A goal and then a momentum killer….YIKES!!!!
When Daniel Alfredsson hit Scott Niedermayer with the puck in the closing seconds of the second period….all I could think of….was….what the???? The wife and family said the same exact thing…..as if this was out of some bizarre Hitchcock novel where the twist ending wasn’t even an ending.
Okay, so to rewind back to the actual events….it was 2-2 with only seconds left in the second period…Ottawa had just tied it and had all the momentum. Alfredsson goes to take the traditional last ditch fire it at the goalie maneuver when all of a sudden, he just turns and fires. The puck goes off Niedermayer and sparks a very nice scrum on the ice and near the Ottawa bench. I would have loved to see the CBC version of this but the NBC folks didn’t do too bad of a job covering it.
Hull to his credit did not sugarcoat this…nor does he ever. He sighted other instances where Ottawa was a little bush league in its approach. The Getzlaf goalie interference and the Neil flop off Beauchemin’s penalty. The latter two I didn’t think were so bad…though I did think they were questionable calls to say the least. However, the Alfredsson incident was regrettable to say the least. We may never know what sparked it but that shot hit Niedermayer for all to see and anytime a player does that intentionally or unintentionally, it is a scary proposition. Just ask Scott Stevens how that Kubina slapper felt sometime. Now Hull often puts his foot in his mouth but he did feel it was just something uncalled for. Honestly I was expecting something worse to come out of his mouth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26b1Buh9-38
Game 4 highlites…Alfredsson play about midway in.
Should the league do something about this? Perhaps they should but what message would it really serve? To me, it wouldn’t do much…..this was more an isolated incident that could be settled on the ice. Alfredsson should be fined and really in the offseason, they should do more to protect players from head shots (they already are debating it) and drop the blasted instigator rule to get some respect back in this game. Players do not respect one another like they did in the pre-Bettman NHL. That is all there is to it. This may have happened without the instigator rule in place but you better believe there would have been some haymakers thrown after an incident like this.
Did this stir up some controversy for Alfredsson? Maybe….but it stirred up trouble for his team because Anaheim came out firing in the third, scored the game winner, and never looked back. Sometimes you can see the turning point of a game come right off a player’s stick and tonight, it was as obvious as can be. Now, the Ducks head home Wednesday with the chance to clinch the Stanley Cup…something I didn’t think would happen before :05 left in the second period tonight.
