First, I’m sorry for the few posts since the season’s been over. I’m vegging in Florida.

The playoffs, I think, have been sensational. Who would have thunk Marty Brodeur would be the worst of the eight remaining goalies? How bout Vancouver’s atrocious power play (apparently the Wild isn’t the only team unable to beat Anaheim’s exceptional PK)? Ottawa looks darn good, and boy, could San Jose be regretting that final minute of regulation against Detroit last night. And the NHL needs a better video review system, don’t you think?

But just to show you how loco I am, I got bored between periods of Ducks-Canucks right now, so I decided to watch Randy Carlyle’s press conference on Anaheimducks.com from after this morning’s skate. I always find him fascinating.

So the topic got to Teemu Selanne, who’s been an absolute warrior this postseason. His face is just one big laceration.

Remember, in the Wild series, before Game 5, Selanne took a puck above the right eye in warmups and an uncalled highstick over the left eye from Nick Schultz. In this series, Selanne’s gotten sliced by teammate Chris Pronger (who also happened to nail then-mate Ryan Smyth in last year’s playoff with a puck), sliced by an uncalled Alex Burrows high stick and his mouth shredded by Josh Green in Game 4.

So during his presser today, Carlyle accused the Wild (or a Wild player) of purposely (that was the insinuation, at least) shooting the puck and hitting Selanne during that warmup incident. Here’s the quote:

On the warmup puck to Selanne’s head, Carlyle said, “That was the one that has everybody scratching their head. Where he got hit (left faceoff circle) and the position he was on the ice, it was like it had come from the other end.”

When the reporters laughed, Carlyle says, “Serious. [Selanne] was heading on the far side of the rink, with the glass over here (to his left) and the net behind him. And he got hit on this side (above right eye), so it’s Crime Scene Investigation. The trajectory of the puck had to come from the other end of the ice or from center. He was skating toward center. He got hit on this side (above right eye).

When somebody asked if there was one shooter, Carlyle said, “Yeah, the grassy knoll.”

I’ll tell you what, if one of the Wild players has such impressive accuracy, too bad he didn’t display this during the ACTUAL GAMES!

I will tell you, Carlyle does have an interesting point though. I didn’t see the incident. I was still madly writing about the near brawl that just took place. I look up, and Selanne’s down on the ice. Normally, when players are nailed in warmups, it’s because a shot deflected off the pipe or the player’s skating near the net. But for Selanne to be in the left circle and be hit in the right eye (the eye facing the Wild end), it seems a bit fishy. And remember, the Wild was heated because it alleges the warmup melee began when Pronger shot a puck at Derek Boogaard.

Spoke with Wild assistant GM Tom Lynn. He laughed at Carlyle’s accusation and said he saw the incident with the corner of his eye: “Selanne got hit in the right eye because a puck was shot at the goal by their player, travelled around the glass to the left of the goal, hit one of their ridiculous stanchions (because they refuse to use seamless glass), and bounced straight out and hit him as he was drifting toward center ice (with the right side of his head to the glass). Could be your first injury because a team didn’t have seamless glass.”

The Orange County Register actually accused Boogaard today, which is amusing considering Boogaard isn’t exactly known for his pinpoint, precise shot.

Anyways, that’s it from here. By the way, if you want to see World Championship stats, go to www.iihf.com.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.