Game 8: Canadiens 1, Predators 2

1) So Paul Gaustad was very circumspect a couple years back when Milan Lucic demolished his goalie Ryan Miller in the mother of all cheap shots, but quite brave in running 5'7" Daniel Brière into the stanchion.  Mr. Gaustad is a very thoughtful guy who considers all options before acting.  He above all must be very aware that George Parros, Douglas Murray and Alexei Emelin are injured, and that Brandon Prust is walking wounded.

I already didn’t have much respect for that guy, he’s lost of lot of what was left.

2)  Proost? Troba? Greg Millen is at it again, lost in his pinwheel.  If these were difficult names to pronounce, and relatively obscure players, maybe I'd understand, but any play-by-play professional should have these names down now.  Any pro would, even if he hadn't followed hockey for the last couple of years, with only a few minutes of preparation.

Bob Cole and Greg Millen are very hard on the ears.


3)  The kids have the right idea. If the Preds can bulldoze Carey Price, then maybe we can get in Pekka Rinne’s blue paint once in while too.  Good on Alex, Brendan and Lars.  René, Travis, take note.

Now if we could just buy off the officials like the Bruins do…

4)  That diving penalty on P.K. was well within the NHL norms.  The Nashville forward was clearly beaten by the skill of a better player and skater, he was a couple steps behind, so he had to resort to the hook and hold and do the little slashes, that's par for the course in Don Cherry's game.  

If P.K. had stayed upright and accepted to be held/interfered to a 30-45% degree, all would have been well.  He has to tolerate it, if other players don't hook and slash him, he's liable to score a couple goals a game.  Let's be reasonable, how can we have parity if the best players on the best teams are allowed to benefit from this advantage?

Now, if the opponents go over the limit, and hook-interfere-slash-hold-trip him to an unacceptable degree, somewhere in the 18-100% range, and the conditions are propitious, if it's early in the season, and the score isn't too close or it's not late in the game, most probably there will definitely be a penalty, in most cases, generally.  P.K. has to understand that and fight through the holds until the refs are cornered into blowing the whistle.  If he doesn't do his utmost to stay upright, he's making a mockery of the sport, sullying its proud tradition of making rules up as it goes along and selectively enforcing them sometimes, when it doesn't disadvantage the Bruins in any way.