Milbury said it straight out: Patrick Kane was ineffectual as center.  Kane’s face-off win percentage was probably 33% on average, and he got hammered and nailed upon most attempts to take the puck to the net.

Milbury concluded that Kane lacked depth as center, and observed that Kane was being yelled at by the coach on the bench for lack of production (not to mention the turnovers and/or giveaways).  So I have to ask: Will Patrick Kane’s tenure in Chicago soon be coming to an end?  Will the Chicago Blackhawks be floating him for a trade?  Just think what the Hawks could do with $5 million in extra cap space…hmmm….

He went on to explain to the Sun-Times that Sarah Kustok had “comprehensive sports knowledge.”  How drunk was this guy???  I have no problem with women reporting on sports.  As a woman myself, I think it’s well past time.  But that’s why Kustok annoys me.  She appears to know very little about sports, and if you’re going to be a chick doing a job in a male-dominated field, you better be more than a pretty face; you better know your stuff.

If Comcast really cared about having someone who knows their stuff ask questions, they’d send Gail Fischer down there.  Now that lady knows sports!

Tonight the Blackhawks beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 5 to 2 and Viktor Stalberg scored his first NHL hat trick, but perhaps more memorable is that the Hawks were called for ‘instigating’ twice.  So it looks like the Blackhawks will be the team that the NHL proves their instigating penalty on. 

And what is instigating exactly?  According to the NHL’s ever-changing rule book,

“A player who is deemed to be both the instigator and aggressor of an altercation shall be assessed an instigating minor penalty, a major penalty for fighting, a ten-minute misconduct (instigator) and a game misconduct penalty (aggressor).”

Does nobody think this is too severe? After all, Canucks’ Alex Burrows cheap shotted Bruins’ Shawn Thornton in the Canucks/Bruins game the other night, but nobody called constant bur-on-the-butt Burrows for instigating.

It also looks like the NHL is confusing an “aggressor” with an “instigator” as if they were one and the same.  According to the NHL an “aggressor” is,

“…the player who continues to throw punches in an attempt to inflict punishment on his opponent who is in a defenseless position or who is an unwilling combatant.”

Um, yeah, but what do you call an Alex Burrows-type who repeatedly takes cheap shots on guys (hair pulling, biting, scratching, spearing, high-sticking) in order to entice them into fighting?  See, because the dictionary defines instigating as “urging, provoking, or inciting some action or course” and in the case of Alex Burrows in that game the other night, it was he who instigated first.  To put that in playground rules, Alex Burrows started it first!

But the NHL give themselves an out for bad refereeing:

“Referees are provided very wide latitude in the penalties with which they may impose under this rule. This is done intentionally to enable them to differentiate between the obvious degrees of responsibility of the participants either for starting the fighting or persisting in continuing the fighting. The discretion provided should be exercised realistically.”

Another way to define “wide latitude” is “subjectivity” ensuring that no two games are called exactly alike, or properly.  Why subjectivity?  Because refs have preferences for certain teams and dislikes for others, and because the NHL rules are so vague as to be interpreted in many different ways.  For instance, if the instigating rule were a law it wouldn’t hold water; it would be voided for vagueness.  So why should the NHL purposely leave the instigating rule vague so as to ensure confusion and bad calls, i.e. improperly refereed games?

And I guess I can understand why they created the penalty for being the 3rd man to engage in a fight (the old “3rd man in rule”) to guarantee that NHL fights didn’t turn into bench-clearers, but coming to the aid of a teammate after he got checked dirty — like Steve Montador and Jamal Mayers in tonight’s game who were defending Andrew Brunette and Niklas Hjalmarsson respectively — shouldn’t be instigating or a game misconduct.  These kinds of rules are ruining the integrity of hockey and need to stop!

My gosh, did you see Niklas Hjalmarsson get pounded on the ice tonight?  He was on the business end of a dirty check to the head from Blue Jackets’ Jared Boll and a nasty high-stick to the eye from Tomas Kubalik.  Granted the high-stick was an accident, but the dirty hit certainly wasn’t and deserved an answer from Jamal Mayers.  So I disagree with the whole “instigating” penalty as it’s defined by the NHL and as it’s being enforced by the refs.  I understand the fine line the NHL walks between trying to keep the players safe and over-enforcement, but all these rules are ruining hockey.  Seriously, I’m with Don Cherry on this one: If you overly penalize fighting, you will ruin the character of the game and therefore the game itself.

