Two games. This is the uh, price, of an eye for eye in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Two games. This is the woeful response of the NHL to an act of frontier justice that injures an opponent.
Two games for the Canadiens’ Brandon Prust for breaking Derek Stepan’s jaw with a late hit from the blindside that caught the Blueshirts center in the face just 2:55 into Thursday’s Game 3 at the Garden … a hit for which the Montreal winger was not penalized by the grossly incompetent officiating crew, featuring referees Kevin Pollock and Marc Joannette.
A two-game sentence handed down from the NHL’s Department of Player Safety that, by the way, ensures Prust will be able to return to the series and to the scene of the crime if the Habs extend the conference finals to a Game 6.
Not a soul of whom I am aware is blaming the hit or the absence of a penalty call for the Rangers’ 3-2 overtime defeat at the Garden that reduced their margin to 2-1 in the conference finals that resume Sunday night on Broadway.
But that doesn’t absolve Prust, whom I know and we all know in these parts to be an honorable heartbeat guy, from responsibility for his cheap shot on his former teammate.
That doesn’t absolve Pollock or Joannette — or for that, matter linesmen Steve Driscoll or Steve Miller, who were empowered to call a major penalty, or at the very least, to advise the refs they had missed it — of misfeasance.
It is not as if Pollock, the referee on the scene, somehow didn’t see the check. He did. He decided it was a “clean hit.”
“I was told on the ice that it was a clean hit,” Brad Richards told The Post after Thursday’s match when asked what explanation he received when he questioned the lack of a call immediately after the play.
And yet, the Department of Player Safety, currently directed by Stephane Quintal, condemned the blow as a “late, violent hit,” worthy of a suspension because of “its extreme lateness and the significant head contact that results from the way it is delivered.”
And then handed down its puny sentence.
Even knowing the damage Prust’s blow had caused, the Canadiens and their coach, Michel Therrien, persisted on Friday with their disinformation campaign aimed at linking this misconduct with the Chris Kreider/Carey Price accidental collision in which the goaltender suffered a right knee injury that will sideline him for at least the series.
The Rangers, meanwhile, will operate without their first-line center for an indeterminate period of time. Players can and have played with fractured jaws, and some without missing any or much time; Ryan Getzlaf in Round 1 for Anaheim against Dallas is Exhibit A. But all breaks are not the same, so there is no way at the moment to even guess at Stepan’s availability. It is certain, however, that even if he does return relatively soon he will be impaired to at least some degree.
The absence of Stepan will have a domino effect through the lineup, the ramifications of which will become multiplied if Derick Brassard, sidelined for the last three matches with an upper-body injury he sustained on a blindside hit from Mike Weaver in Game 1, is unable to return in Game 4.
It would be difficult enough to replace the minutes played in all critical situations by Stepan, but exponentially more so if the Blueshirts are forced to go without two of their three top centers. That might create a scenario under which the Rangers are forced to break up every forward combination that was intact entering the playoffs.
The 10-game suspension of Dan (The Scorpion) Carcillo for Abuse of Officials isn’t remotely as damaging, but it does create another hole that must be filled. If Brassard isn’t ready, the Rangers would presumably dress both J.T. Miller and Jesper Fast. If Brassard can play, then it would be either Miller or Fast.
Injuries are part of it and so is depth. The Avalanche beat the Devils in the 2001 final even with Peter Forsberg sidelined for the series with a ruptured spleen.
No one is going to feel sorry for the Rangers, and that’s how it should be, even in the wake of sorry performances from the on-ice Game 3 officials, the Department of Player Safety and Montreal Michel.