Last night’s record-breaking win by the Blackhawks didn’t come without incident.
According to TSN’s Bob McKenzie, the NHL is looking into whether or not San Jose’s Ryane Clowe left the bench to engage Chicago’s Andrew Shaw after Shaw delivered a hit from behind on Sharks forward Joe Pavelski.
As CSNChicago.com’s Tracey Myers notes, there’s a suspension coming for Clowe if he is guilty of leaving the bench to start an altercation. Doing that comes with a 10-game suspension.
What the league will look at on this play is whether or not Clowe came over the boards on a legal line change. Considering Pavelski was nearly helped into the bench by Shaw, there’s some reasonable doubt.
Then again, why would a guy who has no goals be coming on the ice with under 30 seconds left to play with his team needing a score to tie it? That’ll be up to the league to decide.
UPDATE (4:26 p.m. ET): TSN’s Darren Dreger says the league has offered Clowe an in-person meeting on Monday to discuss what happened.
For now, check out the video courtesy of CSNChicago and judge for yourself.