It’s now the day after game one between the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators. Final score, 4-3 for the Habs. Has the dust settled by any means? Not even a little. If anything, more has accumulated after the emotional and physical opening game of the series. Mostly due to a specific incident that occurred last night, midway through the second period when Canadiens’ Norris Trophy winning defenceman P.K. Subban slashed the wrist of Senators forward and rookie sensation, Mark Stone.
Instantly when Stone felt the contact, he dropped like a sack of potatoes and was bellowing in pain. Stone skated off to the dressing room but was able to return to the bench within minutes. He did have to return to the dressing room again in the third period but was able to, again, make his way back to the bench. Subban on the other hand, was given a five minute major and a game misconduct for his actions.
When hearing that Stone was able to return, Subban was spotted in the hall, frustrated with most likely not the cleanest words coming out of his mouth. Does he have a right to be angry at the call? Absolutely. Subban was ejected because of his slash, leading to a supposed injury. Surely he thought, along with everyone else who was part of the game or watching in the stands/at home, that Stone couldn’t be that injured if he was able to return within a mere few minutes, regardless if he went off to the dressing room on more than one occasion. Little did we all know, the next day the Senators confirmed that Stone indeed had suffered a micro-fracture to his wrist. Senators general manager Bryan Murray even went on to say that the wrist itself today has no mobility and he assumed that Stone would be ruled out for Friday’s Game 2 in Montreal, and is deemed questionable for the remainder of the series.
Murray then went on to say that Subban supposedly threatened Stone before the incident, which is a pretty outrageous thing to say as Subban himself denies it, Stone never mentioned it and neither did Ottawa’s head coach, Dave Cameron, when he gave his spew of frustration in the post-game press conference.
Cameron, who was clearly upset with the way everything manifested, called on the league to give supplemental discipline to Subban or the Canadiens could be facing retaliation.
“I think it’s an easy solution. You either suspend him or one of their best players gets slashed and just give us five.”
Subban isn’t going to be receiving any sort of suspension. He’ll be back on the ice for Game 2. This, however, is probably not the wisest thing to say because if anything does occur, the referees are already red lighted and will be looking out as a precaution. He really shouldn’t have said anything to that stretch and more or less just followed suit with what Mark Stone had to say on leaving it up to the league, and just briefly giving an opinion that he thought the slash was intentional. This one motion of a hockey stick has raised the bar of emotion and intesnity in this series by itself.
With Stone out of the line-up, you can likely expect the Ottawa Senators to dress either either one of Zack Smith or Chris Neil for Game 2, which is a significant downgrade toStone’s contributions. The beauty of this, from a fan’s standpoint, is that these actions have provided more fuel to the fire, giving this series more of a rivalry feel that includes more hits and higher intensity, hopefully without injuries and intent.
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