Bruce Boudreau said Matt Bradley feels fine this morning. He is expected to ride a stationary bike and if everything checks out he will play tomorrow against Tampa Bay. Bradley has made fun of his “paper” face, but he must have a strong jaw/skull if he escaped a concussion from that blow.
Also, Shaone Morrisonn will take the morning skate tomorrow and if he is ready to play, Boudreau said he will play.
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Boudreau was not happy with Daniel Carcillo’s actions after having a night to watch the replay and sleep on it.
“I don’t know, but I hope something comes from that,” Boudreau said. “That was just a … even if [Bradley] was looking like he was ready, it was unsuspecting and it is just a dirty play.
“That’s two in two nights and we’re trying to get that crap out of the game. Everybody knows we’re not like an aggressive, overly fighting-type team, so they get frustrated when they’re down. They can’t start taking it out like that because that is ridiculous.”
Both incidents came off of clean hits by Caps players, which is another point of contention for Boudreau.
“I don’t get athletes today — some of them,” Boudreau said. “A clean hit is a clean hit and needs no retribution for that. That is what this game has been built on is the speed and the hitting that has made this game so fabulous. Now you take the hitting out of the game because somebody is going to jump you then it is really stupid.”
And one more quote about Carcillo:
“[Bradley] might have been ready, but as he was dropping his gloves, Carcillo was already cold cocked and ready to throw them. He knew as soon as Bradley was ready to accept his challenge, the punch was there and [Bradley]’s gloves and hands were still down [at his waist].
“No matter how you cut it — and it’s not like this guy is in his first year and first chance doing it — whether it is in this league or in the American League where I saw him for two years, he was just as big an idiot there. It is just a dirty play.”
Boudreau wasn’t done. When asked about his team’s defensive play being underrated throughout this offensive explosion, it was Boudreau who went on the offensive.
“Just don’t go tell Mike Milbury that or Alan Muir that, because they keep saying we can’t play defensive hockey,” Boudreau said. “We’re good defensively, I believe. Sometimes if you’ve played the game before and you score four or five goals it is really hard to keep that [defensive] pressure on — you are so up for the game it is human nature to relax a little bit. But every week in the power rankings I read Alan Muir saying we can’t play defense, so it is interesting.”
And finally, since Boudreau was on a roll … why not ask him about SI’s Jim Kelley, who wrote an article criticizing Alex Ovechkin this week?
“I heard about it and I heard it was so ridiculously ridiculous that I was hoping someone would have it or show it to me,” Boudreau said. “I would like to, not attack him but I’d like to at least have a chance at a rebuttal on all the things he said that weren’t true.”
