Jason Chimera's Hit on Adam McQuaid Almost, but Not Quite, Ference's on McDonagh

There could be, but should not be, another tempest of anti-Boston Bruins bias accusations percolating in Brendan Shanahan’s neighborhood. For the fourth time in three months and the second time in five weeks, a potentially-punishable hit on a Boston player has filtered through the NHL offices with no supplemental penalty.

Unlike Kyle Turris’ leaping biff on Joe Corvo or Evgeni Malkin’s blatant hit from behind on Johnny Boychuk, there was a legitimate loophole in Jason Chimera’s charging infraction against Adam McQuaid Thursday night.

McQuaid, who was retrieving the puck and looking to go into breakout mode behind the Bruins’ cage, took a quick glance and indubitably saw the Washington Capitals’ forechecker approaching.

His next act should have been to start churning to his right around the net and initiating a breakout with a little more motion on his part. Or he could have turned back to his left and started moving the puck along the wall.

But instead of accelerating in any direction, McQuaid all but brought his wheels to a standstill and returned his attention solely to the puck. Furthermore, he turned his back at the final split-second before contact was made.

Because of that—whereas the Malkin-Boychuk incident was virtually a remake of Milan Lucic’s illicit hit on Philadelphia’s Zac Rinaldo—this was just short of matching Andrew Ference’s hit on the New York Rangers’ Ryan McDonagh.

In both cases, the checker was more reckless than he was malicious. And just as Ference had done in overtime of that Jan. 21 game, Chimera had started picking up speed in the middle of the neutral zone as he hustled behind the opposing goal-line during Thursday night’s affair.

By the end of each play, the perpetrator and the victim were in the same basic state. McQuaid, like McDonagh, was crumpled on the ice and favoring his head. Chimera, like Ference, was an instantaneous magnet for opposing fury and about to book a five-minute penalty and game misconduct.

But unlike McQuaid, McDonagh was not already at the site of the dangerous hit when his adversary took off. Ference was, in fact, the last player to touch the puck as he dumped it into the Rangers’ corner and converged simultaneously with McDonagh on his distant self-pass.

To be fair, the replay shows that McDonagh also noticed Ference in his vicinity as he approached the puck. But in contrast to McQuaid, he had far less time to take himself out of a vulnerable position.

Chimera certainly could have done more to minimize the impact of his hit. He had literally hopped into action on the fly and sped up exponentially from outside the center-ice red line to behind Boston’s goal line.

For that reason, nothing less than a five-minute charging penalty fit the crime. Whether anything more was warranted is really a toss-up, not unlike Lucic’s collision with Buffalo Sabres’ goaltender Ryan Miller, another incident where the attacker should have been a little more prudent.

But in this case, shrewdness was also lacking on the part of McQuaid. That is what distinguishes this out of all of the reviewable incidents to have occurred in a Bruins’ game this season.

A one- or two-game suspension for Chimera would not have been a crying disgrace in the least. But neither is his non-suspension.