Wednesday night

Couple notes from last night's games....

First, the Vancouver at Saskatoon game probably set a new WHL record with a 26-player shootout required to decide the game. Each team used 13 of their 18 skaters before the shootout was over - and in fact, each team only had 17 skaters available for the shootout since they had both had a player ejected earlier in the game.

Most teams seem to have four or five guys who know what they're doing in a shootout, and after that it becomes a crapshoot with a bunch of guys who may or may not have any useable moves....and a lot of average players will tell you that when it comes to shootouts, they sit on the bench and pray the coach doesn't tap their shoulder next, because they know they're not very good at it. Still, how bad do you have to be at shootouts to be the coach's 14th through 17th choices on your team? Last night, the only shooters who didn't get to shoot for the Giants were James Henry, R.J. LaRochelle, Stefan Schneider, and Craig Schira. For the Blades, not shooting were Mike Reich, John Flatters, Mitch Berg, and Kevin Philp. Vancouver's James Wright and Saskatoon's Teigan Zahn were not able to take part since they were thrown out of the game in the 3rd period for fighting.

The NHL's longest shootout was a 15-round affair between the Rangers and Capitals in November 2005, a shootout which the Rangers' Marek Malik won with a really pretty goal. Thanks to the marvel that is YouTube, you can still see the highlights and winning goal of that epic here.

The other incident last night was an ugly one in Spokane, which saw Chiefs captain Chris Bruton punch Everett pest Kyle Beach in the head at the final buzzer. Beach was down for a while and eventually left the ice with a neck brace on, and Bruton got a match penalty for attempt to injure. Under league rules, Bruton is suspended until the league reviews and rules on the incident, which I'm sure will happen today or tomorrow.

Depending on who you talk to, the punch was or was not of the sucker variety. (I've seen the video of it now and in my opinion it is definitely not a sucker punch since Beach was facing Bruton at the time and had just shoved Bruton in the face himself so he would have had some idea something was coming back his way.) But anyway, what really drew my attention are the comments from Chiefs coach Bill Peters after the game. You can read them in Chiefs beat writer Jessica Brown's game story, which she has posted on her Chiefs blog. About Beach's injury, Peters says, "Let’s not kid ourselves, you talk about acting 101. You get knocked down, you get up, that’s hockey.”

OK....we all know Beach has a reputation for embellishing things, and this may or may not be another case of that. The league will review the tape and decide if it is. But, why is Peters saying this kind of thing unless he had some kind of proof that Beach was in fact not hurt. Hate him or not, it's a 17 year old kid who might have been injured to the point of needing a neck brace. If the league reviews the incident and decides to suspend Bruton, I kind of hope Peters joins him in being disciplined. I'm not a fan of either Everett or Spokane but I think talking that way about somebody who has been injured is over the line. If Beach was indeed faking the injury then that's different, but how could Peters have known that for sure right after the game? From what I saw, Beach pretty much got drilled square in the kisser with a real solid (albeit gloved) shot and could definitely have been legitimately hurt.