NHL Blows... the call on Ottawa vs Buffalo

I'm still following the fallout from Thursday's brawl between Buffalo and Ottawa and a couple of things have jumped out at me.

First off, Lindy Ruff was fined by the NHL for the incident. The only plausible reason here is that Ruff is being fined for putting the line of Kaleta, Mair and Peters on the ice.

Ok, fair enough, fine away. The intent of that line change is quite clear.

So, let's skip forward to Saturday night. Ottawa pulls Brian McGratton (thanks James for pointing out my error on my post about Sat's game. ) out of the press box for the first time in 10 games.

My question is, why isn't the NHL fining Bryan Murray for putting McGratton into the lineup? How is that any different from Ruff putting his goons out on the ice after the Drury injury. In fact it is worse, Ruff could have at least plead heat of the moment, Murray slotted McGratton into the lineup with cold blooded premeditation.

I was browsing around the net and caught site of a post on the Checking Line that I found amusing. In short, Chris DeGroat is suggesting that Martin Biron should have checked out this video of Emery pounding the snot out of Josh Gratton in an AHL game a few years back.

Why is that amusing? If you watch the video the first guy to congratulate Emery after the fight is none other than Anton Volchenkov. The Ottawa Defenseman was on the ice at the time of the Sens/Sabres tilt and my original post about this fight mistakenly identified him as the guy who went for Emery after he pummeled Biron.

So, not only did I mistakenly identify the player, from the wrong team no less... but he is probably the one guy on the ice who knew better than to throw down with Emery from personal experience.

That would be why Blind Sight is 20/20.