While Washington Capitals head coach Dale Hunter doesn’t think that Nicklas Backstrom’s late cross-check on Rich Peverley was all that bad, the Boston Bruins aren’t as convinced. Peverley didn’t go as far as to call for Backstrom to sit out Game 4, but he was candid if unmoved about the situation with CSNWashington.com’s Chuck Gormley.
“He tried to cross-check me in the face,” Peverley said. “We’ll let the league deal with that.”
“I felt a couple guys run me. I was trying to hold the puck up. It’s playoffs, tempers are going to go. Whatever. It’s high intensity and guys are going to be doing stuff like that.”
Hunter said that the hit wasn’t really suspension-worthy. (Click here for somewhat-decent video evidence.) As a rare member of the 1,000+ points and PIM club, the Capitals’ coach seems like a good judge of hockey scrums, so it says something that Hunter compared the third period of tonight’s game to rugby.
It seems likely to expect even more rough stuff as the series goes along, whether Backstrom is suspended or not.
Here is one more look at the incident: