Quick Thought on Chara's Hit on Pacioretty

This sucks. I don't think I need a blog post to really say just that, but it does provide a good lead into it all.  No one wants to see a guy wrap his face around the glass stanchion like a car around a tree, period.

As a standard, I really try to take the speed of the game into consideration for a lot of these kinds of incidents and I think there really is a good argument for it, but there is a hefty argument working against Zdeno Chara, as he and Max Pacioretty, the victim of this awful event, have a bit of a history this season and there were enough strides and more than enough time leading up to the collision along the boards, that could suggest that the giant Slovak defenseman wasn't going to let up.

I'm not sure what kind of consideration Chara had, when both players approached the open stanchion, about putting Pacioretty into it at full speed, but I could pretty well assure you that he would have put all he had into the rub out if it was all glass and boards and nothing else.

Watching it over and over again, it's hard not to take the shove into some sort of consideration.  This again goes back to the speed of the game argument, which has a lot of valid points.  Watching the play in real time is the key, because that's what this has to really be judged on.  It looked to be a rub, but Chara has a few strikes against him, taking away some of his allotted 'benefit of the doubt.'

Personally, I'm not going to lose much sleep over this hit, it really sucked and I hope Pacioretty is okay after it is all said and done.  Any supplementary discipline, if there is any to speak of, likely won't be terribly severe, in my opinion.