By Dan Steinberg
Mike Green's elbow to the head of Michael Frolik only earned Green two minutes of penalty time during the Caps' win over Florida, but it was already raising talk of possible penalties before Friday night had ended. Green himself talked about the hit in the post-game dressing room, and the (inter)national media was all over it.
"That's one of the worst elbows we've seen this year," a TSN studio host said, before giving the stage to Ray Ferraro.
"There's nothing that is defensible about this play, in my opinion," Ferraro said. "Green had been hit earlier in the shift, he closes in on Frolik and leads with his elbow, hits him with his left elbow right in the jaw. To me, it doesn't matter that Frolik got up. I mean, this in my opinion is a suspendable play....See, two games doesn't work, because it's two games, it's two games, it's two games. It has to be a stiffer penalty."
It's worth mentioning that while Bruce Boudreau said he was "very upset" and "just livid" about the three games that Green eventually received, Brooks Laich was considerably more judicious, saying "at some point you have to take control of the game and protect the players. You see what happened in junior hockey. At some point you have to make a statement where there's not a gray area. You can't hit to the head. It's black or white. You hit to the head, you're going to get suspended."
Still, Comcast SportsNet's Alan May openly suggested this week that the Canadian media is out to spotlight transgressions by Caps players, and that this may have contributed to Green's punishment.
"They're always trying to poke holes in the Capitals, and it's the same reason that Mike Green was suspended," May said on 106.7 The Fan's Mike Wise Show Monday afternoon, when asked about criticism of the Caps' netminders. "I thought it was created by TSN up in Canada and their announcers, sitting there on a Friday night. The only angles they showed of the Mike Green hit were very poor angles that looked like it was a bad hit, and when you go in super-slow motion, it makes it look worse all the time. And I thought the Mike Green hit, no one even noticed it the other night. And they made a big deal, and he winds up getting three games out of it."
The conversation moved on, but May--who is Canadian--later returned to this subject, again pounding away on the Toronto media pack. This is red meat to the hounds for a fan base that has sometimes been accused of harboring a persecution complex, and May wasn't equivocating.
"Once again I'm gonna go back to the Canadian media, Sportsnet, TSN up there," he said. "And it all depends who they're going after, what team he's from. But if it's a Washington Capital, they're going after him hard. They're picking on the guys south of the border big time. They're so pro-Canadian up there. Because the league offices are in Toronto, where they dole out the suspensions, they're on the phone within five minutes of a hit saying, 'Is he gonna be suspended?'
"Well, the guys in the office there, they're saying, 'Well, we didn't even see it,' so they've got to go back, and all of the the sudden players are getting suspended. I don't like it at all. I blame it more on the Canadian media, and I think the league has to quit letting those guys have so much influence on the game, because the power of the NHL is in the United States. There's more teams down here. And If they want to have a healthy National Hockey League, you've got to make sure you have healthy American franchises."
There was lots more in this conversation, including May's belief that George McPhee will indeed acquire a veteran defenseman before all's said and done, but co-host Bill Rohland also asked whether the old-time hockey establishment looked unfavorably toward the Caps, with their flashy style and their Russian leaders.
"Absolutely," May said. "And it's been going on for a few years now. The style of hockey they play is no different than the style of hockey that the Vancouver Canucks play, but the Vancouver Canucks are top of the pedestal, and they treat the Caps as though they're frauds. I think they've got one of the best coaches in the league, and to win a hockey game, you've got to score more goals than the opposition.
"And with the new rules, you can't just sit back and play defense and cheat and use your stick like the New Jersey Devils did for years, and bored fans right out of the buildings. And you'll see the Capitals, if you went around the league and saw, they're the best thing for hockey in my opinion, because they're trying to win every game. And they're not trying to win it 1-0, even though I'm sure they could. They're going out, and every building they're playing in is packed, and it's standing room only, and their type of hockey's just incredible.
"And I think the Canadians up there, they do not like the fact that there's a Russian hockey player as the best player in hockey. And he's the toughest player in hockey, the fastest player game in and game out, and there's nothing like this. And I think there's a lot of jealousy up there. But if you look around those teams, their star players, none of them is a Russian, and I think there's some bias up there towards it."
By Dan Steinberg | February 1, 2010; 11:22 PM ET
