Some quick thoughts from the NHL on TSN panel on Sunday.
It's unfortunate for the Philadelphia Flyers that Claude Giroux gets a goal and an assist, and looks like he's playing better, and then gets obviously frustrated and very angry late in the second period with his hit on Dainius Zubrus.
He's upset because Martin Brodeur plays the puck outside the trapezoid. Giroux says to the ref, 'Can't you see that? Why didn't you call a penalty?' Now he's frustrated and angry and he tracks Zubrus and with less than five seconds left in the period, hits him in the head.
He did not make body contact; he did not rub him out against the boards. This is a frustrated, angry hockey player who picked the head. It was a classic case of a player picking the head as a point of contact.
These are interesting times. Rostislav Klesla was suspended for one game earlier in the day for running Nashville Predators F Matt Halischuk. The smoking gun in that case was that Klesla grabbed the bunched up sweater of Halischuk, pulled him back, and gave him a push into the boards. Halischuk did come back to play in that game but there was still a suspension.
Now we've got Giroux with a very classic Rule 48 violation – a pick of the head. You can't make a justification that he hit body first. That was strictly shoulder to head contact by a very frustrated and angry hockey player. According to Rule 48, that's a targeted head shot and he easily could be suspended for that.
On the other end of it, the Flyers will argue embellishment, and that Zubrus came back and wasn't hurt, but it looked to me like it could be a suspendable play.
Brown leads the way as Kings advance past Blues
Dustin Brown really sets the tone for the Los Angeles Kings in terms of being a physical player on a very physical team, but also in terms generating the offence that they need.
Oddly enough, going into Game 4 in this series, Brown didn't have a goal, he had four assists, but he fixed that quickly enough. The Kings' captain scored a couple of goals in the clinching game, including the empty netter.
Brown provided big hits throughout the series, and showed the ability to draw penalties and take the opposition off their game.
He did it against the Vancouver Canucks when he got four goals and five points in the first round series. Then, right from the beginning against a big, strong St. Louis Blues team that was supposed to be the mirror image of the Kings, he delivered the same in the second series.
Brown set himself apart from just about everybody else, including David Backes and the St. Louis Blues.