Senators/Canadians play as well. Did not see anything wrong with that hit, his teammate was the one who was largely responsible for the outcome with the dangerous pass he made.
He jumped and he made contact with his head, that's a direct violation of rule 42.1
Every time something happens to one of your players, you homers show up in full force whining about how everyone is against you. There is no conspiracy against the Red Wings. The league isn't plotting against your team, the commissioner doesn't hate you. I've never seen so much complaining about a borderline AHL player getting suspended before. Grow up.
Completely agree with you. If a Ducks player did this to a Wings player everyone in hockeytown would be irate. I actually love Abby as a player despite his Sparty roots, and I am certainly a Wings homer, but I do believe Abdelkader left his feet - which is a big no-no these days.
As for Abdelkader being a border-line AHL player, I'll respectfully disagree. He can be a big impact player for us when he is on his game. Bottom line is losing Abdelkader and DeKeyser could spell our doom. The wings simply were not that good to begin with, which should be clear to anyone who has followed them this season. Losing two guys certainly won't help our chances.
While I don't echo your thoughts completely, I mostly agree with this. Whether his skates were touching the ice the split second he made contact or not, the bottom line is Abdekader lined him up and was jumping as the hit was made, he made contact with the head, and extended his elbow/arm on the guy's head. I'm not a huge defender of Shanahan, but the suspension had to be at least 2 games after that Senators/Canadiens call.
And yes, Weber should have gotten a suspension last year. But I have a really hard time taking any Wings fan seriously when they claim conspiracy. Detroit is one of the more popular teams in the league and the NHL would much rather have them do well than a team like Nashville or Columbus. I'm a Devils fan and I know damn well that no one wants my team to go anywhere even though NJ has played an aggressive style for a couple years now. It just makes it more fun when you go on a playoff tear through Philly and New York.
Pile it on. I am impervious to pain.
Just a crap decision.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpBIFsbcy6Q
That's a link to the hit. I was listening to the game on the radio at the time, this would be my first time watching it. All of you saying this hit is legal are completely out of your minds. He deliberately launched himself into the player, and clearly hit the other player in the head with his shoulder/elbow. This was a dirty hit, absolutely no question about it. Whether or not he left the ice directly at the impact of the hit is irrelevant - he was launching himself off the ice on purpose to hit a defensless player as hard as humanly possible. The Kronwall hits you keep mentioning are competelely different in every way. Here's a link to some of his best hits, and what you'll notice is that Kronwall absolutely anihilates the other player, but he never, ever launches himeself and because of this typically doesn't get a penalty at all - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk3qIjz5EDM
Comparing this hit to anything Kronwall has done is riduclous, this hit was dirty and deserved everything it got.
Kronwall's name was only brought up twice, and once was me using him as an example of why contact to the head =/= penalty. This really doesn't look anything like a classic Kronwall hit.
I'm surpised at the number of people in this thread that seem to think insulting the person they are talking with will somehow change that person's mind or somehow makes their own argument more credible.
I know I'm a bit late to the outrage here, but all I have to say is that if the roles were reversed, and it was Corey Perry hitting Ericsson, well this would be a 100 post thread about how Perry is the biggest shitbag in hockey and how he should be suspended for the rest of the year and blah blah blah.
Everyone needs to take off their red-tinted glasses and just admit that it was a stupid play and not as clean as people want it to be
I guess I don't have a huge problem with this given that they suspended that guy in Ottawa two games for basically the same thing. But compared to Shea Webber's non-suspension last year, it is outrageous.
stupid, stupid.