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Much Ado About Nothing: Prust, Shrimp and Cherry

February 4, 2014, 11:48 AM ET [9 Comments]
Paul Stewart
Blogger •Former NHL Referee • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Follow Paul on Twitter: @paulstewart22

When I woke up in Moscow the other day, I had an email waiting for me. My day started with a question about the Brandon Prust "spearing incident" with Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Ben Bishop on Saturday night that Don Cherry ranted about afterward on Hockey Night in Canada.

I watched the video of what happened on the ice. Then I watched it again, wondering if I missed something. Perhaps I had blacked out. Maybe I blinked at the wrong moment.

Nope, I didn't miss anything. I've speared the last shrimp on an hor d'oeuvre tray more forcefully than Prust jabbed Bishop.

Mostly, the two players jawed with one another and a minor scrum ensued between the teams. The events unfolded during a television timeout late in the first period of Saturday's game between Tampa Bay and Montreal.



Apparently, Bishop was complaining to referees Don Massenhoven and Francois St. Laurent about being bumped around the net in earlier shifts. Prust told him to quit whining and away they went in what mostly a lot of trash talking to one another. In the course of bickering, Prust gave Bishop the old "cup check" with no force behind it. After that, there was pushing and shoving between two teams.

Nothing all that notable happened. It was far from pandemonium. In fact, I doubt I would have even been asked about it if Don Cherry had not played the "incident" up on Hockey Night in Canada.

Now is as good of a time as any to give my take on Cherry, who will celebrate his 80th birthday tomorrow.

For the most part, I like Don. He still has his place in the game and things he says should be viewed in a certain context. Don Cherry offers opinion-as-entertainment. For all his decades in the game, expert analysis has never been his strong suit. He realizes that.

Cherry's job is to create water-cooler (or, nowadays, internet) discussion and debate. If there is nothing truly controversial, he'll invent something to fill up the air time. That's exactly what he did with Prust and Bishop.

The game involved the Canadiens. So that is an instant angle for drawing emotional responses on both sides. Since Cherry has a knack for making his opinions the jump-off point for subsequent discussion -- including this very blog -- we suddenly had a "controversy" instead of a non-story that would be forgetten by time the game ended.

There are some similarities between Don and myself in our views of the game. But there are also some rather major differences that boil down to a) rulebook knowledge and b) understanding ways that the game has changed and the need to adapt along with it.

Cherry doesn't really care to know the rulebook. Never has, never will. He is perfectly content to rant and rave about "how could that referee make a call like that?" and leave it to long-time partner Ron MacLean (who knows the rulebook thoroughly is a certified referee who worked in minor hockey for years and even once refereed an NHL exhibition game) to actually impart some knowledge of the protocols of the rulebook.

Sometimes with Don, he will ignore whether a call itself was the correct one and focus instead on a pet peeve of his. For instance, that he believes the two-referee system is inherently bad (never mind that as long as the red line has been removed for two-line pass purposes, a one-ref game is impossible).

During the Stanley Cup playoffs one year, he went ballistic on the air because I had made a call as the R2 (referee trailing the play) on my partner referee's side of the ice. I made it -- and it was the correct call, by the way -- because my partner had been spun around and hadn't see it. It was actually an example of the two-referee system working properly, but that wasn't going to deter Cherry.

I get it. That's just how Don Cherry is, and I don't see malice or deliberate mean-spirit in him even when he says things that are way off base. He is kind of hockey's Archie Bunker; a crotchety older person whose bluster, stubbornness and reactionary ways are balanced off by generally having his heart in the right place and having been a product of a different time.

That is where Cherry differs from someone like Mike Milbury. Cherry is loud and old-fashioned. Milbury is malevolent.

Regarding Cherry's specific comments about Saturday's events-- centering on how horrendous it was for Prust to "spear" Bishop and how goalies always use to be held in reverence in the good-old-day -- it was a reach that rang pretty hollow.

I realize that I talk a lot, both here and elsewhere, about events from a bygone hockey era and about things like "the Code". I believe in those things, but I am also not blind to the way that this is now a different game from that one.

For one thing, the game has changed a lot since the days of Ken Dryden and Bernie Parent. The goal crease dimensions have changed. The goalies themselves have gotten much bigger physically and much stronger physically. The goalies wear much more padding and are more protected than they ever were back when I was a player and Cherry was a coach. Also, the goalies roam around the ice much more than they did back in the era Cherry was talking about.

Secondly, there have always been players who gleefully jabbed or slashed at you with the stick. That included some goaltenders, too. For instance, Billy Smith got me real good one night in the Island). Some players use to put a little extra padding behind their legs under their long underwear -- or even around the cup area -- because of it.

The four-minute spearing penalty -- the "attempted spear" that does no damage-- was created because there was a lot it creeping into the NHL game. It was a common trick in European hockey in particular, and players such as Mr. Samuelsson were artful practitioners. There were also North American players who did it. For example, Kenny Linseman wasn't called "the Rat" for nothing.

I will also add that Cherry coached a Bruins team that had two of the worst stickwork guys the game has ever seen: Bobby Schmautz and Wayne Cashman. Spearing, two-handers and deliberate sticks to the face were A-OK by Cherry when it was one of his own players doing it.

In the broader sense of watching hockey, Don likes to see the game played a certain way. I like it the same way. He'd call it the Canadian way, but it's just physical, aggressive and team-oriented hockey that really is not a question of nationality.

There are brave, tough and honorable players from everywhere on the globe -- and dirty ones as well . Part of Don's persona (which is his real-life personality magnified for the cameras) is to paint everything in the broadest possible strokes.

That includes himself. If Don had really wanted to stir up some Monday morning watercooler talk during a slow weekend, perhaps he should have worn a Brooks Brothers suit. Instead, Don makes himself the sartorial version of a Lewis Carroll migraine aura.

It's all part of the Don Cherry brand. The Cherry brand still has a place in the game, even if it's as predictable as Archie blowing a raspberry to Meathead on an All in the Family rerun.

************

Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.

Today, Stewart is an officiating and league discipline consultant for the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and serves as director of hockey officiating for the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC).

The longtime referee heads Officiating by Stewart, a consulting, training and evaluation service for officials, while also maintaining a busy schedule as a public speaker, fund raiser and master-of-ceremonies for a host of private, corporate and public events. As a non-hockey venture, he is the owner of Lest We Forget.

Stewart is currently working with a co-author on an autobiography.
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