Nearing the end of the second period, the home team leads the visitors 4-0. The visitors’ top defenseman, one of the best in the league and the largest player in NHL history, lines up a hit against a winger that embarrassed him in a match earlier this season by scoring an overtime goal in the big man’s face and shoving him post-play, sending the giant into a rage. The winger chips the puck down-ice before contact occurs, but the D-man decides to finish his check. The pair speeding along the boards in front of the visitors’ bench, the big man spots an opportunity when he looks directly at a glass partition (that probably should not be there), reaches out and holds the winger’s head while he rides it into the post of the partition. The winger is taken off the ice on a stretcher. For a few minutes, I wonder if he is dead.
This is what I saw last night when the Montreal Canadiens hosted the Boston Bruins. Max Pacioretty was the injured winger and Zdeno Chara was the giant defenseman. In all honestly, the brutal hit disturbs me less than the post-hit reaction by NHL pundits. Far too many commentators are concluding that the hit must have been an accident, and as far as I can tell, they have offered two explanations to as why they feel that way: Chara has never done this before and things happen very quickly on the ice.
I’ll start with the latter since it’s the most common justification for questionable hits in the NHL. It’s not always bullshit, but I think in this case it is. Yes, the game is very fast, and there are many times when the last-second actions of a hit’s victim actually alters the circumstances of the hit in such a way that it becomes very dangerous in a way the hitter did not intend. The most typical example here is when a checker is targeting a puck-carrier near the boards when said puck-carrier turns to face the boards, accidentally creating a hit from behind if the checker does not have time to react. I do not understand how anyone could use the speed argument to defend Chara. In fact, I propose we use speed against Chara in this instance.
Here is a video of the hit. To argue that Chara does not have time to realize that his hit is illegal is ludicrous. The hit concludes at the red line, by which time the puck is past the blue line. However, I would argue that he does not have enough time to overcome a nasty instinct. Chara sees a player that humiliated and infuriated him months ago, sees a chance to hurt him, and does not have time to think better of it.
The more popular defense of Chara relies on a clean history. He’s a big, mean man, but not particularly noted as a dirty one. I don’t understand how this changes what happened on the ice. There’s a first time for everything. If someone does something nasty for the first time, it is still nasty. It does not get promoted from ‘nasty’ to ‘not so bad’ by virtue of the fact that it was a first offense. I understand that his suspension will span fewer games than if this was the second or third time he did this, and I agree with this logic, but some analysts (namely Mike Milbury and Barry Melrose) actually suggested this was no more than a two-minute penalty on the grounds that Chara’s record is clean.
Consider this: everyone’s record is clean until it isn’t. To give a player the benefit of the doubt based on his history, even if it involves ignoring every other factor relevant to the situation, is just stupid. Let’s summarize the case:
- For Chara: He has never done this before.
- Against Chara: His team was down 4-0; including this game, Boston has lost 8 of its past 9 against Montreal; the hit was very late; he was looking directly at the obstacle of collision; the victim was a rival with whom he had bad blood entering the game; the victim had scored 4 goals and 2 assists in 3 games against the Bruins this season entering the match, including an overtime goal; positionally, Chara has no reason to be at centre ice at this point and should be in his own zone, indicating he was going after Pacioretty.
The NHL can never determine exactly what a player was thinking during a play; disciplinarians are not psychic. Their job involves weighing evidence to make objective guesses as to what a player was thinking. Anyone who can consider all the items in this case and still conclude that Chara acted without malice is simply making a concentrated effort to be dishonest.
