Let's go back and freeze the tape.
Brad Marchand, the Boston Bruins' face-licking, goalie-sticking, bomb-ticking miscreant, had just sucker-punched Tristan Jarry and was about to dig his stick into the goalie's face with 24.1 seconds left in Tuesday's game.
The Penguins' top line — Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust, Jake Guentzel — was on the ice with top defense pair Kris Letang and Brian Dumoulin.
Your choices here, before the tape rolls:
A) Everybody attack Marchand.
B) Somebody attack Marchand.
C) Nobody attack Marchand.
We all know that if this were Penguins general manager Ron Hextall playing goalie back in his day, he might be in a Boston jail right now. Marchand might no longer have a head, let alone a tongue with which to lick opposing players (something he once did to the point where the league had to order him to stop).
Hextall didn't need anybody to fight his battles. He protected himself, and let it be noted that Jarry bladed Bruins forward Charlie Coyle in the gut right before the incident, so he's no wallflower.
But back to your choices. Let's say, for argument's sake, that every Penguins player saw Marchand's punch, even if the tape shows otherwise and even if sucker punches are designed to not be seen. From the sounds of it — from social media, talk-radio and elsewhere — most of you would have chosen A: Everybody attack Marchand.
That is an understandable emotional reaction. Nobody wants to be aligned with the kid getting his face kicked in by the flagpole after school.
Fight back, right?
One talk-show caller said he was "embarrassed" by the Penguins' mild reaction. He hated the fact that nobody touched Marchand — although an agitated Letang tried before getting pulled back by Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy and an official — or criticized him afterward. The caller even suggested that Brian Boyle should have jumped the boards to confront Marchand, who was suspended six games for his actions.
What is this, 1974?
Again, I get it. You want your pound of flesh in the moment. But let's think about this. Think about the players who were on the ice. Nobody could dare question the toughness or team-first attitude of any of them, but what were they supposed to do?
Did you really want Letang to get involved? And do what? Throw bare-handed punches at a guy wearing a helmet and visor?
How about Crosby? Did you want him using that surgically repaired wrist to try to inflict some damage?
Did you want the injury-prone Rust throwing haymakers, or Guentzel going full Godzilla?
Put an ounce of rational thought into this.
Maybe, with his team up two goals, Mike Sullivan could have used Boyle to take the draw that preceded the incident, the way he used Boyle on the draw after the incident. Maybe he should have, given that the atmosphere was heightened on account of the Bruins' overreacting to incidental contact between Crosby and Patrice Bergeron earlier in the game.
But it would have been asinine for the top line to engage with Marchand, who, by the way, was in such a state that he might have started swinging his stick like a machete.
I had to laugh when I saw people saying other teams will capitalize on this and start running Jarry. They'll pick up on the fact that the Penguins are mostly a turn-the-other-cheek type of team.
You don't think they already knew that?
I must have missed something, because I thought "Just Play" was the mantra when this team was winning consecutive Cups. They weren't exactly timid, with the likes of Chris Kunitz, Patric Hornqvist and Ian Cole on hand, but they were not a retaliatory, if-you-abuse-our-stars-we'll-abuse-yours group, either.
In fact, as general manager Jim Rutherford saw it, his stars absorbed way too much abuse during the second Cup run. Rutherford was so angry that he ripped the league for not protecting his best players and traded a first-round pick and Oskar Sundqvist (who would help the Blues win a Cup) in order to acquire the heavyweight champion of the league, Ryan Reaves.
We all know how that turned out.
Old-time hockey is dead. It's not the 1970s anymore, or even the early 2000s. It used to be that if you got near a goalie you'd be chastised, and if you touched him — let alone sucker-punched him — you'd be drilled. Tell me how often that happens anywhere in the league these days.
The Penguins might indeed have a physicality issue within the boundaries of the game. You saw that against Boston. They got pushed around in front of their net and pinned in their end. But that's different than ripping the top line for not attacking Brad Marchand.
Letang might have captured a pound of flesh, but it's just as well he got pulled away.
