Boston’s Andrew Ference Receives No Disciplinary Action For Hit On Halpren

Added on Apr 28, 2011 by J Merrill in

NHL

The news came out this afternoon that Boston Bruins Adam Ference will not be suspended for a hit he put on Jeff Halpren during game 7 in their series with Montreal. Boston went on to win the game in Overtime, but the game was marred by the incident that left Halpren lying face down on the ice before he was helped off.

Bruins General Manager Peter Chiarelli told the media that himself, Andrew Ference, and the NHL had a disciplinary hearing this morning and there would be no action taken. Chiarelli said “When it first happened I wasn’t worried about a suspension. When I took a closer look at it, because I thought it was just incidental contact, when I took a closer look at it I could see where the League’s concerns lie. But when you look at the whole play, we turned the puck over at our blue line, and when that happens, the defensemen are supposed to close off the rim around the wall. So he was moving that way, and what Ference said was that he just saw the player off his shoulder as he was moving. He was looking up because he saw the turnover. So his motion, the player’s motion, they ran into each other.”

I don’t believe this for a second, and I tried to find the video of the replay angle they showed during the game here, but I am pretty sure you could see Ference making eye contact with Halpren. Hell, Ference even gives him the shoulder shrug to make sure he connected with his head. The momentum was from Halpren peaking up speed to head back up ice on the play. Even the announcers that were on my feed said they expected action because they thought the head was the target and the puck wasn’t in the play.

I know Ference isn’t lighting up the lamp 30 times a year, in fact last season he played in 51 games and the defensemen only had 8 assists for 8 points. However, thats not his job on the defense. He is supposed to have the vision to see plays developing all over the ice, and get back to protect the crease. For this service, Ference gets a little above 2.2 million dollars a year, and many feel he is worth every cent. With all of that said, we are supposed to believe he didn’t have the vision to see Halpren who was ten feet away when the play started? We are supposed to believe that the shoulder shrug, which you can even see the angle from far away, was a complete coincidence and just happen to connect with the face of Halpren?

This is the same guy, who after scoring the go ahead goal in game 4, skated toward the glass and gave the middle finger to the people who paid money to see him play. Ference was fined $2,500 for the infraction, which is actually the high end as to what he can be fined for that moronic act. Ference has happened to stumble upon some confidence, and is now showing his true colors on the rink. This is good right now for the Boston Bruins, but this will come back to haunt them. It doesn’t seem like encouragement, but the fact that he is getting attention and there is little or no recourse. Maybe if he does something really dumb in a game that has some consequences, they would open their eyes, but I just hope that when the time comes no one gets hurt.

At a time when we should be talking about the overtime performances by Nathan Hornton that gave them the win, and one of the goals icing the series for the Bruins, we are talking about this: