On Malkin and White-outs

First of all, Evgeni Malkin should not be playing tonight. I already talked about how there should be a rule in place to keep the last minute of a lopsided game from turning into a street brawl. As it turns out, there's something like that in place. It's called a Game Misconduct. If you get one in a game, you're supposed to be suspended for the next game. Malkin didn't get suspended. No one got suspended as a result of the ten man cage match that Game 1 of the Flyers-Pens series turned into. Scott Walker didn't get suspended for cold-cocking Milan Lucic in the Canes-Bruins series.

So, you could say that the rule has no teeth because they don't enforce it during the most important games of the year. But that actually doesn't get to the heart of the matter. Even if they did enforce the rule, it doesn't go far enough. Say Ville Leino (I know you've never heard of him, that's the point) sucker punches Crosby in the kidneys several times at the end of a blowout loss. Leino gets a Game Misconduct, a two minute minor, a 10-minute major, and is suspended for the next game. But, maybe Crosby cracks a rib. If he doesn't miss several games, he's at least hampered for the rest of the series. And the Red Wings lose some dude I picked off their fourth line from their roster page on ESPN.com. For one game.

A 10-minute major doesn't mean a whole lot when there's 35 seconds left on the clock. It would mean an awful lot, though, if the penalty minutes carried over. Imagine if Malkin was out of the line-up and Detroit started with a nine-and-a-half minute power play tonight. On second thought, don't imagine that. In fact, forget I brought it up.

My point is that the NHL needs to enforce the rule as it stands and change it so that it actually hurts teams who hurt players.

I am SO over the white-out. Two reasons:

1. They have one every friggin' home game, so it's not special and it's not an advantage.
2. The fans are wearing white, the Pens are wearing black. To top it all off... the visiting team is wearing white. That just never made any sense to me.

I understand that there's no way that Console Energy would sponsor a blackout. I get it. Also, I've heard that everyone wearing black (straight black, not home jerseys) makes it harder for the goalie to see the puck. The all white jerseys make it easier for the goalie to see the puck.

Therefore, I propose a Black and White Out. Give everyone a black t-shirt and a white t-shirt when they walk in the door. Everyone on one side (the side facing the opposing goalie) wears the black shirt. Everyone on the other side (the one facing Fleury) wears the white shirt. Each intermission, everyone changes their shirt.

I'm sure this isn't legal, but I think that we could get this going for Game 4. I'm sure we could find a sponsor for one game. Maybe two.