ANAHEIM — In a highly publicized incident last season, Calgary star Johnny Gaudreau’s finger was broken by Minnesota’s Eric Staal with a well-placed hard slash of his stick. Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, the NHL’s preeminent face, took it up a notch by chopping open the digit of Ottawa’s Marc Methot.
As the preseason is showing, the league is responding to those often unpenalized acts by telling players to cut it out.
The NHL is cracking down on slashing in the game and the early impact of that is the plethora of penalties being called in the first exhibition games. The Ducks, who played their first of seven contests Tuesday night at San Jose, will be using the preseason to adjust as are players on every other team.
How serious might the league be when the regular season begins Oct. 4? Referees called 41 slashing infractions across seven games played Monday. It is striking when you consider that many playoff games might not have six penalties of any variety called.
Francois Beauchemin, a 13-year veteran defenseman entering his third stint with the Ducks, has already picked up on the early clamp down.
“Obviously in preseason they’re trying to crack down on all the stuff that they can to try to implement the new rules,” Beauchemin said. “But I think it’s a good thing. Guys are getting their finger and hand broken on slashes. As players, we’ve just got to be more responsible with that and taking care of ourselves.
“It’s one thing to go stick on puck. But the slashes on the hands, those are the ones they want to take away from (the game).”
Andrew Cogliano is all for something that restricts the slashes on the wrists and gloves that can cause injury. But the act of using a stick to swing at an opponent’s stick or hand to separate him from the puck is as old as the game itself. And that has the Ducks’ left wing asking for reason when it comes to enforcement.
“Hopefully they don’t call penalties when you’re getting guys’ sticks,” Cogliano said. “I think that’s the only thing I don’t want to see happen because a lot of times, that’s what turns over pucks. That’s what makes a forechecker effective. He’s on guys and he’s disrupting their stick.
“So hopefully there’s a big difference between slashing a guy’s stick than slashing a guy on his hands or his wrists. I agree with that. Because a lot of times you can be trouble if you take one of those slashes.”
Enforcing that by repeatedly calling penalties is the quick and easy way to change behavior. How quickly that gets players to change their way of defending another is the bigger question. Cogliano is among the many who will use the exhibition games to adjust things he and others often do on instinct.
“I think it’s more thinking about the game when you’re out there,” Beauchemin said. “Making sure that you know what you’re doing with your stick. It’s got to be in the right position. I’m sure they’re going to show us videos of examples they don’t want to see.
“But at the same time, I’m sure it won’t have anything to do with stick on puck. At the end of the day, this is what it’s all about. Trying to get the puck back. As long as we keep it on the ice, it’s going to be fine.”
Beauchemin said he believes that when the NHL cracked down on head shots and levied stiff suspensions, the result was many of them being eliminated from the game. He also cited the increased focus on hooking and holding coming out of the 2003-04 lockout – until it crept back in over time.
Ducks coach Randy Carlyle wants his players to get the message from him instead of a referee sending them to the penalty box. He is also having NHL linesmen discuss their intent to strictly enforce new rules in the faceoff circle before games.
However, Carlyle is expecting his team to do much more penalty killing to start the season.
“We would rather not put ourselves in that position,” Carlyle said. “But it’s difficult if you’ve played that way for a number of years, to make a change as dramatic as what they’re asking us to do in a short period of time. That’s as simple as I can put it.
“If you drove to work in the same way for 10 years, then all of a sudden you have to take another street, it does grab you a little bit and say I have to go about this differently now.”
ARENA CHANGES
The 24-year-old Honda Center has evolved over that time while mostly keeping its original structure. Significant changes in recent years have included a new state-of-the-art videoboard and the addition of an exterior terrace for gathering areas.
The latest alterations underway are new LED lighting that has brightened the arena, in particularly an ice surface that occasionally drew criticism for being too dark to view on television. And the entrance through the Grand Terrace is being extended to its edge, pushing a previous open-air meeting spot indoors.
