Center will miss Game 4 after cross-check penalty
The Capitals had to play 40 games this season without star center Nicklas Backstrom. Now they will have to make do without him for a critical game during the Stanley Cup playoffs, too.
Backstrom had a disciplinary hearing by phone with Brendan Shanahan, the NHL’s senior vice president of player safety, on Tuesday afternoon. That followed Backstrom’s cross-check to Boston Bruins forward Rich Peverley just as the final horn sounded, ending Monday’s 4-3 loss in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series.
A match penalty was issued by an on-ice official, which carries an automatic one-game suspension. After a hearing, the NHL upheld the one-game ban.
Washington coach Dale Hunter reiterated earlier Tuesday that he expected the NHL to rescind the match penalty and the suspension. Hunter also claimed that the Bruins are intentionally targeting Backstrom’s head. He missed those 40 games thanks to a concussion suffered on Jan. 3 after an elbow to the jaw from then-Calgary Flames forward Rene Bourque.
“Oh yeah. [Backstrom] comes out with no helmet, a blocker to the head, and then they jumped on him and twisted his head down,” Hunter said. “Last night, what did [Boston forward Milan] Lucic do to him behind the scrum? He grabbed his head. So Nicky’s protecting himself.”
The Bruins don’t see it that way in a suddenly antagonistic series. Boston coach Claude Julien says the Caps have escaped penalty for multiple stick violations, including the cross-check delivered by Backstrom and also one by Alex Ovechkin on defenseman Dennis Seidenberg in Game 2.
“The league needs to look at it and judge it,” Julien said. “We’re not a team that will go down, and I’ve said that many times, and start rolling on the ice for no reason.”
Down 2-1 in the series with a key Game 4 on Thursday at Verizon Center, Washington will be without its top center. Backstrom has played in just seven games since returning from his post-concussion symptoms, but he scored in the regular-season finale on April 7, added the game-winning overtime goal in Game 2 at Boston last Saturday and had the primary assist on Brooks Laich’s tying goal late in the third period Monday.
“[The Bruins] seem to push the other team around. And for us, we have enough big players that we’re not going to get intimidated by that sort of thing,” Caps forward Troy Brouwer said. “Our focus is on what happens in between the whistles. Anything after the whistles is for the refs to sort out. You can’t win games after the whistle’s blown.”