That said, congratulations to Viktor Stalberg on his hat trick and to Dave Bolland on his shorty goal;  Tazer (who took a puck to the head off a deflected shot from Duncan Keith in the 1st period) and Jelly go ice your heads; and hey NHL, can we cool it on the instigation penalties for one hot minute???

Typical.  Where there’s a goon, there’s a Vancouver Canuck, and it’s usually Alex Burrows and Kevin Bieksa.  Good for Boston, particularly Zdeno Chara and Milan Lucic.  Forget about the misconducts.  A yard sale is the only language the Canucks seem to understand.

Hey refs, how about an instigating penalty on constant troublemaker Alex Burrows???  And hey NHL, how about a suspension on Burrows for a history of instigating and goonery?  Milan Lucic wouldn’t have left the bench had Alex Burrows not cheap-shotted Shawn Thornton in the face.  Hey, remember when Alex Burrows bit Bruins’ Patrice Bergeron in game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals last year?  Cause it looks like the refs forgot!

And as a little jog down memory lane for Blackhawks fans, remember when Alex Burrows pulled Duncan Keith’s hair like a little girl?  Remember when Ben Eager jerseyed Kevin Bieksa?  Good times.

More:

Alex Burrows’ Number Called by Refs

Speaking of getting it right, the Hawks couldn’t in tonight’s shutout by the Avs. I don’t think we have ever seen Captain Serious, Jonathan Toews, so frustrated. In the dwindling moments of the game, Toews was slow to get up after having been knocked once again to the ice, and he just never seemed to recover his will. When the game was over, Toews uncharacteristically was one of the first off the ice to the dressing room, foregoing his usual fist bump to each of his teammates. I can only imagine what he had to say to his teammates once off the ice. Hopefully he angrily yelled at them and said something like, “I can’t carry an entire team by myself. So if you don’t have the heart to get out there and do your best and stop bumbling around with the puck, then what are you doing here???” Toews had every right to take a breeze on his team after the game was over; they took a breeze on him while the game was still on.

That said, I was rather surprised that Coach Quenneville defended Carcillo’s hit saying,

“It’s a quick moment when you’re going for a counter hit fighting for a puck…He (Carcillo) probably had better leverage than the other guy. His intent certainly wasn’t what happened.”

There’s that word again: intent.  I’m not so sure there wasn’t intent there.  Certainly Carcillo didn’t mean to hurt Gilbert, but he did intend to slam him into the end boards that hard.

And how do you defend a forceful hit like that when the guy doesn’t even have the puck? In fact, remember James Wisniewski’s hit on Brent Seabrook in 2010?  After that despicably dirty hit, which earned Wiz an eight game suspension without pay, Quenneville said:

“You hit a guy without the puck, you could kill a guy…It’s the most dangerous hit in the history of the game…He tried to hurt him…If that’s not intent, that’s as bad a hit as you could ever have in the game.”

Ok, so how can Q decry Wisniewski’s dirty hit on Brent Seabrook, who didn’t have the puck, and not Daniel Carcillo’s dirty hit on Tom Gilbert, who also didn’t have the puck?  In both cases extreme force was used against the boards.  How do you justify that?

It’s one thing if you’re going full-bore trying to beat a guy for the puck, run out of ice, and meet the end boards; but it’s another thing entirely to see the end boards, high-stick a guy in the face, and plow him into the end boards because you know it will shut him down.   That’s what Carcillo did and it’s what NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan called “using the boards as a weapon.”  I agree.  So, does Q really want to make the argument that Dan Carcillo just doesn’t know his own strength?  Q’s own prior statement about dirty hits on guys who don’t have the puck is a direct contradiction to his current argument about Carcillo’s hit not being dirty.

That brings to mind the other problem that I consistently see with these suspensions.  It’s nice that a team will send a coach to back their player at a press conference or in interviews, but perhaps the teams’ managers, coaches, and even owners should start taking responsibility for how their players play.  Again, I have to come back to the Vancouver Canucks and the 2004 Todd Bertuzzi incident.  Certainly Bertuzzi didn’t mean to so severely injure the Avalanche’s Steve Moore that it ended his career, but that’s what happened.  Now how much responsibility should the Canucks’ owner, management, and coaches have borne for that goony type of play?  According to the NHL, $250,000.  That’s it.  Meanwhile, Todd Bertuzzi was forced to walk the plank and face the sharks virtually alone.  But everyone knows that the goony type of play that the Canucks engage in does not come solely from the players themselves.  So, to make Bertuzzi take almost the whole of the punishment — bad press, civil lawsuits, a criminal investigation, and a resulting sentence — sold Bertuzzi up the river. (It was like how after the congressional investigation Major League Baseball and the teams themselves took no responsibility for the steroid problem in baseball, as if the pressure to juice had all come from the players themselves.)  And what did the Canucks get?  A slap on the wrist and a fine.  Is that fair???

