Jelisa Castrodale

One of the worst parts about the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs?  They’ve given every self-described funny guy the opportunity to wipe the dust off that hacky line about going to a fight and seeing a hockey game break out. The absolute worst part? They’d be right.

Although the first 25 games (through Tuesday) brought in some of hockey’s biggest non-Olympics audiences, the newest viewers have been treated to chaos, violence and more cheap shots than a TNT ‘Roadhouse’ marathon. This isn’t how the uninitiated should be introduced to the NHL, not at the start of a two-month postseason that will air on every network with a multicolored peacock in the bottom right corner. 

I’m sorry, first-time viewers. Some of what you’ve seen weren’t hockey games — not respectable ones — and a lot of the on-ice incidents that have generated the most discussion weren’t real hockey plays. I feel like the league has been invited into everyone’s living room and it responded by cross-checking a bar stool, slashing the appetizers onto the floor and leaving immediately after ramming the host’s head into the patio door.

Video   PHT Extra: Breaking down the 0-3 teams April 17, 2012: PHT's Jason Brough and Mike Halford look at winless Pittsburgh and Vancouver, Crosby's blame, and if either team is likely to rally.

How has the postseason gone off the rails so quickly? I’m taking my own gloves off and throwing one towards the officials and one toward Brendan Shanahan’s shiny loafers. The league’s Senior Vice President of Player Safety has been maddeningly inconsistent with his interpretations of questionable plays and Magic 8-Ball-unpredictable when it comes to suspensions and fines. 

The tone for the playoffs was set during the third period of Game 1 between Nashville and Detroit, when Predators defenseman Shea Weber forced Red Wing Henrik Zetterberg to do an impression of a suicidal sparrow, grabbing his head from behind and ramming it into the rinkside glass hard enough to crack Zetterberg’s helmet. 

Shanahan missed an opportunity to go all Dean Wormer and shut down some of the extracurricular action, choosing instead to hand out an anemic $2,500 fine instead. That’s the same dollar amount Ottawa’s Zenon Konopka forked over after “verbally abusing” New York forward Brian Boyle during a pregame interview, because open mouths are TOTALLY the same thing as clenched fists. 

Video   Torres' questionable hit on Hossa April 17, 2012: The Coyotes' Raffi Torres jumps off the ice to level Chicago's Marian Hossa, who had to leave the ice on a stretcher.

If Shanahan had made an example of Weber, a three-time All-Star, then maybe the league wouldn’t have already blacked its own eye. There were 11 game-misconduct penalties during the first five days of this year’s playoffs, compared with the six issued in the entire 2011 postseason. Eleven pairs of gloves have dropped so far; there were only 12 fights from the first round to the Stanley Cup finals last year. 

Three of those fights came during a chaotic Game 3 clash between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, where the teams combined for a jawdropping 158 penalty minutes in what will hopefully be the lowest of the low points. On Sunday, they switched stereotypes for three periods, with Pittsburgh playing the aggressor while Philly kept their heads down and you know things have gone Bizarro World when one of the few innocent players is two-legged nastygram Matt Cooke. 

Even a desperate-looking Sidney Crosby squared off against Claude Giroux, an awkward sweater-grabbing slow dance that was like seeing a “My Honor Student Can Beat Up Your Honor Student” bumper sticker. Crosby and Giroux have been the unblemished faces and repeatedly bruised brains of the league, after both young stars missed time with concussions (most notably Crosby, who was limited to 22 games this season after playing only 41 the previous season).

Video   Crosby brawls with Giroux April 15, 2012: The Penguins' Sidney Crosby and Flyers' Claude Giroux get into a fight in the middle of the first period during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The NHL tried to sell a regular season that cracked down on cracked skulls (although USA Today’s Concussion Tracker still has 95 slides) so right now, the H seems like it stands for Hypocrisy. As many soundbites and press clippings as the league put out about head shots and protecting players, their accountability during the postseason has been as toothless as Sean Couturier’s smile. 

Yes, fighting has a place in hockey. It’s as much a part of the game as blue lines and Barry Melrose’s mullet. I appreciate hard hit, hard fought games and am a frequent-enough visitor to Hockeyfights.com to know that they don’t carry t-shirts in my size. But those fights — the ones that even Lady Byng would’ve politely clapped for — have an honor that has been missing from the playoffs. Those fights are about policing the game, a hipcheck-and-balance policy that protects players from cheap shots and chippy play. 

Video   Are suspensions damaging NHL's credibility? April 16, 2012: NHL Live discusses the suspensions of Matt Carkner and Craig Adams and whether they underscore an inconsistent application of punishment in the 2012 NHL playoffs.

There’s no honor in Nicklas Backstrom’s crosscheck to Rich Peverley’s throat, in James Neal introducing his elbows to Couturier and Giroux’s heads or in Weber smashing Zetterberg into the glass. That shouldn’t be a part of the game and shouldn’t be justified with a shrug and a “That’s the playoffs” explanation. 

So, new NHL viewers, if that’s the part you’ve enjoyed so far, save yourselves some trouble and tune in to the next syndicated episode of the Jerry Springer show instead. You’ll see the same amount of hair pulling and haymakers without having to spend the commercial breaks Googling “What does icing mean?”

There are two months of postseason play left. I don’t want to lose the intensity, but the insanity can drop a notch or two.

Jelisa Castrodale has learned a lot about life by making a mess of her own. Read more at jelisacastrodale.com, follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/gordonshumway, or contact her at