Slash and burn? Thirst for vengeance a sideshow

The “slash” wasn’t the real story of Game 1.

The real story was the Ottawa Senators played like a seventhranked team, left poor Hamburglar exposed way too often, embarked on an unwise, distracting mission to beat up little Gallagher, squandered the gift of an own goal, gave away the puck like their old nightmare selves — “pooping the bed” is the official term — and generally got outworked, outchecked and outsmarted.

Well, that was the view from the couch. The doorbell rang during the second period and, when Mrs. returned from a short chat with a neighbour and asked “did anything happen?” — the hands went up and the Lord’s name came firing out. There was no easy way to explain it. A long sulk followed.

But here could be the most worrisome aspect of the Subban slash: It changed the conversation from the goal of winning a series to the means of retribution for one stupid play.

My gentle son, allegedly camped out with piles of books at his dorm in Toronto, sent this text after the game: “I sincerely hope we give that slash right back in their smug entitled faces.” And we thought we raised a pacifist.

Even Coach Cameron, a Godfearing sort, was in an Old Testament mood, where there is only good and evil and lightning bolts. “You either suspend (P.K. Subban) or when one of their best players gets slashed, just give us five (minutes). It’s not that complicated.”

Eye for an eye. Your slash, our something.

Playoff hockey is a time when polite Canadians reveal themselves to be just like anyone else: primal at heart. When we talk about “grittier” hockey, we all know what we mean: “Not necessarily dirtier, but dirtier if necessary.” We play in the Canadian Tire Centre but our blood runs through the Roman Coliseum where, if need be, they eat people for sport.

Did we not win the 1972 Summit Series with the Russians, in part due to a slash to one of their best players, Valeri Kharlamov, knocking him out of the lineup? To this day, you can Google “Bobby Clarke and the slash” and find the evidence.

Asked about it years later, Clarke reportedly said: “If I hadn’t learned to lay on a twohander once in a while, I’d never have left Flin Flon.”

It was curious, too — and it could only happen in hockey — the immediate debate about how “hurt” Mark Stone really was. It’s hockey, after all, when players take 25 stitches in the face between periods and never miss a shift. Surely, a two-hander to the wrist was nothing to whimper over?

(But hurt, we know this morning, he certainly was, and dangerously, apparently lost for Game 2.)

No doubt, as we type, some Habs limb or head is having a bull’s-eye drawn over it, or Chris Neil is making knuckle sandwiches. Perhaps this is inevitable but, as a fan, surely, winning is the best revenge. For Pete’s sake, don’t let them dictate the tenor of the series from the opening game with this sideshow about vengeance. Be calculating about it. The moment will arrive when Subban gets his — an early summer would be a start.

It is, too, such an old story of what happens when you give high-spirited men skates, sticks and a shiny object to play for.

Here is an oft-quoted newspaper account of the Ottawa Silver Seven, who were down to the Toronto Marlboros early in a two-game series in 1904, when they suddenly, ah, “found their game,” a newspaper man reported.

“Ottawa players slash, trip and practice the severest kind of cross-checking, with a systematic hammering of hands and wrists.

“They hit a man on the head when the referee isn’t looking, and they body a man into the boards after he has passed the puck. The rubber is not the objective, but the man must be stopped at all costs; if he is put out altogether, so much the better.”

Oh my. We retained the Cup that year, by the way.

Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. So, best not to arrive at Friday having lost the game, the agenda and the grip on the steering wheel.

There is no Cup for indignation.