Sitting Duck: Pronger suspended again

OTTAWA -- The bad news for the Anaheim Ducks yesterday was that defenseman Chris Pronger, who clobbers people for a living, will have to take a seat in the Scotiabank Place press box tonight for Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals.

An awful price to pay to be an honorary media member, wouldn't you say?

"I'm now a repeat offender," noted the 6-foot-6-inch blue liner, who in 2000 was named the league's No. 1 defenseman and its Most Valuable Player, in part because of the fact that he beats on people. "I'm sure that plays into it."

Pronger will serve his penance for the elbow he delivered to Dean McAmmond's head with 2:01 gone here in the third period Saturday night during Ottawa's 5-3 victory. Charging down the right side, the 5-11 McAmmond was leveled by the hit and was sent skittering across the ice and into the corner the way a flat stone would skip across a mirror-calm Walden Pond.

The Senators said McAmmond was knocked out, and the dazed look on the 33-year-old center's face did not contradict the diagnosis. Nor did his rubbery legs, which couldn't carry him to the dressing room. He needed a couple of teammates to hoist him up and bring him to the bench, where he was handed over to more team and medical personnel.

Early yesterday afternoon, league disciplinarian Colin Campbell ruled Pronger will have to sit out the game -- one and done. All in all, a love tap from the league's front office, which always must consider what vox populi will say if the league doesn't act in good conscience when one player beats the consciousness out of another.

It's the same penalty Campbell dealt Pronger last month when he also delivered an elbow to the head of Detroit's Tomas Holmstrom.

It's far less of a penalty -- as it should be -- than the one Campbell tagged Kyle McLaren with in 2002 when the then-Bruins defenseman played the part of Big Bertha driver to the head of Canadiens forward Richard Zednik in Game 4 of a first-round playoff series. Zednik, KO'd for five minutes, sustained a fractured nose, bruised throat, and facial cuts. McLaren was suspended for the remainder of the best-of-seven series and never again wore the Black and Gold sweater.

"Obviously, the final round is a very difficult round to take any player out of," said Campbell, speaking via conference call only minutes after his decision. "There's no prescribed or defined degree of change as far as the act to suspend players in the final round."

To no one's surprise, the Ducks didn't like the ruling. Anaheim general manager Brian Burke, the league's top disciplinarian before Campbell, nonetheless said the Ducks would "take our medicine . . . we have to live with it." Pronger, while noting he was sorry McAmmond was hurt, described it as a "reaction hit" and a "tough play." But he also added it would be impossible to change his game, which no doubt one day will lead to more elbows and more suspensions, perhaps even during this series, which the Ducks still lead, two games to one.

Rarely can repeat offenders help themselves.

In a bit of an artful dodge, Burke (he did go to Harvard Law School) repeatedly brought up another hit Saturday night, one that Senators tough guy Chris Neil delivered to the head of Ducks forward Andy McDonald.

Like the Pronger hit to McAmmond, it went unpenalized by the four-man on-ice officiating crew. And like that hit, it was a beaut.

McDonald was around the puck deep in his defensive end, on the right sidewall, and Neil lined him up with at least three strides. Arms up, stick up, Neil then aimed directly at McDonald's head. Had McDonald not been able to deke slightly to avoid the full force of the hit, he, too, would have been rendered the kind of roadkill normally featured in a Gary Larson cartoon.

All in all, Pronger's hit looked mean, while Neil's looked vicious.

Burke said he presented the case to Campbell, and also said Campbell should have held another hearing to review the Neil hit.

"He said the player wasn't injured, so mind my own business," said Burke. "Obviously I didn't share that view."

Hits to the head in today's hockey are among the ugliest and most frightful plays, right along with heavy blindside smacks that send defenseless players careening into the boards. To their credit, on-ice officials and league bosses have done a decent job of policing the hits, through on-the-spot penalties or, like yesterday, via supplemental discipline. No one can accuse them of ignoring the problem.

Now, could they hand out stiffer penalties? Without a doubt Pronger, especially with two illegal hits on his résumé in less than three weeks, should have been tagged with two or more games. These aren't parking tickets he's accruing. They're potential career-ending, even quality-of-life-threatening, hits. Neil didn't hurt McDonald, but that's to the credit of the hittee and not the hitter. Neil was out to hurt McDonald, specifically to addle his brain, and the rule is meant to focus on "intent" and not result. McDonald was lucky, but Neil was even luckier.

But let us not forget, friends of big-boy hockey, that we the spectators love these hits. Pronger and Neil clobber people for a living because, frankly, the customers pay them to do it. Some of us (not here) may decry the ugliness and the fights (which are far fewer than the dastardly hits), but we're the same ones who can't stomach the game when it lacks contact, passion, and the occasional displays of hate that erupt when pride, fame, and bragging rights are mixed into one large, old and silvery punch bowl.

"When you play a team a number of times . . . for the Stanley Cup . . . emotions are going to run high," reminded Ducks coach Randy Carlyle. "There's no easy way to win four games in the Stanley Cup finals."

For Anaheim, it will be all the harder with Pronger a DQ'd Duck for a night.

For anyone who likes the game best served hot, the 2007 Stanley Cup finals now will be a more enticing watch. Hold a hand over your eyes if you must when it gets ugly, but don't say you don't like it.