Brashear Suspended 6 Games

Wow. 6 games? Can you say 'track record'??? While I expected Donald Brashear to be suspended for Game 7 on Tuesday night, I did not expect such a lengthy one. The AP story explains it like this: Brashear is being punished Monday for two separate actions -- one before and one during Washington's 5-3 victory in Game 6 at New York on Sunday. He was suspended for one game for making contact with Rangers forward Colton Orr in pregame warmups. Brashear will miss five additional games for what the NHL is calling a "blind-side hit" on Rangers forward Blair Betts midway through the first period. Betts will miss Game 7 with a broken orbital bone. Well, what's done is done. With Betts suffering such a bad injury, it's hard for me to complain about it. Betts may have had his head down, but he clearly was shooting the puck into the Caps zone and was headed off for a line change. It was a cheap shot. I don't understand if this had to do with the pregame warmups. Orr is as much of a trouble maker as Brash and you can't tell me he had nothing to do with goading Brash into a confrontation during the warmup. So now the question becomes who will replace Brash in the lineup? Chris Clark has been told to "be ready" and he is the type of player we need anyway rather than Michael Nylander. It's not as if Clark would be playing 15+ minutes. He'd be playing around 10. I say put the captain in. For a nice perspective (for Caps fans) of the recent craziness of the series, check out this story from The Hockey News. http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/25748-Campbells-Cuts-Caps-comeback-would-be-just-result.html