Perhaps the NHL should start looking a little further up the food chain when assessing blame for dirty hits and overall goonery.  Rough, aggressive play and fighting are part of the game.  But goonery is bad sportsmanship and is proving season after season to be more and more dangerous.

Last night’s 4-1 win against the Calgary Flames was conspicuous in regards to Patrick Kane for a few additional reasons.  First, it was very obvious that Patrick Sharp set Patrick Kane up for a very sweet goal in the third period.  Even Pat Foley noted that Patrick Sharp could just as easily have taken that shot himself, but he “unselfishly” passed off to Kane for the goal.  Was Patrick Sharp being “unselfish” really, or was he just doing what he had been instructed to do?  It’s no secret Patrick Kane has trouble taking the puck to the net.  It’s also no secret that Patrick Kane will give up the puck if harassed by opponents even slightly.  Heck, I’ve been writing about it for several seasons now.  In fact, much of this blog space has been taken up with my complaints about how Jonathan Toews shouldn’t have had to babysit Patrick Kane when Kane was on Toews’ line.  Not only was it ridiculous for Toews to have to prop up Kane, but I think Toews got tired of it too and may have asked for Kane to be put on a separate line…

…Which leads me to the second most conspicuous thing from last night’s Blackhawks-Flames game: After the game, Captain Jonathan Toews gave every one of the Blackhawks a fist bump coming off the ice except for Patrick Kane.  Subtle?  Yes.  Yet it speaks volumes.  So I’ll say it.  I think Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews may have had a falling out.  And all this fan can say is that I don’t blame Jonathan Toews one bit for being fed up as Patrick Kane’s babysitter.  I would also add that it is very apparent that Jonathan Toews is not happy on this team this season, and understandably so.

Jonathan Toews is a superstar, no doubt.  But as captain, you can so clearly see he puts his team first and himself second.  Toews could be a Sidney Crosby or an Alex Ovechkin and take all the glory for himself, but he is selfless and has instead taken a step back and has supported his teammates instead of becoming a glory hound.  Still, there are limits, and if Toews was asked to babysit Patrick Kane in order to make Kane look better (i.e. to carry Kane), well, that is absolutely unfair to Toews, captain or not.

Now I’m not trying to shrink heads here, but there is inarguably a team psychology to every team, and it looks like the Hawks have been psyched out all season.  They win, but can you really say that they’re clean wins or that the Hawks look like a cohesive unit?  And why don’t the Hawks salute the fans after home games anymore?  Why don’t Toews and Kane do fan signings together anymore, or at all?  Why are the Hawks doing less reaching out to the fans than they have in past seasons?  Something’s not right here, and the cracks are starting to show.

Related:

Hawks win on Halloween, but still some bats in the belfry

Where Toews and Kane cannot compare, however, is on the face-off.  Patrick Kane is still struggling on the face-off with only 1 face-off win and 6 face-off losses and a mere 14% face-off win percentage in tonight’s game; whereas Toews had 20 face-off wins and 5 face-off losses for a face-off win percentage of 80%.  So maybe these two can trade up on some things.  Maybe Toews can step up his game and Kane can step up his face-off wins.

And what to say about the Hawks’ lagging power play?  Last year, their power play topped the league and their penalty kill was lagging.  Now it’s the opposite with their penalty kill topping the league and their power play bottoming out amongst the lowest in the league.  It’s embarrassing for the Hawks to repeatedly not be able to score on a 5-on-3, but of course the Hawks are aware of this and are certainly working on the problem.

Overall, the Hawks need to buck up against defensive-minded teams.  The Hawks looked tired and sloppy tonight.  Dave Bolland’s line wasn’t as aggressive as before; Viktor Stalberg, while shooter on the game-winning goal, didn’t pick up his game ’til the overtime period; and even Jonathan Toews was slow to get off the ice at one point.  Let’s hope the Hawks are just suffering from something unavoidable like the flu and will clear out the cobwebs and pick up their game soon.  Still, a win is a win.  Happy Hawks-o-ween everybody!