with San Jose’s Brent Burns) who play both forward and defence equally well.
But he did what he did, and there is no defending it.
The immediate reaction to Burrows’ hit on Gaustad was only slightly less shrill, thanks in large part to the Vancouver winger’s sketchy history of baiting opponents and officials, and a previous (but never forgotten) tendency to embellish his reaction to opponents’ hits and high sticks.
Burrows got a major for interference and a game misconduct for the fly-by — fair enough, the NHL evidently decided — but Gaustad’s head only swung into Burrows’ path at the last instant, as he turned upice to follow the play.
Otherwise, it was essentially a shoulder-to-shoulder hit that Gaustad appeared to milk for all it was worth.
Lucky? That may be an adjective best reserved for Drew Miller, the Detroit forward who has a railroad track of 60 stitches extending from near his right earlobe up his cheek, miraculously shallower across his eyelid, and ending near his eyebrow after being sliced open Tuesday by the skate of Ottawa’s Mark Stone.
But if not lucky, precisely, chalk up the NHL’s leniency to Burrows as a semi-vindication for the feisty Canucks winger, who doesn’t get many breaks from officials.
He didn’t get any justice from the league, either, when L.A.’s Tyler Toffoli pitched him headfirst into the boards last week.
Maybe this was the Player Safety division’s makeup call.
There will be no such wiggle room in the case against Byfuglien.
He did the crime, he’s got to do the time.
An eye test for those refs wouldn’t hurt, either.