There now have been nine suspensions in the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs as the league’s senior vice president of player safety, Brendan Shanahan, tries to curb a chaotic start to his sport’s biggest stage. The latest was Phoenix forward Raffi Torres, suspended indefinitely Wednesday for an ugly hit on Chicago’s Marian Hossa in a game Tuesday night at United Center. That hit came just minutes before Washington’s Nicklas Backstrom and a host of Pittsburgh Penguins were suspended, too. It has been that kind of spring. “I would never want to have that job. The job that [Shanahan] has, it’s got to be the toughest job in hockey,” Capitals forward Jay Beagle said. “Just because to be able to say which is suspendable or which one’s fineable, it’s hard to go through tape and review it. You see something on TV, and you’re like, ‘That should be suspendable,’ and it’s not. And then something like [Backstrom’s] where it could have gone either way.”
There was some carping from Washington about Backstrom’s punishment — especially considering the free pass given to Nashville defenseman Shea Weber for a head shot on Detroit’s Henrik Zetterberg and the one-game suspension given to Pittsburgh’s James Neal for two questionable hits in a game at Philadelphia on Sunday.
“It’s tough to know what is a suspension and what is not a suspension, but I think [Shanahan] is kind of under the gun, too, with fan pressure and all that stuff,” Caps forward Jason Chimera said. “You suspend one thing, you’ve got to suspend another thing, too, so it’s tough. We don’t want to crush people near the face right now, but it’s tough to know what’s right and what isn’t.”
– Brian McNally
