Canucks "Got Hosed", Among 3 Stanley Cup Musings

The sketchy suspension that set back the Canucks Stanley Cup dreams, a Red Wings legend that would have loved video review, and the “nutcraker” that wasn’t so suite. I mean sweet.

(Ouch)

1) First of all, congratulations to all of the Carolina Hurricanes of course, but especially to defenceman Shayne Gostisbehere, for one particular silly reason.

Every time I see him play, I think back to the World Juniors tournament in Ufa, Russia in 2013, as he was among a group of American defencemen that included Seth Jones, Jake McCabe, Jacob Trouba, Mike Reilly and Connor Murphy.

During the 3rd period of Team USA’s final preliminary round match against Slovakia, I was standing adjacent to the American bench, handling the live TV interviews and ice level reports for TSN and NHL Network, when Gostisbehere got in a wee bit of trouble.

Obviously perturbed by earlier events in the game, Gostisbehere went “nutcracker”, a slang term we used at the time, on a unsuspecting Slovakian forward. In their review, the International Ice Hockey Federation used much kinder and appropriate terminology in describing the incident that led to a game misconduct and a one game suspension.

“… the IIHF Disciplinary Panel determined that the U.S. defenceman skated up behind Slovakia’s Matus Matis and forcefully drove his stick between Matis’s legs, striking him in the groin area. Matis fell to the ice, injured on the play …”

So for the quarterfinal match against the Czech Republic (the “Czechia” title wasn’t in use yet), Gostisbehere stood next to me and watched the US win the game 7-0. He didn’t say much. He was pissed off at himself for acting so irresponsibly, in particular because he took the penalty at 16:50 of the 3rd period in a 9-3 victory.

He was chomping at the bit to play in the quarters, but instead, just had to hope for the best result.

In the semi’s against Canada, Gostisbehere was the seventh defenceman for the 5-1 win over the Canadians, avenging a 2-1 loss in the preliminary round, and moving the Yanks on to the final against a Swedish squad led by Elias Lindholm, Alexander Wennberg, and Rickard Rakell.

Team USA won the game 3-1 and the Gold Medal under head coach Phil Housley.

Hanging out with “Ghost” rink-side and watching hockey was one of my memories of the tournament that stands out.

Happy to see things worked out for him. How about a 3rd pair guy who quarterbacks the power play. Go figure.

Footnote: At least three young (presumably) Canucks fans played for Team Canada that winter. Forward Mark McNeill was born in Langley, left-shot D-man Ty Wotherspoon grew up in Burnaby, and of course fellow lefty defenceman Griffin Reinhart hailed from West Vancouver. ‘Of course’ is due to the fact Griffin’s dad Paul wrapped up a 15-year NHL career with two seasons patrolling the blueline for the Canucks. In one playoff season in Vancouver, Paul’s Canucks dropped a seven-game opening round series to his former club, the Calgary Flames, in 1989. The Flames went on to win the Stanley Cup.

(Canucks trauma)

2) OK, let’s face it, fifteen years ago, the Canucks got hosed. I’m talking about the four game suspension issued to Canucks defenceman Aaron Rome for his late hit on Boston Bruins forward Nathan Horton in Game-3 of the Stanley Cup Final.

Four games!

At the time, I didn’t mind. I was working for the NHL in New York, just a couple years after wrapping up three seasons as the Bruins live ice level guy and TV show host on NESN in Boston. I was covering all three games of the Final played at TD Garden.

And actually, pre-suspension, based simply on the hit and the reaction in the building at the time, I ran around the press halo upstairs telling anyone who would listen that the Bruins, despite being down two-game-to-none, were now going to go on to win the series. Knowing the Zdeno Chara’s (Bruins captain) of the world rather well, I just had that overwhelming hockey sense that the momentum had changed monumentally and that the Bruins would wake up and be a different team.

The impact was felt immediately. Already up two-nothing in game-3 at the time of the hit, the Bruins went on to crush the Canucks 8-1.

Little did I know that the overall prediction would get a great deal of assistance from the league office.

Yes, Horton was out for the rest of the series, but four games for a late hit in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Final in particular??

