Lightning avoiding the Shaw festival
TAMPA, FLA.— A couple of springs ago, when Andrew Shaw scored the game-winning goal in triple overtime in the opening match of the 2013 Stanley Cup final, he celebrated a fortuitous bounce off his leg with a memorable exclamation.
“I love shin pads!” Shaw, miked up by the rights-holding broadcaster, was heard to say.
Perhaps because Shaw spends his life as Chicago’s human pinata, tempting opponents to swat him through a mix of devious provocation and clever positioning, he is fond of pads of all kinds. Consider his shoulder pads, a standard pair save for a key detail. Shaw’s have been customized with a couple of plastic-capped football-style pads sewn onto the sides. So where most NHLers usually go without armour — from above the pants to below the armpit — Shaw is fully covered.
“Standing in front of the net on the power play, you’re going to get a few whacks,” Shaw was saying the other day. “A little extra protection never hurt anyone. It helps.”
Shaw may need it come Saturday’s Game 2 of this year’s Stanley Cup final. The Blackhawks forward found himself in the centre of the post-game conversation for his role in a post-whistle scrum in the first period of Chicago’s 2-1 Game 1win. Victor Hedman, the Lightning defenceman who had drilled Chicago forward Patrick Kane with some extracurricular contact to set off the conflict in question, was seen on video replay showing off a midsection wound to teammates on the bench while mouthing the words “He bit me.” Shaw, who’d come to Kane’s defence, was the assumed culprit, although there was no penalty and apparently insufficient evidence for discipline from the league.
“We don’t want to give him what he wants . . . Just keep letting him run around.” ALEX KILLORN TAMPA BAY FORWARD
On Friday Shaw was made available to the media for the first time since the incident. But he mostly declined to speak in specifics.
“I’m not going to get into details,” Shaw said when asked by reporters about the incident. “We’re here to focus on the next game, and, you know, hockey.”
Whether or not he’ll be the focus of Tampa Bay retribution is anyone’s guess. Neither team is known for playing a particularly punishing style. And the Lightning said they’re aware of the fact that Shaw would like nothing better than to have a hothead in a Lightning jersey ex- pending energy chasing him around the rink.
“I think that’s what he wants,” said Lightning forward Alex Killorn. “We don’t want to give him what he wants. It doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t affect anybody else. Just keep letting him run around.”
Hedman sounded similarly set on moving forward. “He’s a player you want on your team, obviously,” Hedman said. “You want a player like that to get under people’s skin.”
And as for the possibility Shaw took the under-skin concept a little too literally? “That’s hockey,” Hedman said, who added he had likely been bitten before, “when I was a kid.”
Hedman, the gracious Swede, laughed the whole thing off, declining an opportunity to show off the effects of the alleged tooth attack for reporters on Friday.
“He’s just a great player,” Hedman said of Shaw. “He’s a big presence in front of our net. He’s tough to play against . . . He stood up for Kane. I stood up for my goalie. That’s the way it should be on the ice.”
Shaw’s gift for pushing hot buttons appears to be boundless. In the Western Conference final he drew attention for infamously heading a puck into the Anaheim net for an overtime non-goal that introduced the world to the rulebook stipulation that directing the puck with anything but one’s stick isn’t kosher.
Certainly it wasn’t long ago that nobody saw him commanding such a big role on hockey’s hugest stage.
He’s 23 now, and the owner of one of the hottest-selling jerseys in Chicago. But growing up in the Belleville area, he was never a star player. He was picked in the 11th round of the 2007 OHL draft and went untaken altogether in back-toback NHL drafts for which he was eligible, this before the Blackhawks took him in the fifth round in 2011. And yet, four years later, he finds himself commanding power-play minutes with a team aiming for its third Stanley Cup in six seasons.
The short answer for how he got here, in the words of captain Toews: “He’s not afraid.”
But he’s not simply a five-foot-11, 180-pound sideshow, either. He has four goals and 10 points in 18 games so far in these playoffs. The insurance goal he scored in Chicago’s Game 6 win in the Western final — a nifty backhander at high speed that beat Frederik Andersen and helped make sure the Blackhawks had a chance to win Game 7 — was one of the gems of the post-season.
Come Saturday night, it’ll be worth noting how the Lightning welcome him into their goalmouth. It’s safe to assume Shaw will arrive prepared and well-padded.