The Refs have to make the call without benefit of review, but I think that the call was way to excessive.

It was a BS call. I hope Havlat didn’t get seriously hurt, but they were not going to call a penalty until after the injury, that is wrong. Havlat should have kept his head up, he knows this, we know this, everyone knows this. We have taken hits just as brutal this series, only difference is we braced for the hit and no injuries resulted. You can’t call penalties based off of an injury, unless that penalty is a high stick or something of that nature. The game misconduct, was entirely inappropriate.

…with unfortunate circumstances.

the only reason i can think of for the call is that if you watch the replay it does appear that kronwall lead with is forearm which i believe is illegal. how ever i think the real reason was because it was in chicago and it knocked him out. i do have to agree that he had it coming he know kronwall was on the ice and he should have known to keep his head up. totally his fault.

I know this probably isn’t a hot topic anymore, but being a Pens fan I hadn’t really given this hit much thought until I ran across this post.

First of all, the legality of the actual hit is not really the main issue, but for arguments sake I went back and looked at some classic Scott Stevens hits for comparison. A lot of them look very similar to this one, and my opinion is that it was a clean hit. He elevated himself by extending his left leg, but not to the point of jumping off his skates. He gets good body lean and explodes through Havlat. That being said, he was absolutely trying to hurt him, otherwise he wouldn’t have used his height advantage to take his head off.

Back to the point. The penalty called was for interference, not roughing/elbowing/charging, so that should be the debate. The ref saw the puck some off the wall between Havlat’s skates, but he never touches it. It’s technically interference because he never has possesion (NHL Rulebook: "The last player to touch the puck, other than the goalkeeper, shall be considered the player in possession. "), but it would be a bit of a ticky-tacky call to make, and would have undoubtedly gone unnoticed had it been less violent. Since the refs decided to make the call they are also allowed to assess a major and a game misconduct (rules 56.4 and 56.5) due to the violent nature of the interference in question.

So, in the end Kronwall caused that penalty with his physicality. This sometimes happens when a guy is throwing his body around. It’s not like he knew Havlat wasn’t going to play the puck, but the league is trying to protect the players and if there’s any cause to make a call on a violent play like that they will do it more often than not.

Ok, so that was more like a dollar’s worth.