Benching a Coach

So, that was interesting. Apparently, while I was upstairs crying in my oatmeal, there was a Caps fan downstairs pouring beer on my head coach. Or something. The details are unclear. At first, the story was that some unruly fan poured beer on the bench, and then Torts threw water back at the fan. After a day of investigation -- no, seriously, I am making none of this up -- it was determined that Torts struck first. And the NHL suspended him for a game.

This...is fantastic. This is really amazing. This is a nice, compact way for me to be angry at absolutely everybody. It is, of course, impossible to figure out what happened in full, but here's what we know: some fan agitated Totorella. Water was thrown. Beer was thrown. Torts brandished Voros's stick at the guy!

You heard me. He took Voros's stick out of his hands and threatened the fan with it.

See? Fantastic stuff. On the one hand, the NHL is suspending a coach in the middle of the playoff series, quite possibly for throwing water at a drunk fan who threw beer at him, while doing nothing at all to ask the Caps to maybe up their security a little bit.

On the other hand, our coach managed to take his mind off the game for long enough to threaten some drunk guy in the stands! Suspendible or not, I don't care how long a T.V. timeout is - you should probably be doing something else? Now, I understand that you're trying to teach your team pride. I do get that. But to get suspended for dealings with a fan? In the middle of the game? Irony bonus: in the middle of the game from which you benched Avery for losing his temper? That is astounding work.

Sure, if that's a Lou Lamoriello coach behind the bench, there's no suspension. Granted. The NHL is biased, we know this - that is no excuse. Just like the open season refs have declared on Avery's head was no excuse for him to swing a stick at a guy, the bullshit coming from the fan and the NHL are no excuse for Torts to take his head out of the game like that. Is there a line combination he could have been changing up in the time he was instead throwing water? Could he maybe have been recommending a Nikolai-Zherdev's-head removal to Nikolai Zherdev's ass? I feel like there's some coaching he could have been doing.

So, that pretty much takes care of Game 5. Promising stuff, huh? Next entry, let's see if we managed to close out the series at home 2 days later (SPOILER WARNING: Nope!)