Max Pacioretty confused by Brendan Shanahan’s decision….and who can blame him

I was listening to clips of Max Pacioretty on 98.5 earlier Tuesday night and man did he sound peeved off. He was giving his first public reaction to the National Hockey League’s decision to suspend him for three games and it’s hard not to sympathize with him.

Listen, I’m not contradicting Monday’s blog. Patch deserves the suspension – though it kills me to say that given that he’ll miss a crucial three-game road trip through California that just might decide the Canadiens’ season (and coach Jacques Martin’s fate). It was a dangerous head shot on Kris Letang Saturday night and there’s no place in the League for that kind of hit.

But Pacioretty is quite right to say the players have no idea what’s right and wrong given the nutsy inconsistency of NHL head disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan’s decisions on head shots this season. Milan Lucic can do a pretty good job of taking off Buffalo Sabres’ goalie Ryan Miller’s head and there’s no supsension – ’cause he’s a Boston Bruin I guess. Ryan Malone also nearly decapitates the Habs’ Chris Campoli and again there’s no suspension – ’cause the guy getting his head ripped off is a Hab I guess.

“I’d like to see a little bit of consistency,” Pacioretty said on Tuesday. “If the onus was on the hitter every single time I’d be fine with the suspension, but you’ve seen instances where they’ve placed onus on the person receiving the hit as well and that’s why I’m confused and a lot of other players are confused as well.”

What Patch is referring to here is that Shanahan said he was NOT suspending Tampa Bay’s Malone because Campoli changed the position of his head just before the hit. But that’s almost exactly what Letang did Saturday, dropping his head in order to rip a shot in Carey Price’s direction. Pacioretty says he made eye contact with Letang, the Pittsburgh Penguins defenceman saw him coming, but still elected to put his head down to make the shot.

Pacioretty really sounded genuinely upset and you gotta know he was thinking – ‘WTF! I nearly got killed by Zdeno Chara, with a hit from behind. The guy slammed my head into a partition at the Bell Centre, I was carried off the ice on a stretcher, taken to the hospital and might never have played hockey again. And Chara? He got nada!’

Why not just give an automatic two-game suspension for a head shot? How complicated is that? But instead Shanahan’s inconsistency has folks – and particularly Habs fans – wondering if the League doesn’t have it in for the bleu-blanc-et-rouge.

Pacioretty deserves the suspension but the NHL is a joke

I said it Sunday and I’ll say it again today – Max Pacioretty’s hit on Kris Letang was an illegal head shot and he deserves to be suspended. That play has to be taken out of the League. It doesn’t matter what you think of Patch or what you think about what happened to him last year, that was a dirty play that merits a suspension. So NHL head disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan is quite right to send Montreal’s most talented forward to the press box for three games. 

But you know what? The NHL is a joke. If Pacioretty deserves that three-game suspension, what about Tampa Bay’s Ryan Malone who nearly took off Montreal Canadiens defenceman Chris Campoli’s head this past October? It was an almost identical hit to the Patch hit yet Malone was not suspended. That’s a joke.

http://youtu.be/Wp4UxGZaz-Q

Then there’s the Milan Lucic attack on Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller. That was a deliberate attempt to injure a goalie from a player renowned for his dirty play. Again no suspension.

http://youtu.be/TERA-GY2K1o

Both of those bad decisions came from Shanahan.

And the icing on the cake is the now-famous Zdeno Chara hit on Pacioretty last year when he smashed him into a partition at the Bell Centre. Pacioretty was carried off the ice on a stretcher. No suspension. Montreal fans are gonna be mighty upset in the coming days and I understand why. Pacioretty deserves the punishment but so did Chara, Lucic and Malone.

There are two choice words to describe this League – Mickey and Mouse.

- Brendan