Calgary forward Rene Bourque is headed back into the NHL’s supplemental discipline arena. Brendan Shanahan, the league’s senior vice president of player safety and personnel, already suspended Bourque for two games last month after a Dec. 18 check from behind on Chicago’s Brent Seabrook. Bourque will have another hearing on Wednesday, an NHL spokesman confirms, after his elbow to the jaw of Capitals center Nicklas Backstrom.
Will have a Backstrom update after Wednesday’s 11 a.m. practice at Kettler Iceplex. He completed his power-play shift and then returned for two more in the third period against the Flames, but didn’t play over the final 3 minutes, 19 seconds and was not made available to the media afterwards as team doctors evaluated him for an undisclosed injury. We presume it’s related to the head shot. A screen cap of Bourque’s elbow could be used as the photo to illustrate the NHL’s Rule 48.1, which prohibits hits where the head is “targeted and the principal point of contact.”
NHL Network host Brian Duff, speaking on the network’s On The Fly program on Tuesday night, compared the hit to Buffalo’s Ville Leino elbowing former Philadelphia Flyers teammate Matt Read in a game Dec. 7. Leino wasn’t whistled for a penalty and Read apparently wasn’t hurt on the play. But Shanahan still issued a one-game suspension.
Bourque himself has quite a nasty reputation, according to several Caps players, including Troy Brouwer, who played against him more often during his days with Chicago in the Western Conference. Still, Bourque had never been fined or suspended by the NHL. That changed last month and will almost certainly influence Shanahan’s decision here.
“The puck’s been distributed and all of the sudden the right arm comes out,” NHL Network analyst Billy Jaffe said during that same On The Fly segment. “I don’t even know how you say it was accidental here because [Bourque is] almost leaning that right foot off the ice, too, to reach up to get [Backstrom]…There’s no reason for the arm to be that high. That chicken wing? That’s going to be done.”
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