Taking an instigator penalty during the last five minutes of play results in an automatic one-game suspension, unless you play for Pittsburgh.
NHL.com: NHL's Campbell rescinds Malkin suspension
Following that review, Campbell said: "None of the criteria in this rule applied in this situation. Suspensions are applied under this rule when a team attempts to send a message in the last five minutes by having a player instigate a fight. A suspension could also be applied when a player seeks retribution for a prior incident. Neither was the case here and therefore the one game suspension is rescinded."
It's funny he should say that, as it seems that the entire hockey-watching world, including but not limited to such people as the CBC announcers, thought the entire point of Malkin's outburst was to "send a message", and "seek retribution" for the fact that Zetterberg has been shadowing Pittsburgh's stars for the whole two games and effectively stopped them from scoring anything.
The instigator penalty was created for exactly this kind of situation, where a player just goes out and attacks another player. I'm not aware of the automatic suspension that comes with it ever having been rescinded before, and everyone who follows the NHL knows it wouldn't have been rescinded for a Brooks Orpik or a Craig Adams. But it is for Malkin.
You can bet anything that if a Detroit player drops the gloves during the last five minutes of Game 3, they're getting suspended.
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Predictably, Pittsburgh found something to whine about despite having practically every call go their way. In the NHL.com game recap, head coach Dan Bylsma:
Marian Hossa took the puck away from Pascal Dupuis on the left side, but the Penguins' cries for a penalty went unheeded and Hossa got the puck on net where Tomas Holmstrom was keeping everyone in a white jersey occupied. The puck popped out to Fleury's left and Filppula was able to get enough on his stick on the puck to backhand the puck over the sea of bodies in front.
"I think the way I saw the replay that our guy was trying to get the puck out," Bylsma said. "Hossa came in and used his stick to lift up the guy's stick. You can make the judgment. The referee made the judgment that it wasn't a hook. I can slow it down and look at it myself and make my own judgment, but that was what happened. We failed to clear it with that hook and it led to the goal."
Maybe someone should try telling Bylsma that if a player lifts another player's stick, it isn't hooking. Basically here Bylsma is admitting that it was a good play and shouldn't have been a penalty. That's how we saw it, and that's how the refs saw it.
It's telling that he still thinks they should have got a call. But then again, he does coach in Pittsburgh.
Another hilarious case of pots and kettles:
TSN.ca:
The Red Wings are a puck possession team, and they displayed that in the faceoff circle in Game 1 where they won 71% of the draws. Penguins captain Sidney Crosby only won 30% of his faceoffs, with Jordan Staal just better than that. Conversely, Henrik Zetterberg won 15-of-20 draws.
I spoke to Crosby after the game, and he believed that the Red Wings took advantage of being on home ice, where the home team player is allowed to come into the face-off second, which allows them to take advantage by timing when the puck is going to be dropped, and cheat on the play to win the draw.
Crosby believes when the series moves back to Pittsburgh that those numbers will shift in favour of the Penguins.
I haven't seen Detroit cheat on the draw. However, through the entire Eastern Conference playoffs, I have seen Crosby cheat on nearly every draw he took, except in these finals where the linesmen haven't let him. I wrote about it earlier. In the first game where they were stopped from constantly breaking the rules on the draw, the faceoffs were 70% Detroit, 30% Pens.
They'll likely be 70-30 Penguins at Pittsburgh, because the linesmen will let Crosy cheat again there.
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Expect the referees to step up in Game 3 like they did in the Washington-Pittsburgh series. It was the same story there: Washington wins the first two games, and in the third Pittsburgh gets seven power plays to Washington's one. That game was so close it's very possible to argue that disparity in penalties, totally unjustified on the basis of what was happening on the ice, swung the game. The refs are going to try to swing Game 3 of the finals as well if it starts going badly for Pittsburgh; the head office already started with the Malkin suspension. Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't suspend Zetterberg.
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