Jack's Back
You’ll be shocked to learn that Bruins homer Jack Edwards was disgusted by Andrei Svechnikov’s massive hockey hit on Hampus Lindholm
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, folks. The halls are decked and the skates are stuffed. Across North America, friends and family have gathered around the roaring flatscreens to make merry. It’s the Stanley Cup Playoffs and it’s getting nuts.
Nowhere was this more abundantly clear than in Raleigh on Wednesday, where the Carolina Hurricanes and Boston Bruins squared off in Game 2 of their Eastern Conference Round 1 series. Historic rivals they ain’t, but you wouldn’t have known it inside PNC Arena where things were downright nasty from the puck drop. It began in the first period, when David Pastrnak received a five-minute major (reduced to a minor upon review) for running into Canes netminder Antti Raanta, cutting Raanta’s face and knocking him from the game.
Pastrnak is not known as a dirty player and closer inspection suggests he tried to pull up a bit, but the damage was, quite literally, done. Late in the second period, Canes winger Andrei Svechnikov happily returned the favor when he got a free run on the Bruins’ Hampus Lindholm behind the net, delivering one of the cleanest, meanest hockey hits we’ve seen since the railroad came to town. Witness the thunder.
The hit evened the scales for the Hurricanes and sent the hockey world into a state of glorious rapture. Well, except for NESN play-by-play announcer and Bruins homer extraordinaire Jack Edwards, who, as you might have guessed, saw things a little differently.
You honestly have to respect the commitment to type. It doesn’t matter how textbook the hit was. It doesn’t matter that every pucks pundit on TV and Twitter could be seen drooling over Svechnikov’s shoulder-through-chest technique. It doesn’t even matter that Svechnikov said he felt bad about injuring Lindholm after the game. To Jack Edwards—high king of Boston sports sanctimony—this was an affront not just to hockey, but humanity.
Thankfully Edwards got the frontier justice he so desperately craved a short while later when noted ambassador of the game, Brad Marchand, whipped a two-handed slash into the upper body of Pyoter Kochetkov after intentionally running into the Canes’ backup goalie late in the third period.
A penny for your thoughts, Jack.