Poll: Chara on Pacioretty: Suspension Worthy?:

… but it doesn’t look really pretty, and I don’t think it would hurt to make an example of this kind of thing.

If you’re going to punish other players for weak hits, just on the basis of injury, then it certainly makes sense to go after Chara, especially considering his history of (uncalled) elbows and dirty play.

8+ games, just to make an example out of him. Thomanik can keep the Bruins alive in net until Chara gets back.

Do all rinks have that center glass setup as in Montreal? I’m trying to picture how it looks elsewhere. That, really, seems to be the problem in the situation — not necessarily the hit or the timing.

In my opinion, Chara has the right to finish his check there — Pacioretty has just touched the puck. I tend to trust him that he had no intention to injure, or to shove anyone into the turnbuckle based on his reputation and character. I’d say that no suspension was the correct decision by the league, even though the result of the hit was horrendous.

A better route than pursuing Chara legally, or threatening the league as Air Canada, would be to move to reorganize that area of the rink a bit to avoid such a structure. I mean, I know some sort of start-and-stop of the glass is inevitable, and the area will always hold the potential to have someone’s head rammed into it — it happened to Doughty on edge of the bench, not the center, just last night. Nonetheless, I think some modification to make the area less dangerous could be looked into if this sort of thing persists.

I don’t like the leagues justification of Chara not being a dirty player therefore they don’t believe there was an intent to injure. At the same time the kid from the Islanders gets 10 more games for much less just because he does have a past history of being dirty. If the name on the back of that jersey is Ott or any other enforcer/bruiser/agitator in the league he’s probably suspended for the rest of the season. And just because Chara doesn’t have the reputation of hitting dirty that lets him off on all future instances that may appear that way? What happens the next time he does this?

I’m all for the physical game and I’m all for players finishing their checks but I’m also all for players dealing with the consequences of their actions on the ice regardless whether or not it was an accident. To me I think Chara knew what he was doing. Finishing your check is one thing but giving the kid a forearm shiver to the head like that, knowing that that glass is coming isn’t finishing your check. As well, if you look at the near side replay Chara has his head up and facing the boards a good 8 feet before where the glass starts. Heat of the action or not, he was aware it was there and he ran his forearm up the kids head into the glass. Any way you cut it, it’s a shot to the head and I thought the league was cutting down on these things regardless of intent.

because somebody on Montreal is going to try to get revenge on him.

because i don’t think you could have even hoped for more from the league to begin with. Regardless of whether you believe it was on purpose or not, it was an illegal hit. It was clearly late, and to me, it does look like Chara made the extra effort to shove his upper body over the half wall. But the primary point is, it was an illegal hit regardless of his intent or the injury. When you make an irresponsible decision like that, you have to be held accountable for what you’ve done, and I think this is one of the few cases where you do consider the injury in how you deal with it. Chara broke the kids neck on a play that never should have happened, and that makes it suspension worthy.

This is very close…
I get the feeling that there were no bad intensions, but the results were really bad…
And this is my opinion, but it wasn’t clean, it’s very close one, but it looked – to me – as Chara pushed a bit.