Twice in the previous series against the San Jose Sharks, Rome had been drilled from behind along the boards, once suffering concussion symptoms, with no suspensions issued. The perpetrators were Ben Eager and Jamie McGinn.

Before and since Rome’s penalty, there have been much longer suspensions issued in the postseason, but those involved multiple repeat offenders, like Tie Domi, Matt Cooke, and Raffi Torres. Torres was actually a member of the 2011 Cup Final Canucks, but his 21-game suspension came the following spring when he was playing with the Phoenix Coyotes.

Rome’s background was pretty much clean. The 27-year-old was living out his dream playing in the Final for the Canucks.

Cue the conspiracy theories, and they do make one wonder.

Although he did step aside as the NHL’s chief disciplinarian just as the 2011 Final began, Colin Campbell did retain his job as the league’s senior vice president and director of hockey operations. Campbell’s son Gregory played for the Bruins, and dad had a published history of complaining about certain calls against his son.

Meanwhile, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was best of buddies with Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs. In fact, Jacobs was Bettman’s top boss, as the chairman of the executive committee of the NHL’s Board of Governors.

Did that impact the decision and the series result? Hard to say. Or maybe it was just that Bruins wake-up call in the end. Rome wasn’t an offensive threat, he was a fringe 2nd-pair, mostly 3rd pair guy, and he only went on to play another 95 NHL games, retiring at age-29.

Then again, D-depth is precious, particularly in the postseason. Keith Ballard popped into the line-up for game-4, replaced by rookie Chris Tanev for the remaining three. Third pair blueliner, and former Bruin Andrew Alberts continued to see limited ice time.

The key men in getting the Canucks to that stage, Hockey Hall of Famers Henrik and Daniel Sedin, had to put it all behind them. They’ll now try to take the Canucks to the promised land as hockey executives.

(Red Wings lament)

3) Among the endless things that have changed in the NHL over the years, video review has made one of the largest impacts. It’s a fact of life on pretty much a nightly basis.

That wasn’t always the case of course.

The Martin Gelinas goal / non-goal for the Flames in game-6 of the Stanley Cup Final in 2004: one that would have won the Cup, definitely stands out. The series should have been over. Instead the Tampa Bay Lighting prevailed in that match and went on to win game-7.

The question was whether the puck crossed the goal line as Gelinas crashed the Bolts net.

“That puck was in!” NHL linesman and Hockey Hall of Famer Ray “Scampy” Scapinello said after seeing the replay postgame in the dressing room. Unfortunately for the Flames, that was the extent of “video review” at the time.

There was an even bigger one almost forty years before the Gelinas controversy, and it involved a whole lot of Hockey Hall of Famers.

In 2012 I had the honour and privilege of sitting down with the great Ted Lindsay, the namesake of the annual most player award handed out by the NHL players, for an extensive TV interview at Wayne Gretzky’s restaurant in Toronto.

Among other distinctions, Lindsay sacrificed a lot to initiate the start of what became the players’ union.

And while “Terrible Ted” won four Stanley Cups, he told me it was the fifth one that got away that never stopped bothering him. Along the way, he wasn’t the only hockey great who told me that the big losses were wedged in their memories just as much as the wins. In some cases, more so.

In 1966 the Stanley Cup Final ended with the Montreal Canadiens beating Lindsay’s Detroit Red Wings 3-2 in overtime of game-6. Henri “Pocket Rocket” Richard, the younger brother of Maurice “Rocket” Richard, tallied the winner at 2:20 of sudden death.

“He pushed the puck into the net with his arm,” Lindsay told me. “And he still teases me about it.”

There was no question. The puck went into the net off Henri’s body, his hand or his arm is in question, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. He fell into Red Wings rookie goalie Roger Crozier and the puck went in.

Referee Frank Udvari had no choice but to award the goal.

It was the seventh of eleven Stanley Cups won by the younger Richard as a player, the all-time record.

Lindsay said it would bug him until his dying day. The only other statement that he backed up in such an emphatic manner, was that Gordie Howe was the greatest hockey player of all time. Wayne Gretzky agrees with him.

Lindsay died at age 93 in 2019. The Pocket Rocket passed away a year later at age 84.