black aspirin wrote:
Karl Hungus wrote:
I realize they are trying to crack down on some of the 'thuggery' that comes with the game from way back, but nothing thrown at Lucic or even Miller (who took one hell of a swipe at Lucic after the 'blow up' about 20 feet out of the crease the other night)
Lucic was questioned about the hit the night of and the day after and had a hard time keeping a serious face when asked if it was intentional. My opinion is youre fair game out of the crease, but Lucic did kind of go out of his way to smoke the guy. The 'concussion' he sustained I heard was bullshit too.
Upon viewing that hit, I felt that Lucic went out of his way to nail Miller. Raised the shoulder, even lunged a bit. It was intentional.
As to the argument that goalies are 'fair game' if they leave the crease, I'm a bit torn. I don't think that anyone should ever get to line up a goalie and smoke them just because they're outside the crease, but there should be an acceptable level of contact that is higher than inside-the-crease.
The most pathetic part about the Lucic hit was that Buffalo didn't even take care of business. I know Lucic is one tough customer, but
somebody on the Sabres team should have immediately dropped the gloves and taken him to task, win-or-lose.
I agree with all of what you said. I think that Lucic definetely put some added oomph into the hit, but the thing is, with the momentum of him moving forward and Miller also moving towards the puck at a quick rate, something bad was bound to happen. Generally, i'm not a fan of goalies that move the puck around or get up into the play and try to get fancy with things. I'd got into hockey in the late 80's and early 90's, and you didn't see alot of goalies trying to be a hero.....they'd generally stay in the crease and let the other players field the puck. I think that the way that the NHL is nowadays, with the dilution of the talent pool with over expansion, that you see goalies having to do more, almost providing the assist before the assist.
I don't know if that has merit, or whether it's just the way that the game is played now, but I do know that if any player starts moving up the ice as Miller did
towards the opposition's goal (and/ or trying to break up a legitimate breakaway), that a certain "fair game" clause should be enacted. I mean, Miller could arguably fall into the same category as a defensive player that impedes the progress of a scoring chance on net on a breakaway--a trip, a hook, whatever. He's easily 10-15 feet out of his net, trying to be heroic. And that's probably why Lucic hit him, "get out of the way of me trying to score on this break". You can't protect someone blindly, just because they feel they have carte blanche to be an additional offensive player. I think that's why there's not enough real legitimate outrage on Lucic's hit, because it's a totally different story when a goalie is in his crease and a player runs him, or if he's behind the net playing the puck, I think.
Hence no suspension for Lucic. And hopefully, other goalies get the message: don't get overly heroic, if your defense just blew the play, you sit back in the net and wait to either get scored on, or save it. If I was Ruff, I may have even gave Miller a stern talking to: "if that puck goes around you, who stops it then? You have more chance of stopping the puck on a rebound, even if Lucic hits the post or crossbar". The play made no fucking sense at all.
