So last night, Alexander Ovechkin, clearly tired of scoring goals, decides to change things up and imitate Claude rather than Mario. He hit Brier from behind, exactly where the kids have those little Stop signs sown on their jersey. It was an ugly hit, clearly deserving of a suspension.
Except, of course, to NHL Director of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell. This is hardly a surprise, of course. This is the same guy you refused to suspend John-Michael Liles for kneeing Ryan Smyth. Or Darcy Tucker for grabbing Casey Jansen’s helmet during a fight, and repeatedly hitting him over the head with it. Example abound of Colin Campbell doing nothing in response to dirty, dangerous hits. The situation is ridiculous. Someone is going to get seriously hurt, and then finally the NHL will come down hard on the perpetrator, totally obvious to the fact that if they’d crack down now, they wouldn’t have the problem.
The hit wasn’t that bad…IT almost looked like he turned in as soon as AO was hitting the point of no return on that hit…I think the fall was a little played up too.
It’s a shame that stuff like that happens but if they suspend him on that we are going to end up with a really passive game. The real dirty dirty cheep shots are what you need to suspend…a grey area like that… not so much
That was an awful hit, and he should have recieved a very long suspension. Briere clearly had gotten rid of the puck and was out of the play, and Ovechkin nailed him from behind.
Ovechkin wasn’t even CLOSE to the point of no return on the hit before Briere passed and turned away, as you can see around timestamp 1:10.
I also vote this a dirty hit. Briere gets rid of the puck starts to put his head down, and THEN Ovechkin turns into and hits Briere. Had Ovechkin hit him as he was getting rid of the puck, then it would have been a clean, hard hit. But that doesn’t appear to be the case here.
Definitely dirty. Not “dirtiest hit ever”, not one of those ones that should be criminally prosecuted or anything, but still dirty. A suspension for a game or two would not be out of line, IMO.
It doesn’t “look” that bad when viewed in slow motion except for a couple of things:
The replay at 1:10 was in slow motion, at 1:31 though, you can get a better idea on how bad it was and how much worse it could have been.
Ovechkin probably knew that Briere was heading for the bench, that is why O caught up with B when B was slowing down to get to the door. He had a good 1-2 seconds to let up knowing that B was coming in for a line change.
The bench door was not latched (probably because one of the players on the bench anticipated players coming in on the line change), and the opening of the door after the hit could have cause great injury. Any hockey player and coach knows this, but I don’t think O was too concerned about incurring injury to B when B was letting up on his skating to make the change…and B was not in play at the moment that O hit him.
Definitely suspension worthy. Since O has a clean rep up to this point, 1 game and a fine sounds right.