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TAMPA - One time, and it's a fluke.
One time, and it's bad luck. Wrong place, wrong time, that sort of thing. One time, and you shrug your shoulders. It's a fast, physical game, after all. Sometimes, players get hurt.
Two times, and it's coincidence.
Two times, and it's a bad streak. What are the odds? Two times, and you shake your head. After all, trouble travels in pairs. Sometimes, these things happen.
Three times, and it's a trend.
Three times, and something is going on. You are no longer talking about random chance. Three times, and you are talking about gangland violence. You are talking about a plan of attack.
Now that there is blood on the ice, it is time to ask the unthinkable.
Do the Calgary Flames have a hit list?
Two games, and three blows to the head of marquee Lightning players, begs the question. Ruslan Fedotenko is hurting. And Pavel Kubina. And Vinny Lecavalier.
Is that coincidence, or is it conspiracy? Are the Flames merely dirty, or are they dastardly?
Put it this way: If you were out to get the Lightning, if you wanted to take the three most vital pieces off the game board, is there a better place to start than its hottest offensive player, its most physical defensive player and its most talented overall player? Notice that the Flames haven't exactly bounced around the grinders of the Lightning.
Of course, if you had a hit list, you would probably have Martin St. Louis on it, too. But let's face it. St. Louis has spent his career avoiding the headhunters, backshooters and sidewinders of the NHL. He's pretty good at it.
Still, it's enough to want to make you check the Flames' locker room for wanted posters of Brad Richards and Fredrik Modin and Dave Andreychuk. Frankly, it should make the bosses at the NHL a little nervous.
So far, they don't seem to be. Colin Campbell, the NHL's executive vice president and director of hockey operations, really threw the pamphlet at Calgary's Ville "the Villain" Nieminen on Wednesday. He suspended Nieminen for one whole game, which, in the world of punishment, is a degree worse than dusting the erasers but not quite as bad as writing "I will not be a back-jumper" 100 times on the blackboard.
"To me, this didn't look or smell like more than a one-game suspension," Campbell said.
From here, it smells as if Nieminen should be gone until sometime next fall. From here, it looks as if the Flames should be reminded that, as rough a sport as hockey is, there are still rules of engagement. Hitting from the back is still the route of a coward and, from this day hence, Nieminen should be considered as offensive as Eminem.
This was Nieminen's second suspension of the postseason, and as a repeat offender, this time should have lasted until sometime next fall. There is no excuse for Nieminen's rear-ender on Lecavalier. It was the worst sneak attack since Wild Bill Hickok was offed on Deadwood.
In the convoluted world of NHL punishment, part of the reason Nieminen got off with one game's jail time is this: Vinny can take a punch. As silly as it sounds, it was part of the deal. The NHL considers the severity of injury in its punishment; one supposes that if Lecavalier's skull would have bounded into the stands, the vile Ville might have had to sit out two whole games.
Look, no one around here is grousing about the physical play. Hey, it's a rough game. The Flames also have delivered more than their share of legal, punishing hits, and that's great. As long as it is face to face, well, the opponent can toughen up or take up figure skating.
But when a player such as Nieminen continually charges from the rear, it dishonors the game.
Yet, the Flames and their fans continue to look at Nieminen's hit with the eyes of an altar boy. Who? Us?
They have sniped about which referee made the call, and about Nieminen getting five minutes rather than two, about whether Lecavalier embellished (What? Did he act as if it were a 12-stitch gash rather than just a 10-stitcher?). They keep bringing up a controversial hit by the Lightning's Cory Stillman in Game 1. Wednesday, a Canadian reporter asked about the condition of Lecavalier's chin strap, as if Lecavalier's helmet constantly pops from his head with the slightest of pressure.
As for Stillman's hit? As Campbell said Thursday, it was from the side. Campbell equated it with Martin Gelinas' hit on Kubina, not Nieminen's hit on Lecavalier.
This is silliness. Nieminen made a stupid play, and his team should be disappointed. He made a dirty play, and the league should be outraged.
Every time Darryl Sutter tries to explain away Nieminen's play, it lessens his credibility and calls into question every other explanation he has had for every other play. What Sutter should have said was this: "He messed up. He was too aggressive at a key point of the game." If Sutter admits to that, then maybe you buy that Nieminen wasn't trying to injure. Maybe.
Instead, you can look back at Robyn Regehr mashing Fedotenko's face into the boards, and at Gelinas elbowing Kubina, and it looks very much like a team that has decided it can't skate with its opponent so it is going to roughhouse. Which brings us back to the hit list question.
Oh, it probably isn't that simple. The Flames don't have to write down the names of the Lightning players they want to punish. Anyone on the top two lines will do. The Flames act as if they're playing a video game, and you get bonus points for the blood of a star.
It's a shame. Good sport, hockey. Good town, Calgary.
Both of them should be better than this.