Pronger's suspension has altered Stanley Cup finals

	For the second time in these playoffs, Chris Pronger has earned a one-game suspension. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
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OTTAWA -- Maybe if the referees had given Chris Pronger a five-minute elbowing penalty and a game misconduct in Game 3 instead of blindly missing his malfeasance early in the third period, he would be playing in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals Monday.

Maybe if Ottawa Senators center Dean McAmmond had bounced up instead of laying in the corner of the rink, dazed and confused and assuredly concussed, NHL vice-president of violence Colin Campbell would have swallowed hard and given the Anaheim Ducks defenseman a pass and not suspended him for the second time in the playoffs.

Or maybe if the Ducks did not publicly revel in their own toughness, the other suspension story of the day -- as Anaheim general manager Brian Burke vainly argued on a conference call with Campbell -- would have been the Senators' Chris Neil skating from somewhere the other side of the Rideau Canal and getting his hands and stick up to the head of Anaheim center Andy McDonald midway through the second period, a hit Burke termed "reprehensible."

But for Campbell, this ultimately proved to be an easy one. This was not merely a frustrated, playing-on-the-edge 6-foot-6 defenseman elbowing the 5-foot-10 McAmmond just after the center delivered a shot on goal. This was the perfect suspension storm.

Consider:

• The player. Pronger is a recidivist, a defenseman with six prior suspensions that have amounted to 12 regular-season games and one playoff match. If the NHL has to talk to Pronger any more about crossing the line, the league should put him on speed dial. (Irony alert: Pronger's first suspension, four games for slashing Pat Peake in 1995, was meted out by the NHL's former hanging judge, Brian Burke.) Indeed the last time Pronger was disciplined was fewer than three weeks ago when he was suspended for elbowing Tomas Holmstrom, the Red Wings forward, in Game 3 of the Western Conference final. Although the Ducks took umbrage at that one-game suspension -- in a tortured bit of logic, Pronger blamed the Canadian media for it -- the Holmstrom hit appeared to be a more blatant act than the one that resulted in the McAmmond concussion because Pronger skated several strides before jarring the Wings player face-first into the glass. (Rob Niedermayer, who helped sandwich Holmstrom along the boards, wound up with the game misconduct on the play while Pronger was not penalized.) "They did the right thing here," Pronger conceded 14 hours after kissing off the McAmmond play as merely finishing a check. "... And I don't blame them in any way."

• The visuals. Game 3 was the first of the finals that was televised on NBC. And seeing a glassy-eyed McAmmond prostrate on the ice for a few minutes is hardly the image the NHL wants to show to its audience in the United States. (Not that a suspension wouldn't have occurred if the games were still on Versus, but if a tree -- or McAmmond -- falls in the forest and no one sees it, why do anything about it?) The NHL just didn't need any trumped up charges of thuggery because of the errant Pronger elbow, which was dealt with expeditiously. The NHL's new motto: No bad deed goes unpunished. Pronger became the third player, after the amoral Claude Lemieux of Colorado in 1996 and Calgary's wild Ville Nieminen in 2004 to be suspended twice in the same playoff year. Pronger also joined the Bruins' Mike Milbury (1977), Detroit's Jiri Fischer (a crosscheck in 2002) and Nieminen (a hit from behind on Tampa Bay's Vincent Lecavalier) as the only players to be suspended for their actions during a final.

• The zeitgeist. Hits to the head is the topic du jour, at least on Monday. The general managers, gathering in Ottawa for meetings, are scheduled to address the epidemic of high hits. The issue truly has bedeviled the league. NHL referees have become expert at detecting the little hooks and subtle holds that have created the stream to the penalty box, but they have yet to get a proper handle on the big, dangerous stuff. (On the hit on Holmstrom, which left him with blood streaming down his kisser, the wrong player, Niedermayer, was tossed. On the elbow to McAmmond, referee Paul Devorski, who probably has had the best playoffs of any striped shirt, didn't call a penalty despite a clear view of the play. When asked on a conference call if the NHL were embarrassed that Pronger was being sidelined for a second playoff game when no call had been made on him either time, Campbell bristled, "That's a stupid word, embarrass." The league calls a suspension "supplemental discipline." If no penalty has been assessed, shouldn't that be initial discipline?) Even Ducks coach Randy Carlyle, so Old School that the rink boards in Anaheim's arena should be covered in ivy, expressed concern for the trend. "[I'm] alarmed from the standpoint that there seems to be a lot more severe blows directed toward the head," said Carlyle, a Norris Trophy-winning defenseman who was one of the last NHL players to don a helmet. "From the earlier era of hockey, there was an old saying that you had to eat wood if you were going to come hard enough and far enough. And that was reality. If someone was putting you in a position of vulnerability ... to a high hit and [was] coming across the ice to direct a blow to the head, there was usually some Sher-wood or Louisville hockey stick that they had to go through first. And that was accepted. The rules have changed."

And one elbow has altered the Stanley Cup finals. The Ducks managed to win Game 4 against Detroit without Pronger, but that match was on home ice, not in a hostile environment like Ottawa where the Senators will have the last line change. Carlyle said the Ducks have to accept the decision and turn the page. True. But when they turn the page, they should remember to keep their elbows tucked to their sides.